Here’s what Kerry saPOSTID:
KERRY (8/9/04): Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it was the right authority for a president to have, but I would have used that authority, as I have said throughout this campaign, effectively. I would have done this very differently from the way President Bush has.
Shorter version:
KERRY’S POSITION: I voted to give President Bush the authority. Then President Bush f*cked it up.
NewMexiKen readers who just spent time near Traverse City, Michigan (you know who you are), might find this editorial from the Traverse City Record Eagle particularly interesting.
An open letter to President George W. Bush
Welcome to Traverse City. Hopefully you got a glimpse of Grand Traverse Bay on your flight in and the beautiful landscape that makes this such a special place to live.
Since this is a campaign stop, it is appropriate to address issues that residents of this area find important and would like to see addressed in this election year:
– Air quality. Frankfort, a village of about 1,500 located right on Lake Michigan, has an ozone reading comparable to urban areas and is just one step away from being forced to adopt curbs on auto emissions.
Obviously, that pollution isn’t coming from Frankfort; it’s coming from coal-fired power plants in Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin that have been exempted from tougher pollution standards by your administration. When will it stop?
– Taxes. Residents here would love to jump on the tax cut bandwagon, but don’t make enough money. Only 1 person in 55 in our region made $125,000 or more a year in 2002, just over half of what it took to qualify for the highest tax cuts.
The Congressional Budget Office says those in the top 1 percent of income – $1.2 million a year – got a break of about $78,000. Those making $57,000 a year got about $1,100. When do the rest of us get our turn?
– Great Lakes. Biologists warn the Lakes are just one foreign species predator away from seeing the charter boat and commercial fishing industries wiped out. And yet the U.S. Coast Guard refuses to enforce existing rules against dumping ballast water. Why?
– National parks. As home to the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, park policy matters here. The National Geographic Society and the General Accounting office say the parks are facing a $600 million shortfall in operating funds. Deferred maintenence has hit $5 billion. Wasn’t there room in the $400 billion-plus deficit for our parks?
– The economy. No rebound here. Regional unemployment was 6.9 percent in June, and most new jobs are low-pay service industry positions that don’t include benefits. Can they expect some help?
– National forests. A 2001 rule aimed at keeping roadless national forests closed to logging is being dismantled. It would allow states to decide if forest land should be opened to logging. So whose forests are these, anyway?
– Iraq. Families across northern Michigan worry every day about a loved one in Iraq. What do you tell them when they ask why we’re there? No weapons of mass destruction, no al-Qaida links, no “imminent” threat to the United States all equal no justification. But nearly 1,000 Americans are dead, more than 6,000 have been wounded. And we’re not out yet. Why?
These are things that are important to northern Michigan, Mr. President, and we hope you give them your attention.
May your stay with us be a pleasant one.
Link via First Draft.
Ten reasons not to vote for Bush from a professed Republican.
Jack Ohman in The Oregonian
According to the Commission on Presidential Debates the schedule (with moderator) is:
First presidential debate:
Thursday, September 30
University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL
Jim Lehrer
Vice presidential debate:
Tuesday, October 5
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH
Gwen Ifill
Second presidential debate:
Friday, October 8
Washington University, St. Louis, MO
Charles Gibson
Third presidential debate:
Wednesday, October 13
Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
Bob Schieffer
From The New York Times:
Mr. Kerry was taken to task in Wednesday’s Las Vegas Review-Journal for mispronouncing Nevada (it’s Ne-VAH-da, not Ne-VAD-uh) and its Yucca (he said YOO-kah instead of YUK-ah) Mountain. “I’ve got to stop saying Ne-VAD-uh the way they say it in Massachusetts,” he said the next day. “Ne-VAH-da.”
Let’s hope they coached him before he said Or-eh-GONE in Or-eh-GUN.
And I don’t even want to think about WARSH-ing-ton.
Update: Actually, NewMexiKen doesn’t think the Times helps much with pronouncing Nevada. It’s Ne-vad-a (vad rhymes with dad), not Ne-va-da (va rhymes with ma).
Kevin Drum, with Bob Somerby‘s help, does an excellent job of summarizing why Kerry’s position on Iraq is consistent and why Bush’s action was wrong.
This is an excellent, brief post. As tempted as NewMexiKen is to excerpt some of it, I recommend instead that you read it and decide for yourself.
“Is it me or is Bush going everywhere Kerry goes? So far in the past week, President Bush has followed John Kerry to Davenport, Iowa; New Mexico; Las Vegas; Los Angeles; and he follows him to Portland, Oregon. The only place he never followed John Kerry was Vietnam.”
“In a stunning announcement, New Jersey Governor James McGreevey announced that he had an extramarital affair with another man. Finally, a Democrat who can honestly say, ‘I did not have sex with that woman!'”
“President Bush appeared with Arnold Schwarzenegger at a huge campaign event. Only in California can a governor who speaks German and a president who can barely speak English try to make themselves clear to an audience that’s primarily Spanish. What a country we live in!”
Jay Leno
From report in the Los Angeles Times:
Later, Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) accused Kerry of advocating socialism within the United States and appeasement overseas.
“It’s not John Kerry’s fault that he looks French,” Smith told reporters on the conference call arranged by the Bush campaign.
NewMexiKen wonders what other ethnic groups Senator Smith can disparage.
This guy is running for U.S. Senate as a Libertarian in Illinois. He should have tried for President. He could have swept the dyslexic vote.
As Wonkette puts it, “screw Obama. This was the speech of the year.” New Jersey Governor James E. McGreevey’s resignation speech.
Link via First Draft.
Update: That’s an AMTRAK GE P42DC running north of Las Vegas, New Mexico, at 80mph last Saturday. Here’s the background.
“Let’s see what’s going on with the Democrats, John and Teresa. Or as they’re now called, ‘Cash and Kerry.’ According to the Drudge Report, John Kerry and his wife had a huge argument after a campaign rally in Arizona and had to sleep in separate hotel rooms. So apparently they’re going after the Clinton vote.”
“President Bush said yesterday it doesn’t make any sense to raise taxes on the rich because rich people can figure out how to dodge taxes. Then Dick Cheney said ‘Shut up! You’re ruining everything.'”
Jay Leno
Here’s the video.
Link via Scaramouche Blog via Sideshow.
Juanita got me laughing so hard about Tom DeLay, I actually had to stop and take a break from reading.
The more his poll numbers drop, the more he’ll be calling in favors. Thelma says that for the promise of some federal government pork, she’ll give him a reception over at Thelma’s Pool Hall and Family Mediation Center. However, Thelma really means pork, as in pork ribs, not the government money kind.
Daniel Gross writing at Slate tells us —
Now we’ve also got red-state, blue-state discount retailers.
On the left: Costco Wholesale Corp. Last week, Jeffrey Brotman and James Sinegal, chairman and chief executive office of Costco, respectively, joined the list of executives who endorsed John Kerry for president. The company is based in Washington (a blue state in the past four elections, and one that Kerry leads, by a 53-45 margin according to the Aug. 2 Zogby poll), and a list of its locations bears some resemblance to the Kerry-Edwards campaign: strong on the affluent coasts and virtually nonexistent in the comparatively poor Great Plains and in the Old Confederacy….
Like today’s Democratic Party, Costco favors highly trafficked urban and edge-city locations—it has three stores in New York City. And it caters to a decidedly upscale crowd. As John Helyar reported in this excellent Fortune profile, the average salary of a Costco member is $95,333. The company’s merchandise mix reflects the fact that its customers shop at discounters by choice, not by necessity. They’re New Luxury suckers who like to save on staples, more Jean Chardonnay than Joe Six-Pack. As Helyar notes: “Costco is the U.S.’s biggest seller of fine wines ($600 million a year).”
The article continues.
It seems a number of visitors to NewMexiKen are searching for the President’s answer on the American Indian tribal sovereignty issue. Here it is [mp3 file].
Update: Type “tribal sovereignty Bush wav” into Google and you get NewMexiKen as the first pick.
A young woman came to NewMexiKen’s door last night — right in the middle of a Law & Order rerun (one I didn’t remember!). She knew my name and wanted to encourage me to vote for John Kerry. I told her that wouldn’t be a problem, but she persisted. (Just maybe there aren’t that many Kerry supporters in my neighborhood and she wanted someone to talk to).
What was the most important issue, she asked.
He wasn’t an idiot, I answered. (My reasons to be positive about Kerry actually do exceed my negativity about Bush, but it was an easy answer.)
But it still didn’t seem to satisfy her. She must have felt I was just telling her what she wanted to hear so I could get back to Briscoe and Curtis. And I just felt her time was better spent convincing someone who needed convincing.
Did I have any questions about the candidates?
No, I said. Then I gave her the response that seemed to completely satisfy her that I was indeed in Kerry’s column.
My son used to work on Senator Kerry’s staff, I said.
From the Los Angeles Times —
Almost half of Medicare recipients dislike the new prescription drug law, and nearly 3 in 10 seniors and disabled persons say the issue will influence their vote for president, according to a national survey released Tuesday.
The survey suggests that there are “maybe a half-million seniors” who might swing their votes to Democratic candidate John F. Kerry and another “1 million to 2 million whose votes might be up for grabs on this issue,” said Drew E. Altman, president and chief executive of the private, nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation.
From America’s Finest News Source, The Onion —
Delivering the central speech of his 10-day “Solution For America” bus campaign tour Monday, Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry outlined his one-point plan for a better America: the removal of George W. Bush from the White House.
“If I am elected in November, no inner-city child will have to live in an America where George Bush is president,” Kerry said, addressing a packed Maize High School auditorium. “No senior citizen will lie awake at night, worrying about whether George Bush is still the chief executive of this country. And no American—regardless of gender, regardless of class, regardless of race—will be represented by George Bush in the world community.”
“When they say they served with Kerry in Vietnam, what they really mean is that they were in Vietnam at the same time. Kind of like how Snoopy served with the Red Baron”
Jon Stewart on the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth
“First Lady Laura Bush said that people shouldn’t be saying that the benefits from stem cell research are ‘right around the corner’ because it gives people false hope. Then later her husband said that the economic recovery is ‘right around the corner.'”
Jay Leno
here’s your guy. Want to reconsider?
Link via Atrios.
NBC is refusing rights for documentary film producer Robert Greenwald to use a clip from President Bush’s appearance on Meet the Press where he defends his decision to go to war. The clip, according to NBC in refusing permssion, is “not very flattering to the president.”
Lawrence Lessig discusses the ins and outs of the issue at Wired News.
Outside the window [of Kerry’s train]. Out on the fringes.
There were old ladies standing in 90-degree heat for a 90-second glimpse of Kerry’s train. A little girl dressed like “Star Wars'” Princess Leia, holding a sign for “Obi Won John Kerry.” Mud-splattered trucks on parallel streets speeding up and slowing down to keep pace as a 21st-century presidential campaign used 19th-century technology to reach its audience.
