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I�M (ALMOST) BAAAACK! Taking time off now and then is good for the soul, good for the heart and good for the mind. But I expect to be back in the swing of things full-time again very soon. There will be changes...some minor, some major...but all for the better, of course. Unless, that is, you�re a liberal...or a lockstep compassionate conservative GOP partisan (uh-oh). In the meantime, here�s a special edition of News & Views to hold you over a wee bit longer... BONANZA FOR POLITICAL JUNKIES Don�t know if I mentioned this before going on vacation, but our friend Rodney Helm in Vegas found a website which houses presidential campaign television commercials dating all the way back to Ike. A real blast from the past. Check it out at: http://livingroomcandidate.movingimage.us/index.php INQUIRING MINDS WANNA KNOW �These (9-11 Commission) hearings amount to nothing more than current government officials meeting with former government officials, many of whom now lobby government officials, and agreeing that we need more government! The current and past architects of the very bureaucracy that failed Americans so badly on September 11th three years ago are now meeting to recommend more bureaucracy. Why on earth do we assume that former government officials, some of whom are self-interested government lobbyists, suddenly become wise, benevolent, and politically neutral when they retire? Why do we look to former bureaucrats to address a bureaucratic failure?� - Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), �Texas Straight Talk,� 8/23/04 DUMB & DUMBER �When I was a kid and my parents started talking about politics, I'd run to my room and put on the Rolling Stones as loud as I could. So when I see all these rock stars up there talking politics, it makes me sick. If you're listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who to vote for, you're a bigger moron than they are. Why are we rock stars? Because we're morons. We sleep all day, we play music at night and very rarely do we sit around reading the Washington Journal." - Rock star Alice Cooper OOPS...KERRY CAUGHT PULLING A GORE �I remember well April 1968--I was serving in Vietnam--a place of violence--when the news reports brought home to me and my crewmates the violence back home--and the tragic news that one of the bullets flying that terrible spring took the life of that unabashedly maladjusted citizen.� - John Kerry in a 2003 speech commemorating Martin Luther King Day. Problem is, Kerry didn�t go to Vietnam until NOVEMBER of 1968. Guess he doesn�t remember April of �68 so well after all. IN DEFENSE OF NEGATIVE ADVERTISING �What in the world is wrong with giving a voter a reason why he should not vote for a candidate?� It's �negative� for me to tell you that you might not want to vote for Kerry because he's going to raise your taxes, or that you might not want to vote for Bush because he pandered to Ted Kennedy on education spending? In any political campaign there are both reasons why you should vote FOR one candidate as well as reasons why you should NOT VOTE FOR another.� These are all valid issues to be brought before the voters. . .so spare us any further whining about �negative� advertising.� - Talk show host Neal Boortz GETTING WHAT HE ASKED FOR �It was John Kerry, not the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who picked this fight. Kerry was the one who made his long-ago stint in Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign for president.� He's the one whose running mate urges voters to take Kerry's measure by spending �three minutes with the men who served with him 30 years ago.�� He's the one whose campaign ads dwell on his combat heroics.� He's the one who has repeatedly played the Vietnam card against critics and opponents.� And he's the one who challenged anyone �who wants to have a debate about our service in Vietnam to bring it on.� �So the Swifties brought it on.� - Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby FREE SPEECH FOR ME, BUT NOT FOR THEE �The (527) groups that have lately been portrayed as 'shadowy' and suspicious are ultimately nothing more than citizens of varying levels of political sophistication who want a say in the process. Politicians are the last people on Earth who should be allowed to 'crack down' and regulate the groups that exist expressly to challenge and defeat them.� - Seattle Times columnist Collin Levey REPEAL McCAIN-FEINGOLD? BRING...IT...ON! �If 527 organizations that are allowed to spend unlimited sums for political advertising are so bad why doesn�t some member of congress introduce legislation repealing the ghastly McCain/Feingold campaign finance reform act which resulted in the formation of the 527s.� - Lyn Nofziger, �Musings,� 8/25/04 HIGH COST OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION A new study from the Center for Immigration Studies is one of the first to estimate the impact of illegal immigration on the federal budget. Based on Census Bureau data, the study estimates that households headed by illegal aliens used $10 billion more in government services than they paid in taxes in 2002. These figures are only for the federal government; costs at the state and local level are also likely to be significant. The study also finds that if illegals were given amnesty, the fiscal deficit at the federal level would grow to nearly $29 billion. The study, entitled The High Cost of Cheap Labor: Illegal Immigration and the Federal Budget, is online at http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscal.html THE PARTY OF BIG GOVERNMENT �Once upon a time, the Republican Party stood for fiscal responsibility and limited government. That fantasy world disappeared long ago. �A House-Senate conference committee is considering legislation to hand billions to tobacco producers and extend Food and Drug Administration rules to cigarettes. President Bush seems prepared to accept anything that passes. More spending and regulation together: The GOP, no less than the Democrats, is the party of big government.� - Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute ALL HAT AND NO CATTLE �When it came to controlling deficit spending last year, words were abundant but deeds were in short supply on Capitol Hill. . . . The phrases �fiscally responsible,� �fiscal discipline,� �fiscal responsibility,� �fiscal irresponsibility,� and �fiscally irresponsible� appeared 1,046 times in the 2003 Congressional Record, an increase of nearly 25 percent compared to the 1st Session of the previous Congress (2001).� �Yet, no one in Congress had a net voting record that would have cut overall discretionary spending�down from a high of 512 Members in 1996 (104th Congress). . . . All told, the average House Member voted for just 2 cents in spending cuts for every dollar in spending increases. Senators backed 5 cents in reductions for every dollar of increases.� - Results of the Vote Tally study for 2003 by the National Taxpayers Union Foundation MEANINGLESS AGENDA �With John Kerry running no worse than even in most polls, many Republicans believe that Mr. Bush needs a big idea of some kind to galvanize his supporters. I think they probably will be disappointed. Very few presidents ever have a meaningful second-term agenda.� - Columnist Bruce Bartlett HERE�S �YOUR� PLATFORM: LOVE IT...OR ELSE! �The (Republican Party) platform was written in secret and not delivered to the 100 members of the platform committee until late Tuesday. Time for consideration of the platform was cut in half and the entire proceedings treated like a sensitive meeting of the Federal Reserve Board. Columnist Robert Novak, who has attended every opening reception of the GOP platform committee for a quarter century, found that the reception this year was held under police guard and he was denied admission.� - John Fund, Political Diary, 8/26/04 FORKED-TONGUE PLATFORM �(The GOP platform plank on illegal immigration is) Clintonlike doublespeak in a Republican platform: I'm against amnesty but let me define what amnesty is. The president is wrong not to reach out to his base, which opposes amnesty. This pandering to Hispanic voters is going to get the president into more trouble than if he dealt with illegal immigration forthrightly. I want the platform to oppose amnesty, Social Security benefits and driver's licenses for illegal aliens working in the United States.� - Rep. Tom Tancredo, Colorado Republican, Washington Time, 8/26/04 WHERE SELDOM IS HEARD, A CONSERVATIVE WORD �Late yesterday, the American Conservative Union obtained an advanced copy of the 2004 draft Republican Platform. . . . Indeed, on first reading the word �conservative� does not even appear in the document, not even with the modifier �compassionate� as in the 2000 Bush platform.� - Richard Lessner, executive director for the American Conservative Union, 8/25/04 WE�RE ALL BIG GOV�T CONSERVATIVES NOW �The 2004 Republican Platform Committee finished its work this afternoon. It wasn't a pretty picture. You have to give the Bush political operation credit: they badly outflanked the party conservatives. By the time delegates gathered here in New York for the platform committee work, the game was already over. The Bush operation made certain that the committee, selected by state parties, was packed with loyalists. Any chance of a conservative uprising over the platform was DOA. �The most controversial plank in the draft platform was on immigration, specifically President Bush's proposal for a guest worker program for illegal aliens, a plan that also would put those who entered America unlawfully on the path to U.S. citizenship. This idea is wildly unpopular with grassroots Republicans and the Bush people know it. So the fix was in. Any effort by the handful of conservatives on the rubber-stamp platform committee to amend or delete the offending plank on immigration were trumped by a series of strong-arm tactics and procedural maneuverings. �Not that the bullying tactics mattered much. The platform delegates comported themselves like a flock of obedient sheep. Taking their cues from committee co-chairmen Sen. Bill Frist and Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, delegates even rejected amendments drawn word-for-word from the 2000 GOP platform. �While there is much in the platform to please conservatives, there is also plenty to infuriate. Just eight years after the GOP platform called for the abolition of the U.S. Department of Education, the 2004 platform boasts, �President Bush and Congressional Republicans have provided the largest increase in federal education funding in history and the highest percentage gain since the 1960s [only a last-minute amendment deleted a reference to LBJ at this point] ... Support for elementary and secondary education has had the largest increase in any single Presidential term since the 1960s � an increase of nearly 50 percent since 2001.� �A Texas delegate, introducing an amendment to delete this mind-boggling big government boast, said it sounded like something out of the Democratic Platform rather than anything identifiably Republican. The amendment was overwhelmingly crushed. And that's how it went here in New York. I guess it's true: We're all big government conservatives now.� - Richard Lessner, executive director for the American Conservative Union, 8/26/04 CAN ANYONE FILL THIS VACUUM? �I'm tired of sitting by and watching the morons who have destroyed what my Republican Party stood for for many years.� Too bad Libertarians are such nut cases because I believe the GOP has left me behind.� Ronald Reagan must be spinning in his grave.� - News & Views reader Deanna Lowther FAMOUS LAST WORDS �Government is not the solution, it�s the problem.� - Ronald Reagan * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Chuck Muth�s News & Views is published by Citizen Outreach, a non-partisan, 501(c)3 non-profit corporation. The opinions and views expressed in Chuck Muth's News & Views reflect those of the writers, editors and columnists therein and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Citizen Outreach, its officers, directors or employees. 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