pinions of buddy don: gummint is not the problem

ronald raygun lacked to claim gummint is the problem. tiz a insult to all of us that bleeves the gummint is of the people, by the people n for the people. so ifn ye claim gummint is the problem, then yer really saying people is the problem.

in fack, gummint aint the problem. the problem is letting folks guvern who bleeves gummint is the problem.

heres whut ye git whenever ye let such folk guvern ...

• Bush Official Arrested in Corruption Probe:

  The Bush administration's top federal procurement official resigned Friday and was arrested yesterday, accused of lying and obstructing a criminal investigation into Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff's dealings with the federal government. It was the first criminal complaint filed against a government official in the ongoing corruption probe related to Abramoff's activities in Washington.

• Kerry, Edwards Criticize Bush Over Response to Hurricane:

  Using the nickname Bush used for Brown, Kerry said, "Brownie is to Katrina what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq, what George Tenet is to slam-dunk intelligence, what Paul Wolfowitz is to parades paved with flowers in Baghdad, what Dick Cheney is to visionary energy policy, what Donald Rumsfeld is to basic war planning, what Tom DeLay is to ethics and what George Bush is to 'Mission Accomplished' and 'Wanted Dead or Alive.' "

• Recruits Sought for Porn Squad:

  The new squad will divert eight agents, a supervisor and assorted support staff to gather evidence against "manufacturers and purveyors" of pornography -- not the kind exploiting children, but the kind that depicts, and is marketed to, consenting adults.
  
  "I guess this means we've won the war on terror," said one exasperated FBI agent, speaking on the condition of anonymity because poking fun at headquarters is not regarded as career-enhancing. "We must not need any more resources for espionage."

• Immigration Nominee's Credentials Questioned:

  The Bush administration is seeking to appoint a lawyer with little immigration or customs experience to head the troubled law enforcement agency that handles those issues, prompting sharp criticism from some employee groups, immigration advocates and homeland security experts.

• Bush Proposes Vouchers for All Displaced Students:

  Under President Bush's plan to cover most of the cost of educating students displaced by Hurricane Katrina, parents could enroll their children in a private or religious school this year at federal expense, even if they had gone to public schools back home, administration officials said yesterday.
  
  [...]
  
  The expansive eligibility for private-school payments intensified the dispute over Bush's approach to providing federal relief to people and places harmed by the hurricane. Democrats on Capitol Hill and public education advocates had begun to complain that the president was using the catastrophe to weave into legislation a version of federal funding of vouchers for private education, which the administration has sought, unsuccessfully, since 2001.

• FEC Sues Pro-Republican Political Group:

  The Federal Election Commission filed a lawsuit Monday in U.S. District Court in Washington against the Club for Growth, the first case of its kind to arise from high-dollar fundraising during the 2004 elections. The pro-Republican group spent at least $21 million in the 2003-2004 election cycle.

• British Smash Into Iraqi Jail To Free 2 Detained Soldiers:

  British armored vehicles backed by helicopter gunships burst through the walls of an Iraqi jail Monday in the southern city of Basra to free two British commandos detained earlier in the day by Iraqi police, witnesses and Iraqi officials said. The incident climaxed a confrontation between the two nominal allies that had sparked hours of gun battles and rioting in Basra's streets.
  
  An Iraqi official said a half-dozen armored vehicles had smashed into the jail, the Reuters news agency reported. The provincial governor, Mohammed Walli, told news agencies that the British assault was "barbaric, savage and irresponsible."

• Two Unanswered Questions:

  Two pretty basic questions are throwing President Bush and his top aides for a loop as they push their ambitious reconstruction plan for the Gulf Coast:
  
  1) What will it cost?
  
  2) Who is going to pay for it?
  
  For a White House that normally has a smooth comeback at the ready for even the most caustic queries, the response to these two straightforward questions has been notably fumbling.
  
  Bush, who has not held a regular press conference in more than three and a half months, made a brief public appearance with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday. That gave Associated Press reporter Terence Hunt the chance to ask the obvious:
  
  Who will pay?
  
  Bush wouldn't say.

• Bush and the mad scientists; The administration strikes again in its infuriating war against science:

  THE LAMENTATION in the forthcoming New England Journal of Medicine is typical of a growing genre: complaints about the misuse of science by the Bush administration. It is merely the latest jeremiad, from a group of distinguished experts, about the loss of reason by our leaders. This particular editorial, titled "A Sad Day for Science at the FDA," concerned so-called Plan B emergency contraception (the "morning after" pill), but it just as well could have been about the science of global warming or mercury pollution. Yawn. We've heard it all before.
  
  There's an inherent difficulty when it comes to sustaining outrage over how science gets continually misused in the Bush administration. The complexity of scientific disputation, paired with the intricacies of bureaucratic decision-making, make for a truly soporific combination. It's tough to get past the latest scandal and see the big picture — even when, as in this case, three distinguished doctors are writing that the Food and Drug Administration has made "a mockery of the process of evaluating scientific evidence, disillusioned scientists both inside and outside the agency, squandered the public trust and tarnished the agency's image."

• A new storm on the right:

  Unfortunately, the president still seems to believe that the severe poverty of New Orleans is an anomaly exposed by the storm, rather than a disturbing national reality he should have long since confronted. One wishes he would take to heart the words Bishop T.D. Jakes of Dallas offered before Bush spoke at the National Cathedral on Friday: "Katrina, perhaps she has done something to this nation that we needed to have done. She has made us think, and look, and reach beyond the breach." He also noted: "We can no longer be a nation that overlooks the poor and the suffering and continue past the ghetto on our way to the Mardi Gras, or past Harlem for Manhattan, or past Compton for Rodeo Drive."
  
  Of course, it should not have taken a devastating hurricane to reveal to our president the depth of human misery in a nation that could easily afford to have no poor people. Perhaps Bush simply hasn't fallen far enough from the tree, considering it was famously said of his father that he was a man who was born on third base and thought he hit a triple. His even more clueless mother thinks letting devastated African American evacuees sleep in the Astrodome worked out "very well for them" because they "were underprivileged anyway."
  
  One would have hoped that the avowedly "born again" younger Bush would have witnessed the disconnect between the teachings of the son of God, which repeatedly counsel aiding the poor and vulnerable, and his own family's "let them eat cake" approach to governance. After all, 37 million Americans — 13 million of them children — are living in poverty, 4.5 million more than when Bush was first inaugurated. This sad fact is never mentioned when the president trumpets the alleged benefits of his tax cuts for the rich.

• Bush’s uncaring tax-cut math:

  WE HAVE two wars abroad. Moreover, we must rebuild a Gulf Coast region so thoroughly devastated that had the destruction come from human hostilities, we would have declared a third war. Yet President Bush pretends in a critical way as if nothing happened at all.
  
  ‘‘You bet, it’s going to cost money,’’ Bush told reporters last Friday. ‘‘But I’m confident we can handle it, and I’m confident we can handle our other priorities. It’s going to mean that we’re going to have to make sure we cut unnecessary spending. It’s going to mean we don’t do — we’ve got to maintain economic growth, and therefore we should not raise taxes.’’
  
  Bush then hid behind a familiar prop of politicians: the common person. ‘‘Working people have had to pay a tax, in essence, by higher gasoline prices,’’ Bush said. ‘‘And we don’t need to be taking more money out of their pocket.’’
  
  What Bush really meant was better said by White House spokesman Scott McClellan. On Sept. 8, a day after White House requests for emergency aid in the wake of Hurricane Katrina soared past $62 billion, McClellan was asked, ‘‘Why does the president believe it is morally justified, why is it the right thing, to give some of the richest people on the planet a huge tax cut right now?’’
  
  McClellan said, ‘‘It’s not a fair description.’’