Jay Haynes

Clark Consistent on Dissent

Clark Community Network:

When General Clark says "dissent protects democracy" he truly believes it. This isn't a notion that just fell upon him recently and it certainly isn't a one way thought. Let me bring you back to Oxford University circa summer 1999. Now I must tell you, I have done about 250 road trips while serving on the SACEUR Communications Team, so my timelines are a bit foggy. At any rate, General Clark had just completed an address to the students of his Alma Mata, Magdalen College, and was walking to a local pub with an energetic group of students, when he was confronted by a pen wielding Israeli law student. Immediately a watchful security team moved in close, but the General, with just a glance (something that only comes from knowing your team well), signaled to the team that he would allow the engagement. Big Joe remained vigilant though.The shrew like student hammered away at the legal merits of the Kosovo Air Campaign. General Clark grinned from ear to ear. This student was passionate about the war. This student was willing to fight for what she believed. She did not fear the General or his security team. She went at him with every ounce of conviction she could muster. I knew what was going on in his head. I knew he was thinking "if I could just only make her understand and turn that fire around...". He listened intently waiting for a valid point that might alter his position. It never came. He respected her dissent, that is until he realized that her dissent would turn into a diatribe. She had crossed the line. The General politely excused himself.

He spent the rest of the evening like a university student holding court at one end of the bar while we, the staff, enjoyed Mrs. Clark's stories of the early Oxford years. He still light and enthusiasm of student ready to change the world. It was a memorable night. I was lucky enough to attend an Oxford lecture by a man who may one day lead our nation back from the brink. It may be just a crumb, but I can lay claim to a tiny bit of Oxford education. Thanks Boss!

Bush Overspends Says McCain

McCain Lashes Congress, Bush for Overspending

McCain said Bush, who has never vetoed a spending bill, was in large part responsible for this year's spending levels exceeding prescribed caps of 4 percent growth, at a whopping 8 percent.

"The president cannot say, as he has many times, that I am going to tell Congress to enforce some spending discipline and then not veto bills," McCain said.

"We are laying a burden of debt on future generations of Americans. ... Any economist will tell you, you cannot have this level of debt, of increasing deficits without eventually it affecting interest rates and inflation," he added.

McCain, who challenged Bush for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, took particular issue with the massive energy bill, which in beginning stages cost $8 billion, a total that rocketed up with dozens of provisions inserted to benefit the districts of individual lawmakers to win their support.

"There was no policy initiatives in the energy policy. It was just one pork barrel project larded onto another," he said. "... And the administration is still saying it is one of its highest priorities, I don't know how you rationalize that."

Despite the bills that were passed, however, lawmakers recessed last week without passing a roughly $375 billion year-end federal spending bill.

The failure will not shut down the government, which can operate under stopgap funding until Jan. 31. But it was a setback for Republicans, who had vowed to get the budget process back on track this year.

Federal Spending Up Dramatically Under Bush and Republicans

The Bush Betrayal

In 2000 George W. Bush campaigned across the country telling voters: "My opponent trusts government. I trust you."

Little wonder that some of his supporters are now wondering which candidate won that election.

Federal spending has increased by 23.7 percent since Bush took office. Education has been further federalized in the No Child Left Behind Act. Bush pulled out all the stops to get Republicans in Congress to create the biggest new entitlement program -- prescription drug coverage under Medicare -- in 40 years.

He pushed an energy bill that my colleague Jerry Taylor described as "three parts corporate welfare and one part cynical politics . . . a smorgasbord of handouts and subsidies for virtually every energy lobby in Washington."

It's a far cry from the less-government, "leave us alone" conservatism of Ronald Reagan.

GOP: The Party of Pork

GOP: The Party of Pork

The same GOP-led Congress that has just passed abloated giveaway to drug companies disguised as a prescription drug benefit to seniors, isn't exactly looking for other ways to save money. Wasteful pork barrel spending has increased exponentially since Republicans took over the Congress in 1994, a new report by the Democratic staff of the House Appropriations Committee shows.

Republicans haven't simply increased the number of home state "earmarks" — projects slated for specific funding in the home districts of members of Congress who push them — they have also pushed pork into bills that were previously considered off-limits.

For example, the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill, which accounts for one-third of discretionary non-defense spending, was long considered off limits to pork projects. With Republicans in power, that bill is now bursting at the seams with wasteful earmarks. In fiscal year 2003, there were 1,857 separate earmarks in the bill for a total of $896 million — nearly a billion dollars of pork in one bill alone.

Republicans have passed similarly massive increases in pork spending into Transportation bills, Defense bills, the Veterans Administration and Housing and Urban Development bill, the State-Commerce-Justice Departments bill — virtually every appropriations bill passed by Congress.

The wasteful spending represents breathtaking hypocrisy by Republicans, who repeatedly made pork barrel spending a campaign issue when they were in the minority. In 1993, Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) said, "Republicans are concerned about the budget deficit. Adding more pork programs to our massive debt is a bad way to start."

Aiding the inarticulate

Aiding the inarticulate

The Republican National Committee's reprehensible new ad, which criticizes Democrats for wanting honest answers from Bush on his deceptions and failed foreign policies, is also doctored.

As the New York Times reports, President Bush's words from his State of the Union address used in the ad were a little mangled in his original speech. So the RNC used digital audio editing to make the president sound strong and resolute instead of hesitant and unsure.

Just another example of historical revisionism from this administration.

Click here to watch the ad. Then to see Bush's original statement in the State of the Union click here for Windows Media and click here for RealPlayer. (These links may take a few minutes to download on slow connections.)

Welcomed with Open Arms

7 Spaniards Killed In Iraqi Ambush

An hour after the attack on the Spaniards, more than 100 residents of a nearby Sunni Muslim village swarmed the area, many chanting slogans in support of Hussein. In a display of jubilation mixed with hostility unusual even by the standards of other attacks on foreign soldiers, several youths forcefully kicked three of the bodies, which had been dragged into the opposite lane of the divided road.

People at the site said they believed that the soldiers, who were dressed in civilian clothes, were CIA agents or members of the Israeli intelligence service.

"Praise to the steadfast people!" several people shouted in unison. Others beckoned passing motorists to roll down their windows and then boasted: "Look what we have done to the Americans and the Zionists." It was the deadliest roadside attack on occupation forces since shortly after the capture of Baghdad.

Faces of the Fallen in Iraq

washingtonpost.com: Faces of the Fallen

Neil Bush and New Bridge

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: November 23, 2003 - November 29, 2003 Archives

If you're involved in all sorts of iffy financial transactions, don't get into a messy divorce.

Someone didn't mention this sage advice to Neil Bush.

Now it turns out that Bush is not-too-distantly connected to New Bridge Strategies, the outfit President Bush's right-hand-man Joe Allbaugh set up to play Iraqi contracts game.

Here's the run-down.

It turns out Neil is Co-Chairman of something called Crest Investment Corporation. Whatever it is Crest does, it pays 60 grand a year to get a few hours a week of advice from the President's ne'er-do-well brother on how to do it.

The other "co-chairman and principal of Crest," reportsthe Financial Times, "is Jamal Daniel, a Syrian-American who is an advisory board member of New Bridge Strategies ..."

The New Bridge website says that before Daniel started up Crest he was in the international real estate biz and also "has extensive experience in structuring investing in energy and oil and gas projects throughout the U.S., Europe and the Middle East."

Will the surprises never cease ...

-- Josh Marshall

Bush's Violent Dinner

News:

News of the visit only broke in the US after Air Force One had taken off from Baghdad and was on its way home. And no sooner was the visit made public in Baghdad, than the city was shaken by the sounds of conflict ­ repeated loud explosions, gunfire and ambulance sirens.

Bush Avoids Human Cost of War

Center for American Progress - The Progress Report:

President Bush yesterday "held a rare meeting with families of fallen soldiers" at Fort Carson, CO. The WP reports that the meeting was only "Bush's third with families of fallen soldiers since the war began," although he has attended 41 fundraisers during that same period of time. The President faces criticism for avoiding "images that will remind Americans of the war's human toll, putting restrictions on news coverage of casualties and confining the President to largely upbeat settings." And President Bush " has not attended any of the funerals of the 431 U.S. service members who have died since the invasion of Iraq . Bush's critics point out that 40 of those funerals were at Arlington National Cemetery , just four miles from the White House." Veterans have been circulating a petition to ask the Commander-in-Chief to attend a funeral of an American killed in war.