Convention Wisdom

Like most folks in Blogdom I've been anxiously awaiting the preliminary dispatches of my more priveleged cohorts who were given press passes to the DNC this year.  I was running around like a headless chicken chasing down link after link trying to find them all when I finally came across this handy-dandy website that consolidates everyone's posts.  Woohoo!!  Of course, I watched the Clintons' speeches last night.  I was not disappointed.  I need to bookmark the text of Bill's to use for future reference - he did a fantastic job of describing in clear terms what the differences are between the two parties.  The best part was how he detailed what Bush's tax cuts have 'cost' America:

"They protected my tax cuts while:
·         Withholding promised funding for the Leave No Child Behind Act, leaving over
2 million children behind
·         Cutting 140,000 unemployed workers out of job training
·         100,000 working families out of child care assistance
·         300,000 poor children out of after school programs
·         Raising out of pocket healthcare costs to veterans
·         Weakening or reversing important environmental advances for clean air and the preservation of our forests."

And how they want to continue to hamstring the country in it's fight on terror:

 "In this year’s budget, the White House wants to cut off federal funding for 88,000 uniformed police, including more than 700 on the New York City police force who put their lives on the line on 9/11. As gang violence is rising and we look for terrorists in our midst, Congress and the President are also about to allow the ten-year-old ban on assault weapons to expire. Our crime policy was to put more police on the streets and take assault weapons off the streets. It brought eight years of declining crime and violence. Their policy is the reverse, they’re taking police off the streets and putting assault weapons back on the streets."  

"On Homeland Security, Democrats tried to double the number of containers at ports and airports checked for Weapons of Mass Destruction.  The one billion dollar cost would have been paid for by reducing the tax cut of 200,000 millionaires by five thousand dollars each. Almost all 200,000 of us would have been glad to pay 5,000 dollars to make the nearly 300 million Americans safer—but the measure failed because the White House and the Republican leadership in the House decided my tax cut was more important."

Good, good stuff!