“India's Hindustan Times reports that, during a 14 month period from 2002 to 2003 when the Republican Party was playing up patriotism, its fund-raising and vote-seeking campaign was performed in part by two call centers located in India,” says the Daily Mislead, one of this old newspaper reporter’s favorite Internet sites.

Daily Mislead staffers have good memories. In 2003, the website also says, “The New York Times reported that the Bush Commerce Department co-sponsored a conference at the lavish Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York that was designed to ‘encourage American companies to put operations and jobs in China.’ Then, this year, the President's top economic adviser said outsourcing was ‘a plus for the economy.’”

Glenn Dowdy, former president of the Western Kentucky Area Council, has a good memory, too. He recalls that after 9-11, the U.S. Post Office, headed by Bush appointee John E. Potter, sold American flag lapel pins that were made in China.

This year, too, the Republicans sold "Bush-Cheney '04" campaign jackets made in Myanmar. Never mind that the Bush administration banned imports from Mynamar, formerly Burma, because the country is run by one of the most brutal dictatorships on earth.

Outsourcing is hitting Bush where it hurts politicians the most: in the polls.

Apparently, it has dawned on Dubya (or his handlers) that most Americans don’t think it’s a good idea for business and industry bosses to fatten their wallets by shipping our jobs to cheap labor countries. While outsourcing is steaming full speed ahead with Bush’s blessing, the administration is no longer bragging about how exporting jobs is good for the economy. Instead, the Republicans are circling the wagons with their old campaign standbys, the social issues.

Bush renewed his call for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Now the call to arms has gone out to the Republican-friendly National Rifle Association, which is blazing away at John Kerry, the AFL-CIO endorsed Democrat for president. Kerry “owns owns a shotgun and a rifle, has taken time from the campaign trail to go hunting and relied on firearms during the Vietnam War,” according to Reuters. Even so, the NRA says Kerry is anti-gun (because he wants to keep assault rifles out of the hands of criminals and terrorists).

“His anti-firearms record is among the very worst in American politics,” NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said. “It’s not a stretch to say that the worst thing that could happen to the Second Amendment is for John Kerry to be elected president.”

Kerry called LaPierre’s claim “the phoniest argument I’ve ever heard in my life,“ Reuters reports. Kerry said he has been hunting since he was 12.

Kerry invited LaPierre on a hunting trip “as long as he agreed not to turn the gun on me,” the candidate told Associated Press reporters and editors. He was joking, of course. Kerry, by the way, handled firearms deftly in Vietnam. He earned a Bronze Star, a Silver Star and three Purple Hearts for bravery. You’d figure as much as LaPierre loves guns, he would have volunteered for Vietnam and packed some major heat. But he’s another middle-aged Republican who was gung ho for Vietnam but chose not to go, according to the New Hampshire Gazette’s “Chickenhawk” list, which is topped by Bush and Cheney.