Factoids

The U.S. trade deficit for 2004 was $617.2 billion dollars. For all of 2005 it is likely to be an estmated $710 billion dollars. With trade agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA and WTO, the trade deficit problems have only grown during the Bush years. This has cost many high paying factory jobs.


The average wage in China is just 40 cents an hour in factories, although many actually pay only 24 cents an hour. However the wages in the Geely automobile company is $3.50 an hour, some of he highest factory wages paid in China. In the U.S. thousands of $29 an hour factory jobs at GM and Ford are disappearing and pension cuts are growing in American industry. Airline wages have been cut by an average of 40% over the last several years.


William Bennett, former Reagan Administration member, who is best known for his right wing moralizing on "values", reportedly lost as much as $8 million dollars on gambling.


Bill O'Reilly who keeps insisting that their is a "culture war" in America, reportedly paid as much as $10 to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by a female producer after O'Reilly reportedly made a large number of unwanted sexually explicit phone sex calls to this producer. In another example, Bill O'Reilly invited adult film star and producer, Jenna Jameson to appear on his program so he could attack her industry. But after the show was over, the adult film star reported that Bill O'Reilly changed his attitudes towards her and asked for free DVDS he could bring home to watch of her popular films.

Rush Limbaugh, champion of right wing causes with his popular "White populist" radio program, publicly admited problems with prescription drug addiction on October 10, 2003 and that he was entering a drug rehab clinic after mounting problems from a law enforcement investigation.

William F. Buckley, the "Godfather" of American conservatism, despite a very literate command of the English language proved himself to be a very advocate for the conservative ideology on more that one occasion. On a televised debate with author Gore Vidal, Buckley was was having difficulty winning the discussion on whether the Chigago police had acted properly during the violence outside the 1968 Democratic Convention. When the discussion began to breakdown, Vidal refered to Buckley as a "crypto-nazi", and Buckley got angry and shouted, "Now listen you queer, stop calling me a crypto-nazi, or I'll sock you in your god***n face, and you'll stay plastered". In another example of Buckley inability to adequately represent the "conservative" viewpoint , Buckley walked out of a debate with Howard Zinn at Tufts university when a debate wasn't going well. Buckley had a style of eloquent command of the English language in public policy debates, that often failed him when liberal opponents began to cite hard facts.


It's popular for Mr. Bush to surround himself with military personel to appear to be both patriotic and promilitary, however therecord of Bush on military affairs is really quite bad. For example, Mr. Bush only scored 25% on the National Guard flight appitude test, the lowest possible passing score so he could enter the National Guard flight school, and avoid combat duty in Vietnam. As President , Bush cut veteran's health care benefits forcing 200,000 veterans to wait for needed medical services. Despite the fact that 40% of the forces in Iraq are National Guard or Reserve units, the Bush Administration opposed health care benefits for both National Guard and Reservists. And the Bush Administration cut $172 million from the education funds alloted to educate the children of military familes.