Al Gore endorses Howard Dean.
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| Tue, 12-09-2003 - 9:17am |

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/12/09/elec04.prez.gore.dean/index.html
Al Gore endorsed Howard Dean's bid for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination on Tuesday, substantially deepening Dean's fast-developing drive for dominance in the nine-candidate field of would-be challengers to President Bush.
"I'm very proud and honored to endorse Howard Dean as the next president of the United States of America," Gore said.
The announcement in Manhattan's Harlem, coming on the morning of another debate between the "'04 Dems," as they're called, could cement Dean's status as the leading Democratic candidate heading into the kickoff contests now just weeks away in Iowa and New Hampshire.
"We need to remake the Democratic Party, we need to remake America," Gore said.
"This nation cannot afford to have four more years of a Bush-Cheney administration," he said.
Prior to Tuesday's endorsement, a source told CNN that Gore -- the Democratic Party's presidential candidate in 2000 -- thinks a protracted primary campaign would serve only to help President Bush.
"In a field of great candidates, one candidate clearly now stands out and so I'm asking all of you to join in this grassroots movement to elect Howard Dean president of the United States," Gore said.
Dean thanked Gore for his leadership: "We have needed a strong steady hand in this party and I appreciate Al's willing(ness) to stand up and be one," Dean said.
Gore said part of the reason he chose to endorse Dean was his ability to appeal to the nation's "grassroots" elements, a reference to Dean's success in organizing and raising funds on the Internet and in small voter gatherings.
Gore also praised Dean's opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq. The former vice president called the Iraqi war a "catastrophic mistake" by the Bush administration, a move that leaves the United States less effective in the nation's battle against terrorism. He said the United States is now in a "quagmire" in Iraq.
Gore said that he and Dean would travel together to Iowa following the announcement. Gore was to give a speech later in the day in Cedar Rapids. The Iowa Caucus is set for January 19.
Dean was expected to travel on to New Hampshire for Tuesday evening's Democratic debate s-sponsored by ABC News and WMUR-TV. The New Hampshire primary is scheduled for January 27.
The announcement came nearly three years to the date from Gore's concession in the 2000 election, when he won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, Gore's vice-presidential running mate in 2000 and a current presidential hopeful, said he would continue to "to fight for what's right, win this nomination, and defeat George W. Bush next year."
"I have a lot of respect for Al Gore -- that is why I kept my promise not to run if he did," Lieberman said.
"Ultimately, the voters will make the determination and I will continue to make my case about taking our party and nation forward," Lieberman said in a written statement.
A source close to Lieberman said Gore, who was Clinton's vice president, did not call Lieberman to inform him of the decision.
Dean pulling ahead
With the Dean campaign gaining momentum, a new CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll shows Dean widening his front-runner status among the eight other Democratic candidates.
The poll showed that 25 percent of registered Democrats surveyed support Dean as their nominee, with retired Gen. Wesley Clark coming in second with 17 percent. (Poll: Dean's New Hampshire lead increases)
In an interview before the news broke on CNN's "Judy Woodruff's Inside Politics," Dean played down his front-runner status.
"The pundits in Washington have been talking about me as the front-runner for a long time," Dean said.
"Well, guess what, the people of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Arizona and so forth get to decide who the front-runner is. So, it's nice talk but I'm not buying it."
Caught off-guard
Erik Smith, a campaign press secretary for Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri, sounded as if the Gephardt team was caught off-guard by the news, as were Dean's other rivals.
Dean and Gephardt are the top two candidates in Iowa. (Gephardt calls for increased homeland security funding)
"Dick Gephardt fought side-by-side with Al Gore to pass the Clinton economic plan, pass the assault weapons ban and defend against Republican attacks on Medicare and affirmative action. On each of these issues, Howard Dean was on the wrong side," Smith said.
Saying he respected Gore and fought for his campaign four years ago, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts said, "This election is about the future, not about the past." (Kerry: Bush administration arrogant, reckless)
"This election will be decided by voters, across the country, beginning with voters in Iowa," he said.
Paul Begala, a political adviser to President Clinton and now a host of CNN's "Crossfire," called the endorsement an "enormous boost" that would clearly give Dean momentum going into Iowa and New Hampshire.
"It's very good for him," Begala said. "I wouldn't go so far as to say it locks anything up, though, because people want to make up their own minds."
cl-Libraone


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Dean gains endorsements in the South.
Challenging his critics' view that he lacks appeal in the South, Howard Dean won the endorsement Saturday of the Congressional Black Caucus chairman as well as the backing of more than a dozen state and local lawmakers in Georgia in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.
U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland said the endorsement was his own and not representative of the 39-member caucus he leads, telling Dean supporters at a private campaign stop in Atlanta that the former Vermont governor brings a much-needed influx of new energy to the Democratic Party.
More.......
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/12/13/elec04.prez.dean.endorsements/index.html
cl-Libraone
IN THE US POVERTY IS AN EXPERIENCE, NOT A DESTINY
Poverty is largely a transitory experience for people who are willing to work, as Labor Department data confirms. In the early '90s, the median duration of poverty was 4.2 months. Only a third of the 36 million Americans the Bureau of Census classifies as poor had been below the poverty line for 24 or more months. This boils down to a long-term poverty rate of 4 percent, compared to the overall official rate of 13.3 percent in 1997.
hhttp://www.jewisworldreview.com/cols/williams071699.asp
People who remain more than 8 years in the bottom 20% of income earners "constitute less than one percent of the American population, according to data published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas in its 1995 annual report."--economist Thomas Sowell http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell020700.asp
MYTHS OF RICH & POOR
A recent book titled Myths of Rich & Poor shoots down innumerable examples of economic nonsense that prevail in the media and in politics. It authors, W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm, deserve a medal for bringing some sanity to a subject where insanity is the norm.
Many of the facts they bring out would be incomprehensible -- indeed, impossible -- if the gloom and doom scenarios we hear were true. For example, only about a third of the homes built in 1970 had both central heating and air conditioning. By the 1990s, four-fifths of the homes were being built with these two features. Only about a third of the homes had color television in 1970 but 98 percent do today.
The net financial holdings of American households in 1997 were three times what they were in 1980 and six times what they were in 1970. Not bad for people whose wages and household income had "stagnated"!
This is not even taking into account the qualitative changes in the products we use. The authors of "Myths of Rich & Poor" point out that steel-belted radial tires last more than 10 times longer than tires used to last. That means that the cost of tires per mile driven is cheaper than at any time in American history, even though steel-belted radials are more expensive -- per tire -- than the old tires were.
There are numerous other qualitative changes in other products. People today carry around laptop computers that can do calculations faster than a huge 1970 computer costing millions of dollars.
If you measure people's economic situation by how much time they have to work in order to earn enough to buy some product, the improvement is even more dramatic. Even where money prices have gone up substantially, the time it takes to earn that money has typically gone down.
A half-gallon of milk, for example, cost an average American ten minutes' work in 1970 but only 6 minutes' work in 1997. An air-conditioner that cost 45 hours' work in 1970 costs just 23 hours' work today.
A much-overlooked fact that is brought out in "Myths of Rich & Poor" is that most of the things that create a higher standard of living for the masses were once exclusive luxuries of the rich. It was precisely the fact that the rich bought these things when they were first produced -- and cost an arm and a leg -- that enabled these products to survive long enough to become mass-production items that the great majority of Americans could afford.
Within my own lifetime, cars, telephones, refrigerators, television and college education have all gone from being the luxuries of the few to the common "necessities" of the many. Those who rail against the luxuries of the rich ignore the fact that it was precisely the rich, paying through the nose for the prestige of having something new and exotic, who made it possible for initially very expensive products to develop to the point where they became affordable mass-production items found in virtually every home.
Statistics that are loosely thrown around about people in the top and bottom 20 percent in income overlook the fact that most of these are the same people at different stages of their lives. Only 5 percent of the 1975 "poor" were still poor in 1990 -- and 29 percent of them were "rich."--economist Thomas Sowell http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell020299.asp
THE POOR DON'T STAY THAT WAY
tudy after study has shown that "the poor" do not remain poor in contemporary America...An absolute majority of the people who were in the bottom 20 percent in 1975 have also been in the top 20 percent at some time since then. Most Americans don't stay put in any income bracket. At different times, they are both "rich" and "poor"... There are of course some people who remain permanently in the bottom 20 percent. But such people constitute less than one percent of the American population, according to data published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas in its 1995 annual report... At some times and places, there have been whole classes of people who lived permanently in poverty or in luxury. But, in the United States today, the percentage of Americans who fit either description does not reach beyond single digits.--Larry Elders http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?id=1307
THEY GET RICH
"he rich" are not a different class of people but largely people in older age brackets who have accumulated some money in a pension fund, paid off most of their mortgage and put a little money aside to see them through retirement and the illnesses of old age.
The average net worth of households headed by someone 65 years old or older is more than 10 times the net worth of households headed by someone under 35 years of age. But these aren't different classes of people, because everyone who is 65 or older was once 35 or younger.
Many of the statistical "poor" are just as fictitious as the statistical "rich." For most Americans, being in the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution is strictly a transitional phase. More of them rise to the top 20 percent than remain at the bottom, and the rest of them are scattered all in between.
Most Americans are likely to have incomes in the top 10 percent at some point or other during their lives.--economist Thomas Sowell http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell052499.asp
THE POOR ARE NOT NEEDY
ost poor people live in conditions that would have been judged fairly comfortable just a few generations ago. Consider:
* Forty-six percent of all poor households own their homes. The typical "poor" home is a three-bedroom house with one and a half baths, a garage and porch or patio.
* More than three out of every four poor households have air conditioning. Thirty years ago, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
* Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than two thirds have more than two rooms per person.
* The average poor American has more living space than the average individual in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens and other European cities.
* Nearly three quarters of poor households own a car; 30 percent own two or more.
* Nearly all have a color television; more than half own two or more. Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or "dish" TV.
* Almost three quarters own microwave ovens. More than half have a stereo, and a third have an automatic dishwasher.
As a group the poor are far from being chronically undernourished. The average consumption of protein, vitamins and minerals is virtually the same for poor and middle-class children. Poor children actually consume more meat than higher-income children do and have average protein intakes 100 percent above recommended levels. Most poor children today are in fact super-nourished, with the average male growing up to be one inch taller and 10 pounds heavier that the GIs who stormed the beaches of Normandy in World War II.
Some poor families do experience hunger. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 13 percent of poor families and 2.6 percent of poor children are hungry at some point during the year. In most cases, thankfully, their hunger is short-term. Almost 85 percent say their families have "enough" food to eat, while only 3 percent say they "often" don’t have enough to eat.
Overall, the typical poor American has a car, air conditioning, a refrigerator, stove, clothes washer and dryer and a microwave. He has two color televisions with a cable or satellite hookup, a VCR or DVD player and a stereo. He can obtain medical care. His home’s in good repair and isn’t over-crowded. By his own report, his family isn’t hungry.
In short, this individual’s life, while far from opulent, hardly conjures the images of poverty often conveyed by the press, poverty advocates and politicians.
The best news is that poverty can be readily reduced still further, particularly among children.
There are two main reasons American children are poor: their parents don’t work much, and their fathers are absent. The typical poor family is supported by only 800 hours of work a year (16 hours a week). If work in each family were raised to 2,000 hours per year -- the equivalent of one adult working 40 hours per week year-round -- nearly 75 percent of poor children would be lifted above the poverty line.
As for those absent fathers: Nearly two thirds of poor children reside in single-parent homes and each year another 1.3 million children are born out-of-wedlock. If poor mothers married the fathers of their children, almost three quarters of these children would immediately be lifted out of poverty.
http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed112603b.cfm
IF YOU'RE POOR IT'S YOUR OWN FAULT
If you're a poor adult in America, for the most part, it's all your fault. That's true, at least today, whether you're black, white, brown or polka dot.--economist Walter Williams
http://www.suanews.com/articles/2003/povertyinamerica.htm
FINISH HIGH SCHOOL & GET MARRIED BEFORE YOU HAVE CHILDREN
The 2001 Census data clearly show that dropping out of high school, staying single, having children without a spouse, working only part time or not working at all substantially increase the chances of long-term poverty. Certain behaviors are a recipe for success. Among those who finish high school, get married, have children only within a marriage and go to work, the odds of long-term poverty are virtually nil.--National Center for Policy Analysis http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba428/
EVEN SINGLE MOTHERS CAN MAKE IT
Census data show this isn’t the case. Besides, the government supplements the earnings of low-wage parents through programs such as the Earned Income Tax Credit. These subsidies are enough that a single parent can raise her family’s income above poverty by working full-time, even at the minimum wage.
http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed093003a.cfm
GET A JOB, GO TO WORK, & WORK AS MANY HOURS AS YOU CAN
In the almost seven years since the welfare reform law was enacted, economic conditions have improved dramatically for America's poorest families. Welfare rolls have plummeted, employment of single mothers has increased dramatically, and child hunger has declined substantially. Most striking, however, has been the effect of welfare reform on child poverty, particularly among black children...
* For the 25 years prior to welfare reform, the percentage of black children living in poverty remained virtually unchanged.
* Since welfare reform, the poverty rate among black children has dropped by one-fourth, falling from 41.5 percent in 1995 to 30.0 percent in 2001.
* The black child poverty rate is at its lowest point in U.S. history.
* Since welfare reform, over 1.2 million black children have been lifted out of poverty.
* Since welfare reform, six black children have been made better off and lifted out of poverty for every black child whose economic condition has worsened.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/bg1661.cfm
WHAT ABOUT UNEMPLOYMENT?
he work levels of poor parents remain consistently low even in the best economic conditions. In the long term, the earnings of poor parents are hurt more by an eroded work ethic than by a lack of jobs.
A low level of work, not low wages, is the main cause of child poverty. If yearly work were raised to 2,000 hours per family (the equivalent of one parent working 40 hours per week for 50 weeks) the child poverty rate would plummet: About 75 percent of poor families would rise out of poverty.
http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed093003a.cfm
FURTHER READING:
Thomas Sowell--Creating "poverty"
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell102599.asp
Walter Williams--Where are the poor?
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/williams102898.asp
Walter Williams--How to become rich?
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/williams122198.asp
The Role of Parental Work in Child Poverty
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Family/cda-03-01.cfm
Renee
During the first part of the administration, Clinton continued Bush's policy of containment. After the assasination attempt, intelligence suggesting that Iraq had a hand in several terrorist attacks, that SH was still attempting to further his WMD program, and the realization that sanctions were not having the desired effect and they couldn't continue indefinitely, it was scrapped for a new policy of regime change.
"America's policy has been to contain Saddam, to reduce the threat he poses to the region, and to do it in a way that makes him pay a price when he acts recklessly." Clinton '96
Letter from Congress to Clinton in '99 (signed by Kerry & Lieberman) chiding him for not taking action after he signed the Iraq Liberation Act in '98.
http://www.nci.org/c/c81199.htm
This feet dragging appears to be the result of Clinton's habit of making decisions based on polling data.
http://www.cin.org/archives/al-bushra/199802/0189.html
Reuters--
Stuck in the middle and very
uncomfortable -- that is how the Clinton administration looked
Thursday as analysts picked over its attempt to drum up support
for a limited air campaign against Iraq.
By trying to please as many shades of domestic opinion as
possible, U.S. policy makers may have come up with a strategy
vulnerable to sniping from every quarter.
Opinion polls show support for attacks on Iraq remains
strong, but a disastrous ``town hall'' meeting in Ohio Wednesday
suggested it was equally fragile. Opponents are certainly making
more noise than any silent majority.
``Opposition to the war is a mile deep. Support for it is an
inch thin,'' said Sam Husseini of the American-Arab
Anti-Discrimination Committee, one of the rare groups that
oppose any kind of military action against Iraq.
Clinton's failure to stand up to Hussein, led another Iraq crisis and acknowledgement that containment was not the answer.
20001030; The New Republic; Lawrence F. Kaplan
Rollback
"If their intention was to deter us from our mission of promoting peace and security in the Middle East," President Clinton declared upon hearing of the terrorist attack against the USS Cole in Yemen last week, "they will fail, utterly." But, as it happens, the young sailors on the Cole died on a mission its architects themselves no longer believe in. When attacked, the ship was en route to the Persian Gulf to enforce America's policy of containment against Iraq--a policy that is leaking like a sieve.
Oh, this quote from Madeline Albright about the cost of sanctions will be a good one to remember the next time, someone talks about the price of freedom in Iraq.
When asked on 60 Minutes in '96 whether the cost of the lives of over half a million children was worth it in order to get rid of Iraq's President, she replied "It's a hard decision...but we think the price...is worth it."
http://www.8thdaycenter.org/102700.html
I also turned up this interesting piece from The Guardian speculating in 2000 that the Cole bombing may have been the first step in a joint venture between Iraq & Al Queda.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,384819,00.html
More:
Casualties of a Shadow War
By Jim Hoagland Washington Post, Thursday, October 19, 2000
http://www.sojourners.net/the_casualties_of_a_shadow_war.htm
Edited 12/14/2003 1:45:49 AM ET by wrhen
Renee
If Ossam Bin Laden or Saddam were standing in front of me I would easily put a bullet in their head. Does that make me not a christian?
Now, it's been a few years since I last picked up a Bible, but I seem to remember a commandment...Thou shalt not kill...or another about 'turning the other cheek'...My impression was that Christians were to follow a loving & peaceful path.
Yes we do.
<<>>
Yes I would
<<>>
Once again...Those that know nothing about being a christian tend to forget...we are HUMAN, and we do sin everyday. I would gladly blow their heads off and then pray for forgiveness. God forgives our sins.
Saddam will get a fair tried by an Iraqi court, and justice will be done.
Renee
>"Actually the correct translation is, 'kill' instead of 'murder,' which allows for acts of defense and justice, as well as accidents"<
That's your justification? How convenient.
Interesting perspective.
If you read my post, I did include self-defense.
Renee
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