Blog, blog, blog

Who Lost Iraq?

2005-11-01T12:04:00.000-05:00

WHO LOST IRAQ?

In the two and a half years since the US became involved in Iraq, it has become clear that Iraqis are too traumatized by the disorder of the country and/or are too tangled in their own tribal traditions and/or their religious allegiances to embrace a democratic society. Torn by post-war strife and previous associations, the most powerful people in Iraq today show little interest in a pluralistic society where individual allegiances must give way to compromise. It did not have to be this way. Perhaps if the Bush administration had had a plan for the peace and had committed enough troops to prevent the chaos following the fall of Sadaam Hussein and his Baathist government, the US might have been able to achieve the goal it fashioned for itself – the flowering of a Middle East democracy. But the neoconservatives who pushed for and planned the war never were interested in what they called nation-building. They were more interested in demonstrating that the US had the capacity to wage a quickly victorious hot war. They were more interested in asserting American muscularity and aggressiveness. They, in fact ridiculed the Clintonian nation-building ambitions and the balanced diplomacy favored by Bush père.

In the chaotic aftermath of the fall of Sadaam, deposed Baathists who had been summarily ejected from all levels of Iraq government and bureaucracy and both Shi’a and Sunni Islamists reacted against the American presence in Iraq. They began a terror campaign that attempted to fill the power vacuum left by an ineffective American sponsored civilian administration which failed to prevent growing criminal activity as well as acts of terror. A major terrorist objective has clearly been to destabilize Iraq’s political class by targeting Iraqis who cooperate in the formation of a constitutional government, and by attacking Iraqis who are working or looking for work in the new Iraqi government. They also have sought to spread terror generally by attacking people where they shop and where they pray in order to make clear that neither the Americans nor the governing Iraqis are capable of stabilizing the country. Equally, the terror campaign is designed to drive Americans from Iraq so that the doors will be open for one of the competing power groups to take control. Think of Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation.

Of course the perpetrators of terror are responsible for the mayhem and death that they cause, but the US bears responsibility here as well. The reckless de-baathification of Iraq following the fall of Sadaam left a vacuum at the center of government and created conditions that encouraged the post-war looting and criminality. The failure to hand Iraqis contracts for rebuilding of the country has left many of its citizens paupers, and the initial failure to involve Iraqis in post-Sadaam recovery left the Iraqis feeling, not unjustly, that they had been occupied, not liberated.

It is truly hard to say what the Bushies hoped to accomplish in Iraq when they went to war. Clearly there was no imminent threat; clearly, democracy has not flourished; clearly terrorism waxes in Iraq rather than waning; and clearly, the US is less safe now from terror than it was before 9/11. Of course, it is terrorists who perpetrate terrorism, but the Bushies bear some of the burden. Before George W. Bush, Iraq was Sadaam Hussein’s to lose; now it is the Bushies who have lost Iraq and who are dragging us further in the terrorist miasma.

Disaster in New Orleans

2005-09-01T21:20:00.000-04:00

Disaster in New Orleans

I have been watching the scenes from the American south, and all I can think of is that this is so incredibly distressing. Our government is so hopelessly disorganized and useless in this natural catastrophe. So much for improved Homeland Security.

To me the single most invidious statistic regarding our government's utter failure here is that the 8000 National Guardsmen who should be coordinating the rescue efforts in NO and protecting FEMA...that is the guardsmen who are from LA and MS... are on active duty in Iraq. So much for being able to protect the homeland and fight this (pointless) war in Iraq.

What happens when the next tragedy -- natural or manmade -- occurs? Where is George W Bush? Where has he been? Cutting taxes so the Army Corps of Engineers can't do its work; fighting a war abroad that needs to be fought at home. Remember the Constitution promises us a government that will "provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our prosterity." No common defense, no general welfare and no blessings tonight again in New Orleans and the gulf coast of Mississippi.

It's all well and good for celebrities to give concerts and for the president to urge us to give to the Red Cross, but we need leadership, not songs and words.

Where's the Real News

2005-06-14T09:43:00.000-04:00

While CNN, Fox, and even the major dailies and of course the tabloids focus their attention on the Michael Jackson trial and the missing Alabama girl in Aruba, the real story goes unreported except on the internet and in the British broadsheets. That is the Downing Street Memos. They clearly reveal that the British knew in advance of the war in Iraq that the bushies were more concerned with building a rationalization for war to overthrow Sadaam Hussein than they were with solving the problems of the man's inhumanity to his people. The first Memo published in May by the London Times explicitly states that the Bushies were not committed to helping the UN get weapons inspectors back in, and that they had no plan for the post-war period. Yesterday, the London Times published a second briefing paper reaffirming the first: i.e. that the US had no real interest in a UN solution and only went ahead with the Colin Powell farce when pressured by the British. It also demonstrates tha the US knew that the post-war period would be chaotic but had no post-war security plans. Furthermore and more strikingly, the memo makes it clear that all the US machinations to bring Sadaam into line were just ploys to give the US and the UK an excuse to start a war that they had planned to conduct all along.

This sounds like real news to me but the Washington Post and the NY Times barely reported on the May memo and did so 4 weeks after the fact. Yesterday, the Times reported on the memo but generally got the sense of it wrong and minimized its import in doing so. The clear message of the memo is that the Bushies were determined to go to war Iraq and built justifications for such a war on a false foundation, and that the Bushies were unprepared for what they knew would be a chaotic and deadly post-war period. Meanwhile, the Times gave space to Scott McClellan's baldfaced denials of the content of the memo saying that they were just someone's impressions and that all the problems were fixed before we went in. The daily attacks by insurgents against troops and civilians tell a far different story. But who should we believe, the billboard slogans of the bushies or our lying eyes?

Today's story on the second memo from Salon. com follows:

The briefing before Downing Street

It took six weeks, but the other shoe has dropped regarding the Downing Street Memo. The thud came courtesy of the Sunday Times of London in its report Sunday on yet another damning, top-secret British government document prepared eight months before the war with Iraq. Like the previous unearthed memo published by the Times on May 1, the latest document paints not only a picture of a Bush administration that, despite its talk in 2002 of averting war, was bent on invading Iraq, but one that, according to close counterparts in the British government, was determined to wage war without thinking through the consequences.

The briefing paper was prepared for participants in advance of the now-famous July 23, 2002 meeting, held at Prime Minister Tony Blair's residence, 10 Downing Street in London. According to the Times report, the briefing paper confirms that Blair had actually signed off on Bush's plan to invade Iraq back in April, 2002, at a summit in Crawford Texas. The two men then spent the next 11 months working to formulate a justification for the invasion -- because, as the briefing paper stressed, it was “necessary to create the conditions” which would make the invasion legal.

During the run-up to the invasion there was deep concern among Blair's senior advisors that an unprecedented, preemptive war of regime change would violate international law. According to the United Nations charter, there are only two reasons to legally wage war: self-defense (Article 51), and to restore international peace (Article 42). On the eve of the war with Iraq in 2003, Blair's Attorney General Lord Peter Goldsmith, working around the clock with a team of attorneys, stitched together a legal justification for the war. Based on the leaked memos, that justification now appears to have been formulated for the benefit of Blair's political needs.

The July 2002 briefing paper wasn't just about "creating the conditions" and circumventing the law, it was about how Bush's war planners had given "little thought" to the implications of an invasion. That's the angle the Washington Post played up on Sunday, based on excerpts of the leaked briefing paper it received and separately verified with British sources. "The eight-page memo, written in advance of a July 23, 2002, Downing Street meeting on Iraq, provides new insights into how senior British officials saw a Bush administration decision to go to war as inevitable, and realized more clearly than their American counterparts the potential for the post-invasion instability that continues to plague Iraq," wrote the Post's Walter Pincus. "In its introduction, the memo 'Iraq: Conditions for Military Action', notes that U.S. 'military planning for action against Iraq is proceeding apace,' but adds that 'little thought' has been given to, among other things, 'the aftermath and how to shape it.'"

The Post notes that some thought about post-war contingencies took place inside the Bush government, within the State Department -- but that the planning there was willfully ignored: "The Bush administration's failure to plan adequately for the postwar period has been well documented. The Pentagon, for example, ignored extensive State Department studies of how to achieve stability after an invasion, administer a postwar government and rebuild the country." This took place even though it was the view of Washington's closest ally, as the briefing paper stated, that "a post-war occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise."

"As already made clear," the briefing paper stressed, "the US military plans are virtually silent on this point."

-- Eric Boehlert

Lest we forget how senseless wars end.

2005-05-24T09:55:00.000-04:00

BBC ON THIS DAY | 24 | 1975: Journalists leave fallen Saigon

1975: Journalists leave fallen Saigon
A group of 80 reporters and cameramen - including nine Britons
- have been allowed to fly out of Saigon to Vientiane in Laos.

They are the first Westerners to leave the capital of South Vietnam since it fell to communist forces a month ago.

The city had been the headquarters of the US military until 29 April when remaining US forces left Vietnam. That day there were chaotic scenes in Saigon as desperate South Vietnamese citizens tried to board overcrowded US helicopters in a bid to flee their own country.

The next day, North Vietnamese tanks rolled in and forced a humiliating surrender.

Thousands desperate to leave

There are still 16,000 foreign passport holders, including thousands of Vietnamese with French passports, waiting anxiously for exit visas and a way out.

After weeks of failed promises and delays, the Western journalists boarded a Russian-made plane belonging to the North Vietnamese Air Force to Vientiane in Laos, the only Indo-Chinese country that still has diplomatic ties with the US.

The fall of Saigon has been marked by victory parades by the communist forces over the last few days. The capture of Saigon by the Viet Cong was greeted with fear, confusion and joy.

That is what happened on this day 30 years ago. The BBC also provides us this summary of the war:

Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City, and North and South Vietnam were unified in 1976.

This was preceded by three decades of bitter independence wars, which the communists fought first against the colonial power France, then against US- backed South Vietnam.

The US had entered hostilities to stem a perceived "domino effect" of successive nations falling to communism.

The jungle war produced heavy casualties on both sides, atrocities against civilians, and the indiscriminate destruction and contamination of much of the landscape.

In 1986, the communist government allowed in elements of market forces and private enterprise.

But some party leaders still fear that too much economic liberalisation will weaken their power base and introduce "decadent" ideas into Vietnamese society.

In November 2000 President Bill Clinton's visit to Vietnam was presented as the culmination of US efforts to normalise relations with the former enemy.

It all seems so senseless now. What will the Iraq war look like in 2035?

Galloway vs. The US Senate: Transcript of Statement

2005-05-22T13:24:00.000-04:00

Published on Tuesday, May 17, 2005 by the Times Online (UK)

Galloway vs. The US Senate: Transcript of Statement
George Galloway, Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, delivered this statement to US Senators today who have accused him of corruption

"Senator, I am not now, nor have I ever been, an oil trader. And neither has anyone on my behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one - and neither has anyone on my behalf.

"Now I know that standards have slipped in the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice. I am here today but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever written to me or telephoned me, without any attempt to contact me whatsoever. And you call that justice.

"Now I want to deal with the pages that relate to me in this dossier and I want to point out areas where there are - let's be charitable and say errors. Then I want to put this in the context where I believe it ought to be. On the very first page of your document about me you assert that I have had 'many meetings' with Saddam Hussein. This is false.

"I have had two meetings with Saddam Hussein, once in 1994 and once in August of 2002. By no stretch of the English language can that be described as "many meetings" with Saddam Hussein.

"As a matter of fact, I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country - a rather better use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of State for Defense made of his.

"I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and Americans governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas. I used to demonstrate outside the Iraqi embassy when British and American officials were going in and doing commerce.

"You will see from the official parliamentary record, Hansard, from the 15th March 1990 onwards, voluminous evidence that I have a rather better record of opposition to Saddam Hussein than you do and than any other member of the British or American governments do.

"Now you say in this document, you quote a source, you have the gall to quote a source, without ever having asked me whether the allegation from the source is true, that I am 'the owner of a company which has made substantial profits from trading in Iraqi oil'.

"Senator, I do not own any companies, beyond a small company whose entire purpose, whose sole purpose, is to receive the income from my journalistic earnings from my employer, Associated Newspapers, in London. I do not own a company that's been trading in Iraqi oil. And you have no business to carry a quotation, utterly unsubstantiated and false, implying otherwise.

"Now you have nothing on me, Senator, except my name on lists of names from Iraq, many of which have been drawn up after the installation of your puppet government in Baghdad. If you had any of the letters against me that you had against Zhirinovsky, and even Pasqua, they would have been up there in your slideshow for the members of your committee today.

"You have my name on lists provided to you by the Duelfer inquiry, provided to him by the convicted bank robber, and fraudster and conman Ahmed Chalabi who many people to their credit in your country now realize played a decisive role in leading your country into the disaster in Iraq.

"There were 270 names on that list originally. That's somehow been filleted down to the names you chose to deal with in this committee. Some of the names on that committee included the former secretary to his Holiness Pope John Paul II, the former head of the African National Congress Presidential office and many others who had one defining characteristic in common: they all stood against the policy of sanctions and war which you vociferously prosecuted and which has led us to this disaster.

"You quote Mr. Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Well, you have something on me; I've never met Mr. Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Your sub-committee apparently has. But I do know that he's your prisoner, I believe he's in Abu Ghraib prison. I believe he is facing war crimes charges, punishable by death. In these circumstances, knowing what the world knows about how you treat prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, in Bagram Airbase, in Guantanamo Bay, including I may say, British citizens being held in those places.

"I'm not sure how much credibility anyone would put on anything you manage to get from a prisoner in those circumstances. But you quote 13 words from Dahar Yassein Ramadan whom I have never met. If he said what he said, then he is wrong.

"And if you had any evidence that I had ever engaged in any actual oil transaction, if you had any evidence that anybody ever gave me any money, it would be before the public and before this committee today because I agreed with your Mr. Greenblatt [Mark Greenblatt, legal counsel on the committee].

"Your Mr. Greenblatt was absolutely correct. What counts are not the names on the paper, what counts is where's the money. Senator? Who paid me hundreds of thousands of dollars of money? The answer to that is nobody. And if you had anybody who ever paid me a penny, you would have produced them today.

"Now you refer at length to a company names in these documents as Aredio Petroleum. I say to you under oath here today: I have never heard of this company, I have never met anyone from this company. This company has never paid a penny to me and I'll tell you something else: I can assure you that Aredio Petroleum has never paid a single penny to the Mariam Appeal Campaign. Not a thin dime. I don't know who Aredio Petroleum are, but I daresay if you were to ask them they would confirm that they have never met me or ever paid me a penny.

"Whilst I'm on that subject, who is this senior former regime official that you spoke to yesterday? Don't you think I have a right to know? Don't you think the Committee and the public have a right to know who this senior former regime official you were quoting against me interviewed yesterday actually is?

"Now, one of the most serious of the mistakes you have made in this set of documents is, to be frank, such a schoolboy howler as to make a fool of the efforts that you have made. You assert on page 19, not once but twice, that the documents that you are referring to cover a different period in time from the documents covered by The Daily Telegraph which were a subject of a libel action won by me in the High Court in England late last year.

"You state that The Daily Telegraph article cited documents from 1992 and 1993 whilst you are dealing with documents dating from 2001. Senator, The Daily Telegraph's documents date identically to the documents that you were dealing with in your report here. None of The Daily Telegraph's documents dealt with a period of 1992, 1993. I had never set foot in Iraq until late in 1993 - never in my life. There could possibly be no documents relating to Oil-for-Food matters in 1992, 1993, for the Oil-for-Food scheme did not exist at that time.

"And yet you've allocated a full section of this document to claiming that your documents are from a different era to the Daily Telegraph documents when the opposite is true. Your documents and the Daily Telegraph documents deal with exactly the same period.

"But perhaps you were confusing the Daily Telegraph action with the Christian Science Monitor. The Christian Science Monitor did indeed publish on its front pages a set of allegations against me very similar to the ones that your committee has made. They did indeed rely on documents which started in 1992, 1993. These documents were unmasked by the Christian Science Monitor themselves as forgeries.

"Now, the neo-con websites and newspapers in which you're such a hero, senator, were all absolutely cock-a-hoop at the publication of the Christian Science Monitor documents, they were all absolutely convinced of their authenticity. They were all absolutely convinced that these documents showed me receiving $10 million from the Saddam regime. And they were all lies.

"In the same week as the Daily Telegraph published their documents against me, the Christian Science Monitor published theirs which turned out to be forgeries and the British newspaper, Mail on Sunday, purchased a third set of documents which also upon forensic examination turned out to be forgeries. So there's nothing fanciful about this. Nothing at all fanciful about it.

"The existence of forged documents implicating me in commercial activities with the Iraqi regime is a proven fact. It's a proven fact that these forged documents existed and were being circulated amongst right-wing newspapers in Baghdad and around the world in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Iraqi regime.

"Now, Senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life's blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies.

“I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

"Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.

If the world had listened to Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded, if the world had listened to President Chirac who you want to paint as some kind of corrupt traitor, if the world had listened to me and the anti-war movement in Britain, we would not be in the disaster that we are in today. Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported, from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth.

"Have a look at the real Oil-for-Food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first 14 months when $8.8 billion of Iraq's wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Halliburton and other American corporations that stole not only Iraq's money, but the money of the American taxpayer.

"Have a look at the oil that you didn't even meter, that you were shipping out of the country and selling, the proceeds of which went who knows where? Have a look at the $800 million you gave to American military commanders to hand out around the country without even counting it or weighing it.

"Have a look at the real scandal breaking in the newspapers today, revealed in the earlier testimony in this committee. That the biggest sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians. The real sanctions busters were your own companies with the connivance of your own Government."

© 2005 Times Newspapers

Protect your rights

2005-05-21T22:57:00.000-04:00

The following message was posted on the Engadget blog.

Help stop the Broadcast Flag

We lucked out when a federal appeals court struck down the lameness that is the Broadcast Flag earlier this month, but that sort of setback doesn’t faze the alliance of broadcasters and movie studios which pushed the rule on the FCC in the first place. Remember that the court overturned the rule because the FCC had overstepped its authority, not because the Broadcast Flag was inherently unconstitutional, so now the industry has decided to stop messing around and are leaning on their pals in Congress to enshrine the Broadcast Flag as law. Yeah, we know that most of you probably won’t be affected by this either way, since the Broadcast Flag only governs digital over-the-air broadcasts and the vast majority of Americans homes get their TV via cable or satellite (which have copy control mechanisms of their own), but the Broadcast Flag establishes a very dangerous precedent. It essentially gives the government a discouraging amount of control over what manufacturers can or cannot do with their products, something which will both dampen innovation and end up limiting consumers’ basic rights to do what they want with their media.
If you’re feeling as frustrated as we are, there’s something you can do. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a new action-alert which makes it easy to let your Congressional representative know just how unhappy you are about this proposed legislation. It’s pretty easy to get cynical about Congress, but if you don’t make your voice heard then you have no right to bitch about this later. At least not to us.

Invasion of the Public Square

2005-05-17T23:18:00.000-04:00

Help! Blogdom is being invaded by the rich and famous and bloggers like Arianna Huffington and her famous blogging friends, and we down-at-the-heel, less than famous folks are mad as hell about it. So what’s going on here? Can’t the little guys stand the invasion of the very wealthy and prominent Ms. Huffington and all her celebrity friends? Are they really such a threat? Do we everyday, lowly bloggers get our jollies by assaulting the integrity (?) of celebs? Well, the answer to all those questions is the ever contradictory yes and no.

Yes, the invasion of a popular celebrity blog is definitely a threat to the independent politically-minded bloggers – the men and women who have used the internet as a public square; the people who have something to say and take the time to express themselves thoughtfully online; the service men and women who write about the war in Iraq; the photographers and independent researchers who find hidden documents and expose them to the light of day. Blogs are the most democratic form of public expression to come down the pike since John Peter Zenger established the American tradition of freedom of the press in 1735. Blogs are the internet version of the underground press through which patriots spread the treasonous idea that the colonies should become independent of King George III. They are today’s Federalist Papers. The very appearance of a star-studded and well-promoted blog seems like a stake in the heart of independent populist expression. Let one well-financed California mogul open up shop on the web and the little guys will find themselves squeezed like the corner candy store in Middle America when Wal-Mart comes to town. This is the thinking here, and it’s not wrong. Just look at what can happen when an independent magazine gets ripped off or snapped up by a media giant. What ever happened to the rollicking old Village Voice anyway? Where is the original New York Magazine? Even The Nation and the National Review seem like old men repeating the same lines that they used to win the ladies in his youth, but now to no avail. I won’t even mention that old liberal daily, The New York Post, which made a hard right turn when Rupert Murdoch and his News Corporation came along or the struggles of independent radio in the face of giant monsters like Clear Channel.

And if this were what all the vitriol regarding Huffington’s blog was all about, bloggers could stand on their righteous pedestals and have the angels of the heroes of the American Revolution on their side. But alas, not all of the anger is so high minded. The vitriolic writing is mostly in the form of ad hominem attacks. Bloggers are certainly free to engage in thoughtless and angry rhetoric, but they undercut their own high moral ground when their main complaint is that celebs are basically too stupid to live – not that that isn’t sometimes close to the truth. It is fair to ask why a movie actor should be listened to, but it is not fair to say that she has no right to express herself. And just because a girl, like Gwyneth Paltrow who has borne the brunt of so many recent attacks, is rich and/or pretty….and sometimes blonde….doesn’t necessarily mean she’s ignorant. It doesn’t exclude that possibility either. But critiquing huffingtonpost.com by insulting the bloggers is hardly the most advanced form of review. And the real truth here is that Americans love to elevate their “stars” and then shoot them down. They love to see them humiliated and brought to their weak little knees. So the anger at Huffington's guest bloggers was eminently predictable and it is equally as sad for the future of independent blogging.

The one truism about bad publicity is that like any publicity it's good for business. The more bloggers rip into Arianna and company, the more people will click on her site to see what the brouhaha is all about. Inevitably, celebrity blogs will reap the benefit of all the ad hominem attacks and they will crowd into the public square. Bloggers will have to share space and find new ways to attract readers. But hey that's just the real side of life in this messy adventure we call a free press.

Necessity is the mother of invention

2005-05-17T19:51:00.000-04:00

Normally, I don't let my tech interests and my political ones cross over into each other. You know war is not really a game despite the way the chickenhawks who are running this country seem to feel. However the following item seems to cover the whole gamut of geek toys and war.

RC TOYS VS. IEDs
How do you handle a roadside bomb, when there's no robot nearby? Simple: you use one of those remote-controlled cars that kids have been playing with for decades.

"Yesterday, I was 'outside the wire,' patrolling with the 2nd Platoon. We came upon a possible IED [improvised explosive device] in the middle of the road, and stopped all traffic to check it out," writes Sgt. Greg Papadatos, of the 69th Infantry Regiment, in a Military.com diary.

A young private [named "E.S."] in that platoon has one of those radio-controlled toy cars. When they find unidentifiable debris in the road, E.S. sends out his little RC car and rams it. If it's light enough to be moved or knocked over, it's too light to be a bomb, so we can approach it and get rid of it. If it's heavy, we call EOD [explosive ordnance disposal -- the military's bomb squad]. At night, they duct tape a flashlight to the car.

The military actually has robots that it uses for such things, but they are larger, slower, higher-tech, and frightfully expensive. Only EOD units have them, and you could wait for hours and hours before they show up with their robot. If 200 units read about this idea, and 50 units actually buy a toy RC car, and it saves just one single life, it would all be worth it.

I've suggested to E.S. that he put some fancy paint and a couple of LED lights on his toy car, demonstrate it to some Army brass at the Pentagon, and sell it to them for $80,000. He won't actually try that, but it's fun to imagine. In the meantime, I've also suggested to some of his chain of command that they put him in for a commendation or a medal for his ingenuity. If he ever finds a real bomb with that toy car, they probably will. (via the Huffington Post)

Excellent. Maybe it's time for those children of the fifties to make room at the top for those kids of the computer generation.

Hostage Crisis

2005-05-16T19:04:00.000-04:00

Yes, there is a hostage crisis in Iraq, but it's not the kind you normally think of when you hear about hostages. It's the crisis Paul Krugman addresses in his op-ed piece today in the NY Times -- the US has gotten itself into a new kind of quagmire in Iraq. We are simply stuck in muck of our creation. There is no organized nationalist opposition to our presence in Iraq within Iraq. There is no Viet Cong or Ho Chi Minh or North Vietnamese government ready to extend control. We have no one to turn the country over to who could turn the chaos that is Iraq into any sort of coherent state.

Krugman writes:

[I]t's very hard to discuss getting out. Even most of those who vehemently opposed the war say that we have to stay on in Iraq now that we're there.

In effect, America has been taken hostage. Nobody wants to take responsibility for the terrible scenes that will surely unfold if we leave (even though terrible scenes are unfolding while we're there). Nobody wants to tell the grieving parents of American soldiers that their children died in vain. And nobody wants to be accused, by an administration always ready to impugn other people's patriotism, of stabbing the troops in the back.

But the American military isn't just bogged down in Iraq; it's deteriorating under the strain. We may already be in real danger: what threats, exactly, can we make against the North Koreans? That John Bolton will yell at them? And every year that the war goes on, our military gets weaker.

So we need to get beyond the clichés - please, no more "pottery barn principles" or "staying the course." I'm not advocating an immediate pullout, but we have to tell the Iraqi government that our stay is time-limited, and that it has to find a way to take care of itself. The point is that something has to give. We either need a much bigger army - which means a draft - or we need to find a way out of Iraq.

Our involvement in Iraq isn't just a disaster in the middle east. It's a disaster waiting to happen right here in the good old US of A. We are basically a country whose army is so involved abroad, that we are undefended at home from real threats. Those real threats are terrorism along the lines of 9/11 and real countries that have nuclear weapons that not only are run by unpredictable leaders but that have every incentive to sell their nuke technology to other countries and to terrorists with big budgets. No one should take this last point lightly. Remember North Korea's sole industry is nuclear weapons production, and it's a country that is on (or perhaps over) the brink of starvation.

I guess my only quibble with Krugman is the impression he leaves that the reinstatement of the draft and a way out of Iraq have some sort of mutual exclusivity. Rest assured that if a draft were restarted and the threat of being sent to Iraq became generalized across all socio-economic borders, more than just a handful of us would be demanding a speedy exit from the middle east conflagration.

Who is patriotic anyway?

2005-05-15T12:35:00.000-04:00

I have a friend who thinks that because someone is opposed to the war in Iraq, she is unpatriotic. Of course, this is utter nonsense. Another misconception that my friend carries is that people who are opposed to the war don't support the troops. Again utter nonsense. People like me who are opposed to this war do have the highest regard for the men and women who have voluntarily given of themselves to fight to defend our freedom. The problem of course with this war is that it has nothing to do with fighting for our freedom or our country. I know Saddam is a bad man and was an evil (to use the Bush word of choice) dictator, but exactly what has this war accomplished. I can't believe that there is a single person in the world who looks at the situation the US has created in Iraq and says, "Gee I wish my country were more like Iraq." So have we really set the seed of democracy free in the middle east or any where?

Okay, so this argument against the war is pretty standard, but what has this got to do with who is patriotic? The answer is simple: people like me who are opposed to wasting the lives of dedicated soldiers, sailors and airmen in this pointless chaos created by our crazy plan to get rid of Saddam Hussein with no plan to ensure the peace are the patriots who support our fighting forces. People like the DOD's Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, GWB, Dick Cheney, and all the other chickenhawks who have never faced another person with a gun or a IED at the really are the unpatriotic ones. Just read this article linked below from Operation Truth and look at the pictures of an unarmored humvee that has blown up and try to explain to our soldiers why they have been asked to fight unprepared, understaffed, unprotected and on the cheap. The answer is clear -- they are the surrogates whose lives are cheap in a war created for some abstract geopolitical/economic reason that has little to do with freedom and has everything to do with the guys in power expanding that power so that they can maintain their personal wealth. Look at the geography. Look at Iraq's strategic location on the sea and in the middle of the middle east. Look at the oil that could flow more easily without Saddam Hussein and look at who makes money here -- the Bushs, the Cheneys, the Rumsfelds, the Rices. And that is not to mention the arms merchants who first sold Saddam his weapons and now sell weapons to the USA to kill the people who first bought their product. But that will always be true about war. How do we the people benefit here? We get to wave the flag and pat our free selves on the back. We get to ignore the real problems of poverty and maldistribution of wealth and services here at home. We even get to ignore the health and well being of the individuals who do the fighting and the well being of the families who have soldiers, sailors, and airmen fighting and dying and being maimed in Bush's Folly, the ultimate struggle for personal wealth and power.

Who is patriotic? The people who are opposed to the war. Who supports our troops? The people who admire their dedication, value their service, value their lives and want to bring them home.

Operation Truth Operation Truth">

Where have I been?

2005-05-09T09:59:00.000-04:00

Good question. I haven't posted since the election of 2004. The election was such a downer in so many ways. The GOP and the Bushies seemed to have established such tight control not only over the election itself but over the news. We know now that so much of the news today is part of the PR bull that is spewed by the bush machine. It is simply prefabricated puffery. If the FTC had control over the news, this would fall into the category of illegal and false advertising. Besides the fact that the bushies steamrollered the rest of us, I was supremely disappointed by John Kerry and the dems inability to counterattack. How uninspiring they were.

So alas, we are stuck with the bushies for another 4 years and if the dems and liberal republicans and libertarians don't take a strong stand against the bush ad campaign for justice for the wealthiest Americans, we are going to be going down a long road to economic doom and gloom. (I'll save my remarks on international doom and gloom for another post)

My pal, Paul Krugman has an excellent op-ed piece in today's New York Times highlighting the disaster that the Bush social security plan of destruction really is. Read the whole thing at www.nytimes.com, but let me just quote the most salient paragraph:

Let's consider the Bush tax cuts and the Bush benefit cuts as a package. Who gains? Who loses?

Suppose you're a full-time Wal-Mart employee, earning $17,000 a year. You probably didn't get any tax cut. But Mr. Bush says, generously, that he won't cut your Social Security benefits.

Suppose you're earning $60,000 a year. On average, Mr. Bush cut taxes for workers like you by about $1,000 per year. But by 2045 the Bush Social Security plan would cut benefits for workers like you by about $6,500 per year. Not a very good deal.

Suppose, finally, that you're making $1 million a year. You received a tax cut worth about $50,000 per year. By 2045 the Bush plan would reduce benefits for people like you by about $9,400 per year. We have a winner!

I'm not being unfair. In fact, I've weighted the scales heavily in Mr. Bush's favor, because the tax cuts will cost much more than the benefit cuts would save. Repealing Mr. Bush's tax cuts would yield enough revenue to call off his proposed benefit cuts, and still leave $8 trillion in change.

The point is that the privatizers consider four years of policies that relentlessly favored the wealthy a fait accompli, not subject to reconsideration. Now that tax cuts have busted the budget, they want us to accept large cuts in Social Security benefits as inevitable. But they demand that we praise Mr. Bush's sense of social justice, because he proposes bigger benefit cuts for the middle class than for the poor.

You'll find the whole article at the following link (copy and paste it into your browser bar)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/09/opinion/09krugman.html?

George Bush, you are no Ronald Reagan

2004-11-30T08:08:00.000-05:00

This article in Salon sums up what I have been railing on about for the last year. That is, that George W Bush and Karl Rove's singleminded determination to steer the country to the right may be sowing the seeds for the Republican majority's own destruction. Now that GWB has complete control in DC, it is likely that he will push his conservative agenda hard, and that my friends, is the key to alienating the moderate wing of the conservative base. The bushies have brought moral conservatives and foreign policy neocons into their big tent to gain the majorities they have now, but as Ronald Reagan instinctively knew, all conservative all the time does not work in our democracy which relies on bringing the whole country into the government's tent. Ronnie had a sensitive ear to the American electorate's varied tunes and he knew when to subtly alter his approach. He talked a tough game to the Soviets, but was willing to negotiate to end the cold war -- no invasion of the USSR for Ronnie. He knew enough to withdraw the troops from Lebanon when the strategy of a marine enforced peace was working. And he knew that he had to pass some tax hikes to keep the deficit down and Medicare on solid footing. But while Ronnie managed the orchestra of 200,000,000 by keeping his ear to the swing and sway of popular opinion, GWB has the tinniest ear ever in politics. Will his faith, his hotline to the Lord, allow him to change his melody in response to the vagaries of public opinion even within his base? The last four years tell us the answer is no, and that my friends may sow the seeds of the Republican demise.

Salon.com | Can Bush deliver for conservatives?

That's all folks....

2004-11-02T23:16:00.000-05:00

Thank you to all my faithful readers. Blog, blog, blog is history.

Sanctions inadvertently infringe on freedom of expression

2004-11-02T11:19:00.000-05:00

Myron Kandel, CNN's financial editor has written the following editorial comment on a catch-22 for free expression in the United States

Everybody is focused on the election, but I want to digress a bit.

But maybe it isn't a total digression because my subject today involves a basic tenet of our democracy -- one that may be just as important as the right to vote. I'm talking about freedom of expression.

What brings this to mind is a lawsuit against the U.S. Treasury Department filed last week by Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian human rights activist who received the Nobel Peace Prize last year but cannot publish her memoirs in this country.

It's almost a Catch 22 situation, with overtones of Kafka.

Here's what's happening:

Ebadi wants to write her memoirs for an American audience, but because she is not fully fluent in English, she would need the assistance of an American editor or even co-writer.

There's the catch. U.S. trade sanctions against several countries, including Iran, prohibit providing services to anyone in those embargoed countries. Editorial, marketing and translation are among those prohibited services.

Ironically, if the book were issued in Iran, publishing a translation here would be okay. As if that authoritarian regime would permit it to be published there.

But we're a democracy, right? It boggles the mind that sanctions put in place against dictatorships and terrorist threats should prevent someone -- who, by the way, was once imprisoned by the Iranian regime because she was a proponent of women's and children's rights -- from publishing a book in this country.

So she, and several American writer and publishing groups, are suing the Treasury, which oversees the sanctions, for what they assert are regulations that cut off Americans from the work of scholars, dissidents and scientists in regions that we need to know more about.

It's a disgrace. And it's an example of how government can misuse its powers. Those rules need to be changed. If enough people raise loud enough complaints, maybe they will be. Let's hope so.

.

Sanctions inadvertently infringe on freedom of expression - Nov. 2, 2004

Who said this?

2004-11-01T08:17:00.000-05:00

Who said this? "America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment."

Bob Herbert gives the answer at the end of his excellent op-ed piece in today's New York Times. It was Dwight Eisenhower, a republican and a former general who was resolute as almost anyone before or since. But he must be spinning in his grave as the bushies continue to use military power just because we can and regardless of how many innocents are killed, and who think that giving money to the already wealthy is the most important economic tool that they have. It is also the bushies and their republican party faithful who actively try to suppress the vote of their opponents, especially among minority populations by the use of "dirty tricks." So much for the promotion of world peace and human betterment.

Today's Q and A

2004-11-01T08:02:00.000-05:00

The bushies are always asking the question, "Aren't the Iraqis better off without Saddam Hussein?" The answer is "Not so much. They have been released from a prison with well-defined rules; and now they are wandering in the jungle where there are no rules and danger is present with every step and around every corner."

The New York Times > International > Asia Pacific > A Muslim Ally: Concern Rises in Pakistan of a War Without End

2004-11-01T08:01:00.000-05:00

While all eyes are on Afghanistan and Iraq, the military in Pakistan are complaining that the United States is aggravating terrorism in Pakistan. Pakistan's notorious border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan is like the US's nineteenth century wild west where everyone carries a gun and law is whatever the strongest guys say it is. The Pakistan military has been trying to tame that area, but says that America's disastrous war on Iraq and its failure to bring Afghanistan under central government control has resulted in an increase in the number of jihadis. Thus, for every step forward the Pakistani military take; they take two steps backward. Keep in mind that Pakistan is one of the US's allies in the world.

The New York Times > International > Asia Pacific > A Muslim Ally: Concern Rises in Pakistan of a War Without End

BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Top Baghdad official shot dead

2004-11-01T07:29:00.000-05:00

When Bush and Cheney and the other people who are shilling, I mean stumping, for the republican mafia to be re-elected, while they are saying that Iraq is a stunning success, keep in mind today's rundown of events in Iraq as reported by the BBC:

Top Baghdad official shot dead

Elections are scheduled for January
Gunmen have assassinated the deputy governor of Baghdad and wounded two of his bodyguards, Iraqi officials say.
Hatem Kamil Abdul Fatah was killed in a drive-by shooting in the southern Dora district of the capital, an Interior Ministry spokesman said.

His car was rammed by attackers as it went past a mosque, the BBC's Alastair Leithead reports.

The attack happened as voter registration was getting under way for the elections scheduled for January.

Iraqis wanting to vote or run for election have six weeks in which to register in 550 centres across the country.

Our correspondent says the centres have been set up in places where Iraqis receive food rations in the hope that people will not feel threatened, and to reduce the risk of targeted attacks.

But militant groups have made threats against those working on the elections, he adds.

Tikrit rocket attack

The killing of the Baghdad official was the latest in a series of attacks on officials linked to Iraq's US-backed interim government.

It follows a rocket attack on Sunday in the city of Tikrit, which killed at least 15 civilians and wounded eight.

Reports suggest insurgents fired two rockets at an American base, but one missed and hit a hotel housing workers.

Sunday also saw clashes in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, in which at least seven Iraqis were reportedly killed.

Meanwhile, Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has said time is running out for talks aimed at averting major conflict in the insurgent-held city of Falluja.

He said he was determined to re-establish control over the city, by military means if necessary, after meeting tribal leaders from the area.

US forces continue to bombard Falluja and are preparing for a major assault.

BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Top Baghdad official shot dead

Attention all Democratic voters

2004-10-31T23:06:00.000-05:00

The republicans have set up a hotline to report any dirty tricks on election day, so feel free to call them and let them know what their republican supporters are up to on election day. Of course, the folks that set up this line hope to hear from republicans about democratic dirty tricks, but I am certain that they would be happy to hear from anyone about any dirty tricks; I know that they would love to hear about disenfranchised minority voters or young voters or first time voters who were hoping to cast a vote for Kerry but were denied. I mean after all, those republicans are interested in fair play aren't they? So here's the number, fellow Dems. Call and let the republicans know what they are getting up to. 888-610-8170

The Hurried Man's Guide to the Issues

2004-10-31T22:48:00.000-05:00

An article in November's Esquire by Tyler Cabot seeks to summarize the issues in the upcoming election Tuesday. It is presented in an easy to digest format, reprinted in full below:

Unless your name is Bush or Kerry, you probably don't have time for all the scripted speeches, bad commercials, and fumbling candidates. But take 64 seconds to save democracy.

Issue: Stem-Cell Research
Bush: Murderous
Kerry: Miraculous
Issue: Budget Deficit
Bush: We cool—I'll cut it in half in five years.
Kerry: We broke—I'll do it in four.

Issue: Sex Ed
Bush: More born-again virgins.
Kerry: More condoms.

Issue: Abortion
Bush: Civil rights for fetuses.
Kerry: Civil rights for women.

Issue: Health Care
Bush: $70 billion. People covered: 4.5 million.
Kerry: $650 billion plus. People covered: 27 million.

Issue: Tax Cuts
Bush: Make 'em permanent. Cost: $990 billion.
Kerry: Call him Robin Hood (raise taxes on those who make more than $200,000). Gain: $860 billion.

Issue: Faith-Based Initiatives
Bush: Federally fund 'em.
Kerry: Not if they proselytize.

Issue: Missile Defense
Bush: Wanted it yesterday.
Kerry: Sure . . . if it works . . . and it doesn't cost too much . . . and our allies agree . . . and nobody gets mad at us.

Issue: The USA Patriot Act
Bush: I'm watching you (and I like it).
Kerry: You're kinda creeping me out.

Issue: Gays in the Military
Bush: Come out of the closet and you're out of a job.
Kerry: Come out of the closet and you're off to Iraq.

Issue: Flag Burners
Bush: Burn in hell. It should be constitutionally outlawed.
Kerry: Burn in hell, but it's your right.

Issue: National-Security Strategy
Bush: Stronger, leaner, more autonomous military.
Kerry: Rebuild international alliances.

Issue: Troops
Bush: Redeploy 70,000 troops from Europe and Asia to America.
Kerry: Expand active-duty forces by 40,000.

Issue: Education
Bush: Vouchers plus accountability equals progress.
Kerry: More funding plus early education equals success.

Issue: Privatizing Social Security
Bush: Good
Kerry: Bad

Issue: Gun Control
Bush: In bed with the NRA.
Kerry: Let 'em shoot (but only with guns with child-safety locks).

Issue: Energy Policy
Bush: Keep exploring.
Kerry: Keep exploring new technologies.

Issue: Space Exploration
Bush: Yippee! ($1 billion more over the next five years.)
Kerry: Sure, but after we pay for books and medicine.

Issue: Death Penalty
Bush: Ain't nothing like Texas justice!
Kerry: No. I mean yes. Okay, well, only for terrorists.

Issue: Prescription Drugs
Bush: Hope you have good credit.
Kerry: “ Vámonos a Mexico! ”

Issue: Trade
Bush: More markets, more agreements.
Kerry: More regulation, more enforcement.

Issue: Natural Resources
Bush: Oil
Kerry: Ketchup

Issue: Outsourcing
Bush: It's called capitalism!
Kerry: It's called unemployment.

Issue: Affirmative Action
Bush: End
Kerry: Defend

Issue: Tort Reform
Bush: Can't trust those pesky juries.
Kerry: If you've been injured in an accident, please visit johnedwards.com

KeepMedia | Esquire: The Hurried Man's Guide to the Issues

An Interesting Strategic Proposal

2004-10-31T18:11:00.000-05:00

The Left Coaster outlines an interesting strategic maneuver for Kerry in the last day of the campaign -- that is go after moderate Republican swing voters. Read the following. It makes a lot of sense.

Last week Bush tried to appeal to Democrats to encourage them to cross over. I was watching Bill Moyers' "Now" on PBS Friday night, and he had Richard Viguerie on as a guest, who apparently has been good friends with Moyers for years. Viguerie said that no matter who wins the election, right after the result is decided there will be a civil war inside the GOP for control of the party, between traditional Reagan conservatives like Viguerie and the new Neo-Cons and right wing extremists who are behind Bush and running the party now. Although I had read several stories about this in a couple of the center-left magazines in the last several months (both the American Prospect and the Washington Monthly), I had never focused on it until I heard one of the big players in the party admit to it on national TV.

Viguerie said that the biggest flashpoints between Reagan conservatives and the Neo-Con and right-wing extremists controlling the party came down to:

•fiscal discipline, where Bush seems to spend money like a drunken sailor to secure the votes of interest groups without regard for the crushing debt that is being forced onto our children;

•religious extremism and overt imperialism, where fanaticism is actually driving our social and foreign policies and the use of our troops in ill-advised wars of liberation with no clear national interest or exit strategy defined;

•the abandonment of Main Street for Wall Street, where the GOP has left behind its small business base and local communities for the sake of securing the support of multinational conglomerates who don't have the best interests of our communities and country at heart.

I was struck by the fact that there obviously is a great level of unease in the GOP right now, and I thought immediately that perhaps these schisms could be exploited by Kerry in the closing days of the campaign. Why couldn't Kerry mess with Rove's head and upset the GOP apple cart by making direct appeals to Main Street, small businessmen and women, fiscal conservatives, and especially GOP moderates in the last two days of the campaign?

Kerry will be in states where this could take place, and the campaign staff could highlight this in their discussions with the national media. Some talking points can be developed around each of these issues where Kerry could explicitly make references to the fact that today's GOP is not the GOP that Ronald Reagan worked to create, and show how his administration would actually:

•Unlike Bush, put a bigger emphasis on embracing fiscal discipline in a bipartisan way like Clinton did in the 90's;

•Unlike Bush, undertake policies that favor Main Street over Wall Street, giving our independent and small business owners relief so that they can better compete in their communities against large corporations;

•Unlike Bush, foster bipartisan respect for differences of opinion and religious beliefs;

•Unlike Bush, rebuild the bipartisan consensus in support of efforts to protect the environment and our workers by asking moderates in the GOP to work with Democrats to pursue public interest instead of private gain.

This message will not take much to put together, and can be put out there as a signal that Kerry is reaching out to the Reagan supporters in both parties in an effort to go after swing voters in the last days of the campaign. Kerry can make the argument that in today's right-wing extremist GOP, Reagan Republicans are actually moderates with no home in the GOP, who are welcome to work with a Kerry Administration to pursue the policies above. This can be sold by Lockhart and McCurry as an example that Kerry is feeling good enough about his own position with his base that he can appeal to swing voters and Republicans who have been left behind by Bush/Cheney and today's extremist, Wall Street GOP.

The message will work pretty well in those states that Kerry needs in the upper Midwest and especially in Ohio. It will also help in other states like Missouri and Virginia, but we don't have enough time to sell it personally in those areas.

Plus, Rove would not see it coming and he is only prepared to argue the terror card in the last days of the campaign. Any appeal to Reagan Democrats and Republicans on pocketbook and value issues by calling for a return to developing a moderate consensus in this country works against Bush's last minute "all terror, all the time" appeal to his base. It would leave Kerry out there going after these people all by himself and with Bush having no last-minute response. It might pull 1-2% of the GOP vote over to Kerry, as well as clinch the remaining undecideds. And in this election, that would be enough to not only win, but perhaps build an Electoral College cushion in those upper Midwest states.

Kerry can afford to do this now, as he has successfully re-secured his base. Now, he can outmaneuver Rove in the final days and pivot to an appeal towards folks who are already primed to do battle with Bush on November 3 anyway.

The Left Coaster: How To Screw Rove - A Last-Minute Appeal To GOP Moderates

My Vote for Quote of the Day

2004-10-31T18:02:00.000-05:00

A parishoner at Shiloh Baptist Church in Florida wins my vote for quote of the day. When asked about Osama bin Laden's latest tv appearance, Elaine Harris said, ""I really don't know if I should be mad at Osama Bin Laden or mad at George Bush. I feel like the president and Bin Laden have some kind of tie." No one has said it better than this member of the choir who lost a brother in Iraq. Remember who was standing watch on the United States when 3000 people died on 9/11/2001. It was GWB. On November 2nd lay the blame at Bush's feet and tell him that he's fired.

Guardian Unlimited | US elections 2004 | Suzanne Goldenberg on the last desperate days of US election campaign

OfficialWire: Voters claim abuse of electoral rolls

2004-10-31T13:52:00.000-05:00

I remember reading about crazy electoral highjinks that passed for free elections during the 19th century in my elementary school history classes and laughing. Now that electoral abuses have resurfaced with new fury in the early twenty-first century, I realized that there is nothing funny about it. Read the laundry list of illegal goings-on in swing states mostly favoring the current illegitimate President, GWB:

Voters claim abuse of electoral rolls

Students say they were conned into registering twice

by Greg Palast

BROOKLYN, NY -- (OfficialWire) -- 10/31/04 -- An Observer investigation in the United States has uncovered widespread allegations of electoral abuse, many of them going uninvestigated despite complaints of what would appear to be criminal attempts to manipulate voter lists.

The allegations, which come just two days before Americans go to the polls in one of the most tightly contested elections in a generation, threaten to plunge Tuesday's count into a legal minefield and overshadow even the elections of 2000.

The claims come as both Republicans and Democrats put in place up to 2,000 lawyers across the country to challenge attempts to manipulate the vote in swing states.

Although allegations of misconduct have been levelled at both parties recently, the majority of complaints that have been identified in The Observer' s investigation involved claims against local Republicans.

The claims, made by the BBC's Newsnight, follow alleged attempts by Republicans to illegally suppress the votes in key states. Republican spokesmen deny these allegations. Watch the BBC broadcast.

One of the more serious claims is that no action has been taken in a complex fraud, where more than 4,000 Florida students were allegedly conned into signing a form which could lead them to be doubly registered and void their votes. The Florida Law Enforcement Department has told the complainants that it is too busy to investigate.

In Colorado too, Democrats are complaining about an attempt to remove up to 6,000 convicted felons from the electoral roll, at the behest of the state's Republican secretary of state, Donetta Davidson, despite a US federal law that prohibits eliminating a voter's rights within 90 days of an election to give time for the voter to protest.

The attempt to purge the list of alleged felons would appear to be a re-run of the attempt by Florida Governor Jeb Bush's secretary of state to remove 93,000 citizens from voter rolls as felon convicts are not allowed to vote.

Investigations appear to have established that only 3 per cent of the largely African-American list were illegal voters.

That action led to a vote in July by the US Civil Rights Commission to open a criminal and civil investigation of the Jeb Bush administration's purge of voters, including indications of concealing evidence subpoenaed by the commission's investigators. The new claims follow the Newsnight revelation last week of confidential documents from inside Republican headquarters in Florida and Washington which the programme claimed suggested a plan - possibly in violation of US law - to stop thousands of African-Americans from voting on election day.

The programme produced two leaked emails, prepared for the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida and the campaign's national research director in Washington DC, containing a 15-page list. The list contains 1,886 names and addresses of voters in predominantly black and traditionally Democratic areas of Jacksonville, Florida.

An elections supervisor in Tallahassee, when shown the list, told Newsnight: 'The only possible reason why they would keep such a thing is to challenge voters on election day.'

Ion Sancho, not affiliated with any party, noted that Florida law allows political party operatives inside polling stations to stop voters from obtaining a ballot. They may then only vote 'provisionally' after signing an affidavit attesting to their legal voting status.

Mass challenges have never occurred in Florida. Indeed, says Mr Sancho, not one challenge has been made to a voter 'in the 16 years I've been supervisor of elections. Quite frankly, this process can be used to slow down the voting process and cause chaos on election day and discourage voters from voting.'

Sancho calls it intimidation. And it may be illegal. In Washington, well-known civil rights attorney Ralph Neas noted that US federal law prohibits the targeting voters, even if there is a basis for the challenge, if race is a factor in targeting the voters.

The list of Jacksonville voters covers an area with a majority of black residents.

When asked by Newsnight for an explanation of the list, Republican spokespeople claimed that the list merely records returned mail from either fundraising solicitations or newly registered voters to verify addresses for purposes of campaign literature.

Republican state campaign spokeswoman, Mindy Tucker Fletcher, stated the list was not put together 'in order to create' a challenge list, but refused to say it would not be used in that manner.

The Observer has found that many people are soldiers sent overseas. Republicans acknowledge the list was created by compiling lists of voters whose addresses have changed whose only use, say critics, would be to challenge voters on election day on the basis that their voting address is not valid. But this 'caging' method captures those whose addresses have changed because they have been sent to Iraq or other places. The list includes homeless shelter residents, casting doubt on suggestions the list was created from fundraising solicitations for the Bush-Cheney campaign.

View Greg Palast's BBC Television film, "Bush Family Fortunes," available this week on DVD in an updated edition from The Disinformation Company.

PRINTED FROM OFFICIALWIRE.COM

OfficialWire: Voters claim abuse of electoral rolls

OfficialWire: Americans should prepare themselves for another war

2004-10-31T13:46:00.000-05:00

If Bush wins, will we end up fighting another disastrous war? It seems like a crazy thing to do, but then people who claim to have a direct hotline to God are often deemed insane. So this is what Official Wire has to say:

Wedged nicely between Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran is perfectly placed to become the next stop on America's quest to force its version of freedom and democracy on the Middle East. God forbid should George W. Bush be returned to the White House, America should prepare for another war.

Today, Iran's parliament passed a bill requiring the government to continue efforts to develop a nuclear energy program.

With shouts of "Death to America" and "God is Greatest", ministers backed the proposal with 85 per cent in favor of the state continuing its work on the nuclear fuel cycle which includes uranium enrichment—something which brings Iran into direct conflict with demands by the U.N.'s atomic watchdog that it halt such activities.

In doing so, 247 of parliament's 290 lawmakers, sent a strong message to Bush and the world that "the Iranian nation is determined to use peaceful nuclear technology," according to Parliament Speaker Gholamali Haddadadel.

The European Union has asked Iran to freeze uranium enrichment before the next meeting of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on November 25.

But Iran denies U.S. claims that it is secretly building nuclear weapons and, despite being a major oil producer, officials say they will proceed with their nuclear program in order to generate electricity from atomic reactors.

If American intelligence turns out to be right this time, well, I guess there is always a first time, eh, then perhaps the sideshow in Iraq hasn't been the most productive use of U.S. resources.

In any event, America apparently believes in imposing its ideology through violence of war, reference Iraq (latest) and too numerous other events to list here (previously), so it should not come as any surprise that many in the Arab world wonder how the U.S. can criticize so-called fundamentalists who also seek to impose their ideology through violence.

PRINTED FROM OFFICIALWIRE.COM

OfficialWire: Americans should prepare themselves for another war

Le Monde Endorses John Kerry

2004-10-30T11:25:00.000-04:00

The French daily newspaper, LeMonde, entered the American political process today by taking the unusual step of saying that John Kerry was preferable to George W. Bush and of expressing the hope that Bush would get the boot. How do say "kick that blustering buffoon to the curb" in French? That's a phrase I never learned in 15 years of studying French. LeMonde acknowledges that it is not its policy to interfere in foreign elections, but given the differing visions of Kerry and Bush and given the disasters that Bush has created abroad, the paper's editors decided to take this stand. The editorial writer wrote: "For the direction of the world, a John Kerry victory is preferable on the 2nd of November because Europe and the United States will have the chance for a new start at working together and because the White House would install a team that would be guided not by Good and Evil, but by law and justice." [Translated by askhoudari]

Le Monde.fr : Le choix am�ricain

OfficialWire: Adventure Capitalism: The Hidden 2001 Plan to Carve-up Iraq

2004-10-30T10:52:00.000-04:00

As if it weren't enough that the Bush administration wants to make our own country into one big corporate prize package, it always seemed clear that he had the same agenda in Iraq. And surprise, surprise, since this is a CEO administration, the bushies even have a written plan for carving up Iraq into corporate fiefdoms. Click on the link below to read the whole dastardly scheme on Official Wire.com. Here is but a sample:

-- Why were Iraqi elections delayed? Why was Jay Garner fired? Why are our troops still there? Like everything else issued during this administration, the plan to overhaul the Iraqi economy has corporate lobbyist fingerprints all over it. In February 2003, a month before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a 101-page document came my way from somewhere within the U.S. State Department. Titled pleasantly, "Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Growth," it was part of a larger under-wraps program called "The Iraq Strategy." The Economy Plan goes boldly where no invasion plan has gone before: the complete rewrite, it says, of a conquered state's "policies, laws and regulations." Here's what you'll find in the Plan: A highly detailed program, begun years before the tanks rolled, for imposing a new regime of low taxes on big business, and quick sales of Iraq's banks and bridges—in fact, "ALL state Enterprises"—to foreign operators. There's more in the Plan, part of which became public when the State Department hired consulting firm to track the progress of the Iraq makeover. Example: This is likely history's first military assault plan appended to a program for toughening the target nation's copyright laws. And when it comes to oil, the Plan leaves nothing to chance—or to the Iraqis. Beginning on page 73, the secret drafters emphasized that Iraq would have to "privatize" (i.e., sell off) its "oil and supporting industries." The Plan makes it clear that—even if we didn't go in for the oil—we certainly won't leave without it. If the Economy Plan reads like a Christmas wishlist drafted by U.S. corporate lobbyists, that's because it was.
From slashing taxes to wiping away Iraq's tariffs (taxes on imports of U.S. and other foreign goods), the package carries the unmistakable fingerprints of the small, soft hands of Grover Norquist. Norquist is the capo di capi of the lobbyist army of the right.
OfficialWire: Adventure Capitalism: The Hidden 2001 Plan to Carve-up Iraq

OfficialWire: Bush gave terrorists more weapons than Saddam ever would have...

2004-10-30T10:32:00.000-04:00

The official spin of the Bush administration is once again at odds with the statistics. To wit:

U.S. military commanders estimated last year that Iraqi military sites contained anywhere between 650,000 tons and one million tons of explosives, artillery shells, aviation bombs and other ammunition. The Bush administration cited these official figures this week confirming that about 400,000 tons had destroyed or were in the process of being eliminated. That leaves the whereabouts of more than 250,000 tons unknown. "We didn't find the stockpiles we thought would be there—that we all thought would be there. But Saddam Hussein had the capability of making weapons, and he could have passed that capability on to the enemy. And that is a risk we could not afford to take after September 11, 2001. Knowing what I
know today, I would have made the same decision," Bush said at a recent campaign rally in Washington. The problem with that rationale, if one can use that terminology when referring to the utterances of the current U. S. president, is that with more than 250,000 tons of weapons of all descriptions missing (whereabouts unknown) it would appear that invading Iraq has actually had the net effect of putting the weapons into the hands of terrorists more effectively than Saddam Hussein would or could ever have dreamed of...Nice one Mr. President!

Something about the myth of Pandora's Box rings a bell here. Too bad Mr. Bush didn't spend some time on the classics, and no, I'm not talking about the Holy Scripture.

OfficialWire: Bush gave terrorists more weapons than Saddam ever would have...

Bush Lies Are Revealed by Ghost

2004-10-29T23:13:00.000-04:00

Today's Daily Mislead reveals the truth about Bush, father and son:

BUSH GHOST WRITER SHOWS TRUTH ABOUT FATHER AND SON

Mickey Herskowitz - a ghost writer for both George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush - has revealed startling information about both men, which he learned from extensive candid conversations with the 41st and the 43rd presidents. Herskowitz revealed the information in a series of interviews with investigative reporter Russ Baker, which Baker tape recorded.[1]

Baker's article reveals that "in 2003, Bush's father indicated to [Herskowitz] that he disagreed with his son's invasion of Iraq."[2]

George W. Bush was reluctant to talk to Herskowitz about his National Guard service. But Bush did tell him "that after transferring from his Texas Guard unit two-thirds through his six-year military obligation to work on an Alabama political campaign, he did not attend any Alabama National Guard drills at all, because he was 'excused.'"[3] Bush's comments to Herskowitz "directly contradicts his public statements that he participated in obligatory training with the Alabama National Guard."[4]

According to Herskowitz, "two years before the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was already talking privately about attacking Iraq."[5] In 1999, Bush said to Herskowitz, "My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade.... if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency."[6]

Sources:

1. "Bush Wanted To Invade Iraq If Elected in 2000," Russ Baker, 10/27/04, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=3367569&l=65896.
2. Ibid., http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=3367569&l=65896.
3. Ibid., http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=3367569&l=65896.
4. Ibid., http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=3367569&l=65896.
5. Ibid., http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=3367569&l=65896.
6. Ibid., http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=3367569&l=65896.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Bin Laden threatens new attacks

2004-10-29T16:36:00.000-04:00

Osama Bin Laden has apparently peeked up from his cave to comment on the upcoming elections in the United States. I suppose that in the solipsistic manner of American TV news the next question commentators will be asking is, "Who will get a bounce from OBL's criticism of GWB? Will Bush get a boost because Osama is so critical of him, or will Kerry get a push up in the numbers because OBL so clearly dislikes Bush, comparing him to corrupt Arab regimes?" In the solipsistic manner of most US voters, it seems likely that Bush will get the boost just because OBL doesn't like him and Bush will be able to point to the continuing threat from al Qaeda. Bin Laden, if he were really interested in a change of US policy and not just another egotistical power-hungry disappointed rich boy, would have stayed down in his hole and not commented until after election day. It seems very clear to me that his desire to stay in the center of terrorist power is dependent on GWB's being re-elected.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Bin Laden threatens new attacks

Costumes for a contentious political season

2004-10-29T16:13:00.000-04:00

It is never too late to make a halloween costume for the kids or for yourself, and in this season where politics seems to cast its shadow over all else, why not make your costume politically relevant? Here are some suggestions from the stranger.com

2004's Scariest Halloween Costumes

Eminem

2004-10-29T16:08:00.000-04:00

Check out Eminem's new music video, directed by Guerilla News Network's Ian Inaba. Online may be the only place you'll see this hip-hop anthem encouraging young voters to take back America from the Bushies. Even if hip-hop isn't your thing, the animation in the video is an artistic masterpiece. It took me a while and a couple of tries to get the video up and running, but it is well worth the effort.

Guerrilla News Network

The British Have a Certain Style

2004-10-29T13:01:00.000-04:00

You have to love the British for their elegant turns of phrase. This one is from BBC Newsnight: "The US polls indicate the presidential race is tighter than Mr Bush in his drinking days[.]" It's nice to have a President who is well-respected around the world.

The Birds and The Bush

2004-10-29T11:52:00.000-04:00

No, this is not a Bible story or a morality tale; this is a video clip of GWB giving the bird on tape. It's nice to see the leader of the moral free world acting like a little frat boy. Did someone say they were going to restore dignity to the White House?

Click on the link or copy it and paste it into your browser to see the tape. It's short.

http://anon.salon.speedera.net/anon.salon/media/2004/10/BushUncensored.mov

Al Qaqaa may not be alone

2004-10-29T10:47:00.000-04:00

David DeBatto, a National Guardsman who served in Iraq, has written in an article in today's Salon that the weapons apparently stolen by Iraqis from Al Qaqaa may not be an isolated event. DeBatto writes: "When I read last Sunday's New York Times story of the missing explosives from the Iraqi weapons storage facility south of Baghdad at Al Qaqaa, it brought back memories from my time with the Army National Guard's 223rd Military Intelligence Battalion in Iraq last year. Bad memories. In the Times story, Iraqi scientists who worked at Al Qaqaa described how the facility was looted of almost 400 tons of high explosives right after the American troops swept through the area in April 2003 and failed to secure the site.

But Al Qaqaa is not the whole story. The same month it was being looted, I learned of another major weapons and ammunition storage facility, near my battalion's base at Camp Anaconda, that was unguarded and targeted by looters. But despite my repeated warnings -- and those of other U.S. intelligence agents -- nothing was done to secure this facility, as it was systematically stripped of enough weapons and explosives to equip anti-U.S. insurgents with enough roadside improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, for years to come."

Not only has Bush not made us feel safer; he has made the entire world infinitely less safe. I think that the God he hears is the one that wants to hasten Armageddon, not the one who would like us all to be better, more humane, more Jesus-like people. Whatever...I think GWB should have that hearing problem checked.

Salon.com News | The looting of Iraq's arsenal

NASA photo analyst: Bush wore a device during debate

2004-10-29T10:38:00.000-04:00

A NASA photo analyst has enhanced the photos of the mystery bulge using the same techniques he uses to analyze the craters and mountains of space. He worked on his home computer and off the clock at his Caltech NASA lab. The Salon.com article says, "Dr. Robert M. Nelson, however, was not laughing. He knew the president was not telling the truth. And Nelson is neither conspiracy theorist nor midnight blogger. He's a senior research scientist for NASA and for Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and an international authority on image analysis. Currently he's engrossed in analyzing digital photos of Saturn's moon Titan, determining its shape, whether it contains craters or canyons.

For the past week, while at home, using his own computers, and off the clock at Caltech and NASA, Nelson has been analyzing images of the president's back during the debates. A professional physicist and photo analyst for more than 30 years, he speaks earnestly and thoughtfully about his subject. "I am willing to stake my scientific reputation to the statement that Bush was wearing something under his jacket during the debate," he says. "This is not about a bad suit. And there's no way the bulge can be described as a wrinkled shirt."

Take a look at the photos as they look on Salon by clicking on the link and getting a daily free pass. Also, if you have a copy of the bulge photo and photoshop or a similar editing program, you can adjust the image yourself. Remember photoshop editing can be done for good (like to see Bush's wire) or for evil (to enlarge the crowd at your rallies.)

Salon.com News | NASA photo analyst: Bush wore a device during debate

Has the Bush Administration Been Caught in Another Lie

2004-10-29T00:09:00.000-04:00

The bushies have put forward at least three scenarios as to what happened to those missing weapons and explosives in Iraq, but the tale of the tape tells a story that the bushies have refused to own up to. That is that the explosives were there when the US troops got there and then they weren't there. Flip-flop. The following is from tomorrow's New York Times:

A videotape made by a television crew with American troops when they opened bunkers at a sprawling Iraqi munitions complex south of Baghdad shows a huge supply of explosives still there nine days after the fall of Saddam Hussein, apparently including some sealed earlier by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The tape, broadcast on Wednesday night by the ABC affiliate in Minneapolis, appeared to confirm a warning given earlier this month to the agency by Iraqi officials, who said that hundreds of tons of high-grade explosives, powerful enough to bring down buildings or detonate nuclear weapons, had vanished from the site after the invasion of Iraq.

The question of whether the material was removed by Mr. Hussein's forces in the days before the invasion, or looted later because it was unguarded, has become a heated dispute on the campaign trail, with Senator John Kerry accusing President Bush of incompetence, and Mr. Bush saying it is unclear when the material disappeared and rejecting what he calls Mr. Kerry's "wild charges."

Weapons experts familiar with the work of the international inspectors in Iraq say the videotape appears identical to photographs that the inspectors took of the explosives, which were put under seal before the war. One frame shows what the experts say is a seal, with narrow wires that would have to be broken if anyone entered through the main door of the bunker.

The New York Times > Washington > Missing Explosives: Video Shows G.I.'s at Weapon Cache

Bush misspeaks, I think

2004-10-28T22:08:00.000-04:00

This item about our-speech impaired fearless leader was sent to me by my brilliant future son-in-law:

Wow - just when you thought the President couldn't sound any stupider. From last night's interview with Fox News right-winger Sean Hannity:

"Whether or not we can be ever fully safe is up -- you know, is up in the air. I would hope we could make it a lot more safe by staying on the offensive. We have no actionable intelligence. I mean, if I knew that there was a plot getting ready to happen, we would be all over it. We have no actionable -- but we do believe that they have -- because of what happened in Madrid -- that they do think about whether or not they can try to disrupt our elections. Again, I don't want to alarm anybody because I don't -- I just -- there's nothing specific at this point in time -- a kind of general intent."

Must be hard to send mixed signals without your entire Cabinet in the room.
You can hear the advice of his various advisors colliding. Scare them!
Make them feel safe! Hint at upcoming attacks! Don't get pinned down on specifics! We're on the offensive! Not that there's anything specific about to happen! But it could happen AT ANY TIME!!

Bush was right

2004-10-28T22:01:00.000-04:00

In Richard Cohen's op-ed piece from today's Washington Post, he cites one example where GWB was absolutely right. That is when he called his war "a crusade." This is not a compliment: the writer asserts that "In his forthcoming book on the Crusades, "Fighting for Christendom," Christopher Tyerman of Oxford University argues, "There existed no strategic or material interest for the knights of the west" to invade the Muslim east and try to wrest Jerusalem from Islam. "Consequently, the Christian wars of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the Near East provide startling testimony to the power of ideas."

Cohen mentions this book for a reason: "You will remember," he writes, "that early on Bush referred to the war against terrorism as a "crusade." The word, though, was too freighted with Christian-Muslim conflict, and Bush quickly backed down. But, really, he was speaking the truth. Just as the original Crusades were a form of mass madness, so was this one when it was extended to Iraq. It came, as did the original one, out of the bonnet of a leader: Bush this time, Pope Urban II in 1095 -- and it swept everything before it. Congress lent its approval and so, significantly, did the media (myself included). The failure of leadership was across the board. The events of Sept. 11 were as emotionally wrenching to us as the Muslim capture of Jerusalem was to medieval Christians."

Mr. Cohen urges the voters to hold Bush accountable for the madness that is Iraq on November 2nd.

Hold Bush Accountable (washingtonpost.com)

The Guardian Nails Bush

2004-10-24T18:35:00.000-04:00

I'm not really blogging this week, but this was to amazing an article to pass up. This is from the Guardian (UK)

Dumb show

Charlie Brooker
Saturday October 23, 2004
The Guardian

Heady times. The US election draws ever nearer, and while the rest of the world bangs its head against the floorboards screaming "Please God, not Bush!", the candidates clash head to head in a series of live televised debates. It's a bit like American Idol, but with terrifying global ramifications. You've got to laugh.
Or have you? Have you seen the debates? I urge you to do so. The exemplary BBC News website (www.bbc.co.uk/news) hosts unexpurgated streaming footage of all the recent debates, plus clips from previous encounters, through Reagan and Carter, all the way back to Nixon versus JFK.

Watching Bush v Kerry, two things immediately strike you. First, the opening explanation of the rules makes the whole thing feel like a Radio 4 parlour game. And second, George W Bush is... well, he's... Jesus, where do you start?

The internet's a-buzz with speculation that Bush has been wearing a wire, receiving help from some off-stage lackey. Screen grabs appearing to show a mysterious bulge in the centre of his back are being traded like Top Trumps. Prior to seeing the debate footage, I regarded this with healthy scepticism: the whole "wire" scandal was just wishful thinking on behalf of some amateur Michael Moores, I figured. And then I watched the footage.

Quite frankly, the man's either wired or mad. If it's the former, he should be flung out of office: tarred, feathered and kicked in the nuts. And if it's the latter, his behaviour goes beyond strange, and heads toward terrifying. He looks like he's listening to something we can't hear. He blinks, he mumbles, he lets a sentence trail off, starts a new one, then reverts back to whatever he was saying in the first place. Each time he recalls a statistic (either from memory or the voice in his head), he flashes us a dumb little smile, like a toddler proudly showing off its first bowel movement. Forgive me for employing the language of the playground, but the man's a tool.

So I sit there and I watch this and I start scratching my head, because I'm trying to work out why Bush is afforded any kind of credence or respect whatsoever in his native country. His performance is so transparently bizarre, so feeble and stumbling, it's a miracle he wasn't laughed off the stage. And then I start hunting around the internet, looking to see what the US media made of the whole "wire" debate. And they just let it die. They mentioned it in passing, called it a wacko conspiracy theory and moved on.

Yet whether it turns out to be true or not, right now it's certainly plausible - even if you discount the bulge photos and simply watch the president's ridiculous smirking face. Perhaps he isn't wired. Perhaps he's just gone gaga. If you don't ask the questions, you'll never know the truth.

The silence is all the more troubling since in the past the US news media has had no problem at all covering other wacko conspiracy theories, ones with far less evidence to support them. (For infuriating confirmation of this, watch the second part of the must-see documentary series The Power Of Nightmares (Wed, 9pm, BBC2) and witness the absurd hounding of Bill Clinton over the Whitewater and Vince Foster non-scandals.)

Throughout the debate, John Kerry, for his part, looks and sounds a bit like a haunted tree. But at least he's not a lying, sniggering, drink-driving, selfish, reckless, ignorant, dangerous, backward, drooling, twitching, blinking, mouse-faced little cheat. And besides, in a fight between a tree and a bush, I know who I'd favour.

On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Inside besieged Falluja

2004-10-20T16:13:00.000-04:00

This special report was posted on the BBC News website. It's an interesting perspective from an Iraqi in Fallujah, and substantially different from what we hear from the White House.

Inside besieged Falluja
Residents of the rebel-held city of Falluja in Iraq are packing their bags and leaving town after one of the heaviest US bombardments for weeks.

BBC News Online spoke by phone to a reporter in the city, contacted by the BBC's Arabic Service, who gave the following account of life there.

The mood in the city is grim.

It is the start of Ramadan, but there is nowhere to celebrate and no food to celebrate with.

Right now faith is a stronger bond than family

Falluja's most popular kebab restaurant used to be the place to go at the end of the day to break the Ramadan fast - but that was bombed by the Americans this week.

Many families have used a lull in the bombing to leave the city.

Fighters are engaged in skirmishes with US forces in the eastern and southern areas. US positions are about half a kilometre from Falluja.

No single militia force controls the whole city.

Different clans in the city have their own militias but they all seem to be working together to fend off US forces.

The people of Falluja are very clannish - but they have also always been very religious and right now faith is a stronger bond than family.

Police and militias

Two elements have been running the affairs of the city - the police force and local militias.

Relations between the two are good - I have seen policemen on the streets chatting to the fighters.

In fact, relations between local fighters and police have always been good - a deal struck some months ago means the police are welcome in the city provided they do not take orders from the Americans.

There are more police on the streets than usual - possibly to protect the property of residents who are leaving the city.

But the risk of looting is small - the local militias have a reputation for being very tough with the criminals.

No foreign fighters

I am not aware of any foreign fighters in Falluja.

If there are any foreigners here, they have blended in very well with the locals.

Foreigners used to frequent the city in the past, but many of them were forced to leave under a deal the city's leaders struck with the government.

Ninety-nine percent of the fighters here are Fallujans.

Local clan leaders are broadly opposed to any kind of foreign presence in the city because they fear they may be spies.

Supplies exhausted

Hospitals have all but run out of supplies and most people know this.

But still the injured are being taken there - just so that they can be near the doctors and receive some comfort.

The Iraqi health ministry has not sent any extra supplies.

Food supplies are also running out. All shops are shut.

Some people who fled the city a few days ago have begun returning because they ran out of food.

They are coming back even as more and more people are trying to leave.

'Not a sectarian issue'

The ordinary people of Falluja still want a peaceful solution - but they knew war was inevitable when Prime Minister Iyad Allawi issued his ultimatum earlier this week.

That's when they started stocking up on food.

The people believe they are being targeted because they inflicted heavy casualties on US forces during the siege earlier this year.

They say the Americans are attacking them because of wounded pride

They say the Americans are attacking them because of wounded pride. They say they are motivated by revenge.

Most people in Falluja believe the Baghdad government is divided into two camps.

They believe the president, Ghazi Yawer, is a Sunni and heads the faction that wants to negotiate a solution to the crisis.

On the other side, they say, is Prime Minister Allawi, a Shia, who believes military force is the only way ahead.

But many people in Falluja, though largely Sunni, dismiss this.

They say Mr Allawi may be a Shia, but this is not why he is at war with Falluja.

They think he simply gives the order to batter Falluja because this is what the Americans want.

Translation from Arabic by Jumbe Omari Jumbe of bbcarabic.com

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/3748966.stm

Published: 2004/10/18 05:46:42 GMT

© BBC MMIV

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Inside besieged Falluja

Sinclair Broadcasting Wins an Award

2004-10-20T16:01:00.000-04:00

Sinclair Broadcasting has received a special award from the Columbian Journal Review:

It's time for our first annual Ben Bagdikian Media Monopoly Award. Who or what has done the most to curb the dangerously rising power of media companies in America? Our winner is Sinclair Broadcast Group, which this week is unwittingly providing perhaps the clearest example yet of what can happen when a single company controls too many media outlets.

CJR Campaign Desk: Archives

God. What a jokester He is.

2004-10-19T23:22:00.000-04:00

The televangelist Pat Robertson has told Paula Zahn of CNN that he warned GWB that the war in Iraq would be difficult and that Bush should prepare the country for lots of casualties and a long fight. Robertson said, ""I mean, the Lord told me it was going to be A, a disaster, and B, messy. I warned him about casualties."

Now if Pat Robertson was talking to God, and George Bush, who told Robertson that wouldn't be any casualties, was talking to God, then God was pulling a prank on one of them because the Almighty told each guy opposite things. God is kind of like the obstetrician who tells the parents of pregnant woman that they are going to have a girl, but makes a note in his diary that says, "Told parents that they would be having a boy." On the due date, he can say, "See I told you so," either way.

'Catastrophic Success': Faulty Intelligence Misled Troops at War's Start

2004-10-19T23:08:00.000-04:00

What is that old joke? Ah, yes. What is the definition of oxymoron? Answer: Military intelligence. In a new twist, the word intelligence stands on its own as an oxymoron. Read this from tomorrow's New York Times...get a jump on tomorrow:

In early 2003, as the clock ticked down toward the war with Iraq, C.I.A. officials met with senior military commanders at Camp Doha, Kuwait, to discuss their latest ideas for upending Saddam Hussein's government.

Intelligence officials were convinced that American soldiers would be greeted warmly when they pushed into southern Iraq, so a C.I.A. operative suggested sneaking hundreds of small American flags into the country for grateful Iraqis to wave at their liberators. The agency would capture the spectacle on film and beam it throughout the Arab world. It would be the ultimate information operation.

Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, the commander of allied ground forces, quickly objected. To avoid being perceived as an occupying army, American forces had been instructed not to brandish the flag.

The idea was dropped, but the C.I.A.'s optimism remained.

The agency believed that many of the towns were "ours," said one former staff officer who attended the session. "At first, it was going to be U.S. flags," he said, "and then it was going to be Iraqi flags. The flags are probably still sitting in a bag somewhere. One of the towns where they said we would be welcomed was Nasiriya, where Marines faced some of the toughest fighting in the war."

Just as the intelligence about Iraq's presumed stockpiles of unconventional weapons proved wrong, so did much of the information provided to those prosecuting the war and planning the occupation.

In a major misreading of Iraq's strategy, the C.I.A. failed to predict the role played by Saddam Hussein's paramilitary forces, which mounted the main attacks on American troops in southern Iraq and surprised them in bloody battles.

The agency was aware that Iraq was awash in arms but failed to identify the huge caches of weapons that were hidden in mosques and schools to supply enemy fighters.

On postwar Iraq, American intelligence agencies underestimated the decrepit state of Iraq's infrastructure, which became a major challenge in reconstructing the nation, and concluded erroneously that Iraq's police had had extensive professional training.

And while intelligence experts noted an insurgency in its catalog of possible dangers, it did not highlight that threat.

The New York Times > International > 'Catastrophic Success': Faulty Intelligence Misled Troops at War's Start

Team Bush declares war on the New York Times

2004-10-19T20:13:00.000-04:00

If you live in New York City, as I do, it's no secret that the bushies don't like New Yorkers. It was a wonder that GWB actually got to Ground Zero at all after 9/11; I always had a vision of his advisers saying, "Mr. President, you have to go." And GWB whining back, "But I don't wanna. Why do I hafta go? Why.....????"

Then, of course, he came back here for the RNC, but really his feet hardly touched the spotted sidewalks and he certainly didn't press any flesh. He stood behind his lectern with its religious semiotic and distorted the New York Times on Berlin back in 1946 and suggested that perhaps the New York Times was just a nattering nabob of negativism when it came to the Bushies. That of course, was hardly the case. Judith Miller practically pushed New Yorkers over the edge of panic with her falsely vetted stories on Hussein's chemical weaponry whether she intended to mislead or not. Tom Friedman on the op-ed page gave Bush the thumbs up on the invasion. Safire and Brooks...well, the names alone speak volumes. The Times, when it did express regret about not questioning Bush more on Iraq, issued a wishy-washy mea culpa. The bushies have just cut us off. Dick Cheney doesn't allow the NY Times a spot on his campaign plane. Bush has given only one sit-down interview with the Times and that was 30 minutes long. I mean GWB doesn't even talk to us, and he hates us. I feel like the middle school kid who no one likes when I read stuff like that. Why? Why does he hate me? He doesn't even know me? Why should I care though? I don't like him either. It's that old little girl conundrum of wanting to be in with the popular kids who don't like me and whom I don't like. Go figure.

Enough about me though. Let's get to the heart of the matter. The bushies have, according to Salon and others, declared war on New York and they have done it because it plays well with the base, or so they think. It was Barry Goldwater who wanted to send the coasts out to sea, and the bushies, like modern day Goldwaterites, would rather just take our tax dollars and ignore us. Well, New Yorkers can play rough. Sunday, The New York Times Magazine published Ron Susskind's article on Bush's intimate relationship with God. You know, that stuff like God talks to him and talks through him. And the bushies are on the warpath saying that Susskind misquoted Bush and outright lied. The Times is sticking by the story. And the bushies have said that they really don't care anyway because according to Susskind, "Bush and his campaign apparently see little political downside to a public us-vs.-them fight with the allegedly "liberal" press."

Susskind makes that very point when it quotes Bush political consultant Mark McKinnon: "All of you do, up and down the West Coast, the East Coast, a few blocks in southern Manhattan called Wall Street. Let me clue you in. We don't care. You see, you're outnumbered 2 to 1 by folks in the big, wide middle of America, busy working people who don't read The New York Times or Washington Post or The L.A. Times. And you know what they like? They like the way he walks and the way he points, the way he exudes confidence. They have faith in him. And when you attack him for his malaprops, his jumbled syntax, it's good for us. Because you know what those folks don't like? They don't like you!" Why or why do I feel so bad when they stuff like that?

Just one further thought on Bush's supposed communion with God. If he weren't President; if say, he were a homeless guy living on the steps of the church, and he said he talked to God and God spoke through him, we New Yorkers, who are really very caring and concerned as a group, would be calling for a nice outreach caseworker to give GWB a few months of rest at one of our fine city psychiatric facilities. Ah, the perogatives of high office and wealth.

Salon.com News | Team Bush declares war on the New York Times

America's Big Challenge: Asia

2004-10-19T19:34:00.000-04:00

If you are at all interested in the future of the world, it would worth your time to take your eyes off the situation the Middle East and turn your attention to the future growth nations of the world: China and India. Take a look at Fareed Zakaria's piece in today's Washington Post wherein he compares Americans to those Englishmen who "in the waning days of the British Empire...vigorously debated the political and military situations in remote areas such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Sudan." "Some things don't change," he says. Zakaria goes on, "They tried mightily, and at great cost, to stabilize disorderly parts of the globe. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the United States was building its vast economic, technological and cultural might, which was soon to dominate the world."

As we survey the world as it is today, it is equally urgent that we realize that not everything stands still and that, contrary to John Milton's assertion, they do not also serve who only stand and wait.

America's Big Challenge: Asia (washingtonpost.com)

TSA Deal Overpaid Boeing, Report Says (washingtonpost.com)

2004-10-19T19:20:00.000-04:00

Should we be worried? It seems that our federal government agencies are helpless before the people who are trying to sell it equipment. The Washington Post reported today that the Office of the Inspector General says that the TSA overpaid Boeing to obtain security equipment for the nation's airports. The TSA said that they accepted Boeing's pitch because Boeing gave assurances it could meet deadlines set by Congress for installation of that equipment. This led me to wonder if the federal government ever considered the notion that it could drive a harder bargain. I found the weakkneed position of TSA as the buyer of this stuff to be very disturbing. The Post article said in part:

Boeing Co. received at least $49 million in excessive profits on a $1.2 billion contract to supply explosives-detection systems to hundreds of the nation's airports, the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general reported yesterday.

The Chicago-based company won the bidding for the Transportation Security Administration contract in June 2002 to install X-ray machines and trace detection devices at more than 400 airports by Dec. 1, 2003. The contract was expected to be worth $508 million, but it was extended and increased to $1.2 billion.

"It was a TSA problem, this was the contract they agreed to," said Clark Kent Ervin, the department's inspector general. "Boeing was not the lowest bidder; it was the highest bidder in terms of total cost and in terms of the fees."

The TSA said it awarded the contract to Boeing because the company could provide the most efficient and quickest solution at a time when the agency was rushing to meet deadlines set by Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"As a new agency, TSA needed to rely heavily on private industry to meet those congressional mandates," said Amy von Walter, a TSA spokeswoman. "Boeing was selected based on the merit of its proposal, which included detailed contingency plans to ensure all deadlines were met."

Boeing has billed the TSA $889 million so far, including $106 million in profit. About $49 million of the profit is excessive compared with acceptable levels at other agencies, according to the inspector general's report.

Don't these guys know that they are supposed to be shopping wholesale?

TSA Deal Overpaid Boeing, Report Says (washingtonpost.com)

And now this--Iran throws support to George Bush

2004-10-19T18:33:00.000-04:00

I read the following AP report in The Star. No, not that Star, the Star of Malaysia:

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- The head of Iran's security council said on Tuesday the re-election of President Bush was in Tehran's best interests, despite the administration's axis of evil label, accusations that Iran harbors al-Qaida terrorists and threats of sanctions over the country's nuclear ambitions.

Historically, Democrats have harmed Iran more than Republicans, said Hasan Rowhani, head of the Supreme National Security Council, Iran's top security decision-making body.

"We haven't seen anything good from Democrats," Rowhani told state-run television in remarks that, for the first time in recent decades, saw Iran openly supporting one U.S. presidential candidate over another.

"We should not forget that most sanctions and economic pressures were imposed on Iran during the time of Clinton," Rowhani said of the former Democratic president. "And we should not forget that during Bush's era - despite his hard-line and baseless rhetoric against Iran - he didn't take, in practical terms, any dangerous action against Iran."

Though Iran generally does not publicly wade into U.S. presidential politics, it has a history of preferring Republicans over Democrats, who tend to press human rights issues.

"We do not desire to see Democrats take over"

The Associated Press

Social Security 'crisis' is phony

2004-10-19T18:29:00.000-04:00

Mark Weisbrot writes in the Tallahassee Democrat:

Four years ago, my colleague Dean Baker and I wrote a "Social Security: The Phony Crisis," a book that clearly demonstrated there was no financial, economic, actuarial or other reason to be worried about the future of Social Security.

The whole idea that Social Security would run into trouble when the baby boomers retire was an urban legend - and still is.

Among others, The Economist - a conservative British magazine - reviewed the book and agreed. In fact no one dared challenge what we wrote. How could they? The numbers we used were the same that everyone - including the current campaign of President George W. Bush - uses. They are straight from the Social Security Trustees' annual report.

We hoped that our book would put an end to all the nonsense about how to "fix" Social Security. And indeed there has been some progress over the last four years. Last March, The New York Times editorial board stated, for the first time, that "those worried that Social Security will not be there for them when they retire are simply mistaken."

Four years ago, the idea of partially privatizing Social Security had majority support in some polls. This was partly a result of aggressive advocacy on the part of right-wing think tanks and politicians, backed by Wall Street firms that stand to gain tens of billions of dollars from privatization. These people had not only convinced most of the public that they would never see their Social Security benefits, but that they could get more for their money in the stock market.

In our book we showed that the latter claim was also wrong. We demonstrated arithmetically, as no one else had done, that the bubble-inflated stock prices at the time were incompatible with any plausible projected rates of growth for profits and the economy. As we predicted, the stock market bubble burst, and with it went a lot of the support for privatizing Social Security.

But the Bush team is still promoting such privatization.

Their proposal has a number of pitfalls: it would add to our federal budget deficit, which is already at a near-record (as a percent of the economy) level.

It would increase the administrative costs of Social Security enormously, which would subtract from future benefits. It would expose future retirees to the risks of a volatile stock market that is still, by historical measures of price relative to earnings, overvalued.

And it would undermine the political support for America's largest anti-poverty program by splitting future retirees into two camps: the wealthier ones would get a large share of their Social Security income from the privatized accounts, while most others would not.

This is perhaps the privatizers' main purpose: Social Security is not a retirement account but a system of social insurance. It is a commitment by society from one generation to another; we all pay in, and we all draw out, because we never know how we will fare in our old age.

The program also provides disability and survivors' insurance. The idea that "we are all in this together," on which Social Security is based, has always been unpalatable for those who believe in "every man for himself" and the law of the jungle.

Social Security is currently more financially sound than it has been throughout most of its entire history. To cover any shortfalls that may occur over the next 75 years would require less than we came up with in each of the decades of the 1950s, '60s, '70s or '80s. All we have to do to save Social Security is to keep the privatizers' hands off of it.

Now what about Medicare??? That is in a lot of trouble and with the bushies in power, the only thing that is certain is that our elderly population will not see any improvement in the situation. And don't forget this:

Everyone will be elderly if they live long enough, so the elderly's problem is yours.

Tallahassee Democrat | 10/18/2004 | Social Security 'crisis' is phony

There's Bad News; then There's Good News: then There's Bad News

2004-10-19T18:22:00.000-04:00

Roger Hickey in Tom Paine today writes, "Among wealthy industrialized nations, America ranks second to the bottom in the real disposable income of low-income families with children. And recent Census data shows that the number of poor children is on the rise. But that’s the bad news. The good news is that a growing consensus on how to reverse this trend is emerging among leaders across the political spectrum. And the solution—investing in children in their youngest years—not only addresses the poverty problem, it would also make the economy more productive and save money for taxpayers over time." So that's the good news, but wait, there's more bad news: if the bushies are elected, there won't be too much invested in kids so all this optimism will be just so many words written a very good, strong report that will get no attention from our government's calvinist-like leaders, who think that prayer is the answer to all that ails you and money spent on poor children is wasted while money in the pockets of the already wealthy is what makes America great.

TomPaine.com - High-Yield Investment: Kids

Al Gore attacks Bush Where It Hurts--Everywhere

2004-10-19T18:12:00.000-04:00

Our legitimately elected President, Al Gore, attacked George Bush on the issues where he has lied to Americans over the last 4 years...every issue. While Gore gives Bush more credit for intelligence than I would, his speech hits the mark. He said, for example, "There are many people in both parties who have the uneasy feeling that there is something deeply troubling about President Bush’s relationship to reason, his disdain for facts, an incuriosity about new information that might produce a deeper understanding of the problems and policies that he wrestles with on behalf of the country. One group maligns the President as not being intelligent, or at least, not being smart enough to have a normal curiosity about separating fact from myth. A second group is convinced that his religious conversion experience was so profound that he relies on religious faith in place of logical analysis. But I disagree with both of those groups. I think he is plenty smart. And while I have no doubt that his religious belief is genuine, and that it is an important motivation for many things that he does in life, as it is for me and for many of you, most of the President’s frequent departures from fact-based analysis have much more to do with right-wing political and economic ideology than with the Bible. But it is crucially important to be precise in describing what it is he believes in so strongly and insulates from any logical challenge or even debate. It is ideology – and not his religious faith – that is the source of his inflexibility. Most of the problems he has caused for this country stem not from his belief in God, but from his belief in the infallibility of the right-wing Republican ideology that exalts the interests of the wealthy and of large corporations over the interests of the American people. Love of power for its own sake is the original sin of this presidency." Read the rest, see what might have been if the Supreme Court had minded its own previous judgements.

MoveOn PAC

Flu Vaccine? What GWB Knew and When He Knew It

2004-10-18T23:59:00.000-04:00

Today's Daily Mislead...

BUSH MISLEADS ON FLU VACCINE

President Bush has tried to avoid any responsibility for the flu vaccine shortage by making misleading statements. During the presidential debate last Wednesday, President Bush said the problem was that "we relied upon a company out of England."[1] That isn't true. Chiron Corp., the company whose vaccine plant was contaminated, is a California company - subject to regulation by the U.S. government - that operates a factory in England.[2]

During the debate, President Bush also said, "we took the right action and didn't allow contaminated medicine into our country."[3] That isn't true either. It was the British authorities who, after inspecting the plant, revoked the factory's license on October 5th.[4]

In June 2003, the United States Food and Drug Administration inspected the Chiron plant.[5] Initially, the FDA found that the plant was contaminated with bacteria but later announced, "the problems were corrected to their satisfaction," and allowed the plant to continue to operate.[6]

Sources:

1. "Transcript of Debate Between Bush and Kerry, With Domestic Policy the Topic," New York Times, 10/13/04, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=3367569&l=63315.
2. "Both candidates stretched facts on key issues," Philadelphia Inquirer, 10/14/04, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=3367569&l=63316.
3. "Transcript of Debate Between Bush and Kerry, With Domestic Policy the Topic," New York Times, 10/13/04, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=3367569&l=63315.
4. "With Few Suppliers of Flu Shots, Shortage Was Long in Making," New York Times, 10/17/04, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=3367569&l=63317.
5. Ibid., http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=3367569&l=63317 .
6. Ibid., http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=3367569&l=63317 .

The key to plausible deniability is the word "plausible." Bush's denial is just not plausible. If the contaminated vaccine had killed people, the bushies would probably be looking in Iraq for the culprit or blaming Al-Qaeda when the truth is that the responsibility is squarely on our government's shoulders. Thanks to the limeys for being on the alert. The bushies are looking the wrong way.

Mark your calendars. Snap your purse shut.

2004-10-18T01:23:00.000-04:00

If women shut their purses and didn't shop for a day, would the economy
>suffer? The idea gets tested on Oct. 19 by 85 Broads, a networking
>group founded in 1999 by Janet Hanson, who worked for Goldman Sachs,
>headquartered at 85 Broad St.
>
>Business Week has learned that 85 Broads is asking its 4,000-plus
>members
in 450 companies, colleges, and business schools not to spend that day.
Hanson says the "buycott" will show the gap between women's purchasing power and their underrepresentation in boardrooms and
>executive suites. Members plan to spread the word to friends and to
>women
on college campuses.
>
>Women control $3.3 trillion in yearly consumer spending, 44% of
>national spending -- a sum that isn't just symbolic.
>
>According to Business Week, the U.S. economy has become increasingly
female-driven...
>
>Did you know that women in the U.S.:
>
>1) Control $3.3 TRILLION in annual consumer spending?
>
>2) Make 62% of all car purchases?
>
>3) Take more than 50% of all business trips?
>
>4) Control over 50% of the personal wealth in this country?
>
>UNFORTUNATELY, WOMEN'S PURCHASING POWER STILL HASN'T TRANSLATED INTO
ECONOMIC POWER.
>
>According to Catalyst, only 6 CEO's in the Fortune 500 are women, 12.4%
are board directors, and 5.2% are among the top earners in the country.
>
>On TUESDAY, OCTOBER 19th, we invite you to leave your checkbook and
credit cards at home as a symbolic gesture that we no longer "buy" the glacial pace of change for working women in America. Instead of
>shopping, go for a walk in the park, write a letter to a friend, enjoy
>a
museum, or help someone in need.
>
>PLEASE MARK YOUR CALENDARS AND TELL YOUR FRIENDS
>
>for more info on this event, go to:
>
>https://secure.85broads.com/pages/sub-pages/money.html
>

Two Stories More Important In This Election Than The Mary Cheney NonStory

2004-10-18T00:13:00.000-04:00

The Left Coaster underscores for us again today how much the Mary Cheneygate story is a diversion from the real news about the Bush/Cheney administration. Two stories have been missed in all the scandal of referring to the out and politically involved shill for the Republicans among gays a "lesbian," and they are of much more significance to the future of the United States. The first is that the Bushies lied when they said that Paul Bremer didn't insist on more troops. There is now more evidence that they did. And be sure they will again if they expand their war to other parts of the Middle East. The second story is that high ranking members of the State Dept have spoken anonymously, but on the record, to complain that the bushies did not plan for the peace in Iraq and now it may be too late to salvage the situation. This has been reported in the Knight-Ridder papers. Check out the Left Coaster for the details.

Mary Cheney has made a lovely divisive and diversionary issue for the bushies, and people who fall victim to the bushies' tactic should consider that if Mary Cheney were sight impaired and Kerry had called her blind in the debate, no one would have the temerity of accusing him of using dirty tactics. It is just that people are so willing, both gay and straight people, to consider the label "lesbian" a slanderous term. Clearly, it is not. It is just a way of describing the very natural state of being a gay woman in a hetero world. It is a word that one should be proud of carrying, and not one that should only be whispered in dark corners.

The Left Coaster: Two Stories More Important In This Election Than The Mary Cheney NonStory

Who will Americans vote for?

2004-10-17T23:54:00.000-04:00

According to the pollster and student of human behavior, John Zogby, Kerry will be elected president on November 2nd. His reasoning is reported in Asia One (Singapore):

LOST in the maze of conflicting views as to who is likely to win the US presidential election? The Tin Man and the Scarecrow from the Land of Oz may prove to be useful guides. They did for top US pollster John Zogby.

A strong sense of popular culture is needed for a pollster, says Mr Zogby who predicts that undecided voters will tip the scales in favour of Senator John Kerry. Mr Zogby says the battle will be less over issues and more on voter turnout.

In 2000, Mr Zogby took a novel approach to predicting the race between Mr George W. Bush and former vice-president Al Gore.

He asked voters to make a choice: 'You live in the Land of Oz, and the candidates are either Tin Man, with all brains and no heart, or the Scarecrow, who is with all heart and no brains.'

The score - 46.2 per cent to the Scarecrow (seen to depict Mr Bush) and 46.2 per cent to the Tin Man (Mr Gore).

That made him conclude that Mr Gore had drawn level with Mr Bush when other polls had predicted a shoo-in for the latter.

It was a more accurate reading of the situation.

In the end, Mr Gore went on to win 48.4 per cent of the popular vote - higher than Mr Bush's 47.9 per cent. But he lost to Mr Bush in the Electoral College tally, which determines who gets to occupy the White House.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, Mr Zogby sees the Tin Man-versus-Scarecrow model as still relevant in the present race, with Mr Bush now facing a new Tin Man in the form of Senator John Kerry.

And the pollster is staking his 20 years of experience in a Kerry win - at least from soundings of America's 'undecided' voters....Polls of focus groups working with the 'undecideds' show that they want a change in the country's direction.
Who will Americans vote for? - OCT 17, 2004

Recount? Did Someone Say Recount?

2004-10-17T11:17:00.000-04:00

A non-definitive election result is something we should start thinking about before election day. We need a recount leader who is a match to James Baker III who walked all over our nice guy, Warren Christopher in 2000. And don't think the bushies aren't planning their strategy for the close results in swing states. Here' s what the Left Coaster has to say.

Right now, I'm sure most of us are fixated on state polls, voter registration fraud, and Pravda-esque television empires. But there's something else that we should keep in mind, and begin to develop a strategy for; namely, the likelihood of a 2000-style recount fiasco propogated by the Rove/Delay machine. I know this sounds overly sensationalistic, but the Repubs have sent none-too-subtle signals in the past few days that, barring a Kerry blowout, they'll do everything in their power to tarnish the legitimacy of a Kerry victory. Observe:

Tom Josefiak, the Bush-Cheney campaign's general counsel, said he worries that the uncertainty caused by potential delays could undermine confidence in the outcome. "If it's a close election in any one state, it may be days or weeks before we know who actually is the winner," he said. "I hope that doesn't happen."

Haaretz - Israel News - Killing children is no longer a big deal

2004-10-17T11:13:00.000-04:00

I am reprinting the full text of this article because it is something that supporters of the state of Israel, like me and like most of my friends and like our President, do not give any attention to. That is the way in which children, Palestinian children are routinely killed by Israeli soldiers. Before you pass over this article because suicide bombers kill large numbers of Israeli children, which is something that is also worthy of condemnation, take note of the fact that even if only the lowest numbers of Palestinian children killed is used as a base the kill ratio of Palestinian to Israeli children is 5:1. There is plenty of outrage to go around, and it is time that some of that outrage is directed at the loose trigger fingers of Israeli soldiers as directed by that former terrorist himself, Ariel Sharon, and his tacit enabler, George W. Bush. Read the article from Ha'aretz:

Last update - 04:56 17/10/2004
Killing children is no longer a big deal
By Gideon Levy

More than 30 Palestinian children were killed in the first two weeks of Operation Days of Penitence in the Gaza Strip. It's no wonder that many people term such wholesale killing of children "terror." Whereas in the overall count of all the victims of the intifada the ratio is three Palestinians killed for every Israeli killed, when it comes to children the ratio is 5:1. According to B'Tselem, the human rights organization, even before the current operation in Gaza, 557 Palestinian minors (below the age of 18) were killed, compared to 110 Israeli minors.

Palestinian human rights groups speak of even higher numbers: 598 Palestinian children killed (up to age 17), according to the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, and 828 killed (up to age 18) according to the Red Crescent. Take note of the ages, too. According to B'Tselem, whose data are updated until about a month ago, 42 of the children who have been killed were 10; 20 were seven; and eight were two years old when they died. The youngest victims are 13 newborn infants who died at checkpoints during birth.

With horrific statistics like this, the question of who is a terrorist should have long since become very burdensome for every Israeli. Yet it is not on the public agenda. Child killers are always the Palestinians, the soldiers always only defend us and themselves, and the hell with the statistics.

The plain fact, which must be stated clearly, is that the blood of hundreds of Palestinian children is on our hands. No tortuous explanation by the IDF Spokesman's Office or by the military correspondents about the dangers posed to soldiers by the children, and no dubious excuse by the public relations people in the Foreign Ministry about how the Palestinians are making use of children will change that fact. An army that kills so many children is an army with no restraints, an army that has lost its moral code.

As MK Ahmed Tibi (Hadash) said, in a particularly emotional speech in the Knesset, it is no longer possible to claim that all these children were killed by mistake. An army doesn't make more than 500 day-to-day mistakes of identity. No, this is not a mistake but the disastrous result of a policy driven mainly by an appallingly light trigger finger and by the dehumanization of the Palestinians. Shooting at everything that moves, including children, has become normative behavior. Even the momentary mini-furor that erupted over the "confirming of the killing" of a 13-year-old girl, Iman Alhamas, did not revolve around the true question. The scandal should have been generated by the very act of the killing itself, not only by what followed.

Iman was not the only one. Mohammed Aaraj was eating a sandwich in front of his house, the last house before the cemetery of the Balata refugee camp, in Nablus, when a soldier shot him to death at fairly close range. He was six at the time of his death. Kristen Saada was in her parents' car, on the way home from a family visit, when soldiers sprayed the car with bullets. She was 12 at the time of her death. The brothers Jamil and Ahmed Abu Aziz were riding their bicycles in full daylight, on their way to buy sweets, when they sustained a direct hit from a shell fired by an Israeli tank crew. Jamil was 13, Ahmed six, at the time of their deaths.

Muatez Amudi and Subah Subah were killed by a soldier who was standing in the village square in Burkin and fired every which way in the wake of stone-throwing. Radir Mohammed from Khan Yunis refugee camp was in a school classroom when soldiers shot her to death. She was 12 when she died. All of them were innocent of wrongdoing and were killed by soldiers acting in our name.

At least in some of these cases it was clear to the soldiers that they were shooting at children, but that didn't stop them. Palestinian children have no refuge: mortal danger lurks for them in their homes, in their schools and on their streets. Not one of the hundreds of children who have been killed deserved to die, and the responsibility for their killing cannot remain anonymous. Thus the message is conveyed to the soldiers: it's no tragedy to kill children and none of you is guilty.

Death is, of course, the most acute danger that confronts a Palestinian child, but it is not the only one. According to data of the Palestinian Ministry of Education, 3,409 schoolchildren have been wounded in the intifada, some of them crippled for life. The childhood of tens of thousands of Palestinian youngsters is being lived from one trauma to the next, from horror to horror. Their homes are demolished, their parents are humiliated in front of their eyes, soldiers storm into their homes brutally in the middle of the night, tanks open fire on their classrooms. And they don't have a psychological service. Have you ever heard of a Palestinian child who is a "victim of anxiety"?

The public indifference that accompanies this pageant of unrelieved suffering makes all Israelis accomplices to a crime. Even parents, who understand what anxiety for a child's fate means, turn away and don't want to hear about the anxiety harbored by the parent on the other side of the fence. Who would have believed that Israeli soldiers would kill hundreds of children and that the majority of Israelis would remain silent? Even the Palestinian children have become part of the dehumanization campaign: killing hundreds of them is no longer a big deal.
Haaretz - Israel News - Killing children is no longer a big deal

Take a look at tomorrow's New York Times Magazine

2004-10-16T23:03:00.000-04:00

In tomorrow's NY Times Magazine (available online with a free registration,) Ron Suskind has a powerful, and quite worrying article about George W Bush and his faith. Suskind has been working with and reporting on the Bush White House through the unique prism of those who have left the administration worrying about how too many decisions were made totally divorced from reality.

From Suskind's article, it appears that other Republicans are also starting to worry about Bush and how it appears that he has become convinced that he is infallible in his decisions and never has to second guess them because he is convinced that God has led him to the right decision. These Republicans believe that if George W Bush is elected, they will have an all out battle for the soul of the Republican party. I suspect that if Bush wins, these Republicans would be some of the first victims of a purge that purifies the party to carry on God's work in this crusade that Bush and his most ardent followers are waging.

The Left Coaster has some highlights --

The Left Coaster: The Faith-Based Presidency

Broad Use Cited of Harsh Tactics at Base in Cuba

2004-10-16T22:46:00.000-04:00

The New York Times notes in the final paragraph of its article exposing the extreme and routine human rights abuses at Gitmo, "In guided tours of Guantánamo provided to the news media and members of Congress, the military authorities contended that the system of rewards and punishments affected only issues like whether the inmates could be deprived of books, blankets and toilet articles. The interrogation sessions themselves, the officials consistently said, did not employ any harsh treatment but were devised only to build a trusting relationship between the interrogator and the detainee." Clearly this benign rendition of conditions at the prison was simply a lie. And of course, it is not a surprise. Our founding fathers knew that exposure to the light of day was the surest way to prevent rot in the foundation of society. The bushies have not adhered to this foundational reasoning. They have seen nothing wrong with a secret prison with secret prisoners who are exposed to secret types of confinement. They have seen nothing wrong with lying to the electorate about it.

The bushies behavior has diminished us in the eyes of the world. It makes us less safe when we say one thing and do another. It makes no difference whether or not the bushies have gotten intelligence that has, as they have claimed, saved lives and prevented terrorist attacks. The bushies have made liars of all Americans in the same way that 9/11 made the world American. The bushies have replaced the terror of 9/11 with their own terror of secret prisons. It is shameful.

We have been lied to by this administration time and time again. We are told everything is going well in Iraq. Not true.
We have been told the economy is stronger. Not true. We have been told that we are safer today. Not true.
We have been told that the prisoners were treated humanely. Not true.

And we have now been told that the torture when it was used prevented terrorist attacks and saved the lies of soldiers. I do not trust this information either. First, if the bushies had saved even one life or prevented one terrorist attack, they would be bragging about the specifics, and they have not. Second, all reliable indications are that al-Qaeda and related organizations have been able to recruit more as a result of the bushies' tactics, so if the enemy is greater, how can we be undermining Islamic fundamentalist terror threats. And third, these bushies have proven themselves to have lied in one thing (at least). Therefore, we can safely believe that they have lied in all things.

The New York Times > Washington > Broad Use Cited of Harsh Tactics at Base in Cuba

Terror fears don't trump Constitution, court rules - Oct 16, 2004

2004-10-16T21:51:00.000-04:00

The normally conservative Federal Appeals court in Atlanta has ruled that fears of a terrorist attack are not sufficient reason for authorities to search people at a protest. The court has ruled that September 11, 2001, "cannot be the day liberty perished."

"In the absence of some reason to believe that international terrorists would target or infiltrate [the rally against the US School of the Americas], there is no basis for using September 11 as an excuse for searching the protesters," the court said. The police in Columbus Georgia began using metal detectors to screen protesters at this annual demonstration in the wake of 9/11 contending that the higher security alerts required extra precautions.The organizers argued that passing through screening devices was not just an inconvenience. Because there is only one security gate, the crowd backs up creating its own chaos outside the protest site. About 15,000 demonstrators attend the annual vigil, demanding the closing of the center formerly known as the School of the Americas. The facility at Fort Benning was reopened in January 2001 as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.

First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams said that though there are steps the government can take to protect people from terrorism, "that doesn't mean we just dispense with the Bill of Rights as a consequence of 9/11."

"We don't yet live in a society in which everyone must always go through metal detectors everywhere we go."

The judge wrote, "We cannot simply suspend or restrict civil liberties until the War of Terror is over, because the War on Terror is unlikely ever to be truly over. September 11, 2001, already a day of immeasurable tragedy, cannot be the day liberty perished in this country."

Kudos to the three judge panel.

CNN.com - Terror fears don't trump Constitution, court rules - Oct 16, 2004

BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | UK troops 'set for US Iraq role'

2004-10-16T21:15:00.000-04:00

Bush has been using Tony Blair's support in the coalition of the willing to contradict Kerry who says that we have been going it alone. Well, the British public seems a little less willing than its leader, and the opposition is downright angry about the British commitment already. So with the announcement that British troops, under US command, might be committed to more dangerous regions of Iraq, the British may become ex-members of the coalition. Tony Blair may be backing the Bushies, but who is backing Tony Blair? Maybe only GWB. This was on the BBC website today.

UK troops 'set for US Iraq role'
Senior British military sources say the US has asked British troops to fill in behind American soldiers, who are being sent elsewhere.

It is believed UK forces could be sent from Basra, in southern Iraq, to an area south of Baghdad.

BBC defence correspondent Paul Adams said they would be under US command, which might cause controversy.

The Ministry of Defence confirmed discussions were taking place, but said no decision had been made.

The proposal sparked warnings from opposition parties.

Tory leader Michael Howard called for a statement from the government.

He said: "If it's the case that British troops are to be moved out of area, it's vital that a statement is made in Parliament at the earliest possible opportunity so that we can ask the relevant questions."

Liberal Democrat defence spokesman Paul Keetch warned against placing British forces under US command.

He said: "British forces should remain under direct British control within the British sector. Any change to this basic command structure should be brought before the House of Commons.

"With the public disquiet about ongoing operations in Iraq, placing British forces under direct US control would not be supported by the British people."

The deployment, which would involve up to 650 personnel, is expected to last "a few weeks", the BBC was told.

It would allow US forces to be sent from Baghdad to join those involved in operations in the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.
One option being considered would involve Scottish troops from the Black Watch Regiment extending their tour of duty in southern Iraq by a short period.

If this option is pursued, the plan would be to have the regiment home in time for Christmas.

Speculation that Black Watch could be redeployed emerged from families of its soldiers.

Troops are currently acting as the reserve force in the southern city of Basra, and their relatives say they were told they would not be returning home next month as planned.

A MoD spokesman said no decision had been taken to extend their current tour: "Discussions are continuing as these things are always discussed. But if these discussions lead to a decision it will be announced in the normal way."

One military source told Paul Adams the request to move troops was a matter of being a "good ally" to the US, and it was no good "sitting pretty" in the south in large numbers when the Americans were doing all the difficult work elsewhere.

The source added the move was seen as posing no significant additional dangers to those already faced by British forces in the country's south.

The movement of troops, if agreed to, would not necessarily add to the numbers of British soldiers stationed in Iraq.

A separate decision could be taken to boost numbers ahead of the elections, but a decision on this has also not been made.
Published: 2004/10/15 22:40:38 GMT © BBC MMIV

BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | UK troops 'set for US Iraq role'

Outrage That Rings False (washingtonpost.com)

2004-10-16T09:04:00.000-04:00

Hillary Rosen writes an excellent column in today's Washington Post decrying the outrageous hypocrisy of the bushies over Kerry's mentioning Mary Cheney's homosexuality during the debate:

washingtonpost.com
Outrage That Rings False

By Hilary Rosen

Saturday, October 16, 2004; Page A23

Nicolle Devenish, communications director for the Bush-Cheney campaign, said Thursday that John Kerry will pay a heavy political price for what he did. Lynne Cheney, the vice president's wife, said, "This is a bad man."

The crime? John Kerry in the final presidential debate suggested that we are all God's children and used Mary Cheney as an example of a healthy gay person loved by her family.

The response from the Cheneys and the Bush campaign has been blatantly political. In fact, it is they who are using Mary Cheney -- using her now to score points against Kerry and John Edwards over an issue on which they themselves are guilty of the wrongs that Kerry and Edwards are fighting against. Even after almost 30 years in Washington, I am surprised by the overwhelming hypocrisy and meanness of the Bush reelection campaign.

Let's review the facts. Before the election season, this administration opposed every initiative to offer equality for gay men and lesbians. Indeed, it has gone out of its way to be punitive, with such actions as the Office of Personnel Management's announcement that the federal government has no intention of honoring the Clinton administration's order to add sexual orientation to anti-discrimination rules in the federal government.

After the debate, the vice president said of John Kerry: "This is a man who will say anything and do anything to get elected." Many people thought the same thing about Dick Cheney and President Bush on Feb. 24. That was the day the president announced to the country that heterosexual marriages are in trouble because gay people might someday have such a right in a few states. The crisis was so dire that he implored Congress to pass a constitutional amendment to permanently take away any rights gay men and lesbians might have to equal access to government benefits of marriage.

The Republican leaderships in both houses of Congress brought this amendment to the floor. Anyone watching the debate would cringe at the dehumanizing and painful things said by Republican sponsors of the proposal about gay people.

All of the Cheneys have sat back as senators and members of Congress who stood up for their position against the constitutional amendment were attacked in campaigns across the country. In Texas, North Dakota, South Carolina, Oklahoma, North Carolina and elsewhere, Republican candidates are using the gay issue against Democrats who have done nothing more than vote to protect the notion of fairness and equality in our Constitution.

Where is the outrage of Dick and Lynne Cheney over this?

In August, at a town meeting, the vice president was asked to speak from the heart about gay marriage. He did. He said he was against the constitutional amendment. And he expressed love for his daughter. The country was impressed.

I think the record is pretty clear that fair-minded political leaders didn't talk publicly about Mary Cheney until her father did. All of a sudden it was clear to John Kerry and John Edwards that if the Bush campaign tried to attack them on the gay marriage issue, they should just respond by saying they had the same position on this issue as Dick Cheney. That is certainly the advice I gave them. How dare the president criticize Kerry, as he did again the other night, for taking the same position as Dick Cheney? And we know that anti-gay messages are being promoted in many districts around the country to get out the evangelical vote for President Bush on Election Day. The silent but admirable Mary Cheney has remained a loyal daughter and foot soldier in this homophobic campaign.

I feel sorry for her -- sorry that she seems to now be a pawn in this race. But the perpetrator is not Kerry. This issue is in the campaign because Bush sought political advantage by using it all year. This week's outrage rings so false it makes my ears hurt.

The writer is former chairman and chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America and a volunteer for gay rights causes.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

Outrage That Rings False (washingtonpost.com)

A Son's Death, a Mother's Unanswered Questions

2004-10-16T08:10:00.000-04:00

This story from today's Washington Post is so outrageous that I felt that I should reprint it here in full:

A Son's Death, a Mother's Unanswered Questions

By Colbert I. King

Saturday, October 16, 2004; Page A23

Mary Scott was doing fine as she reviewed with me by phone the events that unfolded after Monday, Sept. 20, when Judge Judith Retchin sentenced her 27-year-old son, a first-time offender and quadriplegic -- paralyzed from the neck down -- to 10 days in the D.C. jail for possession of marijuana. Scott, however, lost her composure when she got to Friday, Sept. 24, the day she took her son's much-needed ventilator to the jail. You would have choked up, too.

Since his injury in a car crash at age 4, Jonathan Magbie had been under nursing care 24 hours a day. A chin-operated wheelchair was his mode of transportation. The 24-hour coverage was a little too intrusive, Scott told me, so the family limited the care to 20 hours and took care of the rest themselves.

When Scott heard that Judge Retchin had announced in court that Jonathan would get the care he needed in jail, she felt a little better.

Her fears were also lessened after she spoke with Janet Holt, the associate nursing director at the Correctional Treatment Facility (CTF), the jail's annex, where Jonathan was to be incarcerated. Boniface Cobbina, Jonathan's lawyer, had arranged for Scott to speak with Holt on the day Jonathan was sent to jail. Holt assured Scott that the CTF could perform the lung suctioning procedure that Jonathan required. In response to Holt's questions about Jonathan's medications, Scott said her son might know what they were, but she didn't believe he knew the prescribed dosages, so she immediately arranged for Jonathan's nurse to fax the correct information to Holt. Scott followed up in a phone call and was assured by Holt that the fax had been received and would be given to "Dr. Malek." Corrections spokesman Bill Meeks advised that Dr. Malek is Malek Malekghasemi, the CTF's associate medical director.

Scott said she received a call from a woman at the jail on Jonathan's first day in the city's custody, telling her that he had been taken to Greater Southeast Community Hospital and that she should come to the jail to collect his wheelchair. The jailer called back within minutes, however, and told Scott she could not pick up the wheelchair.

Scott rushed to the hospital with her daughter and a friend of Jonathan's. They were joined by their lawyer, Cobbina, whom Scott had called from the hospital. Together they spoke with one of the correctional officers who had accompanied Jonathan to the hospital and were told he was comfortable. They were not allowed to see him, though Scott said she did receive a call at home around 1:30 a.m. Tuesday from the same correctional officer, who said Jonathan was still resting well at the hospital.

Scott was surprised to learn from one of Jonathan's friends later in the day that he had been returned to the jail's annex. She called Cobbina and told him that Jonathan needed his ventilator. (The Corrections Department acknowledged that on the night Jonathan was taken to the hospital, he informed the corrections medical staff that he used a ventilator at night.) She said she also called Malekghasemi and told him the same thing. She recalled the doctor saying: "I don't know why the judge sent him here." He said he was going to call the judge "to talk some sense into her," Scott said.

The next day, Wednesday, Sept. 22, Cobbina visited Jonathan in jail and reported that her son said he still required his ventilator, Scott said. On Thursday Cobbina called Scott and told her that Corrections officials had agreed that she could take Jonathan's ventilator to the CTF on Friday morning at 10 a.m.

Scott arrived around 9:30 a.m. and waited in the lobby for 45 minutes before Malekghasemi came to see her. She handed him Jonathan's ventilator, a suction cap and a pediatric device to be used because the opening in his throat was so small. Malekghasemi took the ventilator but told her he didn't need the other equipment and then left. Scott asked the guard if she could visit her son but was told she couldn't because she did not have an appointment.

At the time Scott met the doctor, Jonathan had already been transported to Greater Southeast Community Hospital on an emergency basis. Scott said the doctor knew Jonathan had been taken away but didn't tell her. "If I had known, I could have told them what might have been wrong with him and how they could help him," she told me, distress obvious in her voice.

Later that day -- Friday, Sept. 24 -- five days after Jonathan Magbie was placed in the custody of the government of the District of Columbia, Scott received a call telling her that her son was dead.

Cobbina, in a separate interview, said Malekghasemi also told him on Tuesday, Sept. 21, that he would call Judge Retchin with his concerns about Jonathan's incarceration, given his medical condition. The Corrections Department, in an e-mail response to my questions, confirmed that "A [CTF] physician spoke with the judge's law clerk on September 21, 2004, and expressed his personal concern that inmate Magbie did not belong in the D.C. jail. The physician shared his personal concern that inmate Magbie should not be incarcerated given the nature of the sentence and his overall medical condition. The physician did not request that the judge order Mr. Magbie's return to Greater Southeast Community Hospital."

The circumstances leading up to Scott's taking the ventilator to the CTF are in dispute.

In an e-mail response, Corrections wrote that on Wednesday afternoon Jonathan's lawyer called the CTF physician and indicated that a ventilator might be available from his mother and that the attorney would call the CTF physician back with confirmation. The CTF physician called the attorney on Thursday and an agreement was made to deliver the ventilator the next day.

Cobbina, on the other hand, said he told Malekghasemi on Thursday that Jonathan needed his ventilator and that the doctor said he didn't want "gadgets" introduced into the jail because they would only "complicate" matters. "Twenty minutes later," Cobbina said, the doctor called back and said, "Why don't you ask her to bring it in the morning?"

The death of Jonathan Magbie, I have learned, is now under investigation by the D.C. Department of Health and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. That's not enough. The D.C. inspector general and the D.C. Council may wish to weigh in as well, lest the informal network of D.C. bureaucrats who look out for each other attempts to make Jonathan's death appear as natural as the sunset. It wasn't.

These questions need answering.

Why on earth should Jonathan, a first-time offender who had lived most of his life in a wheelchair as a quadriplegic and who required virtually round-the-clock nursing, have been sent to jail for simple possession of marijuana?

Why is it that even after the Corrections Department learned on Monday that inmate Jonathan Magbie needed a medical device the jail did not have and would not provide, and even after an associate medical director determined on Tuesday that Jonathan's medical condition weighed against jail incarceration -- why is it that he nonetheless languished in jail until Friday, the day he died?

Finally, consider this exchange between Judge Retchin and Jonathan Magbie's lawyer at the time, Nikki Lotze, back on Jan. 14 at a status hearing:

Judge: Good morning. Where is Mr. Magbie?

Lawyer: Your Honor, I wonder if the court would consider waiving his presence; he was hospitalized. He's not hospitalized right now, but he was released earlier in the week having had a bout of pneumonia.

Judge: No, I would not waive his presence. He needs to be here.

Lawyer: I'll see if I can get him here later in the day, your honor. But, could we waive his presence just for purposes of scheduling matters and then I'll have him. . . .

Judge: I'll issue a warrant for his arrest. It will be no bond as to Mr. Magbie.

What a sweetheart.

kingc@washpost.com

And people ask what's wrong with our justice system? Clearly it's not just blind; it has no brain and no heart as well.

A Son's Death, a Mother's Unanswered Questions (washingtonpost.com)

Free for the Bushies. Not Free for the Opposition.

2004-10-16T08:00:00.000-04:00

Senator Kerry has demanded that Sinclair broadcasting allow him to have rebuttal time after Sinclair broadcasts its smear movie. But Sinclair, which has built a new studio outside Baltimore for the occasion, has said Kerry can come on, but only if the Kerry is willing to submit to an interview by Sinclair. Kerry is rejecting that offer on the grounds that Sinclair is just trying to set him up for another hour of smear by trying to control the content of his rebuttal time. Who can blame him? Sinclair whose executives have donated more than $100,000 to the Bush campaign and nothing to Kerry's is clearly trying to use the issue of Vietnam Vets against the War to smear Kerry and undermine his candidacy. Sinclair executives smugly touch base with the two words "First Amendment." Nice. How about "free and fair elections." Sinclair says that their position is no different from CBS's whose parent company CEO, Sumner Redstone, supports Bush. Well, yes it is. I don't see CBS running a one hour commercial for its candidate in 62 swing states. And I have a sense that if some broadcaster tried to run Fahrenheit 9/11 on broadcast tv, the bushies would be all over it. Remember how they complained about the ads for Moore's movie claiming that it was basically a Kerry commercial and therefore violated the campaign finance laws. Certainly Michael Powell's partisan FCC would find a way to consider the issue post haste if the blatantly anti-bushie Fahrenheit 9/11 were being broadcast one week or less before the election.

The bushies have an odd sense of free-speech. It is basically "Free for us. Not free for you." I guess that's fair and balanced in a way -- kind of like heads I win; tails you lose.

Kerry Team Demands Equal Time (washingtonpost.com)

1969: Millions march in US Vietnam Moratorium

2004-10-16T00:20:00.000-04:00

I'm sorry I missed mentioning this yesterday. October 15th marked the 35th Anniversary of the Moratorium--a march of millions across the United States to protest the war in Vietnam. It was a heady moment for peace activists. I was in college at the time and remember the day well. This mass dissent, however, did not mark the beginning of the end. Richard Nixon carried on for another 5 years. Millions of Vietnamese were killed; thousands of US soldiers were killed; countless others, Vietnamese and Americans alike were maimed physically and emotionally. Cambodia was dragged into the conflict and the result was one of the greatest acts of genocide in human history. This country was ripped apart. Countries in IndoChina were ripped apart.

I thought we had learned from this experience. Apparently some of us were too busy being frat boys to notice the horror.

BBC ON THIS DAY | 15 | 1969: Millions march in US Vietnam Moratorium

Ex-UK envoy rounds on his critics

2004-10-16T00:11:00.000-04:00

The BBC reported today:

A controversial UK ambassador has said he lost his post because he criticised the use of intelligence allegedly obtained under torture in Uzbekistan.
Craig Murray said he became a "victim of conscience" after a memo in which he claimed MI6 had used the information was leaked to a newspaper last week.

The Foreign Office had tried to force him to resign a year ago with "untrue" disciplinary charges, he told the BBC.

The FO denied the allegations and said he was removed for operational reasons.

It said the ambassador, who was recalled from the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, this week, had lost the confidence of senior officials and colleagues.

His removal has prompted an open letter to the British government from Uzbek political activists who describe him as a "force for democratic change".

But Mr Murray, 45, said officials had been trying to force him out for a year because of his despatches back to London.

In one he claimed MI6 had used information passed on to it by the CIA but originally obtained in Uzbek torture cells - something strongly denied by the Foreign Office.

In the leaked telegram, printed in the Financial Times, he wrote that the use of information gained by torture was "morally, practically and legally wrong".

You have to admire this guy; he has a conscience and is willing to stand up to his government. I would love to see some more of that going on here in the US. Yes, I am speaking to you Colin Powell, among others. How we can justify making friends with repressive regimes like those in Uzbekistan is beyond me, especially when we are trying to make democracy bloom in the Middle East.

BBC NEWS | UK | Ex-UK envoy rounds on his critics

Michael Powell Finds Free Speech Compelling At Last

2004-10-16T00:05:00.000-04:00

Reuters reported this morning: Federal Communications Commission chairman Michael Powell has rejected lawmakers' requests that the agency stop Sinclair Broadcasting from airing a documentary critical of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry.

"Don't look to us to block the airing of a program," Powell told reporters after the FCC's monthly meeting in Washington.

Powell said action against the broadcast would violate free speech guarantees.

Is this the same guy who keeps exploring the idea of cleaning up language on premium channels like HBO? It's now up to the weak-kneed FEC to make their move...like that'll happen. The best strategy is for people to pressure Sinclair advertisers to withdraw their advertising dollars. One thing the righties seem to understand is money. When money walks, nobody talks
Entertainment: Industry Article | Reuters.com

Voting Rights Machinery Doubted (washingtonpost.com)

2004-10-15T23:58:00.000-04:00

Is anybody surprised that John Ashcroft's DOJ is ill-prepared to handle complaints about voting irregularities on November 2nd? The Washington Post reports on a GAO document:

The Justice Department is ill prepared to handle a large influx of complaints about voting rights violations in the Nov. 2 presidential election, according to a report released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office.

Campaign experts predict that the department's voting rights section will be flooded with calls and complaints about poll access and other irregularities in the face of a close race between President Bush and Democrat John F. Kerry and uncertainty over the effects of changes in election law and procedures. Some fear a repeat of the 2000 deadlock over the presidential election results in Florida.

The Justice Department "lacks a clear plan" to reliably document and track allegations in a manner that could allow monitors to swiftly pick up patterns of abuse and take corrective steps, according to the GAO, Congress's nonpartisan investigative arm.

"The reason it's so important to collect this information is to look for patterns in a particular county or in a particular polling place," said William O. Jenkins Jr., who prepared the report at the request of three Democratic lawmakers. "For instance, is it only Democrats or Republicans that seem to be having this problem? Were different voters told different things?"

Will anybody shocked if the DOJ is better prepared to handle complaints from Republican voters?

Voting Rights Machinery Doubted (washingtonpost.com)

Hail Mary

2004-10-15T23:51:00.000-04:00

Here's Andrew Sullivan's take on the gay-bashing that's going on...that is the bushies overreacting to Kerry's summoning up the l-word:

And the way Kerry "gay-baited" was to say that homosexuality is not a choice, that he supports equal rights for gay couples, and that Mary Cheney helps prove that being gay isn't a choice. That'll rile 'em up in the trenches, won't it? Seriously, I've called out anti-gay statements by Democrats in the past; and have a long record of sniffing out homophobia and the use of it, wherever it's coming from...

...I fail to see how Kerry's remark could be understood in any conceivable way as gay-baiting. It never occurred to me when I heard it. It does not occur to me now. You know what is based in gay-baiting? Implicitly, clearly, shamelessly: the Bush-Cheney campaign. The GOP has a nutty candidate in Illinois who called Mary Cheney a "selfish hedonist"- but Dick Cheney wasn't an "angry dad," then. Lynne Cheney didn't call that "tawdry." So Bush runs the most anti-gay national campaign ever and it's his opponent who gets tarred as a homophobe! Brilliant, even by Rove's standards. And when it comes to gay-baiting, there are few as practised as Rove. The sheer nerve of these hypocrites never ceases to amaze.

TomPaine.com - Hail Mary

John Kerry's lesbian moment

2004-10-15T09:47:00.000-04:00

What is so bad about John Kerry's invoking Mary Cheney's sexuality in the debate? It is, rather, the reaction that the Cheney's and the press have had to the use of the L-word by Kerry. And I don't mean liberal. For a lesbian who has been as out of the closet and politically involved as Mary Cheney, it is hard to believe that she would object to being outed once again in a political debate. What isn't hard to believe is the prick in the skin that Mary must get when people she loves and knows are ashamed when she is publicly called out. The church lady, her mother, Lynne Cheney's outrage is an arrow in the heart of her gay daughter. The underlying message of Lynne Cheney's anger is "We love you, but really, do you have to be so out there dear? And maybe you should do something about your hair. Do you have to look so butch? You make us all a target of the smear of the L-word"

Salon.com | John Kerry's lesbian moment

Getting to the bottom of the bulge

2004-10-15T09:31:00.000-04:00

Actually, this article in Salon doesn't get to the bottom of the bulge, but it does include this insightful comment from Mark Crispin Miller, author of "Cruel and Unususal: Bush and Cheney's New World Order. The Salon author writes, "While he believes the president was probably wired, whether or not the bulge theory is true "doesn't alter the fact that what [Bush] says is carefully scripted and dishonest." "In cyberspace," Miller says, "the Bush regime stands accused of many things they may not have done. What's interesting is that so many reasonable people in the country are so agnostic on such provocative questions."

Every moment of the Bush presidency is so scripted, and every campaign appearance is a prepared performance in front of a hand-picked claque, so why wouldn't his debate performance be aided by the standard acting trick of in-ear prompting. If Marlon Brando could use it (and he did in every movie since 1980,) why shouldn't Bush use an in-ear aid? The main difference is that Brando was a trained and talented actor, and that Bush, who has, I am sure, been trained endlessly, is apparently not as talented an actor as his handlers had hoped he would become after four years on the national stage.

Salon.com Technology | Getting to the bottom of the bulge

The Scary Thing about the Indymedia Case

2004-10-14T20:58:00.000-04:00

Open Democracy, an independent online magazine points out that when Indymedia was taken offline in the UK on October 7th by an unknown US government agency which went to court on behalf of an anonymous foreign country, a major threat against independent journalism was brought into stark relief. Bill Thompson of Open Democracy writes: "The degree of contempt for procedure, the rule of law and natural justice displayed by the authorities still shocks. For those of us active in online journalism and campaigning it brings into stark relief other denials of civil liberties, like the arbitrary detentions at Guantánamo and Belmarsh. It also makes us aware of just how vulnerable we all are, and raises many questions for openDemocracy itself.

If Indymedia can be taken offline so easily, then what of our server, Plato, sitting at our internet service provider’s (ISP) data centre? openDemocracy’s ISP is a British–based firm, but a foreign government could easily ask the Home Office for a warrant under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) and seize it. Ripa even comes with its own gagging clauses, so the hosting company would be unable to tell us why we’d suddenly gone offline, or who had taken our server away."

Thompson continues: "The decision to target the hosting provider – a commercial company with no particular interest in what is being published by the sites it hosts – is a worrying precedent. Indymedia and its lawyers could be expected to defend their right to speak freely, and indeed the EFF is already preparing to go to court on their behalf on the grounds that the US court was in breach of the country’s constitution in ordering the seizure of the servers.

An ISP, on the other hand, will be concerned with staying in business and could be expected to comply more easily with such an order – as indeed it did.

If the police arrived at the BBC with a warrant and a gagging order, it’s a safe bet that senior editorial staff would choose to go to jail rather than comply. They would have the backing of the corporation and its legal department. But if the police turned up at openDemocracy’s hosting company with the same documents, we could not expect them to do the same for us."

It's a scary world out there with terrorists and legitimate government using the pretext of terrorism to undermine a free press.

Indymedia�s silencing: a warning to us all? Bill Thompson - openDemocracy

Surprise!!! Another October Surprise Rumor

2004-10-14T20:39:00.000-04:00

This is from El Mundo and posted on The Left Coaster:

There is a report published in El Mundo that OBL has been hiding in an area of China bordering Pakistan. The report goes on to say that OBL negotiated a deal with China that in return for his remaining in China he would end attacks by Muslims in the area.

Supposedly Bush is negotiating with China to hand over OBL for a collection of diplomatic/economic bounty.

It is believed that the possibility for such a deal emerged early this year, after Donald Rumsfeld had met with a delegation of the Chinese government during a visit to the far East. Later, George Tenet, then director of the CIA, requested a viability study for an operation to capture Bin Laden. Tenet was informed that the only possibility would be if they could count on the cooperation of the Chinese.

"To what extent that collaboration will occur in the few weeks remaining until the elections, will depend to a good extent on the confidence that Bush can inspire in the Chinese that he will be able to live up to his promises," confirmed the functionary of the Pentagon.

The Left Coaster

Halliburton's Interests Assisted by White House

2004-10-14T20:13:00.000-04:00

That the Bush White House exhibits outright favoritism to Halliburton should come as no surprise after almost four years of no-bid contracts, corporate handouts, and weak responses to fraud and overcharging by KBR. But the LA Times adds a new avenue: how Halliburton is participating in enhancing the Bush's wonderfoul environmental record.

Over the last four years, the Bush administration and Vice President Dick Cheney's office have backed a series of measures favoring a drilling technique developed by Halliburton Co., Cheney's former employer.

The technology, known as hydraulic fracturing, boosts gas and oil production and generates $1.5 billion a year for the company, about one-fifth of its energy-related revenue. In recent years, Halliburton and other oil and gas firms have been fighting efforts to regulate the procedure under a statute that protects drinking water supplies.

For the Bushies it's apparently not enough to wreck the air; they want to pollute the water as well. Anything for a buck.

Halliburton's Interests Assisted by White House

The NRA is too clever

2004-10-14T13:59:00.000-04:00

Billboards put up by the NRA and now seen in at least 10 key states show a prancing French poodle, its fur fancily clipped for show, wearing a pink ribbon and a blue Kerry-for-president sweater. The text says: "That dog don't hunt."

The NRA neglects the poodle's history as originally a hunting dog. The NRA neglects the poodle's record as the dog that annually inflicts the most bites that need to be treated by a doctor. Kerry may be pretty and well-dressed but he ain't nobody's lapdog, Mr. Bush. Down Bushie--get off Dickie's lap.

Adams versus Bush

2004-10-14T13:33:00.000-04:00

John Adams said, "It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives." Yeah, but "Leave no child behind" is so much catchier, and easier for those that have already been left behind to understand.

Battle of Bulge, Yet Again-- Letterman's Top Ten

2004-10-14T13:25:00.000-04:00

From the October 13 Late Show with David Letterman, the
"Top Ten President Bush Explanations for the Bulge in His Jacket."
Late Show home page: http://www.cbs.com/latenight/lateshow/

10. "It's connected to an earpiece so Cheney can feed me answers
-- crap, I wasn't supposed to say that."

9. "It's a device that shocks me every time I mispronounce a
word."

8. "Just a bunch of intelligence memos I haven't gotten around to
reading yet."

7. "Mmm, delicious Muenster cheese."

6. "John Kerry initially voted for the bulge in my jacket, then
voted against it."

5. "I'll tell you exactly what it is -- it's a clear sign this
economy is moving again."

4. "Halliburton is drilling my back for oil."

3. "Oh like you've never cheated in a presidential debate."

2. "Accidentally took some of Governor Schwarzenegger's 'roids."

1. "If Kerry's gonna look like a horse, then I'm gonna look like a
camel."

What Poll and Registration Numbers Don't Reveal

2004-10-14T12:16:00.000-04:00

All this discussion of what the poll numbers and registration numbers reveal is fascinating to me. For many years I did market research studies and so I have some experience with the accuracies and inaccuracies of polling results albeit for things like beer, nuts, sewing, and shampoo.

The sample is of course the key thing here. If the sample isn't right, then you can forget the results. Second of course, is the questions; they can be rigged or accidentally faulty or badly worded due to inexperience. Let's say that the polling companies who are doing this year's big electoral surveys have the questionnaire right -- after all their aim is to be able to say when the election is over, "See, we told you so." So that leaves the sample, and this year, previous years' sampling techniques may not be accurate because of the get out the vote drives and the number of new voters who may be overlooked by survey sampling questions that exclude them from likely voters because they didn't vote in 2000.

When you have a global pool of voters driven by anger and as polarized as this year's group is, you are seeing a pool that is not comparable to past experience. And so while the likely voter sampling technique has worked well in the past, today's situation may be different. If the turnout is as high as has been predicted, especially in the swing states, the polls' sample will not be predictative of the voters and hence, the results are anybody's guess. Similar things have happened before. The 1994 midterm elections are the most recent example where the Republicans managed to motivate voters through anger. This year, the anger is more on the Democrats side with loathing of the bushies and their regime at an all time high. The Republicans have organized well with their base, but the disorganized base of the Democrats is being motivated by huge registration drives in swing states among the elderly, the young and the voters whose votes were thrown out or undermined in 2000.

For a long time I thought that Bush would win this, and he may still pull it out through the use of extensive voter fraud to exclude the newly registered (see my post from yesterday.) But I am beginning to get a good feeling about Kerry's possibilities, so go vote...and vote for Kerry.

Thanks, Heather, Dave, Mike and Kristian

What Poll and Registration Numbers Don't Reveal (washingtonpost.com)

More on the mysterious ill-fitting suit

2004-10-14T11:51:00.000-04:00

This was published in yesterday's Daily News. It is the most definitive analysis of Bush's mystery bulge and also a nice sartorial comment as well:

Is there something under President Bush's jacket?

Tonight's presidential debate is supposed to focus on domestic issues, but the first question will concern neither taxes nor health care nor stem cells.
This question will be asked not by the moderator but by viewers at home straining to answer for themselves whether President Bush once again has a mysterious bulge under the back of his suit coat.

Already, there is the question of what exactly caused the bulges at the first and second debates. The Bush people insist the whole matter is just a bit of Internet lunacy. They scoff at the suggestion Bush was wearing an electronic prompter, which you would expect to be much smaller than the apparent bulges suggest. They also deny Bush had on body armor.

The candidates were positioned behind lecterns in the first debate.

Section 9, subsection (a), sub-subsections (iv) and (vi) of the debate rules clearly state that "TV cameras will be locked into place" and "the camera located at the rear of the stage shall be used only to take shots of the moderator."

But the good people at Fox filmed a rear view of the man who is clearly their candidate. They could not have anticipated that a purportedly undoctored freeze frame would flash around what our President would call the Internets showing what became known as "Bush's mystery bulge."

In the second debate, the candidates moved about the stage and Bush's back more than once came into view. A freeze frame again appeared to show a bulge, all the more mysterious for seeming a different shape and dimension than the first.

At the third debate tonight, the candidates again will be at lecterns and we may not get even a glimpse of Bush's back. Those who will be looking prominently include Edward Hayes, a New York lawyer and man about town who terms himself, with considerable justification, "the world's leading expert on suits."

Before he became the best-dressed lawyer in all New York, Hayes was the best-dressed homicide prosecutor in all the Bronx. He has studied the freeze frames from the first two debates with an eye both forensic and sartorial.

"As a man whose first experience with lumps in suits was in homicide in the Bronx and then went on to Saville Row, I'm telling you that is not a tailor's mistake," Hayes said. "Unless somebody doctored the photos, he's got something under there."

Hayes' expertise regarding lumps under suits includes the kind sought out by the seemingly friendly hands of his more nefarious clients when they greet somebody they fear might be wearing a wire.

He indicated how he himself might respond if somebody arrived for a meeting with such a lump.

"I tell you what: If I pat him on the back and feel something like that, I'm on the elevator before he is," Hayes said.

Hayes also has taken note of the fashion challenges posed by body armor.

"A bulletproof vest, you'd see under his armpits," Hayes suggested.

Only the most paranoid of us could believe Bush wore an electronic device to the debates, but if he did, it would be a receiver, not a transmitter. His demeanor in the first debate was not entirely unlike somebody who had a voice muttering in his ear.

Hayes joked that perhaps this also could explain why Bush did so much better in the second debate. "The second time he had a guy from a town with more than a cow and six people in it," Hayes said.

Lump or no, Hayes is not impressed by Bush's attire. The fit is too tight. The material is sometimes, well, a little shiny - the tailor's answer to Freedom Fries.

"A Texas suit," Hayes said.

Kerry wears darker colors and slightly heavier materials with a much better fit - a suit to impress foreign leaders at a summit. "Upper-class, custom-made, probably right down to his shoes," Hayes said.

Hayes knows as well as anybody that neither clothes nor even a lump means much compared with the momentous issues now facing us.

And the domestic matters to be discussed tonight are secondary to the question of the war in which our finest people are being killed and maimed day after day after day.

But there is nothing like a little mystery to provide a momentary distraction in dire times.

"There will be a cast of thousands looking for a bulge," Hayes said.

Originally published on October 13, 2004

The economy and the election

2004-10-13T23:42:00.000-04:00

This item is about a week old, but I don't think that tonight's debate would alter the results except to give Kerry an even stronger outcome. According to a poll conducted by The Economist among 100 academics, 70% of the responding professors rate Bush's economic policies as bad or very bad. Fewer than 20% of the professor think Bush will do better in a second term. Kerry didn't get a very strong endorsement either, but 4 out 10 respondents thought Kerry's economics program is good or very good and less than 3 in 10 gave Kerry negative scores on this measure. Bush couldn't even get a gentleman's C on the economic score -- he should have done his homework instead of clearing brush and exercising.

Economist.com | The economy and the election

E-Voting Machine Crash Deepens Concerns

2004-10-13T23:25:00.000-04:00

If you thought hanging and pregnant chads were problems in 2000, how do you feel about voting machines that can be judged unreliable because of hurricanes and power failures that are storm related in a state (Florida) known for being struck by hurricanes? The AP posted the following disturbing item on its tech website:

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - A computer crash that forced a pre-election test of electronic voting machines to be postponed was trumpeted by critics as proof of the balloting technology's unreliability.

The incident in Palm Beach County — which is infamous for its hanging and pregnant chads during the 2000 presidential election — did not directly involve the touch-screen terminals on which nearly one in three U.S. voters will cast ballots on Election Day.

But critics of the ATM-like machines said it proved how fickle any computer-based voting system can be and highlighted the need for touch-screens to produce paper records.

Tuesday's public dry run had to be postponed until Friday because excessive heat caused a computer server that tabulates data from the touch-screen machines to crash, said county elections supervisor Theresa LePore. Such "logic and accuracy" tests are required by law.

She said she suspected Hurricane Jeanne, which struck in September, may have zapped electricity and air conditioning to the room where the server was stored, causing temperatures to soar to 90 degrees or more. The storm wiped out power to nearly 1.3 million homes and businesses throughout Florida.

The incident raised questions in the minds of computer hardware and software engineers about the reliability of other computers on which Floridians will depend for an accurate vote count on Nov. 2 — especially touch-screen machines.

An Achille's heel of electronic voting equipment, just like any machines whose circuits get hot with colliding electrons, is its inability to tolerate extreme conditions, many experts say.

"Heat is a very serious problem for these machines, especially in Louisiana and Florida," said Dan Spillane, former senior testing engineer of touch-screens for a small equipment manufacturer in Seattle. "Basically, these things work in the secretary of state's office. Outside of that, no one knows."

LePore, who lost a re-election bid and will be replaced as supervisor in January, said the incident did not result in deleted or altered data and she predicted a smooth election on Nov. 2.

"We can always go back if everything totally crashes and burns," she said. "We still have the info on the cartridges and the voting machines."

LePore was referring to the memory cartridges in the touch-screen machines that record the votes.

Why don't I believe the lying scoundrel? Because she's untrustworthy; that's why.

Yahoo! News - E-Voting Machine Crash Deepens Concerns

Bush is Best When He Can Be Himself

2004-10-13T22:26:00.000-04:00

I look at GWB and I see a man who would be a lot happier if he could just go back to Texas and be a goofy dad and a goofy husband. He is absolutely only appealing when talking about his wife and kids. And I would be alot happier if he would go home and be happy.

Minimum Wage/Minimum Answers

2004-10-13T22:08:00.000-04:00

This from Begala's blog:

Minimum wage. Kerry is very strong on this. Bush seems annoyed. I want to hear a man you and I pay $400,000 a year -- and who spends 43% of his time on vacation explain why he doesn't think a working person is worth more than $5.15 an hour.

Bush's defense is to mumble something about Mitch McConnell. In 49 states people are turning to their spouses and asking, "Mitch McConnell. Wasn't he the bandleader on Johnny Carson?"

Bush is spending the bulk of his answer on minimum wage giving his education speech from 1998. So, your No Child Left Behind Act is the answer for jobs being shipped overseas, and for the low minimum wage. Next it's the cure for male-pattern baldness.

Begala challenges that Lewin Group Lie

2004-10-13T22:06:00.000-04:00

Bush just cited something called the Lewin Group to support the proposition that Kerry's health plan is a big government takeover. It's a charge he's made before. Trouble is, the Lewin Group says he's not telling the truth. John Sheils, vice president of the Lewin Group, told ABC's Jake Tapper yesterday Bush's attack "is not accurate."

I'm a little insulted that Bush is this cavalier about the facts. What does he think -- that we trust him? After his fibs, falsehoods and fabrications about Iraq, no American with a brain will ever trust him again. I'm like Ronald Reagan: trust but verify. It took me less than 5 seconds on Google to find the quote from Lewin saying Bush is misrepresenting their work. Give us a little credit, Mr. Bush.

Just When You Think Bush Has a Strong Hold on Kerry

2004-10-13T21:48:00.000-04:00

Kerry is a real expert. Just when Bush seems to have him pinned to the mat, Kerry comes back on taxes, social security, minimum wage, immigration. And then Bush goes back to his talking points...leave no child behind. Bush needs to go back to college. Maybe he'll be able to get a Pell Grant. What does education have to do with raising the minimum wage. Bush is worse than he ever has been but at least he's not scowling.

Begala hits home again

2004-10-13T21:41:00.000-04:00

Schieffer just asked Kerry about Catholic bishops who say Kerry's an unacceptable candidate because of his positions on abortion and stem cell research.

Will he ask Bush about the Pope's condemnation of President Bush's support for the death penalty and his war in Iraq? Why is it that only one side is being asked about the aspect of the issue where he's out of step with the Church?

What is the baseball score? The score here is Kerry in a walk.

Kerry is not letting Bush get away

2004-10-13T21:30:00.000-04:00

Bush keeps trying to say Kerry has no record in Congress. Finally, Kerry has not let that slide and reviewed some of his fine Congressional record. Kerry also is good at getting specific on his insurance plan and basically called Bush a liar. Neat. I think Kerry is doing great, staying on message, being clear and putting Bush on the defense which is where he should be.

Bush and Community College

2004-10-13T21:27:00.000-04:00

Paul Begala had a great take on Bush's answer on jobs:

Schieffer just asked President Bush what he'd say to someone whose job just got shipped overseas. Mr. Bush's answer is basically, "Tough luck. You lost the job you need and want and love. Go to community college."

Bush has slipped off of jobs and is now yammering about education. If only he had been as interested in education when he was in school.

And if community college is the answer for joblessness, let's hope there's a good community college in Crawford, Texas.

Bush is rattled

2004-10-13T21:22:00.000-04:00

Kerry just really rattled Bush with his major answer on fiscal responsibility and job loss. Bush looked like a little kid stumbling into a graduate economics class and being handed a final exam.

Just Checked in with Bob Novak

2004-10-13T21:20:00.000-04:00

Bob Novak that rightie commentator thinks Bush is doing a weak job and that Kerry is doing well. Mirabile dictu!

Kerry Opened Well, but Will Minds Change?

2004-10-13T20:58:00.000-04:00

It was a nice touch referencing Kennedy, FDR and Reagan in Kerry's opening. It was a good a attack on Bush's record versus of Osama bin Laden, challenging Bush on his lack of concentration on getting OBL. By contrast Bush was weak in his attack on Kerry's calling terrorism a potential nuisance.

Now Bush is turning talk on flu to safe, secure drugs from Canada of all places (last week he outrageously implied that drugs from Canada might not be safe.) Bush mounted the old hobby horse of frivolous lawsuits. How does that affect contaminated flu vaccine in the UK. Kerry's answer has a nice focus on the weakness on America's lack of good health insurance. We've got great healthcare in the US, but so many people can't afford it.

Kerry defended his healthcare plan very well, and came down hard on Bush's old saw about a plan is all Kerry has.

Kerry is doing great both attakcing Bush and presenting his alternatives. Bush has his strong suit in attacking Kerry's record, but I don't buy it. Unfortunately, bushies will think that Bush's offense is perfect.

The Left Coaster: More on Winning Hearts and Minds

2004-10-13T19:03:00.000-04:00

Vietnam redux anyone? This is a transcription from part of a speech by Seymour Hersh:
I got a call last week from a soldier -- it's different now, a lot of communication, 800 numbers. He's an American officer and he was in a unit halfway between Baghdad and the Syrian border. It's a place where we claim we've done great work at cleaning out the insurgency. He was a platoon commander. First lieutenant, ROTC guy.

It was a call about this. He had been bivouacing outside of town with his platoon. It was near, it was an agricultural area, and there was a granary around. And the guys that owned the granary, the Iraqis that owned the granary... It was an area that the insurgency had some control, but it was very quiet, it was not Fallujah. It was a town that was off the mainstream. Not much violence there. And his guys, the guys that owned the granary, had hired, my guess is from his language, I wasn't explicit -- we're talking not more than three dozen, thirty or so guards. Any kind of work people were dying to do. So Iraqis were guarding the granary. His troops were bivouaced, they were stationed there, they got to know everybody...

They were a couple weeks together, they knew each other. So orders came down from the generals in Baghdad, we want to clear the village, like in Samarra. And as he told the story, another platoon from his company came and executed all the guards, as his people were screaming, stop. And he said they just shot them one by one. He went nuts, and his soldiers went nuts. And he's hysterical. He's totally hysterical. And he went to the captain. He was a lieutenant, he went to the company captain. And the company captain said, "No, you don't understand. That's a kill. We got thirty-six insurgents."

You read those stories where the Americans, we take a city, we had a combat, a hundred and fifteen insurgents are killed. You read those stories. It's shades of Vietnam again, folks, body counts...

And the wheel goes round...sadly.
The Left Coaster: More on Winning Hearts and Minds

You gotta love the Brits

2004-10-13T17:55:00.000-04:00

CNN reports: LONDON (AP) -- Spiders are more scary than terrorists -- at least according to a survey of a thousand Britons.

Household creepy crawlies frighten Britons more than terrorist attacks, or even death, the survey released Monday found.

Terrorism only came second on the list of respondents' top ten fears, according to the survey conducted by RSGB Omnibus for Universal Pictures UK Ltd. The survey was based on telephone interviews of 1,000 aged 16 to 55 across Britain on September 22-26.

Another crawling phobia -- snakes -- was ranked third, followed by a fear of heights. Death came in a surprising fifth place as the nation's greatest fear.

CNN.com - Poll: Britons fear spiders more than terrorism - Oct 13, 2004

Voter Registrations Possibly Trashed

2004-10-13T11:47:00.000-04:00

Welcome to our banana republic. Where is Jimmy Carter when we need him? KLAS TV in Las Vegas reports on a large scale voter fraud which entailed registering or re-registering voters on the streets and outside the malls of Las Vegas. The problem is that the private company doing the registrations was only interested in Republican voters. Voters who identified themselves as democrats may go to polls to find out that their registrations never made it that far. The company registering them simply shredded the democratic voters forms:

Employees of a private voter registration company allege that hundreds, perhaps thousands of voters who may think they are registered will be rudely surprised on election day. The company claims hundreds of registration forms were thrown in the trash.

Anyone who has recently registered or re-registered to vote outside a mall or grocery store or even government building may be affected.

The I-Team has obtained information about an alleged widespread pattern of potential registration fraud aimed at democrats. Thee focus of the story is a private registration company called Voters Outreach of America, AKA America Votes.

The out-of-state firm has been in Las Vegas for the past few months, registering voters. It employed up to 300 part-time workers and collected hundreds of registrations per day, but former employees of the company say that Voters Outreach of America only wanted Republican registrations.

Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats.

"We caught her taking Democrats out of my pile, handed them to her assistant and he ripped them up right in front of us. I grabbed some of them out of the garbage and she tells her assisatnt to get those from me," said Eric Russell, former Voters Outreach employee.

Eric Russell managed to retrieve a pile of shredded paperwork including signed voter registration forms, all from Democrats. We took them to the Clark County Election Department and confirmed that they had not, in fact, been filed with the county as required by law.

So the people on those forms who think they will be able to vote on Election Day are sadly mistaken. We attempted to speak to Voters Outreach but found that its office has been rented out to someone else.

The landlord says Voters Outreach was evicted for non-payment of rent. Another source said the company has now moved on to Oregon where it is once again registering voters. It's unknown how many registrations may have been tossed out, but another ex-employee told Eyewitness News she had the same suspicions when she worked there.

Voter Registrations Possibly Trashed

Spammers and Spies Have No Shame

2004-10-13T10:34:00.000-04:00

According to the Washington Post, the feds have asked a federal court to shut down a big spyware operation that not only installed the sneaky tattletale programs on unsuspecting people's computers, but also sold spyware detector programs that were designed to remove the spyware the company was installing in the first place. David McGuire of the Washington Post writes:

Federal authorities have asked a federal judge to shut down an operation that they said installed intrusive "spyware" on people's computers and then sold anti-spyware software to those same victims, a top consumer protection official said today.

The complaint, filed by the Federal Trade Commission last week with the U.S. District Court in New Hampshire, accuses the defendants of fraud and asks a judge to shutter the organization and force the people behind it to pay back to their victims. It is the first federal lawsuit filed against the purveyors of spyware, a rapidly growing nuisance on the Internet.
"The defendants were selling software to fix the problem they just caused. I've decided this is my definition of online chutzpah," Lydia Parnes, acting director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, said at a press conference Tuesday.

Parnes said the case was filed against two companies, Seismic Entertainment Productions and Smartbot.net, as well as Sanford Wallace, who in the late 1990's was known as the infamous "spam king."

FTC Sues Spyware Suspects (washingtonpost.com)

Nicholas Kristof: As Humans Are Hunted

2004-10-13T09:51:00.000-04:00

In today's New York Times, Nicholas Kristof writes from the ground in Sudan. He had to sneak across the border because the Sudanese government would not issue a visa to this reporter who has done so much to underscore the humanitarian crisis in that country. The suffering goes on and the world rings its hands and weakly urges Africans to do more to stop the suffering in Sudan. The Sudanese government continues to fail to take real action to stop the slaughter and forcible removable of Africans from their land either because the government supports the genocide or because it has lost control of the militias that it let loose on Sudan in the wake of a major drought and in an effort to remove African farmers from land that the Arab nomadic population wanted for grazing of their livestock. Kristof notes that George Bush has taken the lead in urging a solution to the genocidal conflict in Sudan, but Kristof also notes that words are not enough and that there is more direct action that can be taken. Kristof writes:

It's progress that the world has denounced the genocide without waiting the customary 10 years before wringing its hands in regret. But there are many other steps the United States could take: a no-flight zone, an arms embargo, an asset freeze on businesses owned by Sudan's ruling party, and greater teamwork with African and Islamic countries to exert more pressure on Sudan. [emphasis added]

President Bush is already in the forefront of the world leaders who have addressed the slaughter in Darfur, and he has done far more than President Clinton did during the Rwandan genocide. But there is so much more the United States can still do.

Mr. President, you pride yourself on your willingness to stand up to evil - so why do you remain so passive in the face of such evil?

The Hunting of the President Part II

2004-10-12T22:13:00.000-04:00

Conservatives don't know how to play by the rules and they have a very odd concept of treason. The righties waged a campaign to persecute Bill Clinton from day one and now they are getting ready to start on John Kerry. The Federalist, a right-wing website is waging a campaign to charge John Kerry with being constitutionally unfit to hold office, any public office, because, they allege that his statements as head of Vietnam Vets against the War gave aid and comfort to the enemy. I received the following email update from the The Federalist:

Dear Fellow Patriot,

The petition for indictment of John Kerry, for "giving aid and comfort to the enemy," and, thus, to disqualify him for national office, has reached its goal of more than 150,000 signatures. On Monday, 18 October, the petition will be delivered by registered courier to Vice President Richard Cheney (in his capacity as Senate President), Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Attorney General John Ashcroft today.

Though John Kerry has an extensive and well-documented record of anti- American activities over the past three decade, it is his acts of treason in 1970-71 that are the subject of this petition for indictment. Our appeal notes both Kerry's violations of the UCMJ (Article 104 part 904) and U.S. Code (18 USC Sec. 2381 and 18 USC Sec. 953), and calls for his disqualification for public office in accordance with the Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3, which states: "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice- President ... having previously taken an oath ... to support the Constitution of the United States, [who has] engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."

Why prosecute John Kerry now?

In October 2003, Mr. Kerry chose to make his Vietnam war record the centerpiece of his campaign for the presidency; this has been especially true since his primary victory in March 2004. In response, more than 165,000 signatories of the above-referenced petition for indictment have made his war record the centerpiece of their campaign to disqualify Kerry from public office.

We understand that no action is likely to be taken on this petition until after the 02 November election. Be it known, however, that on 03 November, we will seek full recourse in an effort to have John Kerry prosecuted for acts of treason and disqualified from any future campaign for any national office. We are thus committed to holding Mr. Kerry accountable for his actions, as there is no statute of limitations for acts of treason.

Who is the traitor here? The organization that is trying to undercut a person's right of free speech and the free and fair election of the President seems pretty traitorous to me.

Will the real guy from Ground Zero Please Stand Up

2004-10-12T15:10:00.000-04:00

This has been making the email rounds:

Will the "guy" from Ground Zero please identify himself? Bush has had
>some difficulty with his recollection, used to finish almost every
>speech about his moment on Sept. 14, 2001, atop the rubble of the twin
>towers. Back in February of this year, as the Web site Salon
>documented, Bush remembered "a guy pointing at me and saying, 'Don't
>let me down.' " In May, the figure became "a guy in a hard hat" and
>then "the firefighter." In June, he became an ensemble of "tired
>firefighters and police and rescue workers," who said, collectively,
>"Don't let us down." In July, it was "a fireman or a policeman, I can't
>remember which one, looking me in the eyes." Presently, Bush added to
>the tale, saying the guy "grabbed me by the arm." He then added "bloodshot eyes and sweat pouring" to the portrait.
>
>In August, Bush said the fellow, "a firefighter or a policeman," was
>"looking through the rubble for one of his buddies." The "buddy"
>morphed into "a loved one" and "somebody that he worked with," then
>back into a "buddy." By September, Bush had dropped the buddy but
>developed new recollections about the guy. "I remember a guy grabbed me
>by the arm, a big old burly firefighter, I guess he was a firefighter.
>He said: 'Do not let me down.' "

Who was that masked man? I don't know, but he left this great political storyline.
>

The Reality for Women in Afghanistan

2004-10-12T15:08:00.000-04:00

News reports and politicians highlighted women's participation in last Saturday's Afghan election citing it as an advance for women in Afghanistan. It would be a mistake to revel in this as some sort of great women's liberation in that country. An article in the Guardian (UK) asserts:

Sahar Saba, a spokeswoman for the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, a secular organisation still unable to work openly, told me last week: "People who should be on trial for their crimes are still in key positions in the government, so in such a situation speaking about democracy and women's rights is futile."

As is well known, the warlords - men such as Rashid Dostum and Atta Mohammed - have many of the same attitudes to women as the Taliban. Between Hope and Fear, a report just published by Human Rights Watch, provides a chilling reminder of what that means. These men are targeting women who take part in any political or development work. Even in Kabul, by far the safest and most open part of the country, one woman working at a women's organisation said, "Even entering the door of this office, that itself is a grave risk."

A woman from Kabul who went to a northern province to investigate why a women's centre had been forced to close down by local strongmen, received death threats and was forced to leave the country. Many of the women who spoke to Human Rights Watch are those who tried to participate in public life, but who have now dropped out in fear and despair.

One of the most depressing of many depressing tales in the report is the story of a women's organisation that was forced to close a project in the Panjshir region because a group of mullahs objected to it. The staff tried to go on despite threats by armed men, but in the end they gave up. "Nothing worked. We felt we had lost."

Even the figure of 40% of voters being female has been questioned by observers, who have noted multiple registration in some areas, while in others fewer than 10% of registered voters were women. Female reporters - able to talk to ordinary women, who are often prevented from talking to male outsiders - talked to many women who obtained cards but were prevented by the men in their families from going to vote.

It is a mistake to put too much store on the election in the lives of the women in Afghanistan. Its outcome is not in much doubt, but even after the election Afghan women will have to go on living in a society in which, beyond Kabul, power is still parcelled out between those brutal regional commanders.

Those female voices that do get heard are still calling for more funding for development and disarmament initiatives in Afghanistan, and the expansion of the UN-backed peacekeeping force in order to create a less threatening situation on the ground. But although our politicians like to use the tale of the women of Afghanistan as a selling point, their real energy and interest has moved on.

In a strange twist of logic, Tony Blair said at Labour's conference that the resistance in Iraq was led by "the same people who stopped Afghan girls going to school ... They are in Iraq for the very reason we should be." The idea that the occupation forces in Iraq are fighting the Taliban is nonsensical.

It is bizarre that the example of the needs of Afghan girls should be used not as a spur for redoubled humanitarian efforts in that country, but as a spur for the occupation of another country. Politicians in the west are keen to use the rhetoric of women's rights as a justification for their policies, and they are refusing to listen to women who say those policies are failing them.

For George Bush and his fellow bushies, the sight of all those flowing blue burkahs at the polls was a photo op designed to increase GWB's weak standing among women who don't like his male attitude of "I don't ever admit to mistakes because I never make any." It is a sad fact that women's real plight in Afghanistan is being swept under the rug to promote the status of our own President. I don't think that man ever has a non-solipistic human emotion.

Guardian Unlimited | Guardian daily comment | The winners are warlords, not women

Bush Reclining.

2004-10-12T14:53:00.000-04:00

Bush Reclining., originally uploaded by ASKHOUDARI.

Should I have called this Reclining Bush?

Bush Revealed

2004-10-12T14:44:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON - A cartoonish painting of President Bush (news - web sites) in the nude has been taken down from the wall at the City Museum of Washington. The picture, called "Man of Leisure, King George," adopts the pose of a famous Impressionist painting, Edouard Manet's "Olympia," that scandalized Paris in 1863, and now hangs in the Gare d'Orsay Museum in Paris. The painting by local artist Kayti Didriksen, shows a caricature of Bush, reclining in the nude on a chaise lounge, his head propped up by pillows. Instead of the female servant who stands behind Olympia's couch, a man in suit and tie resembling Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) stands nearby, holding a cushion with a crown and a miniature oil rig on top of it.

The painting was part of a "living room art" show called "Funky Furniture" — a variety of painted furniture and other items that were set up in the museum last week.