Daily Archives: August 11, 2004

bush Rugby

This entry was posted in bush on by

As Bob Harris says The past is Prologue.
Without it none of us can be who and where we are today and many change their ways more then once as they navigate through life. Others do not appear to change their core at all. They hold to their basic character and behavior from beginning to end. This is not necessarily good or bad but different for each individual. Some of these are your neighbors, some are your ministers, some are in jail and some are presidents (R):

I am looking at a photo of the George W. Bush that you’ve probably never seen before. It’s a sports-action close-up of him at Yale, over a caption written prophetically by a fellow undergraduate more than 30 years ago: “George Bush delivers illegal, but gratifying right hook to opposing ball carrier.”
Never mind that this is a rugby game, alien to most Americans, and that the caption writer’s assessment wasn’t political. I think it explains one reason why Bush hasn’t slid in the polls since John Kerry reported for duty: He owes more than a little something to the “bad boy” vote that no pollster captures as well as this photo and caption do.
The Apostropher suggests that the picture of bush
..provides photographic evidence that Bush was already a cheap shot artist years before you ever heard of him.
Go look for yourself, read Bob Harris’ post and Jim Sleepers column in the LA Times (link above), and make your own decision.

A Plan

This entry was posted in Capitalism Constitution Economics Election 2004 Federal Government Federalism Libertarianism on by

w and his administration are not well known for providing comprehensive public policy plans for public discussion and possible action. For instance, regarding the economy the bush buzzward is ownership. See here and here. There is not much depth and from a planning perspective these appear to be more like action items without any overall strategy direction. And looking deeper on the bush campaign site finds more of the same kind of thing.
Tyler Cowan proposes a somewhat expanded plan for bush (I presume he’d like kerry to adopt it as well)and does include at least a bit of overarching vision in his 12th point:

Get on TV and tell the nation that a free economy is a critical source of our strength. Tell them you mean it, and then mean it. Economic growth is the greatest long-run gift we can give to the world.
The rest of the list is incomplete but, for the most part, a great start toward implementing the proposed vision.
To all of this Ideablog says:
Big problem: it’s politically impossible.
To which I say, well, that’s ok. What is impossible today happens tomorrow but only if you start talking about it.
This is why, whether you ultimately agree point by point, you should go read Cowan’s proposal, think about it, talk about it, discuss your alternatives, refine it, and go at it again, and again, until we get it closer to right.

The Election Must be Getting Close

This entry was posted in bush Iran US Foreign Policy on by

And the bushies need something to lift their chances from the depths they are at today. So, they are waving sticks in the air again:

The Bush administration is piling on the pressure over Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons programme. It maintains Tehran’s decision to resume building uranium centrifuges wrecked a long-running EU-led dialogue and is proof of bad faith.
The US will ask a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency on September 13 to declare Iran in breach of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, a prelude to seeking punitive UN sanctions.
….
Condoleezza Rice, the US national security adviser, said at the weekend there was a new international willingness to confront Tehran, but declined to rule out unilateral action if others did not go along.
Sound familiar?
Eric at Wampum argues:
The current working-draft of the casus belli (singular) for the work-in-progress Iran War is failure to allow IAEA inspections.
Eric is wrong in restricting the gathering threat to a single issue. According to the above Guardian article the bushies are waving sticks on 4-5 fronts though the nuclear issue seems to be the biggest one at the moment. Given the apparent information failures related to their last adventure I expect folks to set an extremely high standard of proof for any allegations that might lead to an act of war.
Question for the day: what other nuclear powers are planning to not allow IAEA inspections?