is doing just that...sitting on his a$$ and not doing anything. Meanwhile the economy has been going down the tubes. Yeah, it's much more important to kiss Bush's butt than to actually address the situation we are in and get people working again. Have you ever heard of the word *priorities?*
COLUMBUS, Ohio, Nov. 22 - Leesa Martin never considered President Bush a great leader, but she voted for him a year ago because she admired how he handled the terrorist attacks of 2001.
Selena Smith, an advertising agency director in Atlanta. The war is more important to me now. What’s the plan? Give us something to hang our teeth on, she said.
Kevin Fitzsimons for The New York Times
I don’t know if it’s any one thing as much as it is everything. It’s kind of snowballed, said Leesa Martin, a market researcher in Columbus, Ohio.
Then came the past summer, when the death toll from the war in Iraq hit this state particularly hard: 16 marines from the same battalion killed in one week. She thought the federal government should have acted faster to help after Hurricane Katrina. She was baffled by the president's nomination of
Harriet E. Miers, a woman she considered unqualified for the Supreme Court, and disappointed when he did not nominate another woman after Ms. Miers withdrew.
And she remains unsettled by questions about whether the White House leaked the name of a C.I.A. agent whose husband had accused the president of misleading the country about the intelligence that led to the war.
I don't know if it's any one thing as much as it is everything, said Ms. Martin, 49, eating lunch at the North Market, on the edge of downtown Columbus. It's kind of snowballed.
Her concerns were echoed in more than 75 interviews here and across the country this week, helping to explain the slide in the president's approval and trustworthiness ratings in recent polls.
Many people who voted for Mr. Bush a year ago had trouble pinning their current discontent on any one thing. Many mentioned the hurricane and the indictment of a top aide to Vice President
Dick Cheney, which some said raised doubts about the president's candor and his judgment. But there was a sense that something had veered off course in the last few months, and the war was the one constant. Over and over, even some of Mr. Bush's supporters raised comparisons with Vietnam.
We keep hearing about suicide bombers and casualties and never hear about any progress being made, said Dave Panici, 45, a railroad conductor from Bradley, Ill. I don't see an end to it; it just seems relentless. I feel like our country is just staying afloat, just treading water instead of swimming toward somewhere.
Mr. Panici voted for President Bush in 2004, calling it a vote for security. Now that a year has passed, I haven't seen any improvement in Iraq, he said. I don't feel that the world is a safer place.
A USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll in mid-November found that 37 percent of Americans approved of Mr. Bush, the lowest approval rating the poll had recorded in his presidency. That was down from 55 percent a year ago and from a high of 90 percent shortly after Sept. 11, 2001.
An Associated Press/Ipsos poll earlier in the month found the same 37 percent approval rating and recorded the president's lowest levels regarding integrity and honesty: 42 percent of Americans found him honest, compared with 53 percent at the beginning of this year.
Several of those interviewed said that in the last year they had come to believe that Mr. Bush had not been fully honest about the intelligence that led to the war, which he said showed solid evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
I think people put their faith in Bush, hoping he would do the right thing, said Stacey Rosen, 38, a stay-at-home mother in Boca Raton, Fla., who said she voted for Mr. Bush but was totally disappointed in him now. Everybody cannot believe that there hasn't been one shred of evidence of W.M.D. I think it goes to show how they tell us what they want to tell us.
Mark Briggs, who works for Nationwide Insurance here, said he did not want to believe that the president manipulated intelligence leading the country into war, but believed that, at least, Mr. Bush had misread it.
Still, however much he may disagree with Mr. Bush's policies, Mr. Briggs said, he admires the president for standing by what he says.
There is the notion of leadership and sticking with the plan, which I believe in, he said. George Bush is clear and consistent. He made a tough decision to go to war - and others voted for it, too. And I think he's right: those people may be trying to rewrite history.
Kacey Wilson, 32, eating lunch with Ms. Martin, said she, too, had concerns about the death toll from the war, but she felt that Mr. Bush spoke the truth, even if it might not be what the country wanted to hear. I like his cut-and-dry, take-no-prisoners style, Ms. Wilson said. I think people are used to more spinning.
Others, though, saw arrogance in that approach.
We need to not be so stubborn, said Vicky Polka, 58, a retired school principal in Statesboro, Ga., who voted for Mr. Bush and described her support for him as waning. Something's not going right here. We need to resolve this. I hate to say it, but I think Iraq is going the way of Vietnam.
Few people said they were following the leak scandal, which led to the indictment of I.
Lewis Libby Jr., Mr. Cheney's former aide. Some who could cite main characters and events dismissed it as little more than political theater. Even fewer said they had paid attention to other scandals preoccupying Washington: the indictment of
Representative Tom DeLay, the powerful Texas Republican, and the guilty plea by his former spokesman.
But several people said that the leak scandal had left them with the sense that the president was not leveling with the public about his involvement
He has to give us more information, said Phil Niemie, 51, an elementary school principal eating lunch with his family in Columbus. The longer it goes without closure, it begins to trigger those Nixon Watergate years. I felt the same way with Clinton.
Progress has been made. The Iraqis have a constitution. They’re actually creating their own country, said Rich Canary, an information technology specialist, Columbus, Ohio.
He has to give us more information. The longer it goes without closure, it begins to trigger those Nixon Watergate years, said Phil Niemie, an elementary school principal in Columbus, Ohio.
But for Mr. Niemie, who voted for Mr. Bush, and others, the leak scandal raised the biggest doubts about Vice President Cheney.
A lot of problems tie back to some of Cheney's shenanigans, Ms. Martin said. It just seems like he could have done better for vice president the second time around.
In Atlanta, Selena Smith, a director at an advertising agency, echoed others when she said she thought too much time had already been spent on the investigation.
The war is more important to me now, said Ms. Smith, 46. What's the plan? Give us something to hang our teeth on. What's really top of mind for me is how many people are getting killed across the creek, and how are we going to get them home?
Here in Ohio, the most hotly contested state in the 2004 election, the heavy toll on a local Marine battalion had played out on television and in newspapers throughout the summer's end, and the majority of two dozen people interviewed here said they wanted to see the troops come home.
Some, though, faulted Americans as having short attention spans.
Anything that takes more than a couple of months, we get bored with, said Rich Canary, 35, an information technology specialist here. Progress has been made. The Iraqis have a constitution. They're actually creating their own country. When you hear the soldiers talk, they feel what they're doing is important.
And there was much division about how to end the war. Some military families said it was important to finish the task the troops had begun; others said they resented accusations of being unpatriotic when they criticized the war. Some who said their approval of the president had not wavered nevertheless argued for a quick end to the war, while some of Mr. Bush's strongest critics said it would destabilize Iraq to withdraw the troops anytime soon.
Too many people would get hurt, said Laurence Melia, 28, a salesman from Newton, Mass., who campaigned against President Bush last year. There has to be a last foot on the ground in the end, and there might be more problems if we run away too fast.
In Houston, Geoff Van Hoeven, an accountant, said he thought the war in Iraq had aggravated the terrorist threat by creating a breeding ground for Al Qaeda. Still, Mr. Van Hoeven said a quick withdrawal was not possible, because America's going to be perceived as extremely weak and unreliable coming in, and when the going gets rough, they pull out.
Even those who voted against Mr. Bush a year ago saw little satisfaction in his woes.
Part of me enjoys watching him squirm, said Shirley Tobias, 46, sitting with a colleague from Netscape at a coffee shop in Grandview, a suburb of Columbus. But he's squirming on our behalf. We're all in this together.
all by its lonely for over an hour without a rebuttal or a distraction post. Bullseye!
nursing my head cold with cough medicine and sucking on Halls......I just couldn't help wonder what has really happened to all of us? I mean really. Whatever happened to the citizens of the USA taking care of themselves. Why are we so dependent upon our government? We have put so much faith into a system that is full of politicians who will say anything to get elected into office. We have gone from proud Americans who would rather work harder than ever receive a handout from anyone to people who continually cry out that they are victims and government should support them. Whatever happened to self-reliance? We are spoiled. We got too comfortable. People spent more money instead of saving it. People lived way beyond their means, got mortgages they couldn't afford, and used credit cards unwisely.
I'm sorry but I do not want government to take care of me. I don't want money earned by others to support me. I don't want more government programs that increase government spending. I don't want government telling me who I can doctor with and how soon I can get into see one. I don't want government taking more of my hard earned money and spending it.
What I DO want is smaller government. I want government spending to be controlled. We all live on budgets and so should our government. I don't want the government to have more control of my life. If we expect government to get big enough to take care of all of our needs....it will also be a government big enough to take away our liberty. That is not what I want.
We the people need to take control of our own lives. Be responsible for our own actions. If we use poor judgment, we alone should face the consequences without expecting everyone else to bail us out. If you are capable of working, get off of your lazy rear end and work. We need to start by teaching our kids how to save their money and not spend every dime they get. We need to teach our kids that the foundation to a good life starts with a good education. To always give 100% and by all means.....learn from your mistakes and keep trying.
I will get off of my soap box now. I'm sure you are all tired of hearing my drugged up on cough syrup rantings. LOL!
which way the wind would blow. Still with the blame game.
Ralph Reed, who has condemned gambling as a cancer on the American body politic, quietly worked five years ago to kill a proposed ban on Internet wagering — on behalf of a company in the online gambling industry.
Reed, now a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of Georgia, helped defeat the congressional proposal despite its strong support among many Republicans and conservative religious groups. Among them: the national Christian Coalition organization, which Reed had left three years earlier to become a political and corporate consultant.
A spokesman for Reed said the political consultant fought the ban as a subcontractor to Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff's law firm. But he said Reed did not know the specific client that had hired Abramoff: eLottery Inc., a Connecticut-based company that wants to help state lotteries sell tickets online — an activity the gambling measure would have prohibited.
Reed declined to be interviewed for this article. His aides said he opposed the legislation because by exempting some types of online betting from the ban, it would have allowed online gambling to flourish. Proponents counter that even a partial ban would have been better than no restrictions at all.
Anti-gambling activists say they never knew that Reed, whom they once considered an ally, helped sink the proposal in the House of Representatives. Now some of them, who criticized other work Reed performed on behalf of Indian tribes that own casinos, say his efforts on eLottery's behalf undermine his image as a champion of public morality, which he cultivated as a leader of the religious conservative movement in the 1980s and '90s.
It flies in the face of the kinds of things the Christian Coalition supports, said the Rev. Cynthia Abrams, a United Methodist Church official in Washington who coordinates a group of gambling opponents who favored the measure. They support family values. Stopping gambling is a family concern, particularly Internet gambling.
Reed's involvement in the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act of 2000, never previously reported, comes to light as authorities in Washington scrutinize the lobbying activities of Abramoff, a longtime friend who now is the target of several federal investigations.
The eLottery episode echoes Reed's work against a lottery, video poker and casinos in Alabama, Louisiana and Texas: As a subcontractor to two law firms that employed Abramoff, Reed's anti-gambling efforts were funded by gambling interests trying to protect their business.
After his other work with Abramoff was revealed, Reed asserted that he was fighting the expansion of gambling, regardless of who was paying the bills. And he said that, at least in some cases, his fees came from the nongaming income of Abramoff's tribal clients, a point that mollified his political supporters who oppose gambling. With the eLottery work, however, Reed has not tried to draw such a distinction.
By working against the Internet measure, Reed played a part in defeating legislation that sought to control a segment of the gambling industry that went on to experience prodigious growth.
Since 2001, the year after the proposed ban failed, annual revenue for online gambling companies has increased from about $3.1 billion worldwide to an estimated $11.9 billion this year, according to Christiansen Capital Advisers, a New York firm that analyzes market data for the gambling industry.
Through a spokesman, Abramoff declined to comment last week on his work with Reed for eLottery.
Federal records show eLottery spent $1.15 million to fight the anti-gambling measure during 2000. Of that, $720,000 went to Abramoff's law firm at the time, Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds of Washington. According to documents filed with the secretary of the U.S. Senate, Preston Gates represented no other client on the legislation.
Reed's job, according to his campaign manager, Jared Thomas, was to produce a small run of direct mail and other small media efforts to galvanize religious conservatives against the 2000 measure. Aides declined to provide reporters with examples of Reed's work. Nor would Thomas disclose Reed's fees.
Since his days with the Christian Coalition, Reed consistently has identified himself as a gambling opponent. Speaking at a National Press Club luncheon in Washington in 1996, for instance, Reed called gambling a cancer and a scourge that was responsible for orphaning children ... [and] turning wives into widows.
But when the online gambling legislation came before Congress in 2000, Reed took no public position on the measure, aides say.
In 2004, Reed told the National Journal, a publication that covers Washington politics, that his policy was to turn down work paid for by casinos. In that interview, he did not address working for other gambling interests.
Some anti-gambling activists reject Reed's contention that he didn't know his work against the measure benefited a company that could profit from online gambling.
It slips over being disingenuous, said the Rev. Tom Grey, executive director of the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling, who worked for the gambling ban. Jack Abramoff was known as 'Casino Jack' at the time. If Jack's doling out tickets to this feeding trough, for Ralph to say he didn't know — I don't believe that.
A well-kept secret
When U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) first introduced the Internet gambling ban, in 1997, he named among its backers the executive director of the Christian Coalition: Ralph Reed.
In remarks published in the Congressional Record, Goodlatte said, This legislation is supported ... across the spectrum, from Ralph Reed to Ralph Nader.
But Reed's role in the ban's failure three years later was a well-kept secret, even from Goodlatte. That's in part because Reed's Duluth-based Century Strategies — a public affairs firm that avoids direct contact with members of Congress — is not subject to federal lobbying laws that would otherwise require the company to disclose its activities.
We were not aware that Reed was working against our bill, Kathryn Rexrode, a spokeswoman for Goodlatte, said last week.
Several large conservative religious organizations, with which Reed often had been aligned before leaving the Christian Coalition in 1997, joined together to support the legislation. Those groups included the Southern Baptist Convention, the United Methodist Church, Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council — and the Christian Coalition.
In addition, four prominent evangelical leaders signed a letter in May 2000 urging Congress to pass the legislation: James Dobson of Focus on the Family; Pat Robertson of the Christian Coalition; Jerry Falwell, formerly of the Moral Majority; and Charles Donovan of the Family Research Council.
Among the other supporters: the National Association of Attorneys General, Major League Baseball and the National Association of Convenience Stores, whose members are among the largest lottery ticket sellers.
Opponents, in addition to eLottery and other gambling interests, included the Clinton administration, which argued that existing federal laws were sufficient to combat the problem. In a policy statement, the administration predicted the measure would open a floodgate for other forms of illegal gambling.
To increase the measure's chances of passage, its sponsors had added provisions that would have allowed several kinds of online gambling — including horse and dog racing and jai alai — to remain legal.
Thomas, Reed's campaign manager, said in a statement last week that those exceptions amounted to an expansion of online gambling: Under the bill, a minor with access to a computer could have bet on horses and gambled at a casino online.
Thomas' statement claimed that the Southern Baptists and the Christian Coalition opposed the legislation for the same reason as Reed.
Actually, the Southern Baptist Convention lent its name to the group of religious organizations that backed the legislation. But as the measure progressed, the convention became uncomfortable with the exceptions and quietly spread the word that it was neutral, a spokesman said last week.
As for the Christian Coalition, it argued against the exceptions before the vote. But it issued an action alert two days after the ban's defeat, urging its members to call Congress and demand the legislation be reconsidered and passed.
In fact, the letter signed by the four evangelical leaders indicated a bargain had been reached with the Christian Coalition and other religious groups. In exchange for accepting minor exemptions for pari-mutuel wagering, the evangelicals got what they wanted most — a ban on lottery ticket sales over the Internet. Other anti-gambling activists say the exceptions disappointed them But they accepted the measure as an incremental approach to reining in online gambling.
We all recognized it wasn't perfect, Abrams, the Methodist official, said last week. We decided we weren't going to let the best be the enemy of the good.
Any little thing, she said in an earlier interview, would have been a victory.
Plans to expand
Founded in 1993, eLottery has provided online services to state lotteries in Idaho, Indiana and Maryland and to the national lottery in Jamaica, according to its Web site. It had plans to expand its business by facilitating online ticket sales, effectively turning every home computer with an Internet connection into a lottery terminal.
The president of eLottery's parent company, Edwin McGuinn, did not respond to recent requests for an interview. Earlier this year, he told The Washington Post that by banning online lottery ticket sales, the 2000 legislation would have put eLottery out of business. We wouldn't have been able to operate, the Post quoted McGuinn as saying.
Even with Abramoff and other lobbyists arguing against the measure, and Reed generating grass-roots opposition to it, a solid majority of House members voted for the measure in July 2000.
But that wasn't enough. House rules required a two-thirds majority for expedited passage, so the legislation died.
In addition to hiring Abramoff's firm to lobby for the measure's defeat, eLottery paid $25,000 toward a golfing trip to Scotland that Abramoff arranged for Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) — then the House majority whip, later the majority leader — several weeks before the gambling measure came up for a vote, according to the Post. Another $25,000 for the trip came from the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, an Abramoff client with casino interests, the Post reported. The trip, which is under review by the House Ethics Committee, was not related to DeLay's indictment on a conspiracy charge last week.
The campaign against the Internet gambling ban was one of several successful enterprises in which Abramoff and Reed worked together.
The Choctaws paid for Reed's work in 1999 and 2000 to defeat a lottery and video poker legislation in Alabama. In 2001 and 2002, another Abramoff client that operates a casino, the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, put up the money for Reed's efforts in Louisiana and Texas to eliminate competition from other tribes. Reed was paid about $4 million for that work.
Abramoff, once one of Washington's most influential lobbyists, now is under federal indictment in a Florida fraud case and is facing investigations by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and the Justice Department into whether he defrauded Indian tribes he represented, including those that paid Reed's fees. Reed has not been accused of wrongdoing.
Reed and Abramoff have been friends since the early 1980s. That's when Abramoff, as chairman of the national College Republicans organization, hired Reed to be his executive director. Later, Reed introduced Abramoff to the woman he married.
In an interview last month about his consulting business, Reed declined to elaborate on his personal and professional relationships with Abramoff. At one point, Reed was asked if Abramoff had hired him to work for clients other than Indian tribes.
Reed's answer: Not that I can recall.
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