Unfounded attacks on Bush

I had to put on a little smirk of my own after reading Alex Cuthbertson’s column (“The smirk is doing the work” April 18). If Alex Cuthbertson is angry and embarrassed, Bush must really be making progress. Let’s quickly review the progress that has got Alex so riled up.

What’s that Alex? “It’s more difficult to get an abortion, internationally speaking”? You mean that there’s less redistribution of wealth, internationally speaking. You’d have a hard time convincing a majority of Americans that family planning is humanitarian aid and that our tax dollars should be spent on it. For my money, I’d rather spend it on food and medicine (real stuff that actually saves lives).

And, oh no, emission standards are being “cut.” Actually, emission standards are staying where they are and have been. Bush refused to sign a bill that would raise the emission standards. On a side note, what you’ve said here, Alex, is similar to what Democrat senators say when making comments on the budget. They scream “budget cuts!” when spending doesn’t go up as much as it did the previous year. It’s not a cut, it’s just not the increase that you want.

But concerning emission standards, have you noticed that no one gives a darn about them? People care that the lights stay on and that prices stay down. You may recall that it was power plants shutting down for maintenance that started that string of blackouts in California. No, I don’t think now is the best time to retrofit our power plants to meet new standards.

And to top it all off, the “water is poisoned.” I can only guess that you’re referring to the executive order that Bush repealed to decrease the amount of arsenic in drinking water from 50 parts per billion to 10 parts per billion. Alex might not be aware of the fact that Clinton signed this order into law in his last days in office. It must have been done in the down time between pardoning traitors (Marc Rich) and accepting presidential library contributions from Denise Rich.

This raises an interesting question (besides that of how such a corrupt person could make it into the highest office in the land). Why did Clinton wait eight years to sign this “important” order into law? With just a signature, he could have enacted it on his first day in office. The answer is that the standards are arbitrary, as admitted by Clinton’s own science advisors.

And lastly, Bush wouldn’t apologize to the Chinese for them crashing into our plane over international waters. But it could have been our fault, right Alex? Let’s imagine this hypothetical run in. The idea that our prop-propelled surveillance plane rammed a jet is equivalent to thinking that a street sweeper could ram a Porsche … on the open freeway. You made a real mental leap on this one. Better sit down and rest — don’t hurt yourself. Let’s try to remember that they were the ones that sent their planes to make dangerous passes along side our plane and caused the accident.

CAS ’01