"Mr. Kerry suddenly turned against the war, too. 'Are you one of the anti-war candidates?' asked Chris Matthews back in January on MSNBC's 'Hardball.' Mr. Kerry: 'I am--Yes . . .'
Source: . Wall Street Journal, September 10, 2004, page A12
What's your impression?Source: Hardball transcript from August 16, 2004In the sense that I don‘t believe the president took to us war as he should have, yes. Absolutely. Do I think this president violated his promises to America? Yes, I do, Chris. Was there a way to hold Saddam Hussein accountable? You bet there was and we should have done it right.
Source: Hardball transcript from August 16, 2004Do you (Matthew Dowd, a senior strategist with the Bush-Cheney campaign) think that was a fair cropping of what he had to say? You cut him off after he said, yes. And you did not let him continue on to say: 'in the sense that I don‘t believe the president took to us war as he should have.'
Let me ask you, Matt, are you going to have the president stop saying that John Kerry, on our show, on HARDBALL, because that‘s what he was referring to, clearly, 220 days ago when he said this, are you going to get him to stop saying that John Kerry declared himself the anti-war candidate, which is clearly not what he said because I used the word anti-war candidate and I referred to a number of them? You say what he said on my show and he didn‘t say that. That‘s all I‘m asking.
I‘m asking you, is the president going to keep saying that something that was said on this show wasn‘t said?
Why don‘t you show [President Bush] a tape of the show for 10 seconds so he‘ll get it straight.
But you don‘t—you can‘t. So it only showed the first part of the sentence so they wouldn‘t get to judge it for themselves, right?
Would you like to have your sentences cut down like to a third of their length and let people decide on the first three or four words what you meant by the 20 words? Let me repeat it again, what he said. I‘m not going to argue this any further tonight. I think you guys should consider taking this off your loop. I think the president ought to be shown this tape so he knows what he‘s talking about, instead of having it fed to him by somebody who doesn‘t show them full sentence.
I assumed that letters to the Readers' Forum, while expressing opinion, also had to be factual. The Times states that "Letters are subject to verification" a process designed to "make sure or demonstrate that (something) is true, accurate, or justified." [source: Oxford University Press] The letter, "Truth unknown," published Monday, September 6, 2004 fails this process. John Kerry's military records are available at his website, www.johnkerry.com. I can understand Ms. Ehrman's confusion. One candidate, George Bush, actively fought the release of his records, released as few records as possible in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, and some whose records are still missing according to the Associated Press ("Records on Bush's Military Service are Missing" Matt Kelley, Associated Press, September 6, 2004).
Michael Brent
"As a kid I saw the socialist country that Austria became after the Soviets left. Now don't misunderstand me."---Arnold Schwarzenegger August 31, 2004
Source: Austrians question Schwarzenegger's recollections of his homeland in remarks to RNCAustria was governed by coalition governments that included the conservative People's Party and the liberal Social Democratic Party, Martin Polaschek, a law history scholar and vice rector of Graz University, told the Vienna newspaper Kurier.
Between 1945 and 1970, all the nation's chancellors were conservatives -- not socialists. And when Schwarzenegger left in 1968, Austria was run by a conservative government headed by People's Party Chancellor Josef Klaus, a staunch Roman Catholic and a sharp critic of both the socialists and the communists ruling in countries across the Iron Curtain.
Schwarzenegger "confuses a free country with a socialist one," said Polaschek, referring to Soviet bloc communist officials' routine descriptions of their eastern European countries as socialist. "He did not speak as a historian, after all, but as a politician."
Norbert Darabos, a ranking official of Austria's opposition Social Democratic Party, complained, "The Terminator is constructing a rather bizarre Austria image."
Schwarzenegger's spokeswoman, Margita Thompson, said the governor was not referring specifically to the Socialist party but rather to "a socialistic style of government and governing that he experienced when living in Austria."
Source: FACTS ON AUSTRIAGovernment: Federal republic with nine provinces, each with own assembly and government. 1920 constitution, revised 1929, forms constitutional basis of government. Government consists of executive, legislative, and judicial branches. President head of state, elected every six years by popular vote. Executive headed by chancellor (prime minister) and cabinet, which reflect party composition of parliament. Legislative power vested in bicameral parliament consisting of Nationalrat (National Council) and Bundesrat (Federal Council). Nationalrat primary legislative power, with 183 popularly elected members; Bundesrat represents the provinces with sixty-three members elected by provincial assemblies. Independent judiciary.
source: CIA - The World Factbook - Notes and DefinitionsFederal Republic - a state in which the powers of the central government are restricted and in which the component parts (states, colonies, or provinces) retain a degree of self-government; ultimate sovereign power rests with the voters who chose their governmental representatives.(emphasis added)
Source: FACTS ON AUSTRIAPolitics: Dominated by Social Democratic Party of Austria (Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs--SPÖ) and Austrian People's Party (Österreichs Volkspartei--ÖVP);
Source: THE LEADERS OF AUSTRIAWhen the Austrian Republic was reestablished in 1945, the Provisional Government formed by Chancellor Karl Renner was made up of approximately equal numbers of representatives from the Sozialistische Partei Österreichs (SPÖ-Social Democrats), the Österreichische Volkspartei (ÖVP-Christian Democrats) and the Kommunistische Partei Österreichs (KPÖ-Communists).
After the first elections to the Nationalrat, in November 1945, in which the Communists won only four out of a total of 165 seats, there was, until 1947, one communist minister in addition to the cabinet members representing the two major parties. With the exception of this two-year period, the government until April 1966 was always in the hands of a coalition between the People's Party and the Socialists, with the Chancellor coming from the People's Party, which was consistently the stronger. In 1966, the People's Party gained a majority and formed a one-party government, which remained in power until April 1970.
