Fight Back America!

Bush Remembered By Former Professor

2004-07-22T09:23:00.000-04:00

While Democrats, the press and Michael Moore have been searching for and exposing the President's National Guard records, the years following have recieved little scrutiny. Last week, one of his professors at the Harvard Business School - which he attended after leaving the Texas National Guard- blasted him in a scathing article.

Yoshihiro Tsurumi, a visiting professor of International Business at Harvard between 1972 and 1976, says Bush was one of 85 students he taught in a first year course titled, “Environment Analysis for Management.” Bush scored in the bottom ten percent of students in his class and was remembered for being flippant, arrogant, and a right-wing extremist.

As a harbinger of things to come, Bush equated FDR's New deal with socialism and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as an ememy of capitalism. According to Professor Tsumuri, Bush "didn’t stand out as the most promising student, but...he made it sure we understood how well he was connected."

A direct link to the Harvard Crimson article is provided above.

Crazed Billionaire Right Winger Declares Himself Emperor of the United States

2004-07-21T21:03:00.000-04:00

The Reverend Sun Myung Moon, bizarre billionaire and owner of the ultra-conservative Washington Times - held a coronation ceremony recently at the Senate Dirksen office Building. In attendance were Senator John Warner (R-VA), Congressman Tom Davis (R-VA), Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Congressman Chris Cannon (R-UT), Curt Weldon (R-PA) and Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD), among others.

There is a lot of be puzzled about and even downright afraid of when it comes to this guy. He claimed not too long ago that he has spoken to Jesus, Buddha, and Confuscious. He doesn't stop there. While conversing with this interreligious dream team, he goes on to claim that Muhammad was also there as his champion along with all the dead Presidents of the United States (Why would you need Richard Nixon's endorsement if you have Jesus?)

It seems that not only the good guys have him in their hearts, but so do the bad guys too. At his recent coronation-in the presence of the aforementioned politicans and assorted dignataries-Moon announced that a reformed Adolf Hitler and a "kinder, gentler" Josef Stalin have endorsed him as "none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent."

As the avatar of God, one would assume Moon to br a pretty pious guy. But if only the Religious conservatives that endorse men such as Lindsey graham and Curt Weldon knew who the real Moon was. According to Moon, "Jesus Christ is the product of fornication." Ouch. Do you think he might be a little jealous of his fellow messiah?

George Bush/Ken Lay - Friends Forever

2004-07-16T15:39:00.000-04:00

An interesting letter from George Bush to Ken lay. Looks like they had a pretty tight relationship after - as if anyone would ever doubt that. Click on the title to take you to a copy of the letter.

Chronicle of Bush Lies

2004-07-16T09:22:00.000-04:00

In the 2000 election, George Bush promised to restore "honor and integrity" to the White House.  In the meantime, his presidency has been repeatedly defined by a host of lies. These are not accidental but part of a regular pattern of misinformation aimed at convincing the American people he is a compassionate conservative while pulling the rug from under their lives.

This list could go on and on. However, I selected only a few for the time being, which I will be updating as time goes by.   What is amazing is you will find very little about the Iraq War. The lies made to get us into a war are the subject of a whole posting in itself.

On Children's Hospitals
The Rhetoric - "My job as the President is to submit a budget to the Congress and to set priorities, and one of the priorities that we've talked about is making sure the health care systems are funded.” – Egleston Children's Hospital, Atlanta, Georgia 3/1/01
The Reality - Bush's first budget proposal consisted of cutting grants to children's hospitals like the one he was visiting by 24%. He seeks to cut an additional 30% from children's hospitals in his 2004 budget.

On Supporting First Responders
The Rhetoric - “We're dealing with first-time responders to make sure they've got what's needed to be able to respond. “ – Bush, 3/27/2002
The Reality - Instead of increasing funds to front-line police officers and firefighters, Bush has elimated $150 million in grants for local police and firefighters. He also tried to cut $1 billion in existing block grants for first responders. Pretty pathetic for a man "chosen by God" to lead our war on terror.

On Retirement
The Rhetoric - “We've got to do more to protect worker pensions.” – Bush, 8/7/02
The Reality - Four months after publicly stating that he supports strengthening private defined benefit plans, Bush instructed his treasury secretary to propose new regulations that would allow employers to convert pension plans to new ‘cash balance’ plans - lowering benefits to long-serving workers and putting the financial health of the pension plans in jeaporady.

On Government Spending
The Rhetoric - “One of the ways we've got to make sure that we keep our economy strong is to be wise about how we spend our money. If you overspend, it creates a fundamental weakness in the foundation of economic growth. And so I'm working with Congress to make sure they hear the message -- the message of fiscal responsibility.” Bush, 9/16/02
The Reality - Bush has taken a budget surplus and created an enormous deficit the like of which had never been seen before. America is currently running a $300 billion deficit thanks to his economic policies.

On Veterans
The Rhetoric - "Our veterans from every era are the finest of citizens. We owe them the life we know today. They command the respect of the American people, and they have our everlasting gratitude.” – Bush, 11/11/02
The Reality - According to a letter sent to the President from leading veterans' groups, Bush's budget falls $15 billion short of what is needed to provide adequate care for this nation's veterans.

On Military Intervention and Nation Building
Rhetoric - "I think what we need to do is convince people who live in the lands they live in to build the nations. Maybe I'm missing something here. I mean, we're going to have kind of a nation-building corps from America? Absolutely not." (Made in 2000 while he was governor)
Reality - After finding there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the Bush Administration has begun to sing a different tune. He now points to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein as his justification for war - a very different claim than was made when he argued for war on the grounds of WMDs.

On John Edwards
Rhetoric - "He chose the fourth most liberal member of the Senate." On John Kerry's pick of John Edwards for Vice President.
Reality - John Edwards never was close to being the fourth most liberal member of the Senate. In 1999, Edwards was the 31st most liberal senator, the 19th most liberal senator in 2000, the 35th most liberal senator in 2001 and the 40th most liberal senator in 2002.  Anything that is the exact opposite of the neo-conservative position in America so I guess the Bush remark was actually a compliment.

On Medicare
Rhetoric - "Another priority of the federal government will be to have a Medicare system of which we can be proud, a Medicare system that will include prescription drugs for all seniors, a Medicare system that understands that some seniors have to choose between food and medicine. (Pittsburgh, PA. 11/4/2000)
Reality - Bush's prescription drug plan fails to cover 7 million Medicare recipients. Even the White House estimates that approximately 10 million seniors and persons with disabilities have no prescription drug coverage. Only those below 150 percent of poverty are eligible for Bush's plan - meaning only 6 percent of the current medicare recipients.

On Student Loans
Rhetoric -   "Every year, U.S. colleges attract the best and the brightest students from all over the world. I want to make sure that higher education is affordable and accessible to every American. And therein lie our greatest weaknesses: college tuition and the burden of student indebtedness. I am committed to helping families prepare for the cost of higher education." (Matrix: The Magazine for Leaders in Higher Education, 10/1/00)
Reality -  President Bush and his fellow Republicans in Congress fought for the elimination of $1.3 billion from the federal student loan program in his 2002 budget proposal.   Then, a year later, he proposed to withold funds from the LEAP program which the federal government uses to subsidize state scholarship programs. He also advocated a freeze on funding for the Federal Perkins Loan scholarship which provides low interest loans to students and families in grave financial need.

Clean Air
This is an example of his lying as governor of Texas. This lie is just as relevant because it should have woken people up from the ridiculous lie of compassionate conservatism. We should have known better than to trust him in 2000 when we had the first chance of ridding him.
Rhetoric - You’ve got to ask the question, is the air cleaner since I became Governor? And the answer is yes. (George W. Bush, May 1999)
Reality - According to the North America Commission on Environmental Cooperation, composed of representatives of the US, Mexican and Canadian governments, Texas is the leading polluter out of every state and province in the three nations. Not only is it the biggest polluter, but it also leads in a number of categories. Texas is number one in overall toxic releases, air carcinogins, developmental toxins, and number one in ten other categories including the cancer risk to residents.

The End of the Line

2004-07-15T23:59:00.000-04:00

Vice President Dick Cheney is representative of everything that is wrong with politics in this country. First he invited the energy industry into his office to write an energy policy which benefited them at our expense. Cheny even refuses to disclose to the American public what was discussed at those meetings - hardly surprising considered that representatives from Enron played a major part in them. Cheney also helped deliver $18 billion worth of no-bid contracts to the scandal-plagued company Halliburton -- a company in which he still holds hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stock options which he will receive after his term is up through deferred compensation. John Edwards, on the other hand, has consistently prioritized ordinary people over corporations. He's been an advocate for middle class values and policies which help the millions of families that are scraping to get by. He understands what it is to be raised as an average middle class American while Cheney claims to have had "better things to do" instead of serve his country's calling in Vietnam. Bush and Cheney have had their chance and failed. More and more Americans are fed up with their failure and their lies. According to the latest poll figures, even a state like Virginia, a traditionally strong Republican bastion, has woken up and seen this. It is the end of the line for Bush, the end of a short-lived reign for the GOP and the beginning of a new direction for this nation.

2004-07-15T21:41:00.000-04:00

Background blacked out to protect the innocent.

Eight Million American Workers About To Lose Overtime Pay

2004-07-15T16:13:00.000-04:00

If President Bush were concerned about the economic well-being of Americans here at home, why would he be instructing the Labor Department to reclassify the work of 8 million Americans so that they would not qualify for time and a half when they work more than forty hours a week?

Who does it affect, you might ask? Nurses, firefighters, police officers, cooks and licensed technicians are among the positions he intends to make ineligible for overtime.

Overtime pay makes up one-quarter of a worker's weekly pay. Imagine, with the stroke of a pen, the President taking away one-quarter of a person's take home pay.

Just another example of why he doesn't stand with the average American worker and another one of countless reasons we need to get rid of him.