Doobert's Digs

Religion vs Credibility

2006-11-21T13:46:00.000-08:00

When religion loses its credibility
Galileo was persecuted for revealing what we now know to be the truth regarding Earth’s place in our solar system. Today, the issue is homosexuality, and the persecution is not of one man but of millions. Will Christian leaders once again be on the wrong side of history?
By Oliver "Buzz" Thomas

What if Christian leaders are wrong about homosexuality? I suppose, much as a newspaper maintains its credibility by setting the record straight, church leaders would need to do the same:

Correction: Despite what you might have read, heard or been taught throughout your churchgoing life, homosexuality is, in fact, determined at birth and is not to be condemned by God's followers.

Based on a few recent headlines, we won't be seeing that admission anytime soon.

(Illustration by Adrienne Lewis, USA TODAY)

Last week, U.S. Roman Catholic bishops took the position that homosexual attractions are "disordered" and that gays should live closeted lives of chastity. At the same time, North Carolina's Baptist State Convention was preparing to investigate churches that are too gay-friendly. Even the more liberal Presbyterian Church (USA) had been planning to put a minister on trial for conducting a marriage ceremony for two women before the charges were dismissed on a technicality. All this brings me back to the question: What if we're wrong?

Religion's only real commodity, after all, is its moral authority. Lose that, and we lose our credibility. Lose credibility, and we might as well close up shop.

It's happened to Christianity before, most famously when we dug in our heels over Galileo's challenge to the biblical view that the Earth, rather than the sun, was at the center of our solar system. You know the story. Galileo was persecuted for what turned out to be incontrovertibly true. For many, especially in the scientific community, Christianity never recovered.

This time, Christianity is in danger of squandering its moral authority by continuing its pattern of discrimination against gays and lesbians in the face of mounting scientific evidence that sexual orientation has little or nothing to do with choice. To the contrary, whether sexual orientation arises as a result of the mother's hormones or the child's brain structure or DNA, it is almost certainly an accident of birth. The point is this: Without choice, there can be no moral culpability.

Answer in Scriptures

So, why are so many church leaders (not to mention Orthodox Jewish and Muslim leaders) persisting in their view that homosexuality is wrong despite a growing stream of scientific evidence that is likely to become a torrent in the coming years? The answer is found in Leviticus 18. "You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination."

As a former "the Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it" kind of guy, I am sympathetic with any Christian who accepts the Bible at face value. But here's the catch. Leviticus is filled with laws imposing the death penalty for everything from eating catfish to sassing your parents. If you accept one as the absolute, unequivocal word of God, you must accept them all.

For many of gay America's loudest critics, the results are unthinkable. First, no more football. At least not without gloves. Handling a pig skin is an abomination. Second, no more Saturday games even if you can get a new ball. Violating the Sabbath is a capital offense according to Leviticus. For the over-40 crowd, approaching the altar of God with a defect in your sight is taboo, but you'll have plenty of company because those menstruating or with disabilities are also barred.

The truth is that mainstream religion has moved beyond animal sacrifice, slavery and the host of primitive rituals described in Leviticus centuries ago. Selectively hanging onto these ancient proscriptions for gays and lesbians exclusively is unfair according to anybody's standard of ethics. We lawyers call it "selective enforcement," and in civil affairs it's illegal.

A better reading of Scripture starts with the book of Genesis and the grand pronouncement about the world God created and all those who dwelled in it. "And, the Lord saw that it was good." If God created us and if everything he created is good, how can a gay person be guilty of being anything more than what God created him or her to be?

Turning to the New Testament, the writings of the Apostle Paul at first lend credence to the notion that homosexuality is a sin, until you consider that Paul most likely is referring to the Roman practice of pederasty, a form of pedophilia common in the ancient world. Successful older men often took boys into their homes as concubines, lovers or sexual slaves. Today, such sexual exploitation of minors is no longer tolerated. The point is that the sort of long-term, committed, same-sex relationships that are being debated today are not addressed in the New Testament. It distorts the biblical witness to apply verses written in one historical context (i.e. sexual exploitation of children) to contemporary situations between two monogamous partners of the same sex. Sexual promiscuity is condemned by the Bible whether it's between gays or straights. Sexual fidelity is not.

What would Jesus do?

For those who have lingering doubts, dust off your Bibles and take a few hours to reacquaint yourself with the teachings of Jesus. You won't find a single reference to homosexuality. There are teachings on money, lust, revenge, divorce, fasting and a thousand other subjects, but there is nothing on homosexuality. Strange, don't you think, if being gay were such a moral threat?

On the other hand, Jesus spent a lot of time talking about how we should treat others. First, he made clear it is not our role to judge. It is God's. ("Judge not lest you be judged." Matthew 7:1) And, second, he commanded us to love other people as we love ourselves.

So, I ask you. Would you want to be discriminated against? Would you want to lose your job, housing or benefits because of something over which you had no control? Better yet, would you like it if society told you that you couldn't visit your lifelong partner in the hospital or file a claim on his behalf if he were murdered?

The suffering that gay and lesbian people have endured at the hands of religion is incalculable, but they can look expectantly to the future for vindication. Scientific facts, after all, are a stubborn thing. Even our religious beliefs must finally yield to them as the church in its battle with Galileo ultimately realized. But for religion, the future might be ominous. Watching the growing conflict between medical science and religion over homosexuality is like watching a train wreck from a distance. You can see it coming for miles and sense the inevitable conclusion, but you're powerless to stop it. The more church leaders dig in their heels, the worse it's likely to be.

Oliver "Buzz" Thomas is a Baptist minister and author of an upcoming book, 10 Things Your Minister Wants to Tell You (But Can't Because He Needs the Job).

Stem Cell Clarity

2006-11-15T14:13:00.000-08:00

From a molecular biologist. His research is in an area of cell biology related to cancer. As such, he is following the findings and debate surrounding stem cell research very closely.

First let's define what stem cells are. There are two major kinds, adult and embryonic.

A stem cell can be roughly defined as a cell that can divide, such that one or both of the resulting daughter cells can go on to become a progenitor (or founder) for a large number of other cells that have a specific functions (brain cells, muscle, bone, etc). In adult tissue the stem cell remains a stem cell, providing new progenitor cells throughout its lifetime, but only dividing slowly when new cells are needed. These are adult stem cells. In the embryo, a stem cell could continue dividing rapidly, producing not only progenitor cells of a particular cell type, but also other stem cells.

As adults, we are likely to carry stem cells in all major tissues of our body, including brain. Much effort has taken place over the last decade in trying to identify and isolate these cells (without compromising the function of the tissue). For example, in skin researchers have shown that the stem cells are located in a small bulge structure that is part of every hair follicle. Thus, if we can isolate enough of these from for example a burn victim, we could theoretically resupply the necessary skin cells in the laboratory using the stem cells as the progenitors. These cells could then be grafted onto the wounded areas, without all the graft-host rejection problems when donor skin is used. One can now imagine similar strategies for replacing damaged brain tissue (Parkinsons, Alzheimers, accidents, etc), lung tissue, liver, kidney, muscle, and so forth.

Why take stem cells from embryos if we can do the above? That is more a practical problem. Right now skin and bone marrow are amongst the few adult tissues where identifying and isolating the stem cells can be done efficiently. And even in these cases it will be some years before these techniques are widely applied clinically. Embryonic stem cells on the other hand are usually easier to propagate in culture (they divide much more rapidly), and often can be directed towards a particular cell type. The holy grail in stem cell research would be to isolate cells that can be directed to become any cell type, using the right culture conditions.

Advances in stem cell technology are coming every day, whether made in the US or abroad. In fact, with the current federal funding restrictions, we can be assured that most of the major advances will not be in America, unless funded by private sources, as is taking place in California and Massachusetts (not coincidently blue states). We need to continue stem cell research if we are ever to advance beyond the need to isolate stem cells from embryos.

Those whose power is based on clinging to tradition and maintaining the status quo (religious leaders, conservative politicians) are once again standing in the way of scientific advancement. And as always, they stand on the wrong side of history.

The children and grandchildren of people like George Bush and Pat Robertson (and the Pope, in a non-literal sense) will live longer and healthier lives, not because of anything they've done, but in spite of their ignorance.

Seven blunders of the world that lead to violence

2006-11-15T14:12:00.000-08:00

"Seven blunders of the world that lead to violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, politics without principle," - Mahatma Gandhi.

Some Levity

2006-11-15T14:11:00.000-08:00

These bumper stickers were compiled by Jerry Paull, a
former Methodist minister in Lakeside, Ohio, who
writes:
"The following are actual bumper stickers on cars. I
didn't write any of them. I'm only the messenger.
If they make you laugh, good. If they make you cry,
good. If they make you angry, that's good too."

BLIND FAITH IN BAD LEADERSHIP IS NOT PATRIOTISM

IF YOU'RE NOT OUTRAGED, YOU'RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION

IF YOU SUPPORTED BUSH, A YELLOW RIBBON WON'T MAKE UP
FOR IT

POVERTY, HEALTH CARE, AND HOMELESSNESS ARE MORAL
ISSUES

OF COURSE IT HURTS. YOU'RE GETTING SCREWED BY AN
ELEPHANT

BUSH LIED, AND YOU KNOW IT

RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM: A THREAT ABROAD, A THREAT
AT HOME

GOD BLESS EVERYONE (No exceptions)

BUSH SPENT YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY ON HIS WAR

IF YOU SUPPORT BUSH'S WAR, WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE?
SHUT UP AND SHIP OUT

FEEL SAFER NOW?

I'D RATHER HAVE A PRESIDENT WHO SCREWED HIS INTERN
THAN ONE WHO SCREWED HIS COUNTRY

MY VALUES? FREE SPEECH. EQUALITY. LIBERTY.
EDUCATION. TOLERANCE

IS IT 2008 YET?

DISSENT IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF PATRIOTISM -- Thomas
Jefferson

DON'T BLAME ME. I VOTED AGAINST BUSH -- TWICE!

ANNOY A CONSERVATIVE: THINK FOR YOURSELF

VISUALIZE IMPEACHMENT

HEY BUSH! WHERE'S BIN LADEN?

STOP MAD COWBOY DISEASE

GEORGE W. BUSH: MAKING TERRORISTS FASTER THAN HE CAN
KILL THEM

KEEP YOUR THEOCRACY OFF MY DEMOCRACY

DEMOCRATS ARE SEXY. WHOEVER HEARD OF A GOOD PIECE OF ELEPHANT?

ASPIRING CANADIAN

DON'T CONFUSE DYING FOR OIL WITH FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM

STEM CELL RESEARCH IS PRO-LIFE

HATE, GREED, IGNORANCE: WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

HONOR OUR TROOPS: DEMAND THE TRUTH

REBUILD IRAQ? WHY NOT SPEND $87 BILLION ON AMERICA?

FACT: BUSH OIL 1999 - $19 BARREL, 2006 - $70 BARREL

THE LAST TIME RELIGION CONTROLLED POLITICS, PEOPLE GOT
BURNED AT THE STAKE

I'LL GIVE UP MY CHOICE WHEN JOHN ROBERTS GETS PREGNANT

HOW ON EARTH CAN 59,411,287 PEOPLE BE SO DUMB?

Democratic Reminder

2006-11-15T14:08:00.000-08:00

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...from www.dailykos.com

A Message to the Democratic Leadership:

Okay, you're in and they're out. Welcome to the winner's circle. Since C&J is the most widely read publication on "The Hill" (named after Senator Hillary Clinton) I know you're expecting me to provide some personal guidance. Consider this a freebie:

Do the nation's bidding, not just the Democrats' and certainly not just your own (one Joe Lieberman is enough, thank you).

If I have to fork over a third of my income to you guys in taxes, I damn well expect you to be responsible with it. My broker doesn't take my money with the intent of building bridges to nowhere and neither should you.

I'm retiring in 23 years. I don't expect sweets and flowers but I do expect Social Security to be strong and non-privatized. Make it so and keep it so.

Silly flag-burning and gay marriage amendments are a waste of everyone's time. They are now off the table. A constitutional amendment establishing a permanent three-day weekend is back on the front burner.

Communicate with the netroots once in a while. Come to YearlyKos in August. Talk to us---we're a big ball of Democratic fusion (or is it fission? Whichever one doesn't make us literally explode, that's us) and we're here to help. That said, we will be watching and judging you based on spine, principle, talent and the swimsuit competition.

President Bush is not a moron---he just plays one on TV and in person. To put it diplomatically: when dealing with "43" "31 Percent," trust but verify. To put it less diplomatically: don't trust him ever.

The days of Republicans calling our side terrorist sympathizers are over. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid can show you how to deliver a right hook to the jaw. If that's what it takes to stop this nonsense, so be it.

America's health care system is ranked lower than Cuba's. Fix that.

There is much Republican-fueled chicanery to investigate and many subpoenas to issue. Start with the war profiteers, the real traitors in our midst. Make them pay for putting their country club lifestyles ahead of our soldiers' lives.

You will memorize the following phrases and use them when the traditional media tries to push an inaccurate frame or outright lie about you or the Democratic agenda: "Where do you come up with this stuff?" "Prove it!" "Who said that?" "You've got to be kidding---is that what you really think?" "You want to step outside and tell me Democrats are weak?" You will not let the talking heads off the hook until they either prove their assertion or they admit they're full of bull. If the interviewer has been a total jerk, end the interview with, "Thanks for having me on. I hope next time we talk you'll do your homework first."

We understand that democracy is messy. We get that you're all jockeying for position and protecting your little fiefdoms---it goes with the territory. Just try and keep it a notch or two below Level Embarrassing, okay? If you're stooping, you're losing.

You promised to bring transparency and accountability back to Congress. Good. We the People are your boss and we pay your salary. We deserve to see what you're doing in our name.

For our men and women in uniform: 1) Body armor NOW. 2) Vehicle armor NOW. 3) Full funding of VA services NOW. 4) Unrelenting pressure on the president NOW to present his "plan" for getting us out of Iraq. (He, not you, is the Commander-in-Chief. This is his hot potato.) Our troops have been through---and continue to go through---hell. Let's reverse the Republican course and start showing `em some goddam respect.

You've got a helluva mix of seasoned veterans and new recruits with a golden opportunity that's been a long time coming. We don't expect you to be perfect. But we do expect you to be competent. Dear Lord, at least be that.

Sincerely,

---Bill in Portland Maine
American Pundit of Great Influence

Jim Webb Seems to Get IT

2006-11-15T14:04:00.000-08:00

Class Struggle
American workers have a chance to be heard.

BY JIM WEBB
Wednesday, November 15, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

The most important--and unfortunately the least debated--issue in politics today is our society's steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century. America's top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years. It is not unfair to say that they are literally living in a different country. Few among them send their children to public schools; fewer still send their loved ones to fight our wars. They own most of our stocks, making the stock market an unreliable indicator of the economic health of working people. The top 1% now takes in an astounding 16% of national income, up from 8% in 1980. The tax codes protect them, just as they protect corporate America, through a vast system of loopholes.

Incestuous corporate boards regularly approve compensation packages for chief executives and others that are out of logic's range. As this newspaper has reported, the average CEO of a sizeable corporation makes more than $10 million a year, while the minimum wage for workers amounts to about $10,000 a year, and has not been raised in nearly a decade. When I graduated from college in the 1960s, the average CEO made 20 times what the average worker made. Today, that CEO makes 400 times as much.

In the age of globalization and outsourcing, and with a vast underground labor pool from illegal immigration, the average American worker is seeing a different life and a troubling future. Trickle-down economics didn't happen. Despite the vaunted all-time highs of the stock market, wages and salaries are at all-time lows as a percentage of the national wealth. At the same time, medical costs have risen 73% in the last six years alone. Half of that increase comes from wage-earners' pockets rather than from insurance, and 47 million Americans have no medical insurance at all.

Manufacturing jobs are disappearing. Many earned pension programs have collapsed in the wake of corporate "reorganization." And workers' ability to negotiate their futures has been eviscerated by the twin threats of modern corporate America: If they complain too loudly, their jobs might either be outsourced overseas or given to illegal immigrants.

This ever-widening divide is too often ignored or downplayed by its beneficiaries. A sense of entitlement has set in among elites, bordering on hubris. When I raised this issue with corporate leaders during the recent political campaign, I was met repeatedly with denials, and, from some, an overt lack of concern for those who are falling behind. A troubling arrogance is in the air among the nation's most fortunate. Some shrug off large-scale economic and social dislocations as the inevitable byproducts of the "rough road of capitalism." Others claim that it's the fault of the worker or the public education system, that the average American is simply not up to the international challenge, that our education system fails us, or that our workers have become spoiled by old notions of corporate paternalism.
Still others have gone so far as to argue that these divisions are the natural results of a competitive society. Furthermore, an unspoken insinuation seems to be inundating our national debate: Certain immigrant groups have the "right genetics" and thus are natural entrants to the "overclass," while others, as well as those who come from stock that has been here for 200 years and have not made it to the top, simply don't possess the necessary attributes.

Most Americans reject such notions. But the true challenge is for everyone to understand that the current economic divisions in society are harmful to our future. It should be the first order of business for the new Congress to begin addressing these divisions, and to work to bring true fairness back to economic life. Workers already understand this, as they see stagnant wages and disappearing jobs.

America's elites need to understand this reality in terms of their own self-interest. A recent survey in the Economist warned that globalization was affecting the U.S. differently than other "First World" nations, and that white-collar jobs were in as much danger as the blue-collar positions which have thus far been ravaged by outsourcing and illegal immigration. That survey then warned that "unless a solution is found to sluggish real wages and rising inequality, there is a serious risk of a protectionist backlash" in America that would take us away from what they view to be the "biggest economic stimulus in world history."

More troubling is this: If it remains unchecked, this bifurcation of opportunities and advantages along class lines has the potential to bring a period of political unrest. Up to now, most American workers have simply been worried about their job prospects. Once they understand that there are (and were) clear alternatives to the policies that have dislocated careers and altered futures, they will demand more accountability from the leaders who have failed to protect their interests. The "Wal-Marting" of cheap consumer products brought in from places like China, and the easy money from low-interest home mortgage refinancing, have softened the blows in recent years. But the balance point is tipping in both cases, away from the consumer and away from our national interest.

The politics of the Karl Rove era were designed to distract and divide the very people who would ordinarily be rebelling against the deterioration of their way of life. Working Americans have been repeatedly seduced at the polls by emotional issues such as the predictable mantra of "God, guns, gays, abortion and the flag" while their way of life shifted ineluctably beneath their feet. But this election cycle showed an electorate that intends to hold government leaders accountable for allowing every American a fair opportunity to succeed.

With this new Congress, and heading into an important presidential election in 2008, American workers have a chance to be heard in ways that have eluded them for more than a decade. Nothing is more important for the health of our society than to grant them the validity of their concerns. And our government leaders have no greater duty than to confront the growing unfairness in this age of globalization.

Mr. Webb is the Democratic senator-elect from Virginia.

Another great post on my travels.....

2006-10-25T17:37:00.000-07:00

From: www.fatladysings.typepad.com

October 21, 2006

What is Hope?

Senator Barak Obama (D-IL), addressing the DNC in 2004, gave hope to so many of us as he reaffirmed the genius of America. He quoted these words from the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." And then he talked about the true genius of America: that these simple dreams let us put our children to bed at night, knowing they are free from harm. "That we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door. That we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe or hiring somebody's son. That we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution, and that our votes will he counted — or at least, most of the time."

He was speaking before a crowd who needed igniting, on a national podium, before a crucial election. Our nation stood at a turning point: the choices were the hammer of fear, or the glimmer of hope. And we chose fear. The end result of that choice is the Military Commissions Act of 2006 which turns bad policy into bad law. It strips away the very fundamental nature of our being, as Americans: that we will not be awakened in the middle of the night by a knock at the door for something we said, or wrote, or thought. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 means that any of us can be arrested and held without being charged - it strips away the meaning of the Writ of Habeas Corpus, and it shreds the First Amendment.

And still, still I have hope that this sleeping giant that has become the American People will wake up and say "NO MORE." We are less than 20 days before a mid-term election which actually means something. Traditionally voter turnout at mid-term elections is low. Yet I have hope that Americans will vote, and will vote for the truth, and for dignity, and for hope rather than for the hammer of fear.

Obama spoke about a common belief: A belief that we are connected as one people. If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief — I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper — that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. "E pluribus unum." Out of many, one.

Still, the Republicans divide us, demonize us, hammer us with fear. The result of negative advertising is the voters lose. In an upcoming Cable Television ad, the Republicans are featuring the image and words of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and a warning to voters that "these are the stakes" in the November 7 election.

And tell me, please, how after six years of Republican leadership we are safer? Bin Laden remains at large, and Bush himself has said repeatedly that he's not concerned with Bin Laden. But the Republicans prey upon fear, and use it like a hammer.

I prefer hope. I prefer the path of dignity. I prefer the path of debate, discourse, disagreement and truth. I prefer the AUDACITY of hope. Obama said of the 2004 election that the choice was the choice of the politics of cynicism or the politics of hope. That holds true today, more than ever. We were a great nation, although flawed and capable of great mistakes. We can be again.

Dare to hope, and dare to not give up. Wake up!

Posted by Diva Jood in A Call to Arms

Moral? I think not.

2006-10-25T17:20:00.000-07:00

Excellent post from: http://fatladysings.typepad.com/

Moral? I think not.
A guest post by Kelley Bell:

http://kelleybell.blogspot.com

When I read about the moral values debates in our country, I can not help but compare our rhetoric to that of the Islamists.

While reading news articles about U.S.conservatives pushing for Pro- Life and marriage laws, I also read how the Muslims are prohibiting women from swimming at “family beaches.” (A powerful cleric in Somalia said women are welcome to gather jars of ocean water, then take it home and “bathe in it” if they want to enjoy a day at the beach.) Apparently, having the women swim while fully covered in a giant black bag was not moral enough for these folks. It seems, no matter where the line is drawn, someone wants to move it even further.

The problem is not that Muslim and Christian conservatives value morality; rather, it lies in the fact, they both feel they have the duty to impose their version on the populace. Folks, morality can not be compelled. It must be learned, and embraced as a personal choice. If you feel strongly that your particular framework for morality is correct, and then by all means, spread it, by setting a good example for others to follow. But when you cross the line, and demand compliance through force, fear, or rule of law, be aware, the devil is behind your deeds.

It strikes me as ironic, how similar we are to the enemy we fight. Both sides seek a conservative moral world order, deeply rooted in Aberhamic tradition, and both sides focus on sex, and the control of women’s bodies to achieve their aim…Pretty shallow thinking, for a world with scores of bigger problems.

Quite frankly, as a woman, I am offended. I am quite capable of defining my own moral values without the strong arm of the law, thank you very much, and I am deeply saddened when I realize the horrors in Dafur are of less importance to Washington than my sex life.

Ladies, enough is enough; All this ranting and raving needs to come to an end. It is time we use our votes to step in and clean house.

Women represent over 50% of the vote, and account for somewhere near 75% of consumer spending in the United States, yet we comprise less than 25% of policy makers.

If we would stand together, and support each other, we could become the most powerful force in government. We could put an end to the attack ads, and the screaming extremists on the airwaves. We could change the focus of the debate to issues of world hunger, world peace, quality healthcare, and protection of the eco-system for future generations. We could change the model of “superpower” from military might to humanitarian rights.

We could bring the voice of reason into American politics, if we simply stood together and set an example of our own.

Let's shift the moral debate, and move the focus of politics out of the bedroom, and over to issues that really matter. For instance:

* The World Health Organization ranked the United States 37th in health performance. The irony is that the United States spends more per capita for health care than any other nation in the world" (The European Dream, pp.79-80).

* "The U.S.and South Africa are the only two developed countries in the world that do not provide health care for all their citizens" (The European Dream, p.80).

* Lack of health insurance coverage causes 18,000 unnecessary American deaths a year. (That's six times the number of people killed on 9/11.) (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005.)

* Women are 70 percent more likely to die in childbirth in America than in Europe. (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).

* The United States is 41st in the world in infant mortality. (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).

(I can not even comprehend how the Pro Life people can claim any moral dignity at all on this issue when they throw millions of dollars at in the political arena while ignoring this statistic. It represents the worst form of hypocrisy imaginable.)

* Three million six hundred thousand Americans ran out of unemployment insurance last year; (NYT, Jan. 9, 2005).

* "U.S.childhood poverty ranks 22nd, or second to last, among the developed nations. (The European Dream, p.81).

* Twelve million American families--more than 10 percent of all U.S. households--"continue to struggle, and not always successfully, to feed themselves." Families that "had members who actually went hungry at some point last year" numbered 3.9 million (NYT, Nov. 22, 2004).

* The leading cause of death of pregnant women in this country is murder (CNN, Dec. 14, 2004).

* Japan, China, Taiwan, and South Korea hold 40 percent of our government debt. "By helping keep mortgage rates from rising, China has come to play an enormous and little-noticed role in sustaining the American housing boom" (NYT, Dec. 4, 2004). “Read that twice. We owe our housing boom to China, because they want us to keep buying all that stuff they manufacture.”

* Bush: 62,027,582 votes. Kerry: 59,026,003 votes. Number of eligible voters who didn't show up: 79,279,000 (NYT, Dec. 26, 2004).

The Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University offers these statistics on women in American politics:

Congress: women hold 15.1%, of the seats in Congress: 14.0%, of the Senate, and 15.4%, in the House.

State Legislature: 22.8%, of state legislators in the United States are women. Women hold 20.8%, of state senate seats and 23.6%, of state house seats.

…And we have never elected a woman president.

Moral? I think not.

Posted by Kelley Bell in A Call to Arms

Gitmo Torture may let 20th Hijacker walk....way to go George !!!

2006-10-25T12:04:00.003-07:00

Full story at this link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15361462/

Gitmo Torture may let 20th Hijacker walk....way to go George !!!

2006-10-25T12:04:00.002-07:00

Full story at this link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15361462/

Gitmo Torture may let 20th Hijacker walk....way to go George !!!

2006-10-25T12:04:00.001-07:00

Full story at this link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15361462/

Gitmo Torture may let 20th Hijacker walk....way to go George !!!

2006-10-25T12:04:00.000-07:00

Full story at this link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15361462/

Kevin Tillman

2006-10-25T09:09:00.000-07:00

It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we got out.

Much has happened since we handed over our voice:

Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.

Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few “bad apples” in the military.

Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It’s interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.

Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.

Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.

Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.
Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.
Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.
Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.
Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.
Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.
Somehow torture is tolerated.
Somehow lying is tolerated.
Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.
Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.
Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.

Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.

Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance.

Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.

Somehow this is tolerated.
Somehow nobody is accountable for this.

In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don’t be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that “somehow” was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.

Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat’s birthday.

Brother and Friend of Pat Tillman,

Kevin Tillman

The Real Face of the Republican Party....Exposed

2006-10-04T19:27:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Mark Foley and the unmasked Republican Party

Denny Hastert is smack in the middle of one of the tawdriest and ugliest sex scandals in American political history. As a result, he has been the target of aggressive criticism, even from a few members of his own party, and, by all accounts, is desperately battling to keep his job.

In need of moral absolution and support from a respected and admired figure who possesses moral authority among Hastert's morally upstanding Republican base, to whom does Hastert turn? A priest or respected reverend? An older wise political statesman with a reputation for integrity and dignity? No, there is only one person with sufficient moral credibility among the increasingly uncomfortable moralistic Republican base who can give Hastert the blessing he needs:

Rush Limbaugh. And so that is where Hastert went yesterday in order to obtain the Decree that He Did Nothing Wrong.

As much as I tried -- and, trust me, I really tried -- I couldn't expunge this picture from my mind yesterday because, in all its visceral hideousness, it really illustrates what I think is the principal reason why this Foley scandal is resonating so strongly. This is the real face of the ruling Republican party, and it has been unmasked -- violently -- by the exposure of Mark Foley and his allies who protected and harbored him.

If the term "moral degenerate" has any validity and can be fairly applied to anyone, there are few people who merit that term more than Rush Limbaugh. He is the living and breathing embodiment of moral degeneracy, with his countless overlapping sexual affairs, his series of shattered, dissolved marriages, his hedonistic and illegal drug abuse, his jaunts, with fistfulls of Viagra (but no wife), to an impoverished Latin American island renowned for its easy access to underage female prostitutes.

Yet that is who Hastert chose as the High Priest of the Values Voters to whom he made his pilgrimage and from whom he received his benediction. The difference between Rush Limbaugh and Mark Foley, to the extent there is one, is one of hedonistic tastes, not moral level. Rush Limbaugh isn't just tolerated within the party that stands for religious piety and moral strength. He is a leader of it, arguably the leader of its most righteous wing. Is it really all that surprising that a political movement that has chosen a moral degenerate like Rush Limbaugh as one of its most revered and morally respected leaders is not all that bothered by -- and therefore actively harbors -- the Mark Foleys of the world?

The individuals who never tire of making public displays of how concerned they are with our moral fabric -- the Kathryn Jean Lopezs of the world who find Bill Clinton's sex life such a cause for condemnation and who publicly crusade to have John Kerry shunned by good Catholics because of how immoral he is and interrupt such crusades only in order to coo with giddy love and profound respect for Rush Limbaugh -- are well aware that their party is filled to the rim with sleazy, corrupt hedonists with as bloated and piggish a sense of entitlement as can be imagined. But as long as they help keep the party in power, they are not just tolerated but embraced. That dynamic is a core operating principle of the Bush-led Republican Party, and it is why Mark Foley was able to rise within it despite its being an "open secret" in Washington GOP power circles -- a very open secret -- exactly what he was.

When this scandal first broke, I spent a few hours researching federal law with regard to Internet sexual activities and "minors" and, while I knew that Foley was involved in enacting some of these bills, I was really amazed how far beyond that it went. Mark Foley was literally at the center of virtually every activity and law and program over the last 10 years ostensibly designed to battle the evils of Internet sex and minors. Mark Foley spent 12 years in Congress and it is not an exaggeration to say that he basically devoted his whole Congressional career to adding decades of imprisonment on to the mandatory punishments for those who use the Internet to talk about sex with children. He didn't just condemn that which he was doing. He made the crusade against it his life's work, in the most vocal and public way possible.

Mark Foley isn't some isolated case of shocking hypocrisy. Quite the contrary. People who have a publicly and vocally expressed obsession with other people's moral behavior and who want to use the power of the Government to enforce that obsession -- the Rick Santorums and Rush Limbaughs and Newt Gingrichs and Jim Bakkers and Ralph Reeds and Mark Foleys of the world -- are almost always fighting their own demons, not anyone else's. It is so important for them to parade around as moral protectors and moral warriors precisely because they have no other way to cleanse themselves, despite being in desperate need of a cleansing. That's why, all over the Internet, one easily finds things like this:

STATEMENT OF ATTORNEY GENERAL JOHN ASHCROFT ON THE PASSAGE OF THE SMITH-POMEROY-FOLEY CHILD OBSCENITY AND PORNOGRAPHY PREVENTION ACT

"I am pleased that the House of Representatives passed the Child Obscenity and Pornography Prevention Act, a bill that will strengthen the ability of law enforcement to protect children from abuse and exploitation. I urge the Senate to bring this important legislation to the floor as soon as possible.

"I want to thank Chairman Sensenbrenner for guiding this important legislation through the Judiciary Commitee (sic), and Congressmen Lamar Smith, Mark Foley, and Earl Pomeroy for their leadership on this bill. They have worked tirelessly to protect the health and safety of children.

"The Department of Justice remains solid in its commitment to identify, investigate, and prosecute those who sexually exploit children. I look forward to working with Congress to see to it that this legislation becomes law, so that we may continue in our efforts to eliminate child pornography and prosecute offenders."

This isn't some "great find" or specially revealing document. Documents like this are everywhere, because this is the twisted, warped, dysfunctional and rotted political rule to which we have been subjected for the last six years and even before that (though not with the unchallenged power it has now). Mark Foley is the GOP face of efforts to combat the use of the Internet to sexualize minors, and Rush Limbaugh is their High Moral Priest.
We have been barraged with laws, programs, sermons, demagoguery and all sorts of moral demonization from a political movement whose most powerful pundit is a multiple-times-divorced drug addict who flamboyantly cavorts around with a new girlfriend every few months in between Viagra-fueled jaunts to the Dominican Republic. It is a political movement whose legacy will be torture, waterboards, naked, sadomasochistic games in Iraqi dungeons (or, to Rush, "blowing off steam"), with all sorts of varied sleaze and corruption deeply engrained throughout its DNA -- all propped up by a facade of moralism and dependent upon the support of those who have been propagandized into believing that they are voting for the Party of Values and Morals.

It is not a coincidence that the GOP was harboring someone like Mark Foley within its highest ranks while their most powerful political officials purposely looked the other way and even actively helped to conceal what he was up to, thereby enabling him to continue. After all, even now that this conduct has been exposed, their instinct -- all the way to the highest levels -- is to excuse and defend those leaders and offer up the most disgusting defenses -- all because preservation of their political power depends on it. This is not some bizarre aberration. This is how they operate and it is what they are. And the Mark Foley scandal is making it virutally impossible for anyone to convincingly deny it any longer.

posted by Glenn Greenwald | 8:55 AM www.glenngreenwald.blogspot.com

Condi - Another new job?

2006-10-03T17:16:00.000-07:00

"If Condoleezza Rice Were A Mall Security Guard"

"Ms. Rice, the Banana Republic has been looted by armed thugs and the Sunglasses Hut is on fire!"

"Nobody could have foreseen such a thing." (blows nose)

"What are you blowing your nose on?"

(unwads paper) "Some kinda Saf-T-Guards memorandum from last month: 'Armed Thugs Determined To Strike Panda Express.' Whatever that means."

"I think it means that armed thugs were going to hide in vats of Panda Express sweet and sour sauce and pop out during the lunch rush, terrorizing the customers."
"Jesus, like anybody could have seen that coming.""Well, it happened at Northcross Mall about a year ago. Didn't you get the continuity notebook from the previous security guard?"
"I don't do historical documents. I'm all about the future.""What about the JC Penney floor manager? Didn't he mention the skateboarding problem?"

"I can't really remember what I even had for breakfast this morning."

"But we have it on videotape!"

"Fucking stop riding me, asshole, I gotta get a manicure at Visible Changes and hit the Payless Shoes clearance sale!"

"That's the kind of spunk I like! You're promoted to Highland Mall Armed Punk Liaison! Long may your community dialogues be facilitated!"

More here for the metaphorically impaired. You can also construct your own Dennis Hastert as the general manager of a Chuck E. Cheese Funtime Pizza Parlor scenario, so long as it ends with his being fired after overlooking the shenanigans of the deviant employee who installed a risque soundtrack for the animatronic animal musicians. Or skimming cheesy pepperoni rolls for personal consumption.

From: www.norbizness.com

FU GWB

2006-10-03T17:08:00.000-07:00

Found the following on www.fuckyougeorgebush.com ... I find it cathartic and reminds me of the rude pundit. LOL

Fuck you, George W. Bush.

Fuck you for not cutting off your vacation when you got the PDB on August 6, 2001. Fuck you for telling the briefer, “You covered your ass.” Fuck you for those seven minutes in that Florida classroom.

Fuck you for not listening to the warnings of Richard Clarke. Fuck you for appointing John Ashcroft, who told aides that he didn’t want to hear anything about terrorism.

Fuck you for using the horrific deaths of 2,973 on 9/11/2001 to justify the invasion of Iraq, which we now know you had planned since the day you took office, and started ratcheting up within days of 9/11.

Fuck you for squandering the good will and sympathy of the world that existed on 9/12, when even people in Tehran mourned our loss. Fuck you for thumbing your nose at our allies, who were willing to commit unlimited resources to helping us catch the perpetrators of 911, but most of whom rightly couldn’t see the logic of invading a country that had nothing to do with it.

Fuck you for promising to catch or kill Osama Bin Laden, but quickly dropping that pursuit, and to allowing him to still breath the sweet air of freedom, now 5 fucking years after his minions murdered our citizens. Fuck you for letting him escape at Tora Bora, when a decisive or even competent leader would have committed enough forces to make sure he was caught. Fuck you for pulling our Special Forces from the pursuit and sending them to Iraq. Fuck you for disbanding the unit changed with tracking him down. Fuck you for telling the American people that you just don’t think about bin Laden. Fuck you for not thinking about him. Fuck you for allowing Pakistan to pretend to try to catch him. Fuck you for letting them cut a deal with the Taliban. Fuck you for appointing as CIA director a partisan hack, Porter Goss, who said that we could catch bin Laden but for political niceties.

Fuck you for not enacting the 911 commission’s recommendations. Fuck you for not protecting the ports. Fuck you for not protecting chemical and nuclear plants. Fuck you for turning Homeland Security into a corrupt bureaucracy that spends more money guarding flea markets and petting zoos than it does major cities.

Fuck you for claiming, both yourself and through your minions, that Iraq was linked to 911. Fuck you for claiming that the clusterfuck that you created in Iraq is part of the war against terrorism. Fuck you for invading and occupying Iraq INSTEAD of fighting the war against the terrorists who attached us on 911. Fuck you for insisting that Iraq had WMD. Fuck you for not allowing Hanz Blitz and team to confirm that. Fuck you for telling them to leave Iraq before they proved to the world that you were wrong.

Fuck you for squandering the lives of nearly 3,000 brave Americans in your unprovoked war. Fuck you for not sending those brave Americans to fight Al-Qaeda instead. Fuck you for directly or indirectly causing the deaths of 50,000 to 100,000 or more innocent Iraqis.

Fuck you for using 911 as a political cudgel against your foes. Fuck you for impugning the patriotism of Max Cleland. Fuck you for calling Democrats weak on terror. Fuck you for swiftboating Kerry. Fuck you for ratcheting up the terror alert every time your poll numbers require it.

Fuck you for using 911 as yet another justification for cutting taxes. Fuck you for cutting taxes for yourself, Dick Cheney, Mary Cheney, the Bush twins, and Paris Hilton, while sticking my kids with the bill, and running up more federal debt than any president in history. Fuck you for blaming that debt on 911.

Fuck you for pissing away $313,679,500,000 of our tax money in Iraq. Fuck you for not spending that on finding and killing bin Laden. Fuck you for not spending that money working to prevent more bin Ladens and more Al-Qaedas from popping up. Fuck you for insuring that they will.

Fuck you for not knowing the difference between Sunni and Shia. Fuck you for not listening to those who warned that the aftermath of the invasion would be chaos. Fuck you for not planning for it. Fuck you for continuing to claim that it’s all good even as it gets worse day by day. Fuck you for hiring Rumsfeld, who, we’ve recently learned, forbade his staff to even talk about postwar planning. Fuck you for pretending that all you need to make a democrasy is a bunch of purple fingers.

Fuck all the people who work for you, who have all been complicit in your failure to fight the war against Al Qaeda. Fuck Cheney and Rumsfeld and Rice, of course, and fuck the theorists, Perle and Wolfowitz and Feith, and fuck the chickenshit enablers, Powell and Armitage, and fuck the mouthpieces, McClellen, Mehlman, Gillespie, and especially Fleisher. Fuck every staff member, fuck every intern, fuck anybody and everybody who worked in your administration and didn’t go screaming to the media about your mendacity and incompetence. And fuck all the old “grown up” republicans, like James Baker and George HW Bush, for not smacking you down before you caused some serious damage.

Fuck all the people in the mainstream media, who have failed to this day to remind the public that bin Laden is still alive and that you have failed to find him. Fuck the right wing media for hypocrisy and their non-stop lies about everything you do.

Fuck all of the people in Congress who have supported you, your war, and your refusal to protect the nation against further attack from al Quada.

Fuck everybody who voted for you in 2004. They get a pass for 2000, cause they didn’t know any better but in 2004 everybody should have known better, so fuck all of you - even if you’re a relative of mine, in which case, double fuck you!

Fuck you, Tony Blair, for being Bush’s bitch. Fuck you, Supreme Court, for appointing him.

And finally, for not storming the gates of the White House tomorrow and tossing the incompetent son of a bitch out on his ear for letting bin Laden get away with 911, fuck each and every one of us.

Soviet America

2006-10-03T15:23:00.000-07:00

By Charlie Brennan, Rocky Mountain News
October 3, 2006

A Denver-area man filed a lawsuit today against a member of the Secret Service for causing him to be arrested after he approached Vice President Dick Cheney in Beaver Creek this summer and criticized him for his policies concerning Iraq.
Attorney David Lane said that on June 16, Steve Howards was walking his 7-year-old son to a piano practice, when he saw Cheney surrounded by a group of people in an outdoor mall area, shaking hands and posing for pictures with several people.

According to the lawsuit filed at U.S. District Court in Denver, Howards and his son walked to about two-to-three feet from where Cheney was standing, and said to the vice president, "I think your policies in Iraq are reprehensible," or words to that effect, then walked on.

Ten minutes later, according to Howards' lawsuit, he and his son were walking back through the same area, when they were approached by Secret Service agent Virgil D. "Gus" Reichle Jr., who asked Howards if he had "assaulted" the vice president. Howards denied doing so, but was nonetheless placed in handcuffs and taken to the Eagle County Jail.

The lawsuit states that the Secret Service agent instructed that Howards should be issued a summons for harassment, but that on July 6 the Eagle County District Attorney's Office dismissed all charges against Howards.

The lawsuit filed today alleges that Howards was arrested in retaliation for having exercised his First Amendment right of free speech, and that his arrest violated his Fourth Amendment protection against unlawful seizure.

Tenet warned Rice pre-911 we were about to be hit, Rice ignored him !!!!!!!!!

2006-09-30T16:21:00.000-07:00

9/11 Commission not told of key meeting between Tenet and Rice pre-9/11, Tenet warned Rice we were about to be hit, Rice ignored him
from www.americablog.com

I noticed this buried in the Washington Post story last night about Woodward's book, and Editor & Publisher picked up on it too. Here is Editor & Publisher's excerpt of it. This is a big deal. It's the most important piece of evidence, other than the PDB, showing that the Bush White House ignored the signs that 9/11 was coming. How the hell did the 9/11 Commission miss this? This is long, read it:

Tenet called Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser. "For months," Woodward writes, "Tenet had been pressing Rice to set a clear counterterrorism policy... that would give the CIA stronger authority to conduct covert action against bin Laden.... Tenet and Black hoped to convey the depth of their anxiety and get Rice to kick-start the government into immediate action.

"Tenet had been losing sleep over the recent intelligence. There was no conclusive, smoking-gun intelligence, but there was such a huge volume of data that an intelligence officer's instinct strongly suggested that something was coming....

"But Tenet had been having difficulty getting traction on an immediate bin Laden action plan, in part because Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had questioned all the intelligence, asking: Could it all be a grand deception? "
Woodward describes the meeting, and the two officials' plea that the U.S. "needed to take action that moment -- covert, military, whatever -- to thwart bin Laden."

The result? "Tenet and Black felt they were not getting though to Rice. She was polite, but they felt the brush-off. President Bush had said he didn't want to swat at flies."

"Tenet left the meeting feeling frustrated. Though Rice had given them a fair hearing, no immediate action meant great risk. Black felt the decision to just keep planning was a sustained policy failure. Rice and the Bush team had been in hibernation too long....
"Afterward, Tenet looked back on the meeting with Rice as a lost opportunity to prevent or disrupt the attacks. Rice could have gotten through to Bush on the threat, Tenet thought, but she just didn't get it in time. He felt that he had done his job and been very direct about the threat, but that Rice had not moved quickly. He felt she was not organized and did not push people, as he tried to do at the CIA.

"Black later said, 'The only thing we didn't do was pull the trigger to the gun we were holding to her head.'"

At the close of this excerpt, a Post editor's note states:

"How much effort the Bush administration made in going after Osama bin Laden before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, became an issue last week after former president Bill Clinton accused President Bush's 'eocons' and other Republicans of ignoring bin Laden until the attacks. Rice responded in an interview that 'what we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years.'"Then we learn the following:
"The July 10 meeting of Rice, Tenet and Black went unmentioned in various investigations into the Sept. 11 attacks, and Woodward wrote that Black 'felt there were things the commissions wanted to know about and things they didn't want to know about.'"Jamie S. Gorelick, a member of the Sept. 11 commission, said she checked with commission staff members who told her investigators were never told about a July 10 meeting. 'We didn't know about the meeting itself,' she said. 'I can assure you it would have been in our report if we had known to ask about it.'

"White House and State Department officials yesterday confirmed that the July 10 meeting took place, although they took issue with Woodward's portrayal of its results."Nice.

Well, as I recall, DoD and FAA also apparently lied to the 9/11 Commission and that's a crime. So who at the White House "forgot" to mention this key meeting to the commission, and was that a crime as well?

Olbermann is on a roll....

2006-09-26T21:02:00.000-07:00

Keith pulled no punches and launched another smack down on Bush and FOX News…

See original footage and comments at: www.crooksandliars.com

And finally tonight, a Special Comment about President Clinton’s interview. The headlines about them are, of course, entirely wrong. It is not essential that a past President, bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster, finally lashed back.

It is not important that the current President’s "portable public chorus" has described his predecessor’s tone as "crazed."

Our tone should be crazed. The nation’s freedoms are under assault by an administration whose policies can do us as much damage as Al-Qaeda; the nation’s "marketplace of ideas" is being poisoned, by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would’ve quit. Nonetheless.

The headline is this: Bill Clinton did what almost none of us have done, in five years. He has spoken the truth about 9/11, and the current presidential administration.

"At least I tried," he said of his own efforts to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden. "That’s the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They had eight months to try; they did not try. I tried."

Thus in his supposed emeritus years, has Mr. Clinton taken forceful and triumphant action for honesty, and for us; action as vital and as courageous as any of his presidency; action as startling and as liberating, as any, by anyone, in these last five long years.

The Bush Administration did not try to get Osama Bin Laden before 9/11.

The Bush Administration ignored all the evidence gathered by its predecessors.

The Bush Administration did not understand the Daily Briefing entitled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in U.S."

The Bush Administration… did… not… try.—

Moreover, for the last five years one month and two weeks, the current administration, and in particular the President, has been given the greatest "pass" for incompetence and malfeasance, in American history!

President Roosevelt was rightly blamed for ignoring the warning signs — some of them, 17 years old — before Pearl Harbor.

President Hoover was correctly blamed for — if not the Great Depression itself — then the disastrous economic steps he took in the immediate aftermath of the Stock Market Crash.

Even President Lincoln assumed some measure of responsibility for the Civil War — though talk of Southern secession had begun as early as 1832.

But not this President.

To hear him bleat and whine and bully at nearly every opportunity, one would think someone else had been President on September 11th, 2001 — or the nearly eight months that preceded it.

That hardly reflects the honesty nor manliness we expect of the Executive.

KO-Bush.jpg

But if his own fitness to serve is of no true concern to him, perhaps we should simply sigh and keep our fingers crossed, until a grown-up takes the job three Januarys from now.

Except… for this:

After five years of skirting even the most inarguable of facts — that he was President on 9/11 and he must bear some responsibility for his, and our, unreadiness, Mr. Bush has now moved, unmistakably and without conscience or shame, towards re-writing history, and attempting to make the responsibility, entirely Mr. Clinton’s.

Of course he is not honest enough to do that directly.

As with all the other nefariousness and slime of this, our worst presidency since James Buchanan, he is having it done for him, by proxy.

Thus, the sandbag effort by Fox News, Friday afternoon.

Consider the timing: The very same weekend the National Intelligence Estimate would be released and show the Iraq war to be the fraudulent failure it is — not a check on terror, but fertilizer for it!

The kind of proof of incompetence, for which the administration and its hyenas at Fox need to find a diversion, in a scapegoat.

It was the kind of cheap trick which would get a journalist fired — but a propagandist, promoted:

Promise to talk of charity and generosity; but instead launch into the lies and distortions with which the Authoritarians among us attack the virtuous and reward the useless.

And don’t even be professional enough to assume the responsibility for the slanders yourself; blame your audience for "e-mailing" you the question.

Mr. Clinton responded as you have seen.

He told the great truth un-told… about this administration’s negligence, perhaps criminal negligence, about Bin Laden.

He was brave.

Then again, Chris Wallace might be braver still. Had I — in one moment surrendered all my credibility as a journalist — and been irredeemably humiliated, as was he, I would have gone home and started a new career selling seeds by mail.

The smearing by proxy, of course, did not begin Friday afternoon.

Disney was first to sell-out its corporate reputation, with "The Path to 9/11."

Of that company’s crimes against truth one needs to say little. Simply put: someone there enabled an Authoritarian zealot to belch out Mr. Bush’s new and improved history.

The basic plot-line was this: because he was distracted by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Bill Clinton failed to prevent 9/11.

The most curious and in some ways the most infuriating aspect of this slapdash theory, is that the Right Wingers who have advocated it — who try to sneak it into our collective consciousness through entertainment, or who sandbag Mr. Clinton with it at news interviews — have simply skipped past its most glaring flaw.

Had it been true that Clinton had been distracted from the hunt for Bin Laden in 1998 because of the Lewinsky nonsense — why did these same people not applaud him for having bombed Bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan and Sudan on August 20th of that year? For mentioning Bin Laden by name as he did so?

That day, Republican Senator Grams of Minnesota invoked the movie "Wag The Dog."

Republican Senator Coats of Indiana questioned Mr. Clinton’s judgment.

Republican Senator Ashcroft of Missouri — the future Attorney General — echoed Coats.

Even Republican Senator Arlen Specter questioned the timing.

And of course, were it true Clinton had been "distracted" by the Lewinsky witch-hunt — who on earth conducted the Lewinsky witch-hunt? Who turned the political discourse of this nation on its head for two years?

Who corrupted the political media?

Who made it impossible for us to even bring back on the air, the counter-terrorism analysts like Dr. Richard Haass, and James Dunegan, who had warned, at this very hour, on this very network, in early 1998, of cells from the Middle East who sought to attack us, here?

Who preempted them… in order to strangle us with the trivia that was… "All Monica All The Time"?

Who… distracted whom?

This is, of course, where — as is inevitable — Mr. Bush and his henchmen prove not quite as smart as they think they are.

The full responsibility for 9/11 is obviously shared by three administrations, possibly four.

But, Mr. Bush, if you are now trying to convince us by proxy that it’s all about the distractions of 1998 and 1999, then you will have to face a startling fact that your minions may have hidden from you.

The distractions of 1998 and 1999, Mr. Bush, were carefully manufactured, and lovingly executed, not by Bill Clinton… but by the same people who got you… elected President.

Thus instead of some commendable acknowledgment that you were even in office on 9/11 and the lost months before it… we have your sleazy and sloppy rewriting of history, designed by somebody who evidently redd the Orwell playbook too quickly.

Thus instead of some explanation for the inertia of your first eight months in office, we are told that you have kept us "safe" ever since — a statement that might range anywhere from Zero, to One Hundred Percent, true.

We have nothing but your word, and your word has long since ceased to mean anything.

And, of course, the one time you have ever given us specifics about what you have kept us safe from, Mr. Bush — you got the name of the supposedly targeted Tower in Los Angeles… wrong.

Thus was it left for the previous President to say what so many of us have felt; what so many of us have given you a pass for in the months and even the years after the attack:

You did not try.

You ignored the evidence gathered by your predecessor.

You ignored the evidence gathered by your own people.

Then, you blamed your predecessor.

That would be the textbook definition… Sir, of cowardice.

To enforce the lies of the present, it is necessary to erase the truths of the past.

That was one of the great mechanical realities Eric Blair — writing as George Orwell — gave us in the novel "1984."

The great philosophical reality he gave us, Mr. Bush, may sound as familiar to you, as it has lately begun to sound familiar to me.

"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power…

"Power is not a means; it is an end.

"One does not establish a dictatorship to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.

"The object of persecution, is persecution. The object of torture, is torture. The object of power… is power."

Earlier last Friday afternoon, before the Fox ambush, speaking in the far different context of the closing session of his remarkable Global Initiative, Mr. Clinton quoted Abraham Lincoln’s State of the Union address from 1862.

"We must disenthrall ourselves."

Mr. Clinton did not quote the rest of Mr. Lincoln’s sentence. He might well have.

"We must disenthrall ourselves — and then… we shall save our country."

And so has Mr. Clinton helped us to disenthrall ourselves, and perhaps enabled us, even at this late and bleak date… to save… our… country.

—

The "free pass" has been withdrawn, Mr. Bush…

You did not act to prevent 9/11.

We do not know what you have done, to prevent another 9/11.

You have failed us — then leveraged that failure, to justify a purposeless war in Iraq which will have, all too soon, claimed more American lives than did 9/11.

You have failed us anew in Afghanistan.

And you have now tried to hide your failures, by blaming your predecessor.

And now you exploit your failure, to rationalize brazen torture — which doesn’t work anyway; which only condemns our soldiers to water-boarding; which only humiliates our country further in the world; and which no true American would ever condone, let alone advocate.And there it is, sir:

Are yours the actions of a true American?

I’m K.O., good night, and good luck.

Olbermann does it again....

2006-09-20T20:13:00.000-07:00

Finally tonight, a Special Comment about the Rose Garden news conference last Friday.

The President of the United States owes this country an apology. It will not be offered, of course. He does not realize its necessity.

There are now none around him who would tell him - or could. The last of them, it appears, was the very man whose letter provoked the President into the conduct, for which the apology is essential. An apology is this President’s only hope of regaining the slightest measure of confidence, of what has been, for nearly two years, a clear majority of his people.

Not "confidence" in his policies nor in his designs nor even in something as narrowly focused as which vision of torture shall prevail — his, or that of the man who has sent him into apoplexy, Colin Powell. In a larger sense, the President needs to regain our confidence, that he has some basic understanding of what this country represents — of what it must maintain if we are to defeat not only terrorists, but if we are also to defeat what is ever more increasingly apparent, as an attempt to re-define the way we live here, and what we mean, when we say the word "freedom."

Because it is evident now that, if not its architect, this President intends to be the contractor, for this narrowing of the definition of freedom. The President revealed this last Friday, as he fairly spat through his teeth, words of unrestrained fury…

…directed at the man who was once the very symbol of his administration, who was once an ambassador from this administration to its critics, as he had once been an ambassador from the military to its critics. The former Secretary of State, Mr. Powell, had written, simply and candidly and without anger, that "the world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism."This President’s response included not merely what is apparently the Presidential equivalent of threatening to hold one’s breath, but — within — it contained one particularly chilling phrase. Mr. President, former Secretary of State Colin Powell says the world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism. If a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former secretary of state feels this way, don’t you think that Americans and the rest of the world are beginning to wonder whether you’re following a flawed strategy? BUSH: If there’s any comparison between the compassion and decency of the American people and the terrorist tactics of extremists, it’s flawed logic. It’s just — I simply can’t accept that. It’s unacceptable to think that there’s any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective.

Of course** it’s acceptable to think that there’s "any kind of comparison." And in this particular debate, it is not only acceptable, it is obviously necessary. Some will think that our actions at Abu Ghraib, or in Guantanamo, or in secret prisons in Eastern Europe, are all too comparable to the actions of the extremists. Some will think that there is no similarity, or, if there is one, it is to the slightest and most unavoidable of degrees.

What all of us will agree on, is that we have the right — we have the duty — to think about the comparison. And, most importantly, that the other guy, whose opinion about this we cannot fathom, has exactly the same right as we do: to think — and say — what his mind and his heart and his conscience tell him, is right.

All of us agree about that.

Except, it seems, this President.

With increasing rage, he and his administration have begun to tell us, we are not permitted to disagree with them, that we cannot be right. That Colin Powell cannot be right.And then there was that one, most awful phrase.

In four simple words last Friday, the President brought into sharp focus what has been only vaguely clear these past five-and-a-half years - the way the terrain at night is perceptible only during an angry flash of lightning, and then, a second later, all again is dark.

"It’s unacceptable to think…" he said. It is never unacceptable… to think.

And when a President says thinking is unacceptable, even on one topic, even in the heat of the moment, even in the turning of a phrase extracted from its context… he takes us toward a new and fearful path — one heretofore the realm of science fiction authors and apocalyptic visionaries.

That flash of lightning freezes at the distant horizon, and we can just make out a world in which authority can actually suggest it has become unacceptable to think. hus the lightning flash reveals not merely a President we have already seen, the one who believes he has a monopoly on current truth.

It now shows us a President who has decided that of all our commanders-in-chief, ever… he, alone, has had the knowledge necessary to alter and re-shape our inalienable rights. This is a frightening, and a dangerous, delusion, Mr. President.

If Mr. Powell’s letter - cautionary, concerned, predominantly supportive — can induce from you such wrath and such intolerance — what would you say were this statement to be shouted to you by a reporter, or written to you by a colleague?

"Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government…"

Those incendiary thoughts came, of course, from a prior holder of your job, Mr. Bush. They were the words of Thomas Jefferson.

He put them in the Declaration of Independence. Mr. Bush, what would you say to something that annti-thetical to the status quo just now? Would you call it "unacceptable" for Jefferson to think such things, or to write them?

Between your confidence in your infallibility, sir, and your demonizing of dissent, and now these rages better suited to a thwarted three-year old, you have left the unnerving sense of a White House coming unglued - a chilling suspicion that perhaps we have not seen the peak of the anger; that we can no longer forecast what next will be said to, or about, anyone… who disagrees.

Or what will next be done to them. On this newscast last Friday night, Constitiutional law Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University, suggested that at some point in the near future…some of the "detainees" transferred from secret CIA cells to Guantanamo, will finally get to tell the Red Cross that they have indeed been tortured.

Thus the debate over the Geneva Conventions, might not be about further interrogations of detainees, but about those already conducted, and the possible liability of the administration, for them. That, certainly, could explain Mr. Bush’s fury.

That, at this point, is speculative. But at least it provides an alternative possibility as to why the President’s words were at such variance from the entire history of this country. For, there needs to be some other explanation, Mr. Bush, than that you truly believe we should live in a United States of America in which a thought is unacceptable.

There needs to be a delegation of responsible leaders — Republicans or otherwise — who can sit you down as Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott once sat Richard Nixon down - and explain the **reality** of the situation you have created.

There needs to be… an apology from the President of the United States.

And more than one.

But, Mr. Bush, the others — for warnings unheeded five years ago, for war unjustified four years ago, for battle unprepared three years ago — they are not weighted with the urgency and necessity of this one. We must know that, to you…thought with which you disagree — and even voice with which you disagree - and even action with which you disagree — are still sacrosanct to you.

The philosopher Voltaire once insisted to another author, "I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write." Since the nation’s birth, Mr. Bush, we have misquoted and even embellished that statement, but we have served ourselves well, by subscribing to its essence.

Oddly, there are other words of Voltaire’s that are more pertinent still, just now. "Think for yourselves," he wrote, "and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too." Apologize, sir, for even hinting at an America where a few have that privilege to think — and the rest of us get yelled at by the President.

Anything else, Mr. Bush, is truly… unacceptable.

Ann Richards - Authentic, Rare and Gone too Soon...

2006-09-14T13:53:00.000-07:00

from www.vermontwoman.com
The Honorable – and Irrepressible – Ann Richards
by Katharine Hikel

When Ann Richards was voted in as Texas State Treasurer, she was the first woman in fifty years to be elected to state office in the Lone Star State. She served as Governor from 1990-1994. Born in Waco, she graduated from Baylor University and the University of Texas. Though she started out as a junior high school teacher, she has been immersed in politics for most of her life, even as a mother of four and grandmother of six. Richards served four years as Chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Richards is the author of Straight from the Heart: My Life in Politics and Other Places, as well as I’m Not Slowing Down – Winning My Battle with Osteoporosis.

In 1988 Richards delivered the acclaimed keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, which she opened by saying “I am delighted to be here with you this evening because after listening to George Bush all these years, I figured you needed to know what a real Texas accent sounds like.”
On Sunday, May 22 Vermonters can come hear for themselves what a real Texas dynamo’s accent sounds like as the Vermont Woman Speakers Bureau presents the sharp wit of “Ann Richards Being Ann Richards” (Sheraton Conference Center, So. Burlington - click here for ticket information). For a sneak preview, here’s an excerpt from our recent chat with Governor Richards:

Ann Richards
What do y’all do? Tell me about this newspaper … give me an idea of some of the things you write about.

Vermont Woman
We have articles about health care, the political scene, environment, education. We are very political, but we also have humor in the paper. We also carry your friend Molly Ivins' syndicated column.

Ann Richards
Well that’s fabulous. I have been a devotee of the “Today” show for years. I have watched it so many years that I can listen to it, and time myself getting dressed. I know how much time I have left before I have to be out of there. And of late, the stories have been not quite the equivalent of dogs that can walk on their hind legs – but stories like parents helping their children with their homework. As far as any substantial, substantive news, it’s just not there.

Of course I noticed that the producer of the show just lost his job and they’re putting someone else in there, and they’re losing market shares…. I think their assumption is that all we’re interested in is these little, silly human interest stories.

Vermont Woman
Our rule is no recipes and no diets.

Ann Richards
(Laughs) Well that’s a deal!

Vermont Woman
How many times have you been to Vermont?

Ann Richards
I came once, if not twice, to speak for Howard Dean.

Vermont Woman
Have you seen Howard Dean lately? Because we never see him.

Ann Richards
No, I haven’t talked to Howard … and I know he’s going to have one of those opportunities one of these days real soon. And he’s going to hear a lot from me.

Vermont Woman
What will you have to say to him, Governor?

Ann Richards
Well, I am going to talk to him about the general tone and tenor of the Democratic Party. I am going to tell him that when he is looking to build the base of the party, the base that he can depend on, that is really very consistent – it’s the women voters. And when he loses female support, when the Democrats lose female support, they lose elections. So we have to build our base. I don’t think the party would go to black voters and say, “You know, I think we’re going to have to equivocate a little bit on the idea of civil rights, change just a little bit so that we sound better." Or we may tell environmentalists, “Now I don’t want you all to think that we’re not for clean air, but we may have to support legislation that says that air can be just a tiny bit dirty.”

Vermont Woman
Whenever it’s a question of women, there’s always that "We have to temper it" – unlike with any other constituency.

Ann Richards
Right, and that’s exactly what I intend to say. And if Dean wants to keep the base of support of the Democratic Party, they might try to be more artful in the way they express themselves on a lot of issues for women. But they darn sure aren’t going to improve their chances of support by equivocating on women’s right to choose.

Vermont Woman
We were talking to Linda Kaplan Thaler, a media mogul in New York recently, who was considering taking on Hillary’s campaign. She was bemoaning the 40 million women, known as “swingles” (single, self-supporting, low to moderate income women, with kids) who would vote Democratic if they voted – but they don’t vote.

Ann Richards
Yes, so what are we going to do? I don’t like to blame everything on the media, but most people do not gain their passion or their interests because of what is said to them on television. You develop a connection with a person running for office only if you have some link to that person that is personal to you. In the old days, the whole notion was of going door to door and all that. Then the Republicans suddenly picked up and said “We win these races just by buying TV,” and it works pretty well for them. But when it comes to Democrats – they feel like they have some investment in you, and you have some care and attention about them. And we’re a long way away from that.

We’re still trying to win elections running ads. And we might as well be a box of soap, particularly when it comes to young women. What was said to them in the last campaign that would make one bit of difference to them for either one of the candidates? I would suggest to you nothing. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! So if we can’t learn how to talk to these young women, we’re going to continue to lose elections.

Vermont Woman
Do you think there’s a unifying politic or set of issues that the Democrats can actually address on that account? You know, schools, health care, etc. I think that’s what these women care about.

Ann Richards
I don’t know whether it is or not. You know, this isn’t rocket science. Somehow the Republicans are able to figure out that if we talk about X as an issue, we’re going to capture the imagination of the public if we continue to say it enough. Democrats haven’t done that. Now predictably what we do is we put a list together, and we say “which issues do you care about the most?” And the list is always the same. It’s education, it’s the economy, it’s crime, and the only thing that happens from election to election is that the same issues get shifted in their ranking. So it really doesn’t tell us a whole lot. You can capture the people’s imagination by finding a very specific issue that they show is something that matters to them. Now, if you can’t find that issue, then — boy do I understand that. On the last election that I ran, I could never find it. But I think we have the ability to do that, and we simply haven’t done it.

Then, the other thing is, the Democrats are different than the Republicans We don’t just suit up and march to the drum when somebody tells us this is the candidate. We expect the candidate to then prove themselves to us. We’ll go to a meeting and we’ll say “You know, she didn’t talk about maple trees, she talked about cedar trees. And cedar aren’t a problem for us, it’s the maple trees that are a problem. So I’ll just show her. I won’t vote.” We’re a suspicious bunch.

Vermont Woman
Let's talk about women and politics, and how to get more women into the pipeline. Our big problem is, why is there still not even 50% of women in Congress?

Ann Richards
Well it’s real simple. It's that women have other options. It used to be that a lot of people ran for office just because it was the only way in the community for them to get a really good job and be recognized, and be in a role of leadership. Well now, that’s not true. You know, you can be a doctor, a lawyer, a CPA, any number of things.

Vermont Woman
Is it because the culture of politics is more repulsive to women than the culture of medicine or law?

Ann Richards
No. It’s just that they have other options. It doesn’t mean that the passion isn’t there for politics. You know when I was a young woman and growing up, you had either the option of being a teacher or a nurse. It didn’t mean you had to have passion for one or the other; it just meant that that’s what you could do. Well now you go to college, you can even go to graduate school. We couldn’t go to graduate school when I was a young woman. Now, the opportunities and the options are wide open. So there’s no reason for you to feel a passion about getting involved in politics.

Vermont Woman
Is there a financial issue? Are women not getting the support that they need to run?

Ann Richards
I think it’s harder for women to raise the amount of money. But if you’ve got the credibility and you’ve got ability, you’ll find a way or you wouldn’t have women in Congress now.

I try to talk to women about what their history has been. How dramatically things have changed, instead of this moaning and groaning, wringing your hands over why aren’t there more. You know, I’ve got a pretty good perspective on what a miracle it is there are as many as there are. I think women need to have that perspective. I think they need to understand what sociologically they have been taught to do, is to be caretakers. I think it’s amazing that you find a woman anywhere that can say out loud, “One of things I really need to do with my life is make money.”

You know, they’re just like you all. They’re going to tell me how devoted to the cause they are, so therefore they don’t make any money. They’re going to end up being gray-haired, and their husband’s going to run off with the blonde next door. And they can’t figure out how in god’s name they’re going to support themselves. So I talk about money and how important that is in your life and what you can do. And then I talk about your health. And taking care of yourself, instead of worrying about how to take care of your momma, you should be worried about taking care of you.

Vermont Woman
We're already gray-haired, so it's a good thing we aren't married; at least our husbands won't be running off. We wanted to ask you, are we going to get a woman president? Is it going to be Hillary or Condi?

Ann Richards
Well, I always thought I’d see a woman president in my lifetime. So that means, in the next say 15-20 years. Who’s it going to be? I don’t know. You don’t either. None of us know. The way politics is now, we have a short attention span. We’re always going to go with the person we know the least, because once we get to know people personally, we decide they’re not the reincarnation of the savior.

Vermont Woman
That’s funny, given how long people stay in the Senate.

Ann Richards
Well, you can re-elect them but you can’t elect them President. It’s very hard going from the Senate to being President.

Vermont Woman
So we need more fresh faces to chose from?

Ann Richards
Well, I always think that new means change. And things are going to change, whether they change the way you want them to or not. And the present administration is a perfect example of that. Things change by your not being a participant, as much as they do by your taking on issues, and fighting for them.

Vermont Woman
That brings us to the whole idea of campaign issues. The Republicans so easily capture "family values," which is basically slang for a lot personal stuff. We read something that said basically those personal values are selfish, and contrary to the spirit of community, and democracy. The whole idea of civil liberty – allowing people, with governance, to practice their own beliefs – is falling by the wayside. Maybe the Democrats could capture that?

Ann Richards
All we have to do is ask some people, and they’ll tell us. But you have to ask them in the right way. You have to ask them a question they can actually respond to, to give you the information you need to know. People are perfectly willing to repeat things that sound good, even if it doesn’t make sense. The fact that George Bush was a “compassionate conservative” could be repeated by almost every voter in this country. One, is because he never got off message, and he said it every time he stood up. And secondly, it sounded like maybe he was a nice person.

So it’s not that complicated. You have to go ask people what really makes a difference to them, and we’ve got a lot of sophisticated ways of doing that. But the Democrats simply are unwilling to get a message and stick to it, because we’re trying so hard to have all of these participants under the big tent, and we’re so busy giving every one of them a message that will keep them under the tent, that we confuse the public. And if you want to look at a perfect example here, everybody says “Oh my goodness, look at how Bush has his head handed to him over Social Security.”

Well I want to suggest to you that he’s done a masterful job of distracting the public from the two main issues they care about more than anything else, and that’s health care and the economy. And nobody’s talking about it, because they have controlled the dialogue and made the argument over social security. So it’s not necessarily what is your cause, but also the way you control the message for your purposes. And we know how do to that! We just don’t do it.

Vermont Woman
We can get abortion rights without talking about abortion?

Ann Richards
We can get abortion rights if we can talk about it in terms that people can accept and understand – and times change! When we were working hard on the Equal Rights Amendment, we talked about abortion rights in an entirely different way. Now you have to talk about it today. That doesn’t mean you give up on it. Or give up on a woman’s right to chose, and a woman being the master of her own destiny and future. It means that your language is such that it is acceptable to the public.

Vermont Woman
So what do you think of the Bush dynasty?

Ann Richards
Not much.

Vermont Woman
You’ve been living with them a long time!

Ann Richards
I certainly have. That’s why the graduation rates from the state of Texas are the worst in the union. Kids can’t graduate from high school, because we’ve had Bush’s education program longer than the rest of the country.

I think the foreign policy and the actions of the administration have been dreadful. And I’m scared to death of the economy. And some of the really smart people I know in New York, who are supposed to know about these things, are scared to death too. To me, it’s far more significant to ask who has been the group of people who have suffered the most under this administration. How much money have they lost? How many programs have they lost if they are female or poor? What has been the impact on education?

Vermont Woman
What about that "W is for women" motto?

Ann Richards
Nobody says that here in Texas. He’s been the worst president for our health care, for our opportunities in economic advancement, for our education, for the quality of education, for our children, and I certainly can’t say that as a mother, he has been a good president in sending our young men and women to be killed. But I’ve learned that the public will accept things that are not true simply because they are said over and over again.

Women have very little opportunity to get good solid news because we know that now the Bush administration is putting out the television stories that the networks and the cable stations pick up, that most of the stuff we hear has to do with whether or not diaper rash can be affected by corn starch, or do you really need powder.

The fact that you have a print medium that is going to give them information, statistical information about what this administration is doing to the country, in particular with women, is really important. So I think it’s great if your paper is reaching a lot of women.

“Poor George – he can’t help it.
He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”

Ann Richards,
1988 Democratic National Convention keynote address

Fear sells ....

2006-09-14T12:18:00.000-07:00

Sep 12, 2006

via crooksandliars.com taken from www.slacktivist.typepad.com

Fear itself
We have five fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot, so yesterday's fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was regarded as a bigger deal than last year's fourth or next year's sixth.

The occasion was marked by ceremonies in towns and cities across America, and by a media blitz from newspapers, TV networks and, of course, from al-Qaida itself, which despicably marked the occasion with yet another video release.

This last was predictable because our remembering 9/11 -- and staying scared -- is one of al-Qaida's major goals. This is what terrorists do: they terror-ize. Here, again, is the legal definition of "terrorism":

The term "terrorism" means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.
The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were intended to kill a lot of innocent people, and they did, but all that hideous death was meant to serve a larger intention -- "to influence an audience." Specifically, they were meant to scare us and to keep us scared.

This was a gamble on al-Qaida's part. They were gambling that the America of the early 21st century, George W. Bush's America, was populated by a much weaker breed than was the America of the 20th century, FDR's America. Bin Laden surely remembered that Imperial Japan had tried this same gambit -- the devastating sneak attack meant to demoralize -- back in 1941, and that it hadn't worked out very well. But he was gambling that Americans nowadays were made of flimsier stuff.

And for the past five years, our so-called leaders have been tripping over themselves to prove bin Laden was right. From color-coded "terror alerts," to duct-tape panics, to the fetishizing of "security," to the idea that the Constitution, due process, legal warrants and the Geneva Conventions are "quaint" relics unsuited to these insecure times, our leaders have been working hand in hand with al-Qaida to make us scared and keep us scared.

John Rogers summed this up nicely:

I cast my eyes back on the last century ...
FDR: Oh, I'm sorry, was wiping out our entire Pacific fleet supposed to intimidate us? We have nothing to fear but fear itself, and right now we're coming to kick your ass with brand new destroyers riveted by waitresses. How's that going to feel?

CHURCHILL: Yeah, you keep bombing us. We'll be in the pub, flipping you off. I'm slapping Rolls-Royce engines into untested flying coffins to knock you out of the skies, and then I'm sending angry Welshmen to burn your country from the Rhine to the Polish border.
US. NOW: BE AFRAID!! Oh God, the Brown Bad people could strike any moment! They could strike ... NOW!! AHHHH. Okay, how about .. NOW!! AAGAGAHAHAHHAG! Quick, do whatever we tell you, and believe whatever we tell you, or YOU WILL BE KILLED BY BROWN PEOPLE!! PUT DOWN THAT SIPPY CUP!!
... and I'm just a little tired of being on the wrong side of that historical arc.

One place where FDR's spirit -- "nothing to fear but fear itself" -- seems to live on is in New York City, home to ground zero itself. New Yorkers -- those actually, personally, physically affected by the Sept. 11 attacks -- haven't confused vigilance with fear, they've simply gotten back to the business of being New Yorkers. ("There are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade ...") They've had to endure the president's reluctance to fulfill his promise of financial aid. They've had to endure the lies from their government about the safety of the poisoned air they breathe. And they've had to endure five years of lectures from red-staters thousands of miles removed from ground zero about how their refusal to vote for George W. Bush demonstrates that they don't "get" the "meaning" of 9/11 as deeply as do the terrified masses in middle America.

Al-Qaida hit New York City with its very best shot and New York is still standing. For those keeping score at home that's NY, 1; AQ, 0. Game over.

But the score reads differently in the rest of the country, in places far from the destruction of ground zero al-Qaida scored big and continues to score. Credit the Bush administration with the assist.

Both intend to influence an audience. Both want to keep us so scared we can't think straight. But neither has the power to take that which we refuse to willingly surrender. We have nothing to fear but fear itself.

Joe Scarborough says "what" ?

2006-09-14T10:15:00.000-07:00

The Washington Monthly, October 2006

And we thought Clinton had
no self-control

By Joe Scarborough

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When The Washington Monthly reached me at my office recently, a voice on the other side of the line meekly asked if I would ever consider writing an article supporting the radical proposition that Republicans should get their brains beaten in this fall.

“Count me in!” was my chipper response. I also seem to remember muttering something about preferring an assortment of Bourbon Street hookers running the Southern Baptist Convention to having this lot of Republicans controlling America’s checkbook for the next two years.

Maybe that’s because right-wing, knuckle-dragging Republicans like myself took over Congress in 1994 promising to balance the budget and limit Washington’s power. We were a nasty breed and had no problem blaming Bill and Hillary Clinton for everything from the exploding federal deficit to male pattern baldness. I suspected then, as I do now, that Hillary Clinton herself had something to do with “Love, American Style” and “Joanie Loves Chachi.” And why not blame her? Back then, Newt Gingrich felt comfortable blaming the drowning of two little children on Democratic values. Hell. It was 1994. It just seemed like the thing to do.

The terminally rumpled Dick Armey (R-Whiskey Gulch) even went so far as to suggest that the Clintons might be Marxists, drawing an angry personal rebuke from Bubba himself. But 12 years later, it is Armey’s fellow Republicans who should be sobered by the short and ugly history of Republican Supremacy.

Under Bill Clinton’s presidency, discretionary spending grew at a modest rate of 3.4 percent. Not too bad for a Marxist, even considering that his worst instincts were tempered by a Republican Congress. (Well, his worst fiscal instincts.)

But compare Clinton’s 3.4 percent growth rate to the spending orgy that has dominated Washington since Bush moved into town. With Republicans in charge of both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue, spending growth has averaged 10.4 percent per year. And the GOP’s reckless record goes well beyond runaway defense costs. The federal education bureaucracy has exploded by 101 percent since Republicans started running Congress. Spending in the Justice Department over the same period has shot up 131 percent, the Commerce Department 82 percent, the Department of Health and Human Services 81 percent, the State Department 80 percent, the Department of Transportation 65 percent, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development 59 percent. Incredibly, the four bureaucracies once targeted for elimination by the GOP Congress—Commerce, Energy, Education, and Housing and Urban Development—have enjoyed spending increases of an average of 85 percent.

It’s enough to make economic conservatives long for the day when Marxists were running the White House.

This must all be shocking to my Republican friends who still believe our country would be a better place if our party controlled every branch of government as well as every news network, movie studio, and mid-American pulpit. But evidence suggests that divided government may be what Washington needs the most.

During the 1990s, conservative Republicans and the Clinton White House somehow managed to balance the budget while winning two wars, reforming welfare, and conducting an awesome impeachment trial focused on oral sex and a stained Gap dress.

The fact that both parties hated each another was healthy for our republic’s bottom line. A Democratic president who hates a Republican appropriations chairman is less likely to sign off on funding for the Midland Maggot Festival being held in the chairman’s home district. Soon, budget negotiations become nasty, brutish, and short and devolve into the legislative equivalent of Detroit, where only the strong survive.

But in Bush’s Washington, the capital is a much clubbier place where everyone in the White House knows someone on the Hill who worked with the Old Man, summered in Maine, or pledged DKE at Yale. The result? Chummy relationships, no vetoes, and record-breaking debts.

As a political junkie who wept bitter tears the night Jimmy Carter got elected and shouted with uncontrolled joy when Ronald Reagan whipped his sorry ass four years later, I find myself ambivalent for the first time over a national election. After six years of Republican recklessness at home and abroad, I seriously doubt Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid or the aforementioned Bourbon Street hookers could spend this country any deeper into debt than my Republican Party. With any luck, Democrats will launch destructive investigations, a new era of bad feelings will break out, and George W. Bush will stop using his veto pen to fill in Rangers’ box scores and instead start using it like a conservative president should.

- - Advertisers - -

Place Premium Ad Here

Support TWM Please help with your tax deductible contributionRead more...NO CORNER LEFT BEHIND Don't miss the new season of the critically acclaimed original series THE WIRE on HBO. "The best show on TV. Nothing else even comes close." - GQ THE WIRE Sundays at 10pm Only on HBO. Check out video entries for THE WIRE Spoken Word Battle on Blastro.com. Read more...Place Your Ad Here

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Government and Mainstream Media is doing Al Qaeda's work for them....

2006-09-12T14:51:00.000-07:00

Repetition-Convulsion Syndrome
Posted by James Wolcott from www.jameswolcott.com

Roger Ailes--the Roger Ailes who walks in truth and light, not the one savoring the fine aroma of a cigar until he feels something stirring Down There--heaves a Krazy Kat brickbat at Alessandra Stanley for her birdbrained review of The Path to 9/11. It's difficult to imagine a more flippantly considered defense of Bush's inaction after the infamous presidential briefing paper (with the catchy headline "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.") than this fatuous analogy: "It's like focusing blame for a school shooting at the beginning of the school year on the student's new home room teacher; the adults who watched the boy torment classmates and poison small animals knew better." There's nothing the TV critics of the Times can't trivialize. Their true interest is in the minutiae of reality TV or MTV bare-navel bitchery like Laguna Beach; anything that allows them to do their perennial Maureen Dowd clever-chick shtick, and flatter the hip vacuities of the younger audience the Times has been futilely courting in its cultural coverage. That explains the extra dash of cruelty meted out to Dick Cavett in a recent review, whose vulgar crime seems to be that he got old.

Even if The Path to 9/11 were politically pure, its raison d'etre would be suspect. How many times and how many ways must the adrenaline be pumped, the tragedy replayed, and the suffering exploited? The fall of the towers has become a ritual fetish, an annual haunting, that doesn't exorcise fear, but replenishes it.

"What has changed, grotesquely, is the aftershock," Simon Jenkins writes in The Guardian, delivering a splash of cold reality. "Terrorism is 10% bang and 90% an echo effect composed of media hysteria, political overkill and kneejerk executive action, usually retribution against some wider group treated as collectively responsible. This response has become 24-hour, seven-day-a-week amplification by the new politico-media complex, especially shrill where the dead are white people. It is this that puts global terror into the bang. While we take ever more extravagant steps to ward off the bangs, we do the opposite with the terrorist aftershock. We turn up its volume. We seem to wallow in fear.

"Were I to take my life in my hands this weekend and visit Osama bin Laden's hideout in Wherever-istan, the interview would go something like this. I would ask how things have been for him since 9/11. His reply would be that he had worried at first that America would capitalise on the global revulsion, even among Muslims, and isolate him as a lone fanatic...

"In the event Bin Laden need not have worried. He would agree, as did the CIA's al-Qaida analyst in Peter Taylor's recent documentary, that the Americans have done his job for him. They panicked. They drove the Taliban back into the mountains, restoring the latter's credibility in the Arab street and turning al-Qaida into heroes. They persecuted Muslims across America. They occupied Iraq and declared Iran a sworn enemy. They backed an Israeli war against Lebanon's Shias. Soon every tinpot Muslim malcontent was citing al-Qaida as his inspiration. Bin Laden's tiny organisation, which might have been starved of funds and friends in 2001, had become a worldwide jihadist phenomenon.

"I would ask Bin Laden whether he had something special up his sleeve for the fifth anniversary. Why waste money, he would reply. The western media were obligingly re-enacting the destruction and the screaming, turning the base metal of violence into the gold of terror. They would replay the tapes and rerun the footage ad nauseam, and thus remind the world of his awesome power. Americans are more afraid of jihadists this year than last. In a Transatlantic Trends survey, the number of them describing international terrorism as an 'extremely important threat' went up from 72% to 79%...

"Bin Laden might boast that he had achieved terrorism's equivalent of an atomic chain reaction: a self-regenerating cycle of outrage and foreign-policy overkill, aided by anniversary journalism and fuelled by the grim scenarios of security lobbyists. He now had only to drop an occasional CD into the offices of al-Jazeera, and Washington and London quaked with fear. The authorities could be reduced to million-dollar hysterics by a phial of nail varnish, a copy of the Qur'an, or a dark-skinned person displaying a watch and a mobile phone."

I'll be in Cape May this 9/11, as I was on the 9/11 of 2001, and the ones before and since. I don't intend to watch any of the memorial coverage, listen to the radio, or pore over the newspaper supplements. It'll be a day for going to the beach and listening to the underlying bass of the sloshing tide, for birding in the meadow or at the hawk watch, a day for tuning out the too-talkative world. The vapor trails of jets flying overhead will be all the reminder one needs of that September morning.

"Islamic Fascism" ???? LOL Where does Rove come up with this stuff ????

2006-09-02T11:53:00.000-07:00

Friday, September 01, 2006

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

There are at least three pieces of falsely based rhetoric that are beginning to emerge in the fall political campaign that need to be put into context now, early in the game.

All three are being put forward by senior U.S. government officials or Republican candidates, notably Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Pennsylvania's own nonresident peddler of nontruths, Sen. Rick Santorum.

The first of these is that any American who does not believe that the United States should stay in Iraq, to pursue President Bush's vanity war to the end and continue to lose young fighting Americans as well as burn up formidable amounts of cash, is somehow not only wrongheaded but also a traitor who does not really love freedom.

This is a scurrilous lie, insulting and a disgusting slur on good Americans -- Democrats, Republicans or independents -- who believe that it is time the nation found a way to bring an end to a war that is now more than 3 years old.

A second, very misleading, line that, notably, Republican Senate candidate Santorum is using, most recently at a talk in Harrisburg on Monday, is that America's current war is against "Islamic fascism." This concept is inaccurate and unhelpful to the United States in both of its words. Anyone with half a brain can see that Islam is by no means unified or unanimous in its support of al-Qaida, terrorism or even Hezbollah and Hamas. Think of the leaders of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Or think of Indonesia, Bangladesh and Malaysia, majority Islamic countries that have offered troops to the United Nations to stand between Hezbollah and the Israeli Defense Forces in defending the integrity of southern Lebanon.

In addition, what is going on in the Middle East does not meet the definition of fascism. Fascism is a political philosophy, albeit a scrofulous one, and is generally a national phenomenon, not cross-national and religious in its scope.

Mr. Santorum has given no previous indication of any knowledge of foreign affairs, but waving around the words "Islamic fascism" may take the cake.

The third falsely based line that some Republicans are throwing around is an effort to draw a link between the situation in Europe in the 1930s -- Hitler, British Prime Minister A. Neville Chamberlain's 1938 Munich deal, the Holocaust carried out by Germany and other nations against the Jews of Europe -- and some Americans' advocacy of a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. The two situations have nothing whatsoever in common -- even the fact that Mr. Chamberlain saw himself as trying to preserve peace in Europe, whereas the Bush administration is trying to find a way to say it's been successful in Iraq despite the fact that none of its stated invasion objectives (apart from the overthrow of Saddam Hussein) have been achieved.

What would be most useful for America at this point is that its 2006 electoral campaign be waged on the basis of truths -- about its economic situation, of primary importance, as well as the current position of the United States in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East. Feeding lies into the system -- with claims that advocacy of withdrawal is disloyalty, "Islamic fascism" is the problem or the situation in the Middle East is like that in 1930s Europe -- is stupid and counterproductive to useful debate among competing candidates. It needs to stop now before it goes any further.

Even the "Wingnuts" are jumping ship ....!!!!

2006-08-21T17:25:00.000-07:00

Pundits Renounce The President
Among Conservative Voices, Discord

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 20, 2006; A04

For 10 minutes, the talk show host grilled his guests about whether "George Bush's mental weakness is damaging America's credibility at home and abroad." For 10 minutes, the caption across the bottom of the television screen read, "IS BUSH AN 'IDIOT'?"

But the host was no liberal media elitist. It was Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman turned MSNBC political pundit. And his answer to the captioned question was hardly "no." While other presidents have been called stupid, Scarborough said: "I think George Bush is in a league by himself. I don't think he has the intellectual depth as these other people."

These have been tough days politically for President Bush, what with his popularity numbers mired in the 30s and Republican candidates distancing themselves as elections near. He can no longer even rely as much on once-friendly voices in the conservative media to stand by his side, as some columnists and television commentators lose faith in his leadership and lose heart in the war in Iraq.

While most conservative media figures have not abandoned Bush, influential opinion-makers increasingly have raised questions, expressed doubts or attacked the president outright, particularly on foreign policy, on which he has long enjoyed their strongest support. In some cases, they have complained that Bush has drifted away from their shared principles; in other cases, they think it is the implementation that has fallen short. In most instances, Iraq figures prominently.

"Conservatives for a long time were in protective mode, wanting to emphasize the progress in Iraq to contrast what they felt was an unfair attack on the war by the Democrats and media and other sources," Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review, said in an interview. "But there's more of a sense now that things are on a downward trajectory, and more of a willingness to acknowledge it and pressure the administration to react to it."

Lowry's magazine offers a powerful example. "It is time to say it unequivocally: We are winning in Iraq," Lowry wrote in April 2005, chastising those who disagreed. This month, he published an editorial that concluded that "success in Iraq seems more out of reach than it has at any time since the initial invasion three years ago" and assailed "the administration's on-again-off-again approach to Iraq."

"It is time for the Bush administration to acknowledge that its approach of assuring people that progress is being made and operating on that optimistic basis in Iraq isn't working," the editorial said. Lowry followed up days later in his own column, suggesting that the United States is "losing, or at least not obviously winning, a major war" and asking whether Iraq is "Bush's Vietnam."

Quin Hillyer, executive editor of the American Spectator, cited Lowry's column in his own last week, writing that many are upset "because we seem not to be winning" and urging the White House to take on militia leaders such as Moqtada al-Sadr. Until it does, he said, "there will be no way for the administration to credibly claim that victory in Iraq is achievable, much less imminent."

Bush aides were bothered by a George F. Will column last week mocking neoconservative desires to transform the Middle East: "Foreign policy 'realists' considered Middle East stability the goal. The realists' critics, who regard realism as reprehensibly unambitious, considered stability the problem. That problem has been solved."

The White House responded with a 2,432-word rebuttal -- three times as long as the column -- e-mailed to supporters and journalists. "Mr. Will's kind of 'stability' and 'realism' -- a kind of world-weary belief that nothing can be done and so nothing should be tried -- would eventually lead to death and destruction on a scale that is almost unimaginable," wrote White House strategic initiatives director Peter H. Wehner.

Bush advisers said that they never counted Will or some others now voicing criticism as strong supporters but that the president's political weakness has encouraged soft supporters and quiet skeptics to speak out.

William F. Buckley Jr., the founder of the National Review and an icon of the Ronald Reagan-era conservative movement, caused a stir earlier this year when he wrote that "our mission has failed" in Iraq -- just a few months after Bush hosted a White House tribute to Buckley's 80th birthday and the magazine's 50th anniversary.

Thomas L. Friedman, a New York Times columnist who is not a conservative but has strongly backed the Iraq war, reversed course this month, writing that " 'staying the course' is pointless, and it's time to start thinking about Plan B -- how we might disengage with the least damage possible."

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the second-guessing was predictable, given the difficulties in Iraq. "It's hardly unusual in times of war that people get anxious, and that would include people who have supported the president," he said. "The president understands that and is not fazed by it."

Snow said much of the frustration articulated by conservatives stems from a desire to accomplish Bush's ambitions. "The good thing is they all have the same goal: They all want to win the war on terror," he said. "You don't have people quibbling over the goals; they're quibbling over the means -- or 'quibbling' is the wrong word. 'Debating.' "

Snow, who hosted a Fox radio talk show before joining the White House this spring, has made an effort to reach out to conservative audiences by appearing on his former competitors' programs, including shows hosted by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. "We're certainly more engaged on that front," he said.

And some of the president's neoconservative supporters have fired back on his behalf. Norman Podhoretz, editor-at-large of Commentary magazine, wrote an 11,525-word essay this month rebutting not only Will, Buckley and other traditional conservatives but also fellow neoconservatives who "have now taken to composing obituary notices of their own." He noted that he had been a tough critic of Reagan for betraying conservative values, only to later conclude that Reagan's approach served "an overall strategy that in the end succeeded in attaining its great objective."

Fred Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard and a reliable Bush supporter, said the disillusionment is not surprising. "People get weary, especially when they expected a war to be over very quickly," he said in an interview. "Supporters fall off over time. I've been disappointed by some of the people who have fallen off, like George Will, but that's what happens."

Few have struck a nerve more than Scarborough, who questioned the president's intelligence on his show, "Scarborough Country." He showed a montage of clips of Bush's famously inarticulate verbal miscues and then explored with guests John Fund and Lawrence O'Donnell Jr. whether Bush is smart enough to be president.

While the country does not want a leader wallowing in the weeds, Scarborough concluded on the segment, "we do need a president who, I think, is intellectually curious."

"And that is a big question," Scarborough said, "whether George W. Bush has the intellectual curiousness -- if that's a word -- to continue leading this country over the next couple of years."

In a later telephone interview, Scarborough said he aired the segment because he kept hearing even fellow Republicans questioning Bush's capacity and leadership, particularly in Iraq. Like others, he said, he supported the war but now thinks it is time to find a way to get out. "A lot of conservatives are saying, 'Enough's enough</span>,' " he said. Asked about the reaction to his program, he said, "The White House is not happy about it."

Republican Failure Reminder

2006-08-21T15:37:00.000-07:00

Republicans control the White House and Congress and Democrats have no opportunity to enact policy. The "War on Terror" as prosecuted by this administration speaks for itself.

Osama bin Laden - Still free 5 years later

Iraq - No WMD as promised by Bush
Iraq - No connection to 9/11 as promised by Bush
Iraq - No connection to bin Laden as promised by Cheney
Iraq - No yellow cake uranium purchased by Saddam as promised by Bush
Iraq - No welcome as liberators as promised by Cheney
Iraq - No connection to 9/11 hijackers by Iraqi intelligence as promised by Bush

Iraq - No connection to the 9/11 attack as promised by Bush and Cheney

Iraq - No connection between Saddam and bin Laden

IRAQ - Slowly sinking into civil war in spite of ("Mission Accomplished" in 2003)

USA - 2600+ dead Americans in the name of the above
USA - 8 Trillion dollar national debt
USA - Budget deficit of nearly 400 billion dollars
USA - Less than 40% of Americans support this war and this President
USA - A President in the White House who lost the popular vote & was appointed by the Supreme Court
USA - In spite of the Homeland Security Dept. the borders are as porous as ever
USA - Bush tries selling our port operations to Middle Eastern interests
USA - A year later New Orleans still devastated ("Brownie your doing a heck of a job")

USA - A President who walked away from his own military commitment

USA - A Vice President who never served a day in uniform but sends others to die.
USA - An energy policy formulated in secret in the V.P's office by oil CEO's.
USA - Bush veteos stem cell research thus setting back for years the potential to cure devastating diseases.

USA - Gasoline at $3+ a gallon

USA - Bush tax cuts that benefit the wealthiest 4% of the population at the expense of the poor and middle class.

USA - Bush "Healthy Forests" initiative that amounts to a giveaway of our old growth forests

USA - Bush "Clear Skys" initiative that allows coal burning plants in the midwest to spew more, not less sulfur dioxide ito the atmosphere

USA - Bush "No Child Left Behind" education initiative passed into law with much fanfare after bipartison cooperation with Ted Kennedy. Then, he promptly cuts the funding for it.

People who support the occupation in Iraq hate their own children

2006-08-21T15:36:00.000-07:00

Found this posted on AOL message boards. I liked it!!!

This occupation in Iraq is costing the tax payers of the United States 8 billion dollars per month.
The children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren of the “un“-United States
shall be paying off this debt.
With all the social problems to come in the next 6 decades that these children, and their children, shall have to deal with, it is a complete lack of responsibility for the Bushies, and the war profiteers, to put this unnecessary burden of debt at 8 billion per month on the backs of their own children. It is appalling.
Any generation that would act as self centered, irresponsible, and tenacious as the generation of the present must have an underlying hate for their own children.
The 8 billion dollars that I have mentioned, is borrowed from countries that do not even like the “un”-United States. You can look this up it is a true Fact.
Maybe when you find as I have that, Saudi Arabia now owns about 12% of the “un”-United States, China owns about 7%, Korea own about 5%. So, with just these three that is 24% of the “un”-United States. Almost ¼ of America is held by nations who seek to undermine us financially.
And who shall carry the burden of all this? You guessed it. Our children and their children.
So the next time you pound your chests and support this unlawful occupation of Iraq, stop your pontification of your pernicious, self emulating ego, and look into your child’s eyes, and ask yourself.
What is it that my actions shall leave behind, and do I hate my children so much that I would support such capriciousness.
Jamie Barton Agawam MA

GOP Party of Security....LOL sure...........

2006-08-12T15:24:00.000-07:00

Bureaucracy impedes bomb-detection work By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer
Sat Aug 12, 5:53 AM ET

WASHINGTON - As the British terror plot was unfolding, the Bush administration quietly tried to take away $6 million that was supposed to be spent this year developing new explosives detection technology. Congressional leaders rejected the idea, the latest in a series of Homeland Security Department steps that have left lawmakers and some of the department's own experts questioning the commitment to create better anti-terror technologies.

Homeland Security's research arm, called the Sciences & Technology Directorate, is a "rudderless ship without a clear way to get back on course," Republican and Democratic senators on the Appropriations Committee declared recently.

"The committee is extremely disappointed with the manner in which S&T is being managed within the Department of Homeland Security," the panel wrote June 29 in a bipartisan report accompanying the agency's 2007 budget.

Rep. Martin Sabo, D-Minn., who joined Republicans to block the administration's recent diversion of explosives detection money, said research and development is crucial to thwarting future attacks, and there is bipartisan agreement that Homeland Security has fallen short.

"They clearly have been given lots of resources that they haven't been using," Sabo said.

Homeland Security said Friday its research arm has just gotten a new leader, former Navy research chief Rear Adm. Jay Cohen, and there is strong optimism for developing new detection technologies in the future.

"I don't have any criticisms of anyone," said Kip Hawley, the assistant secretary for transportation security. "I have great hope for the future. There is tremendous intensity on this issue among the senior management of this department to make this area a strength."

Lawmakers and recently retired Homeland Security officials say they are concerned the department's research and development effort is bogged down by bureaucracy, lack of strategic planning and failure to use money wisely.

The department failed to spend $200 million in research and development money from past years, forcing lawmakers to rescind the money this summer.

The administration also was slow to start testing a new liquid explosives detector that the Japanese government provided to the United States earlier this year.

The British plot to blow up as many as 10 American airlines on trans-Atlantic flights would have involved liquid explosives.

Hawley said Homeland Security is now going to test the detector in six American airports. "It is very promising technology, and we are extremely interested in it to help us operationally in the next several years," he said.

Japan has been using the liquid explosive detectors in its Narita International Airport in Tokyo and demonstrated the technology to U.S. officials at a conference in January, the Japanese Embassy in Washington said.

Homeland Security is spending a total of $732 million this year on various explosives deterrents. It has tested several commercial liquid explosive detectors over the past few years but hasn't been satisfied enough with the results to deploy them.

Hawley said current liquid detectors that can scan only individual containers aren't suitable for wide deployment because they would slow security check lines to a crawl.

For more than four years, officials inside Homeland Security also have debated whether to deploy smaller trace explosive detectors — already in most American airports — to foreign airports to help stop any bomb chemicals or devices from making it onto U.S.-destined flights.

A 2002 Homeland Security report recommended "immediate deployment" of the trace units to key European airports, highlighting their low cost, $40,000 per unit, and their detection capabilities. The report said one such unit was able, 25 days later, to detect explosives residue inside the airplane where convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid was foiled in December 2001.

A 2005 report to Congress similarly urged that the trace detectors be used more aggressively and strongly warned the continuing failure to distribute such detectors to foreign airports "may be an invitation to terrorist to ply their trade, using techniques that they have already used on a number of occasions."

Tony Fainberg, who formerly oversaw Homeland Security's explosive and radiation detection research with the national labs, said he strongly urged deployment of the detectors overseas but was rebuffed.

"It is not that expensive," said Fainberg, who recently retired. "There was no resistance from any country that I was aware of, and yet we didn't deploy it."

Fainberg said research efforts were often frustrated inside Homeland Security by "bureaucratic games," a lack of strategic goals and months-long delays in distributing money Congress had already approved.

"There has not been a focused and coherent strategic plan for defining what we need ... and then matching the research and development plans to that overall strategy," he said.

Rep. Peter DeFazio (news, bio, voting record) of Oregon, a senior Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, said he urged the administration three years ago to buy electron scanners like the ones used at London's airport to detect plastics that might be hidden beneath passenger clothes.

"It's been an ongoing frustration about their resistance to purchase off-the-shelf, state-of-the-art equipment that can meet these threats," he said.

The administration's most recent budget request also mystified lawmakers. It asked to take $6 million from the Sciences & Technology Directorate's 2006 budget that was supposed to be used to develop explosives detection technology and divert it to cover a budget shortfall in the Federal Protective Service, which provides security around government buildings.

Sens. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., and Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., the top two lawmakers for Senate homeland security appropriations, rejected the idea shortly after it arrived late last month, Senate leadership officials said.

Their House counterparts, Sabo and Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., likewise rejected the request in recent days, Appropriations Committee spokeswoman Kirsten Brost said. Homeland Security said Friday it won't divert the money.

___

BUSH AT 33 ....again...

2006-08-11T08:59:00.000-07:00

Poll: Bush may be hurting Republicans
By DONNA CASSATA, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Republicans determined to win in November are up against a troublesome trend — growing opposition to President Bush.

An Associated Press-Ipsos poll conducted this week found the president's approval rating has dropped to 33 percent, matching his low in May. His handling of nearly every issue, from the Iraq war to foreign policy, contributed to the president's decline around the nation, even in the Republican-friendly South.

More sobering for the GOP are the number of voters who backed Bush in 2004 who are ready to vote Democratic in the fall's congressional elections — 19 percent. These one-time Bush voters are more likely to be female, self-described moderates, low- to middle-income and from the Northeast and Midwest.

Two years after giving the Republican president another term, more than half of these voters — 57 percent — disapprove of the job Bush is doing.

"The signs now point to the most likely outcome of Democrats gaining control of the House," said Robert Erikson, a Columbia University political science professor.

Democrats need to gain 15 seats in the House to seize control after a dozen years of Republican rule, and the party is optimistic about its chances amid diminishing support for Bush and the GOP-led Congress.

Republicans argue that elections will be decided in the 435 districts and the 33 Senate races based on local issues with the power of incumbency looming large.

"This election will be less about a political climate that is challenging for both parties, and instead about the actual candidates and how their policies impact voters on the local level," said Tracey Schmitt, a Republican National Committee spokeswoman.

But fewer than 100 days before the Nov. 7 election, the AP-Ipsos poll suggested the midterms are clearly turning into a national referendum on Bush.

The number of voters who say their congressional vote this fall will be in part to express opposition to the president jumped from 20 percent last month to 29 percent, driven by double-digit increases among males, minorities, moderate and conservative Democrats and Northeasterners.

"I don't feel like the war was the answer," said Paula Lohler, 54, an independent from Worcester, Mass., who is inclined to vote her opposition to Bush. "It seems like it's going on and on and on and nothing's being done."

That attitude propelled anti-war challenger Ned Lamont to Tuesday's Democratic primary win over Connecticut Sen.Joe Lieberman, a stalwart supporter of Bush on the war.

"I think it's going to be similar to what we saw in 1994 and the tremendous dissatisfaction with Democrats," said Dick Harpootlian, the former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party. "Republicans are going to feel the wrath, feel the pain of being associated with President Bush."

In the South, Bush's approval ratings dropped from 43 percent last month to 34 percent as the GOP advantage with Southern women disappeared.

House Republican candidates looking to oust incumbent Democrats seized on the silver lining of the AP-Ipsos poll. Many of the 1,001 adults and 871 registered voters surveyed Aug. 7-9 said they've had enough with the status quo. Only 26 percent of adults said the country was on the right track, and just 29 percent approved of the job Congress is doing.

"It's a good year to be running against an incumbent," said Republican David McSweeney, an investment banker looking to unseat first-term Democratic Rep. Melissa Bean in the Chicago suburbs.

"Approval ratings for Congress are below where the president is," said Jeff Lamberti, a Republican taking on five-term Iowa Rep. Leonard Boswell (news, bio, voting record). "It's a real opportunity for a challenger."

A Democrat seeking an open seat in a competitive Colorado district — Ed Perlmutter — is certain his party will capitalize on the national mood.

"There's a point where people just get mad," said Perlmutter, a winner in Tuesday's primary.

On the generic question of whether voters would back the Democrat or Republican, 55 percent of registered voters chose the Democrat and 37 percent chose the Republican, a slight increase for Democrats from last month.

"I'm not too happy with Bush at the moment," said dental lab employee Chrissie Clement, 36, of Poynette, Wis. "I think he could do more for this country. We need to get somebody new in there and get a different party in charge."

Charles Taylor, 56, who works on newspaper presses and lives near Roanoke, Va., said, "I would like to see Republicans keep control of Congress. I vote Republican to support the president." FINE EXAMPLE OF PARTY OVER COUNTRY

Republican consultant Kevin Spillane said August polls typically have been filled with bad news for Bush and the GOP, but they eventually turn it around in November. Still, he said, "The bottom line from the numbers is no Republican incumbent should be caught unprepared for November."

The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points for adults and 3.5 percentage points for registered voters.

More messing with the Constitution

2006-08-10T06:47:00.000-07:00

SEN. BOND'S ANTI-LEAK BILL DRAWS FIRE AT HOME

"Sen. Kit Bond has gone way too far in an effort to curtail the
public's right to information on government operations,"
according to one of the leading newspapers in his home state of
Missouri.

The Kansas City Star objected to a bill introduced this week by
Senator Bond that would outlaw "leaks" or unauthorized
disclosures of classified information. A similar provision was
vetoed by President Clinton in 2000.

Opponents of such measures argue that the ability of the press to
uncover and report on misconduct in classified programs often
depends on leaks of classified information, and that reporting
on such leaks serves a larger national interest.

So, for example, the fact that "numerous incidents of sadistic,
blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted" on detainees
at Abu Ghraib prison was classified "Secret" when it was first
reported by the press. The unauthorized disclosure of these
findings, from a classified report by Army General Antonio
Taguba, triggered a series of investigations and continuing
public controversy.

"Bond should withdraw his proposal immediately," the Kansas City
Star editorialized today. "It obviously is not well thought
out."

See "Law Would Go Against Ideals of Free Society," Kansas City
Star, August 4 (free but intrusive registration required):

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/15192641.htm

"Over the past few years, we have seen unauthorized disclosures
of classified information at an alarming rate," said Senator
Bond on the Senate floor on August 2.

"Each one of the leaks gravely increases the threat to our
national security and makes it easier for our enemies to achieve
their murderous and destructive plans. Each leak is a window of
opportunity for terrorists to discover our sources and methods.
Each violation of trust guarantees chaos and violence in the
world."

See the introduction of his bill to prohibit unauthorized
disclosures as well as the text of the bill (S. 3774) here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_cr/s3774.html

The bill has been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Ann Coulter Proven Liar...GO AWAY !!!!

2006-08-09T09:29:00.000-07:00

Original article and active links at : www.mediamatters.org

Endnotes in Coulter's latest book rife with distortions and falsehoods

On July 7, Media Matters for America asked Random House Inc. whether it would investigate charges of plagiarism lodged against right-wing pundit Ann Coulter's latest book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism (Crown Forum, June 2006). Steve Ross, senior vice president and publisher of Crown Publishing Group and publisher of the Crown Forum imprint -- divisions of Random House Inc. -- responded to Media Matters by stating that charges of plagiarism against Coulter were "trivial," "meritless," and "irresponsible," and defended Coulter's scholarship by stating that she "knows when attribution is appropriate, as underscored by the nineteen pages of hundreds of endnotes contained in Godless."

This was hardly the first time Coulter and her defenders have offered the large number of footnotes contained in her book as "evidence" of the quality of her scholarship. Also on July 7, Terence Jeffrey, editor of conservative weekly Human Events, defended Coulter's book on CNN's The Situation Room by citing her "19 pages of footnotes." And when similar questions were raised about her 2002 book, Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right (Crown, June 2002), Coulter repeatedly cited her "35 pages of footnotes" as evidence that her claims were accurate.

In response, Media Matters decided to investigate each of the endnotes in Godless. We found a plethora of problems.

Among other things, Coulter:

misrepresented and distorted the statements of her sources;
omitted information in those sources that refuted the claims in her book;
misrepresented news coverage to allege bias;
relied upon outdated and unreliable sources;
and invented "facts."
What follows is documentation of some of the most problematic endnotes in Godless.

1. On Page 175, Coulter attacked "liberals" who would "foist" sex education topics such as "[a]nal sex, oral sex, fisting, dental dams, [and] 'birthing games'" on kindergarteners. Citing a November 8, 1987, New York Times article, Coulter wrote:

But in contrast to liberal preachiness about IQ, there would be no moralizing when it came to sex. Anal sex, oral sex, fisting, dental dams, "birthing games" -- all that would be foisted on unsuspecting children in order to protect kindergarteners from the scourge of AIDS. As one heroine of the sex education movement told an approving New York Times reporter, "My job is not to teach one right value system. Parents and churches teach moral values. My job is to say, 'These are the facts,' and to help the students, as adults, decide what is right for them."9

To those who find it odd that Coulter would support her claim about "fisting" being taught to kindergarteners by quoting "one heroine of the sex education movement" and referring to students as "adults," there is a very good reason for that. The woman Coulter quoted was Dr. Beverlie Conant Sloane, then-director of health education at Dartmouth College. The Times article cited by Coulter, titled "At Dartmouth, A Helping Candor," (subscription required) was about the sex education programs available to adult students at Dartmouth -- not children in kindergarten. Not only is the article about adult students, but it is from November 1987, close to 20 years old -- hardly what would be considered to be relevant information on current sex education policies.

2. On Page 248, Coulter wrote:

In an article in the New York Times on intelligent design, the design proponents quoted in the article keep rattling off serious, scientific arguments -- from [Michael J.] Behe's examples in molecular biology to [William] Dembski's mathematical formulas and statistical models. The Times reporter, who was clearly not trying to make the evolutionists sound retarded, was forced to keep describing the evolutionists' entire retort to these arguments as: Others disagree.2

That's it. No explanation, no specifics, just "others disagree." The high priests of evolution have not only forgotten how to do science, they've lost the ability to formulate a coherent counterargument.

The New York Times article Coulter cited -- "In Explaining Life's Complexity, Darwinists and Doubters Clash" -- appeared on August 22, 2005, as Part 2 of a three-part series on the debate over the teaching of evolution. Coulter's claim that the article's author, reporter Kenneth Chang, offered "[n]o explanations" and "no specifics" from the proponents of evolution is flat-out false. Chang offered detailed explanations of how evolutionary mechanisms gave rise to blood-clotting systems, modern whales, and speciation among birds on the Galapagos Islands ("Darwin's finches"). Chang also noted: "Darwin's theory ... has over the last century yielded so many solid findings that no mainstream biologist today doubts its basic tenets, though they may argue about particulars." Finally, and most egregiously, the phrase "others disagree" appears nowhere in the article.

3. On Page 87, Coulter attacked Democrats and the "pro-abortion zealots," writing:

The pro-abortion zealots demand that the Democrats swear absolute fealty to their craziest positions, and generally the Democrats are happy to comply. They need the money. In 2004, pro-abortion groups gave over $1.4 million in hard money to candidates for national office -- more than twice as much as did pro-life groups. Emily's List is a political fundraising group that gives money only to female candidates who support abortion. In 2004, Emily's List raised $34 million. By comparison, the National Right to Life Committee raised only about $1.7 million.14

As it happens, Coulter's figures about Emily's List and the National Right to Life Committee were accurate. But the citation Coulter gave was a July 1, 2004, letter to the editor (subscription required) former Planned Parenthood president Gloria Feldt wrote to the Chicago Tribune (though Feldt's name appears as "Febit" in Coulter's endnote). Nothing from the excerpt above appeared in Feldt's letter. Feldt's letter read as follows, in its entirety:

Steve Chapman's June 24 column disregarded my remarks about the position and practices of Planned Parenthood and its affiliates.

For more than 88 years, Planned Parenthood has been a trusted provider of confidential and compassionate reproductive health care. Informed consent is our hallmark. We fully support providing women with scientifically accurate medical information. What we do not support is equating speculation with scientific fact in order to advance some politician's ideology. Women are entitled to medically accurate information, not biased scripts mandated by Congress to their doctors. The Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act to which Chapman refers would require doctors to communicate opinions as though they were medical facts.

4. On Pages 106-107, Coulter claimed affirmatively that the Clinton administration destroyed evidence uncovered by Able Danger, a now-defunct military intelligence unit that some congressional Republicans have claimed -- without evidence -- identified Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, as a terrorist over a year before the attacks occurred. Coulter wrote:

Able Danger wasn't "historically significant" in the sense that the intelligence gathered by this operation did not stop the 9/11 attack. It could not have prevented the attack, because the information produced by Able Danger was destroyed by the Clinton administration.7

Coulter's source for this claim was a February 16 Washington Times article, titled: "Probe fails to find pre-9/11 Atta data." The article, however, merely noted that Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA), one of the congressional Republicans baselessly claiming that Able Danger had identified Atta, "has said the Clinton administration destroyed Able Danger documents, shut down the program and prevented intelligence officers from sharing the information with the FBI." Coulter's endnote omitted her true source, citing only The Washington Times in support of her assertion that the Clinton administration destroyed Able Danger information. In fact, The Washington Times simply reported the unsubstantiated claim by a Republican member of Congress that the Clinton administration destroyed the data.

5. On Page 132, Coulter cited the September 30, 2003, edition (subscription required) of Roll Call's "Heard on the Hill" in attacking Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's (D-MA) military service:

After [former Rep.] Tom DeLay [R-TX] joked to a Republican audience, "I certainly don't want to see Teddy Kennedy in a Navy flight suit," [Vietnam war veteran and former Sen. Max] Cleland [D-GA] fired off a nasty letter -- a letter, no less! -- to DeLay saying, "This country deserves more patriots like Senator Kennedy, not more chickenhawks [sic] like you who never served."

Most Democrats shy away from citing Kennedy's "military service" with such bravado. The "military service" at issue consisted of Kennedy's spending two years in NATO's Paris office after he was expelled from Harvard for paying another student to take his Spanish exam.39

Coulter's endnote simply read: "Ed Henry, 'Heard on the Hill,' Roll Call, September 30, 2003." That Roll Call article, "The Importance of Being Earnest," by Henry, then a Roll Call senior editor and columnist who is now CNN's White House correspondent, did indeed address the back-and-forth between DeLay and Cleland, but at no point in the story were the details of Kennedy's military service or college career mentioned, as Coulter's citation indicated.

6. On Page 158, Coulter cited a study from the education journal Education Next in claiming that private-school teachers earn 60 percent less than public school teachers. Coulter wrote:

In 2002, Bob Chase, the president of the National Education Association (NEA), complained that teachers don't make as much as engineers ($74,920) or lawyers ($82,712). But I'm thinking, Why stop at engineers and lawyers? Why shouldn't kindergarten teachers earn as much as Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts? A better benchmark comparison for public school teachers might be private school teachers. Teachers in the private sector earn about 60 percent less than public school teachers.7 And their students actually learn to read.

The study Coulter cited -- "Fringe Benefits" -- actually found that, "Starting pay in private schools begins at 78 percent that of public schools, rises to 92 percent of public school pay by a teacher's 12th year, and declines thereafter." It is unclear where Coulter arrived at her "60 percent less" figure, but it certainly did not come from the source she cited.

7. On Page 195, Coulter wrote:

Until Michael Fumento wrote about Hwang Mi-soon, the South Korean woman who began to walk again thanks to adult stem cells, there was no mention of it in any document on Nexis.56

Coulter was claiming that Michael Fumento, a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute and former Scripps Howard columnist, was the first to write about South Korean Hwang Mi-Soon, who was treated in 2004 with stem cells extracted from umbilical cord blood after she had been paralyzed for close to 20 years; Hwang was later able to walk with the help of braces and a walker. Coulter cited Fumento's October 20, 2005, Scripps Howard column to support her assertion, though she did not provide the parameters she used in her Nexis database search. But a Media Matters Nexis search of all news outlets in the database during all available dates for "Hwang Mi-soon" revealed 47 articles, 36 of which, mentioning Hwang's newfound ability to walk, were published prior to October 20, 2005. Additionally, a week before Fumento's Scripps column was published, Deroy Murdock, another Scripps Howard columnist and a commentator to Human Events, mentioned Hwang's operation in an October 13, 2005, column, titled, "Embryonic stem cell research unneeded." Among those articles were:

The first article to appear in the Nexis database about Hwang is a November 28, 2004, Agence France Presse article titled, "Paralyzed woman walks again after stem cell therapy" -- published almost one full year before Fumento's column.
The New York Post published "Stem-Cell Gal's 'Miracle' Steps" about Hwang on November 29, 2004.
CBS News ran a segment on Hwang on the CBS Evening News on December 1, 2004.
Interestingly, Coutler would have to be aware that her claim was bogus, because her first reference to Hwang, in the paragraph preceding the excerpt cited above, annotated a Korea Times article, "Stem Cell Research May Be Money Game," published on July 8, 2005 -- almost three and a half months before Fumento's column. Additionally, Coulter misattributed the article to "Hankook Ilbo" -- which a Google search reveals is the Korean name for The Korea Times. The article was in fact written by Korea Times staff reporter Kim Tae-gyu. Like the three articles mentioned above and the other 33 articles published before Fumento's column, The Korea Times article is available on Nexis.

8. On Pages 199-200, Coulter attacked "atheists" who "need evolution to be true." Citing what she presented as two Washington Post articles from May 15, 2005, Coulter wrote:

Although God believers don't need evolution to be false, atheists need evolution to be true. William Provine, an evolutionary biologist at Cornell University, calls Darwinism the greatest engine of atheism devised by man. His fellow Darwin disciple, Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins, famously said, "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist."1 This is why there is a mass panic on the left whenever someone mentions the vast and accumulating evidence against evolution.

The Washington Post articles Coulter cited are actually one article by Michael Powell, with the headline, "Doubting Rationalist," accompanied by the subhead, " 'Intelligent Design' Proponent Phillip Johnson, and How He Came to Be." But nowhere in the article will one find the Dawkins quote Coulter cited.

9. On Page 231, Coulter continued her attack on evolution's "cult members," writing:

The cult members are especially dazzled by the similar DNA in all living creatures. The human genome is 98.7 percent identical with the chimpanzee's.3 On the basis of this intriguing fact, psychology professor Roger Fouts of Central Washington University argues that humans "are simply odd looking apes"4 in a book titled Next of Kin: What Chimpanzees Have Taught Me About Who We Are.

Both of Coulter's citations for this passage were of a January 22, 2004, Guardian (London) article titled "The code that must be cracked." This article, however, did not quote Fouts saying humans "are simply odd looking apes" -- indeed, Fouts, nor his book, were even mentioned in the article.

10. On Page 222, in addressing the Chengjiang fossils of the Cambrian period, Coulter quoted a New York Times article, "Spectacular Fossils Record Early Riot of Creation," (subscription required) as stating that the fossils appeared "as though they were just planted there." The phrase, "as though they were just planted there," appears nowhere in the Times article. This was not the only place Coulter misused or fabricated quotes to support her attack on Darwin's theory about evolution, as Media Matters has documented.

11. On Page 48, Coulter suggested that The New York Times' news reporting was biased against former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (R). Coulter wrote:

As the New York Times admitted in one of the rare articles during the nineties not calling Giuliani an "authoritarian,"36 "[W]hile constituting less than 3 percent of the country's population," New York City alone "was responsible for 155,558 of the 432,952 fewer reported crimes over the three years."

In her endnote for that passage, Coulter listed three editorials. On page 48, however, she claimed they were "articles," and that the Times often referred to Giuliani as "authoritarian." Additionally, one of the editorials Coulter pointed to, "The Legal Aid Crisis" (subscription required), from October 5, 1994, read as follows:

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's retaliatory cancellation of the Legal Aid Society's contract with the city at first looked authoritarian and even dangerous at a time when he is urging the police to crowd the courts with more defendants.

But Mr. Giuliani's action has a firm foundation in fiscal reality. The city faces a big budget deficit. Public-employee unions are being told they cannot have raises. It follows then that the legal professionals who already cost the city $79 million a year should know that this is not a year for negotiating the 4.5 percent raise they are demanding.

Therefore, on top of referring to editorials as "articles," Coulter highlighted a Times editorial that said Giuliani "looked authoritarian," but actually wasn't.

As for her claim that the first article she cited was "one of the rare articles during the nineties not calling Giuliani an 'authoritarian' "; in order for it to be true, it would have to be the case that, at the very least, a majority, if not an overwhelming majority, of the literally thousands of articles The New York Times published during the 1990s that mentioned Giuliani also referred to him as "authoritarian." Yet she managed to identify only two editorials that did so.

Coulter also used the wrong date for the editorial "Mr. Giuliani's Energetic First Year," dating it November 25, 1997, in the endnote. According to Nexis, this article was published on January 3, 1995.

12. On Page 67, Coulter attacked the "mainstream media" for being biased against former President George H.W. Bush during his 1988 presidential campaign against former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. Coulter wrote:

Despite being sentenced on two consecutive life terms, [Donald] Robertson was released under Michael Dukakis's furlough program after only eight years in prison. He never came back. Bradford Boyd was serving time for rape when he committed first-degree murder in prison. Still, he was furloughed. While out on furlough, he viciously beat a man, repeatedly raped a woman, and then killed himself. (On the plus side of the ledger, Boyd hasn't committed any crimes since then.) The mainstream media didn't find these stories, [Cliff] Barnes [victim of convicted murderer William Horton] did. They were too busy writing articles about Bush "Slinging Mud on the Low Road to Office,"2 and "Republicans Riding to Victory on Racism,"3 and "Bush Tactics Turn Ugly."4 According to the vast majority of media stories on the 1988 presidential campaign, it was an 'ugly' tactic for the Bush campaign to mention the Massachusetts furlough program.

Once again, Coulter was not citing news articles, but opinion pieces that she falsely claimed were "articles." Coulter cited three op-eds to support her claim about what the mainstream media were "too busy" doing -- a November 4, 1988, Newsday column by Mary McGrory; an October 31, 1988, Financial Post (Toronto) column by Allan Fotheringham; and an October 30, 1988, Newsday column by Murray Kempton, respectively. Moreover, the McGrory column was published three days after the 1988 election, and the Fotheringham column was published in a Canadian paper -- which raises doubts as to how much effect they could have had on the Bush campaign or the American electoral scene.

As for her claim that "the vast majority of media stories on the 1988 presidential campaign" alleged that "it was an 'ugly' tactic for the Bush campaign to mention the Massachusetts furlough program," she offered no citation at all, though from her use of quotes one would assume she meant that, in more than 50 percent of the stories written or aired by the media during the 1988 campaign, the Bush campaign's use of the Massachusetts furlough program was both discussed and referred to with the word "ugly." This is plainly false.

13. On Page 211, Coulter falsely attributed the quote, "[t]he probability of life originating at random is so utterly minuscule as to make it absurd," to Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA's double-helix structure, for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1962; however, the quote actually belongs to Fred Hoyle, a British mathematician and astronomer.

14. On Page 49, Coulter repeated the long-since debunked claim that former President Bill Clinton turned down an offer from the Sudanese government to hand over Osama bin Laden to the United States in 1996. Coulter wrote:

To this day, Democrats demand that we credit Clinton for the plunging crime rate in the nineties -- which did not begin to plunge until Giuliani became mayor of New York. Clinton may have tried to socialize health care, presided over a phony Internet bubble, spurned Sudan when it offered him Osama bin Laden on a silver platter,39 sold a burial plot in Arlington cemetery to a campaign contributor, engaged in sex romps in the Oval Office, been credibly accused of rape by Juanita Broaddrick, obstructed justice, had his law license suspended and gotten himself permanently disbarred from the U.S. Supreme Court, and pardoned a lot of sleazy crooks in return for political donations on his way out of office -- but, we're told, at least he was terrific on crime!

Coulter's endnote quoted two articles from October 2001 -- one from the Associated Press and one from The Guardian. However, as the portions Coulter quoted in her endnote indicated, neither article in any way lent support to her claim that Clinton rejected an offer from Sudan to turn over bin Laden. From Coulter's endnote [emphasis added]:

See, e.g., Jennifer Loven, "Clinton Says Answer to Terrorism is Support of Current Administration," Associated Press, October 10, 2001. ("Clinton also confirmed a failed U.S. attempt in 1996 to have Osama bin Laden arrested in Sudan and placed in Saudi Arabian custody and a CIA-sponsored plan to have Pakistani commandos hunt him down in 1999, abandoned after a military coup there. Bin Laden is the prime suspect in last month's terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.") Michael Ellison, "Attack on Afghanistan," The Guardian (London), October 11, 2001. ("Mr. Clinton confirmed in a speech to executives at the Kennedy Centre in Washington DC that the US had failed in 1996 to have Bin Laden arrested in Sudan and that a CIA-sponsored initiative to have Pakistani commandos snare him three years later was abandoned because of a military coup in that country. A US cruise missile attack on Bin Laden training camps in Afghanistan in 1998 missed their main target.")

Of course, the reason neither of the articles supported Coulter's claim is that, according to the 9-11 Commission, there is "no reliable evidence to support" the allegation that Clinton was even offered bin Laden by the Sudanese government, as Media Matters has documented. This claim first surfaced in an August 11, 2002, article on right-wing news website NewsMax that distorted a speech Clinton made in 2002. The 9-11 Commission found that Clinton "wrongly recount[ed] a number of press stories he had read," and had "misspoken" in his 2002 speech.

Conclusion

Media Matters' analysis of the endnotes in Godless revealed that Coulter routinely misrepresented the information of her sources, as well as omitted inconvenient information within those same sources that refuted her claims. Coulter relied upon secondary sources to support many of her claims, as well as unreliable or outdated information.

In addition to demonstrating her poor scholarship, this analysis also made clear Coulter's lack of respect for her readers, who she clearly assumed would believe anything she wrote, as long as there was a citation attached to it.

Following the publication of Slander, similar errors in the book's scholarship were documented. Just as Ross defended Godless by pointing to the book's endnotes, so did Coulter in defending Slander in 2002.

On June 26, 2002, Coulter appeared on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews and stated, "I have footnotes. I do back this up." The very next day, on CNN's now-defunct Crossfire, Coulter quipped, "I wrote a book [Slander], you know, thousands of facts, studies, quotes -- 35 pages of footnotes ..." On July 15, 2002, Coulter was a guest on Fox News' Hannity & Colmes. Co-host Sean Hannity asked Coulter, "How many pages of footages" in Slander? Coulter replied:

Thirty-five. And we had to cut it down. I have a mainstream publisher -- was not used to publishing a right-winger. And they were wondering what all the footnotes were about. I had to explain to them -- I will be Aldridged [sic] otherwise. I must have substantiation for everything. But we tried to cut out as many as we could.

Two days later, on MSNBC's Buchanan & Press, Coulter stated, "I have 35 pages of footnotes to back it [Slander] up." That same week, on July 19, 2002, The Daily Telegraph (London) quoted Coulter defending her book's scholarship: "My invective is backed up in my book [Slander] with 35 pages of footnotes and examples." And once again, Coulter defended her scholarship on CNN, this time on Talkback Live. She stated on August 22, 2002: "I have a 200-page book [Slander] with thousands of examples and 35 pages of footnotes. So, if you want the evidence, it is in my book."

In response, one of Coulter's editors, Doug Pepper, stated, "If a mistake is found in any book, we change it."

Media Matters would like to take this opportunity to ask of Coulter's Godless editors, Pepper and Jed Donahue: Will the errors in Godless be corrected?

—S.S.M. & R.S.
Additional research and writing provided by Matt Singer and Matthew Biedlingmaier.

Shame !!!!

2006-08-08T13:29:00.000-07:00

THE SHAME OF BEING AN AMERICAN
by Paul Craig Roberts

*** Dr. Roberts is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy
and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He is a former associate
editor of the Wall Street Journal and a former assistant secretary of the U.S.
Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions ***

Gentle reader, do you know that Israel is engaged in ethnic cleansing in
southern Lebanon? Israel has ordered all the villagers to clear out. Israel
then destroys their homes and murders the fleeing villagers. That way there is
no one to come back and nothing to which to return, making it easier for
Israel to grab the territory, just as Israel has been stealing Palestine from
the Palestinians.

Do you know that one-third of the Lebanese civilians murdered by Israel's
attacks on civilian residential districts are children?.... (inserted by
Romira... http://www.fromisraeltolebanon.info/)... That is the report from Jan
Egeland, the emergency relief coordinator for the UN. He says it is impossible
for help to reach the wounded and those buried in rubble, because Israeli air
strikes have blown up all the bridges and roads.

Considering how often (almost always) Israel misses Hezbollah targets and hits
civilian ones, one might think that Israeli fire is being guided by US
satellites and US military GPS. Don't be surprised at US complicity. Why would
the puppet be any less evil than the puppet master?

Of course, you don't know these things, because the US print and TV media do
not report them.Because Bush is so proud of himself, you do know that he has
blocked every effort to stop the Israeli slaughter of Lebanese civilians. Bush
has told the UN "NO." Bush has told the European Union "NO." Bush has told the
pro-American Lebanese prime minister "NO." Twice.

Bush is very proud of his firmness. He is enjoying Israel's rampage and wishes
he could do the same thing in Iraq.

Does it make you a Proud American that "your" president gave Israel the green
light to drop bombs on convoys of villagers fleeing from Israeli shelling, on
residential neighborhoods in the capital of Beirut and throughout Lebanon, on
hospitals, on power plants, on food production and storage, on ports, on
civilian airports, on bridges, on roads, on every piece of infrastructure on
which civilized life depends?

Are you a Proud American? Or are you an Israeli puppet?

On July 20, "your" House of Representatives voted 410-8 in favor of Israel's
massive war crimes in Lebanon. Not content with making every American
complicit in war crimes, "your" House of Representatives, according to the
Associated Press, also "condemns enemies of the Jewish state."

Who are the "enemies of the Jewish state"?They are the Palestinians whose land
has been stolen by the Jewish state, whose homes and olive groves have been
destroyed by the Jewish state, whose children have been shot down in the
streets by the Jewish state, whose women have been abused by the Jewish state.
They are Palestinians who have been walled off into ghettos, who cannot reach
their farm lands or medical care or schools, who cannot drive on roads through
Palestine that have been constructed for Israelis only. They are Palestinians
whose ancient towns have been invaded by militant Zionist "settlers" under the
protection of the Israeli army who beat and persecute the Palestinians and
drive them out of their towns. They are Palestinians who cannot allow their
children outside their homes because they will be murdered by Israeli
"settlers."

The Palestinians who confront Israeli evil are called "terrorists." When Bush
forced free elections on Palestine, the people voted for Hamas. Hamas is the
organization that has stood up to Israel. This means, of course, that Hamas is
evil, anti-Semitic, un-American and terrorist.

The US and Israel responded by cutting off all funds to the new government.
Democracy is permitted only if it produces the results Bush and Israel want.

Israelis never practice terror. Only those who are in Israel's way are
terrorists.

Another enemy of the Jewish state is Hezbollah. Hezbollah is a militia of
Shi'ite Muslims created in 1982 when Israel first invaded Lebanon. During this
invasion the great moral Jewish state arranged for the murder of refugees in
refugee camps. The result of Israel's atrocities was Hezbollah, which fought
the Israeli Army, defeated it, and drove it out of Lebanon.

Today Hezbollah not only defends southern Lebanon but also provides social
services such as orphanages and medical care. To cut to the chase, the enemies
of the Jewish state are any Muslim country not ruled by an American puppet
friendly to Israel.

Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the oil emirates have sided with Israel
against their own kind, because they are dependent either on American money or
on American protection from their own people. Sooner or later these totally
corrupt governments that do not represent the people they rule will be
overthrown. It is only a matter of time.

Indeed Bush and Israel may be hastening the process in their frantic effort to
overthrow the governments of Syria and Iran. Both governments have more
popular support than Bush has, but the White House Moron doesn't know this.
The Moron thinks Syria and Iran will be "cakewalks" like Iraq, where ten proud
divisions of the US military are tied down by a few lightly armed insurgents.

If you are still a Proud American, consider that your pride is doing nothing
good for Israel or for America.

On July 20 when "your" House of Representatives, following "your" US Senate,
passed the resolution in support of Israel's war crimes, the most powerful
lobby in Washington, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC),
quickly got out a press release proclaiming "The American people overwhelming
support Israel's war on terrorism and understand that we must stand by our
closest ally in this time of crisis."

The truth is that Israel created the crisis by invading a country with a
pro-American government.

The truth is that the American people do not support Israel's war crimes, as
the CNN quick poll results make clear and as was made clear by callers into
C-Span.

Despite the Israeli spin on news provided by US "reporting," a majority of
Americans do not approve of Israeli atrocities against Lebanese civilians.

Hezbollah is located in southern Lebanon. If Israel is targeting Hezbollah,
why are Israeli bombs falling on northern Lebanon? Why are they falling on
Beirut? Why are they falling on civilian airports? On schools and hospitals?

Now we arrive at the main point. When the US Senate and House of
Representatives pass resolutions in support of Israeli war crimes and condemn
those who resist Israeli aggression, the Senate and House confirm Osama bin
Laden's propaganda that America stands with Israel against the Arab and Muslim
world. Indeed, Israel, which has one of the world's largest per capita
incomes, is the largest recipient of US foreign aid.

Many believe that much of this "aid" comes back to AIPAC, which uses it to
elect "our" representatives in Congress.This perception is no favor to Israel,
whose population is declining, as the smart ones have seen the writing on the
wall and have been leaving.

Israel is surrounded by hundreds of millions of Muslims who are being turned
into enemies of Israel by Israel's actions and inhumane policies. The hope in
the Muslim world has always been that the United States would intervene in
behalf of compromise and make Israel realize that Israel cannot steal
Palestine and turn every Palestinian into a refugee. This has been the hope of
the Arab world. This is the reason our puppets have not been overthrown. This
hope is the reason America still had some prestige in the Arab world.

The House of Representatives resolution, bought and paid for by AIPAC money,
is the final nail in the coffin of American prestige in the Middle East. It
shows that America is, indeed, Israel's puppet, just as Osama bin Laden says,
and as a majority of Muslims believe.

With hope and diplomacy dead, henceforth America and Israel have only tooth
and claw.

The vaunted Israeli army could not defeat a rag tag militia in southern
Lebanon. The vaunted US military cannot defeat a rag tag, lightly armed
insurgency drawn from a minority of the population in Iraq, insurgents,
moreover, who are mainly engaged in civil war against the Shi'ite majority.

What will the US and its puppet master do? Both are too full of hubris and
paranoia to admit their terrible mistakes. Israel and the US will either
destroy from the air the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon, Palestine, Syria,
and Iran so that civilized life becomes impossible for Muslims, or the US and
Israel will use nuclear weapons to intimidate Muslims into acquiescence to
Israel's desires. Muslim genocide in one form or another is the professed goal
of the neoconservatives who have total control over the Bush administration.

Neocon godfather Norman Podhoretz has called for World War IV (in neocon
thinking WW III was the Cold War) to overthrow Islam in the Middle East,
deracinate the Islamic religion and turn it into a formalized, secular ritual.

Rumsfeld's neocon Pentagon has drafted new US war doctrine that permits
pre-emptive nuclear attack on non-nuclear states.

Neocon David Horowitz says that by slaughtering Palestinian and Lebanese
civilians, "Israel is doing the work of the rest of the civilized world," thus
equating war criminals with civilized men.

Neocon Larry Kudlow says that "Israel is doing the Lord's work" by murdering
Lebanese, a claim that should give pause to Israel's Christian evangelical
supporters.

Where does the Lord Jesus say, "go forth and murder your neighbors so that you
may steal their lands"?

The complicity of the American public in these heinous crimes will damn
America for all time in history.

Israel invasion a breach of international law.....

2006-08-07T18:47:00.000-07:00

Noam Chomsky on Israel, Lebanon and Palestine

By Kaveh Afrasiabi of Global Interfaith Peace

08/07/06 Original article at : www.informationclearinghouse.com

Do you agree with the argument that Israel's military offensive in Lebanon is "legally and morally justified?"

Noam Chomsky: The invasion itself is a serious breach of international law, and major war crimes are being committed as it proceeds. There is no legal justification.

The "moral justification" is supposed to be that capturing soldiers in a cross-border raid, and killing others, is an outrageous crime. We know, for certain, that Israel, the United States and other Western governments, as well as the mainstream of articulate Western opinion, do not believe a word of that. Sufficient evidence is their tolerance for many years of US-backed Israeli crimes in Lebanon, including four invasions before this one, occupation in violation of Security Council orders for 22 years, and regular killings and abductions. To mention just one question that every journal should be answering: When did Nasrallah assume a leadership role? Answer: When the Rabin government escalated its crimes in Lebanon, murdering Sheikh Abbas Mussawi and his wife and child with missiles fired from a US helicopter. Nasrallah was chosen as his successor. Only one of innumerable cases. There is, after all, a good reason why last February, 70% of Lebanese called for the capture of Israeli soldiers for prisoner exchange.

The conclusion is underscored, dramatically, by the current upsurge of violence, which began after the capture of Corporal Gilad Shalit on June 25. Every published Western "timeline" takes that as the opening event. Yet the day before, Israeli forces kidnapped two Gaza civilians, a doctor and his brother, and sent them to the Israeli prison system where they can join innumerable other Palestinians, many held without charges -- hence kidnapped. Kidnapping of civilians is a far worse crime than capture of soldiers. The Western response was quite revealing: a few casual comments, otherwise silence. The major media did not even bother reporting it. That fact alone demonstrates, with brutal clarity, that there is no moral justification for the sharp escalation of attacks in Gaza or the destruction of Lebanon, and that the Western show of outrage about kidnapping is cynical fraud.

Much has been said about Israel's right to defend itself from its enemies who are taking advantage of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, thus causing the latest chapter in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Do you agree?

NC: Israel certainly has a right to defend itself, but no state has the right to "defend" occupied territories. When the World Court condemned Israel's "separation wall," even a US Justice, Judge Buergenthal, declared that any part of it built to defend Israeli settlements is "ipso facto in violation of international humanitarian law," because the settlements themselves are illegal.

The withdrawal of a few thousand illegal settlers from Gaza was publicly announced as a West Bank expansion plan. It has now been formalized by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, with the support of Washington, as a program of annexation of valuable occupied lands and major resources (particularly water) and cantonization of the remaining territories, virtually separated from one another and from whatever pitiful piece of Jerusalem will be granted to Palestinians. All are to be imprisoned, since Israel is to take over the Jordan valley. Gaza, too, remains imprisoned and Israel carries out attacks there at will.

Gaza and the West Bank are recognized to be a unit, by the United States and Israel as well. Therefore, Israel still occupies Gaza, and cannot claim self-defense in territories it occupies in either of the two parts of Palestine. It is Israel and the United States that are radically violating international law. They are now seeking to consummate long-standing plans to eliminate Palestinian national rights for good.

The United States has refused to call for an immediate cease-fire, arguing that this would mean a return to the status quo ante, yet we are witnessing a "back to the past" re-occupation of parts of Lebanon, and Lebanon's rapid decline to political chaos by the current conflict. Is the US policy correct?

NC: It is correct from the point of view of those who want to ensure that Israel, by now virtually an offshore US military base and high-tech center, dominates the region, without any challenge to its rule as it proceeds to destroy Palestine. And there are side advantages, such as eliminating any Lebanese-based deterrent if US-Israel decide to attack Iran.

They may also hope to set up a client regime in Lebanon of the kind that Ariel Sharon sought to create when he invaded Lebanon in 1982, destroying much of the country and killing some 15-20,000 people.

What will be the likely outcome of this "two-pronged" crisis in Lebanon and the occupied territories, in the near and long-term?

NC: We cannot predict much. There are too many uncertainties. One very likely consequence, as the United States and Israel surely anticipated, is a significant increase in jihadi-style terrorism as anger and hatred directed against the United States, Israel, and Britain sweep the Arab and Muslim worlds. Another is that Nasrallah, whether he survives or is killed, will become an even more important symbol of resistance to US-Israeli aggression. Hezbollah already has a phenomenal 87% support in Lebanon itself, and its resistance has energized popular opinion to such an extent that even the oldest and closest US allies have been compelled to say that "If the peace option is rejected due to the Israeli arrogance, then only the war option remains, and no one knows the repercussions befalling the region, including wars and conflict that will spare no one, including those whose military power is now tempting them to play with fire." That's from King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who knows better than to condemn the United States directly.

What steps do you recommend for the current hostilities to be brought to an end and a lasting peace established?

NC: The basic steps are well understood: a cease-fire and exchange of prisoners; withdrawal of occupying forces; continuation of the "national dialogue" within Lebanon; and acceptance of the very broad international consensus on a two-state settlement for Israel-Palestine, which has been unilaterally blocked by the United States and Israel for thirty years. There is, as always, much more to say, but those are the essentials.

Noam Chomsky is Professor of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is the author of numerous books, and his latest is Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy (2006).

Kaveh Afrasiabi is the founder and director of Global Interfaith Peace, and a former political science professor at Tehran University. He is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press).

Disenfranchising the poor again....

2006-08-07T06:10:00.000-07:00

New Registration Rules Stir Voter Debate in Ohio
By IAN URBINA
CLEVELAND — For Tony Minor, the pastor of the Community of Faith Assembly in a run-down section of East Cleveland, Ohio’s new voter registration rules have meant spending two extra hours a day collecting half as many registration cards from new voters as he did in past years.

Republicans say the new rules are needed to prevent fraud, but Democrats say they are making it much harder to register the poor.

In the last year, six states have passed such restrictions, and in three states, including Ohio, civic groups have filed lawsuits, arguing that the rules disproportionately affect poor neighborhoods.

But nowhere have the rules been as fiercely debated as here, partly because they are being administered by J. Kenneth Blackwell, the secretary of state and the Republican candidate in one of the most closely watched governor’s races in the country, a contest that will be affected by the voter registration rules. Mr. Blackwell did not write the law, but he has been accused of imposing regulations that are more restrictive than was intended.

Under the law, passed by the Republican-led state legislature in January 2006, paid voter registration workers must personally submit the voter registration cards to the state, rather than allow the organizations overseeing the drives to vet and submit them in bulk.

By requiring paid canvassers to sign and put their addresses on the voter registration cards they collect, and by making them criminally liable for any irregularities on the cards, the rules have made it more difficult to use such workers, who most often work in lower-income and Democratic-leaning neighborhoods, where volunteers are scarce.

“In Washington, D.C., Congress may have passed the voting rights bill to extend voter participation,” said Katy Gall, organizing director of Ohio Acorn, an advocacy group that focuses on poor neighborhoods. “But out here at the grass roots, things are headed in the opposite direction.”

Ms. Gall said the group had collected fewer than 200 new voter registration cards in the last month, down from an average of 7,000 a month before the regulations took effect on May 2.

“Quit whining,” said the Rev. Russell Johnson, the pastor of Fairfield Christian Church, who chuckled while shaking his head. “We work with the same challenges that everyone else does and we’re not having trouble.”

Surrounded by cornfields and middle-income homes, Mr. Johnson’s 4,000-member evangelical church in Lancaster, Ohio, is part of a coalition of conservative groups that aims to sign up 200,000 new voters by November, he said.

In the past several elections, Republicans have been effective in registering voters and getting them to the polls. Mr. Johnson said conservatives were better able to depend on voter registration volunteers because the conservatives had a message that attracted people who were willing to work free.

But Republicans are in an uphill battle in the face of investigations involving Gov. Bob Taft, who has pleaded no contest to charges of failing to report thousands of dollars in gifts given to him, and of Representative Bob Ney, who has been linked to the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.

Backers of the new regulations say they were needed, pointing to the fake names that appeared on voter registration cards in 2004, like Jive Turkey Sr.

“The new regulations have everything to do with preventing Jive Turkeys from showing up on cards the way they did last time,” said John McClelland, a spokesman for the state Republican Party. “They’ve got nothing to do with suppressing voter participation.” But elections experts and liberal grass-roots organizations say the new rules go too far.

“All this flak about Jive Turkey is a red herring,” said Catherine Turcer, the legislative director for Ohio Citizen Action, a nonpartisan government watchdog group in Columbus. “Yes, his name showed up on a voter registration card along with Dick Tracy, Mary Poppins and Michael Jordan. But none of them showed up at the polls, which is really what matters, and cases like theirs were a total rarity that did not justify such restrictive new measures.”

Back in East Cleveland, the copier machine at the Community of Faith Assembly church was overheating, and Mr. Minor was about to do the same. One new rule requires paid canvassers to return signed registration cards within 10 days to county boards of elections or the secretary of state’s office, rather than to the group paying the canvassers.

To comply with the rule, Mr. Minor has created an elaborate system so the cards do not leave the possession of the canvasser, and so he can make copies of them to get reimbursed by the People for the American Way, which is financing his voter registration drive.

Another rule requires that all paid workers take an online training course. “The problem there is that we’ve got a computer that freezes up every time we try to load the online program,” Mr. Minor said.

Politics have also ratcheted up the debate. In 2004, Mr. Blackwell was a co-chairman of President Bush’s re-election committee, and while the new law would prevent him from holding such a position in the future, his dual role as electoral overseer and candidate for governor has become a favorite target of his opponents.

On July 10, at an Acorn event in Columbus, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton accused Mr. Blackwell of a conflict of interest. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee followed suit with a letter to Mr. Blackwell, calling for him to relinquish his election duties as secretary of state. That sentiment has been echoed by Representative Ted Strickland, a five-term Democrat who has an 11-percentage-point lead over Mr. Blackwell in the governor’s race, according to a Rasmussen Reports survey released Aug. 1.

Mr. Blackwell, who did not respond to requests for an interview, has said he is only carrying out the law that was handed to him by the legislature. If he has any conflict of interest, Mr. Blackwell’s campaign has said, so do the Democratic secretaries of state in Iowa and Georgia, who also ran for governor.

Wendy R. Weiser, a law professor at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law and a lawyer in several of the suits opposing new voter registration regulations, said Ohio must be considered in a national context.

In Florida, the League of Women Voters and other groups are suing over a new law that imposes heavy fines for candidates if they submit forms late or if there are errors on the forms, Ms. Weiser said. In Georgia, the legislature passed a voter-identification law last year requiring citizens to purchase a government-issued ID card to present at the polls, but it was blocked by a federal judge as being a modern-day poll tax.

“I do believe,” Ms. Weiser said, “there is a national trend of using the straw man of voter fraud as a way to impose restrictive regulations on voting and voter registration.”

But what, then, is to be made of Jive Turkey Sr.?

Ohio state officials have said that such names appeared because voter registration groups were paying their workers per registration card, which created an incentive to submit fake names. The new regulations forbid this type of payment, a move that all grass-roots organizations seem to agree is for the better.

As for the level of threat posed by Mr. Turkey: a report compiled in 2005 by Mr. Ney, the Ohio congressman, cited news media reports of “thousands” of cases of voter registration fraud being investigated by local officials. But a separate study last year by the League of Women Voters found that voter registration fraud did not necessarily result in fraud at the polls. Out of 9,078,728 votes cast in Ohio in 2002 and 2004, the report said, only four ballots were fraudulent, according to statistics provided by officials from the state’s 88 county boards of elections.

After Primetime aired the 9/11 morning tapes..this looks even more possible?

2006-08-03T19:52:00.000-07:00

From: www.rense.com
Government Insider Says Bush
Authorized 911 Attacks
From Thomas Buyea
9-17-4

Keep in mind when reading this, that the man being interviewed is no two-bit internet conspiracy buff.

Stanley Hilton was a senior advisor to Sen Bob Dole (R) and has personally known Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz for decades. This courageous man has risked his professional reputation, and possibly his life, to get this information out to people.

The following is from his latest visit to Alex Jones' radio show.

Forwarded with Compliments of Free Voice of America (FVOA): Accurate News and Interesting Commentary for Amerika's Huddled Masses Yearning to Breathe Free.

Note: All honor to Stanley Hilton for risking his life so that we may know the truth of 9/11.

The Bush Junta Unmasked

"This (9/11) was all planned. This was a government-ordered operation. Bush personally signed the order. He personally authorized the attacks. He is guilty of treason and mass murder." --Stanley Hilton

Alex Jones interview of Stanley Hilton, attorney for 911 taxpayers' lawsuit

Alex Jones Radio Show September 10, 2004 Transcription by 'RatCat'

AJ: He is back with us. He is former Bob Dole's chief of staff, very successful counselor, lawyer. He represents hundreds of the victims families of 9/11. He is suing Bush for involvement in 9/11. Now a major Zogby poll out - half of New Yorkers think the government was involved in 9/11. And joining us for the next 35 minutes, into the next hour, is Stanley Hilton. Stanley, it's great to have you on with us.

SH: Glad to be on.

AJ: We'll have to recap this when we start the next hour, but just in a nutshell, you have a lawsuit going, you've deposed a lot of military officers. You know the truth of 9/11. Just in a nutshell, what is your case alleging?

SH: Our case is alleging that Bush and his puppets Rice and Cheney and Mueller and Rumsfeld and so forth, Tenet, were all involved not only in aiding and abetting and allowing 9/11 to happen but in actually ordering it to happen. Bush personally ordered it to happen. We have some very incriminating documents as well as eye-witnesses, that Bush personally ordered this event to happen in order to gain political advantage, to pursue a bogus political agenda on behalf of the neocons and their deluded thinking in the Middle East. I also wanted to point out that, just quickly, I went to school with some of these neocons. At the University of Chicago, in the late 60s with Wolfowitz and Feith and several of the others and so I know these people personally. And we used to talk about this stuff all of the time. And I did my senior thesis on this very subject - how to turn the U.S. into a presidential dictatorship by manufacturing a bogus Pearl Harbor event. So, technically this has been in the planning at least 35 years.

AJ: That's right. They were all Straussian followers of a Nazi-like professor. And now they are setting it up here in America. Stanley, I know you deposed a lot of people and you've got your $7 million dollar lawsuit with hundreds of the victim's families involved.

SH: 7 billion, 7 billion

AJ: Yeah, 7 billion. Can you go over some of the new and incriminating evidence you've got of them ordering the attack?

SH: Yes, let me just say that this is a taxpayers' class action lawsuit as well as a suit on behalf of the families and the basic three arguments are they violated the Constitution by ordering this event. And secondly that they [garbled] fraudulent Federal Claims Act, Title 31 of the U.S. Code in which Bush presented false and fraudulent evidence to Congress to get the Iraq war authorization. And, of course, he related it to 9/11 and claimed that Saddam was involved with that, and all these lies.

AJ: Tell you what, stay there. Stanley, we've got to break. Let's come back and get into the evidence. BREAK

AJ: All right my friends, second hour, September 10th, 2004, the anniversary of the globalist attack coming up tomorrow. It's an amazing individual we have on the line. Bob Dole's former chief of staff, political scientist, a lawyer, he went to school with Rumsfeld and others, he wrote his thesis about how to turn America into a dictatorship using a fake Pearl Harbor attack. He's suing the U.S. government for carrying out 9/11. He has hundreds of the victims' families signing onto it - it's a $7 billion lawsuit. And he is Stanley Hilton. I know that a lot of stations just joined us in Los Angeles and Rhode Island and Missouri and Florida and all over. Please sir, recap what you were just stating and then let's get into the new evidence. And then we'll get into why you are being harassed by the FBI, as other FBI people are being harassed who have been blowing the whistle on this. So, this is really getting serious. Stanley, tell us all about it.

SH: Yeah, we are suing Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Mueller, etc. for complicity in personally not only allowing 9/11 to happen but in ordering it. The hijackers we retained and we had a witness who is married to one of them. The hijackers were U.S. undercover agents. They were double agents, paid by the FBI and the CIA to spy on Arab groups in this country. They were controlled. Their landlord was an FBI informant in San Diego and other places. And this was a direct, covert operation ordered, personally ordered by George W. Bush. Personally ordered. We have incriminating evidence, documents as well as witnesses, to this effect. It's not just incompetence - in spite of the fact that he is incompetent. The fact is he personally ordered this, knew about it. He, at one point, there were rehearsals of this. The reason why he appeared to be uninterested and nonchalant on September 11th - when those videos showed that Andrew Card whispered in his ear the [garbled] words about this he listened to kids reading the pet goat story, is that he thought this was another rehearsal. These people had dress-rehearsed this many times. He had seen simulated videos of this. In fact, he even made a Freudian slip a few months later at a California press conference when he said he had, quote, "seen on television the first plane attack the first tower." And that could not be possible because there was no video. What it was was the simulated video that he had gone over. So this was a personally government-ordered thing. We are suing them under the Constitution for violating Americans' rights, as well as under the federal Fraudulent Claims Act, for presenting a fraudulent claim to Congress to justify the bogus Iraq boondoggle war, for political gains. And also, under the RICO statute, under the Racketeering Corrupt Organization Act, for being a corrupt entity. And I've been harassed personally by the chief judge of the federal court who is instructing me personally to drop this suit, threatened to kick me off the court, after 30 years on the court. I've been harassed by the FBI. My staff has been harassed and threatened. My office has been broken into and this is the kind of government we are dealing with.

AJ: Absolutely and now it has come out - five separate drills of flying hijacked jets into buildings that morning - which you told us about before it even broke in the Associated Press. They were trying to get out ahead of you. You talked about how you interviewed military people who were told it was a drill that morning. Then to get out ahead of that, the news finally reported on it. Now, we've learned that all these operations - I want to get into that, I want to talk about the new incriminating evidence of ordering it and how they had drilled on this, how Cheney was in the bunker controlling this. That has even come out in the mainstream news but they won't release the details of that, Stanley. But what type of FBI harassment are you going through? SH: First of all, my office was burglarized in San Francisco several months ago. Files were gone through and some files were seized - particularly the ones dealing with the lady that was married to one of the hijackers. Fortunately, I had spare copies in a hidden place so nothing disappeared permanently. But more significantly, FBI agents have been harassing one of my staff members and threatening them with vague but frightening threats of indicting them. And it's just total harassment. They have planted a spy, an undercover agent, in my organization, as we just recently discovered. In other words, these are Nazi Germany tactics. This is the kind of government you have in this country. This is what Bush is all about.

AJ: Stay there, Stanley, Bob Dole's former chief of staff. We'll come back after this quick break. Please stay with us. BREAK

AJ: All right, eight minutes, 25 seconds into the second hour. Stanley Hilton, political scientist, lawyer, Bob Dole's former chief of staff, is suing the government for 7 billion dollars for carrying out 9/11 and for racketeering. And he joins us now. During the break, I first really did the big interview with Stanley Hilton after I saw him attacked on Fox News. And that interview got massive attention. And then he kind of went underground for a while because a judge, we're going to talk about that, ordered him to not do any more interviews. And now he's back doing interviews. He's had his office broken into, FBI threats and harassment. Bottom line, he has deposed military individuals, wives of hijackers, you name it, it was a government operation. It has even come out in mainstream news, a piece here, a piece there. They had drills on 9/11, that's why NORAD stood down. Cheney was in control of the whole thing. Stanley Hilton has now gotten documents about how Bush ordered the whole operation. And I'll tell you right now, his life is in danger, folks. And he's got so much courage. He went to school with these neocons at the University of Chicago. He wrote his thesis on how the government could use terrorist attacks to set up martial law. He is the man for the time and folks wondered why he disappeared for a while and just did his lawsuit and wasn't doing interviews, it was because he was ordered to. Stanley, can you get into that for us?

SH: I did an interview with you, Alex, back in March of 2003, about a year and a half ago, and literally two weeks after that, I was contacted by the emissary of the chief judge of the federal court where I have the lawsuit. And I was warned not to publicize it but to keep it quiet and threatened with discipline. And it remained quiet until a couple of months ago and then I got on the air on some programs and some publicity and July 1st, I was threatened directly by the chief judge here, threatened with court discipline. This particular judge has been circulating communiqués to the other federal judges seeking anything negative she can get against me to try and discipline me after I've been on the court here for 30 years with no disciplinary problems at all. This is suddenly happening. And her assistants who are on the committee of the court met with me on July 1st in Palo Alto, California, and threatened me directly. They handed me a copy of the lawsuit and said that the judge wants me to dismiss this. What's this? She doesn't like the content of it. This is politically incorrect. This is outside the norm. I said I represented more than 400 plaintiffs, how am I going to dismiss this case? And they threatened me directly and they said, "the next time you'll be disciplined." And also they've threatened me not to go public, etc. And this is just outrageous.

AJ: It's all color of law. No direct orders, just all in your face.

SH: They sent a letter out, and of course they deny it's because of the political content of the suit but they told me directly on the phone that it is because of this suit and this judge is very, very angry, apparently has been in contact with Ashcroft's Justice Department. I got a call from Ashcroft's Justice Department a few months ago about this, demanding that I drop the suit, threatening sanctions and all kinds of things. I refused to drop it. AJ: Now let's go back over, you had them break into your office, harassment. Let's go over that in detail.

SH: My office was broken into about 6 months ago. The file cabinets - it was obvious they had been rifled through. Files were stolen. Files dealing with this particular case and particularly with the documents I had regarding the fact that the - some of these hijackers, at least some of them were on the payroll of the U.S. government as undercover FBI, CIA, double agents. They are spying on Arab groups in the U.S. And, in effect, all this led up to the effect that al Qaeda is a creation of the George Bush administration, basically. That the entity that he called al Qaeda is directly linked to George Bush. And all this stuff was stolen. Fortunately, I had copies. But this was just part of the harassment. The FBI has also been harassing some of my assistants and has planted a spy in our midst. And it is just outrageous that these Nazi tactics are being used - and the obstruction of justice, these people are criminals. And that's what's happening under the tremendous pressure here to just drop it. Or to shut up now and just go away.

AJ: Now, let's talk about what they want you to drop. Let's talk about, without giving names, the people you deposed, what really happened, the picture you've got. You said earlier that Bush ordered this, they were simulating this which they now admit there were simulations on that morning. Let's go over what they don't want you to talk about, Stanley.

SH: We have evidence both documentary as well as witness sworn statements from undercover former FBI agents, FBI informants, etc., that other officials in the Pentagon and the military and the Air Force that deal with the fact that there were many drills, many rehearsals for 9/11 before it happened. Bush had seen this simulated on TV many times. He blurted this out at a press conference in California a few months after 9/11 where he said he had, quote, seen the first plane hit the first building on the video. And that's not possible because there was no official video of that. There was one of the second plane not the first one. He had seen the first one. We do have some incriminating documents that Bush personally ordered 9/11 events. It was well planned. A FEMA official has admitted on tape that he was there the night before - September 10th, that is

AJ: And now Mayor Giuliani, a few months ago in the 911 Commission, admitted that - Tripod II. They had their whole command post already moved out of Building 7. Now, this is very, very important. This is a key area of this whole event. You said months before it came out on the CIA's own website and the Associated Press, you said I deposed people. They said there were drills that morning and exactly what happened, happening - that was the smoke-screen for the stand-down. And then to get out ahead of it, the CIA comes out and said yeah we were running a drill that morning. Now, we've learned that five, possibly six, were confirmed. Five of these - one drill with the exact same thing happening that actually happened, at the exact same time in the morning. That's why NORAD stood down with 24 different blips on the screen. You've said this. You brought this up first. Now, I know you can't get too much into detail but can you tell us how you learned of this?

SH: I have interviewed individuals in NORAD and the Air Force. I personally toured NORAD many years ago around the time that I worked for Dole. I'm very familiar with the operations at Cheyenne Mountain at Colorado Springs, where NORAD is. Individuals that work in NORAD as well as the Air Force have stated this, off the record, but the point is, yes, this was not just five drills but at least 35 drills over at least two months before September 11th. Everything was planned, the exact location

AJ: But five drills that day.

SH: That day, that day, and Bush thought it was a drill. That's the only explanation for why he appeared nonchalant

AJ: We also had NORAD officers and civilian air traffic controllers going, "Is this part of the exercise? Is this a drill?"

SH: Yes.

AJ: On the tapes and in TV interviews, they thought it was, quote, a drill.

SH: That's right. That's exactly what I said long before it became public. I've known about this since earlier in March of '03, as I stated before. This was all planned. This was a government-ordered operation. Bush personally signed the order. He personally authorized the attacks. He is guilty of treason and mass murder. And now, obstruction of justice by attempting to use a federal judge and FBI agents to inhibit a legitimate civil lawsuit in this country, in federal court. Even a chief judge in this court tried to harass and threaten me personally for representing legitimate plaintiffs. And they got Clinton for allegedly lying under oath about Paula Jones and now - look what's happening now. And Ken Starr used to be across from me in Duke Law School in the early `70s and it´s interesting that he got away with trying to get Clinton impeached, so we have a far worse criminal sitting in the oval office today - somebody guilty of mass murder as well as obstruction of justice.

AJ: Well, I mean look, they say they never heard of a plan to fly planes into buildings - said it all over television - Rice, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft. And then we find out they were running all these drills that morning. Even if they weren't involved, that proves they were liars about ever hearing of such a plan.

SH: Well, I'm trying to take their depositions - I've been trying to take their depositions for months. They've been trying to object to it. They will have to admit they were either lying then or now. It's clearly perjury either way. They are liars and perjurers; that's what they are. These are the people that we have running this government and, of course, they knew about it. How are they going to claim now that they didn't know about these drills? Their idea is that nobody knew anything. It's the old know-nothing mentality. And how anybody considers this believable is beyond me.

AJ: All right, now people ask how could a huge organization, how could the AWACs, how could the military let this happen; whereas before, if your Cessna got off course for five minutes, they would launch F-16s on you. It's real simple. It's what Stanley Hilton said here a year and a half ago. It's what came out in the news after that. The military, good people, were told this was all a drill. And it was not a drill. And ABC News admits that Cheney was in control of [?] out of the White House [?] and that he ordered the military to quote "do something." Our inside sources from Hilton and others say it was a stand down and they admit they will not release that under national security. Stanley?

SH: Well they are going to admit it, they're going to release it in the court case because if you demand it under subpoena powers and they must release it. And part of our lawsuit is brought in the name of the U.S. because under the federal fraudulent [Claims Act], we accuse the Bush Administration of presenting a fraudulent claim to Congress. And under the statutes of Title 31 of the U.S. code, they must release this information. That's why they are trying to threaten me, harass me, invade my office, steal my files, commit blatant obstruction of justice and other crimes to try and prevent a legitimate civil suit from exposing these criminals and their acts of treason and mass murder.

AJ: I think you need to publicly tell folks that you are not planning suicide. Would you like to tell folks that?

SH: (laughs) I'm not planning suicide. I've got family and I'm not planning that but I don't like the threats I'm under - but I can tell you this, it's taking a toll emotionally on me and my staff. And particularly, when you get a threat from the chief judge of your own court.

AJ: Why have you decided to go public again after a year of being under the radar? SH: Because the more and more evidence that I've been adducing over a year and a half has made it so obvious to me that this was now without any doubt a government operation and that it amounts to the biggest act of treason and mass murder in American history. I mean George Bush makes Benedict Arnold look like a patriot. He makes Benedict Arnold look like George Washington. I mean that's what we have - a criminal and a traitor sitting in the White House pretending he's a patriot, wrapping himself in the flag. And it's pretty disgusting because the other side of the so-called opposition, the Kerry camp is just saying nothing because they're afraid to speak.

AJ: Stay right there. We'll be right back.

BREAK

AJ: Stanley Hilton will be with us for another 15 or 16 minutes. Then he's got to go into court. Bob Dole's former chief of staff, political scientist, lawyer, represents 400 plus plaintiffs - most of them victims of 9/11. When I was in New York last week, everybody I was talking to, I mean 90 plus percent of them at ground zero - "I had family, I worked in the buildings, my son's a Navy Seal - he called the night before and said don't go to work." You know, all of this, and then now they never had any idea - and it turns out they had all these drills - and one drill of hijacked jets flying into the World Trade Center and Pentagon at 8:30 in the morning. That morning - come on people! And Stanley Hilton brought all this out on this show before it was in the mainstream news. And I was talking to him during the break. I mean, the harassment, the moles, the threatening of his staff, the judge threatening him. Stanley, let's get specifically into the documents that you have now got that they have now been robbing you for, that you luckily, thank God had copies. Specifically, Bush ordering this. Can you get into that for us - ordering 9/11? SH: National Security Council classified documents which [garbled] and it's was part of a series of documents that were involved with the drill documents. This was all planned - they had it on videotape. These planes were controlled by remote control, as I stated previously a year and a half ago, there's a system called Cyclops. There is a computer chip in the nose of the plane and it enables the ground control, the military ground control, to disable the pilot's control of the plane and to control it and to fly it directly into those towers. That's what happened. It's also a technology used on what's called the Global Hawk, which is an aircraft drone - a remote- controlled aircraft. And they were doing it. We are talking about National Security Council classified documents that clearly indicated that [garbled] had a green light to order this to go and this is no drill. These drills that were running were clearly a dress rehearsal and this was a government operation. You wonder why these people are trying to threaten people and trying to intimidate people who have written this suit, I guess if you murdered 3000 of your own citizens, in conjunction with the corrupt Royal family of Saudi Arabia as Bush did. And if you then waste billions more on a worthless garbage war in Iraq, I guess you've got something to worry about and you want to threaten people to prevent it from coming out.

AJ: I mean let's look at this. Not only are there dress rehearsals, they are smoke screens so the good military stands down and doesn't know what's happening. But it's now coming out, even in mainstream news, that yes these drills were going on. Yes, and some of these drills, quote, passenger-type jets were under remote control - this is decades old technology. In 1958, NORAD was [ ] old jets and using them for target practice. Decades ago they flew jumbo jets from LA to Sidney Australia. So since that's going on, everybody knows that. And it's the same MO. Just like the first World Trade Center [bombing] where they get two retarded men who followed this blind sheik who had a tiny mosque above a pizza parlor. And they set them up as the patsies. Then the FBI cooks the bomb, trains the drivers. This informant goes, "You're not going to bomb the building? They go "Yeah, we're letting it go forward." He tapes them to protect themselves. The two retarded gentlemen, thank God, didn't park it up against the column, as the FBI instructed them to do, so it didn't bring down the tower - because you have to be right up against the column. That doesn't happen. Yet, it's the same thing with 9/11. You've got these CIA agents, these Arabs, who were trained at U.S. military bases, Pensacola Naval Air Station - mainstream media, out creating their legends for this background. They're on board the aircraft. My military sources say nerve gas kills everybody on board the plane - nerve gas packets. Then they fly the planes into buildings. From your inside sources, is that accurate?

SH: It's one of the things that we are looking into - that nerve gas or something else disabled people. It's possible. I can't say for sure to be honest with you

AJ: All you know is they were government agents and they were on board and the planes were remote controlled.

SH: Yeah, it was basically a smokescreen. I mean, the events of the hijackings, how someone snuck in those cutters, it was a plant. It was like a classic decoy. I've got some military background. And it's called decoy. It's a decoy operation. You make the people focus on the decoy to avoid looking at the real criminals. So they are focusing on these so-called nineteen hijackers and saying, "Oh, it must have been these Arabs. When, in fact, the guilty person is at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue - sitting in the oval office. That's the guilty person. That's the one who authorized it. There is only one man who could have authorized this operation and that's Bush. And anyone at NORAD will tell you as I have been told personally at NORAD in the war control room, there is only one man who has the power to do this kind of thing and that's Bush. Even though many believe he's a puppet. And I think in many ways he is. The fact of the matter is where was [ ] Cheney, Rumsfeld and these other traitors. The fact is Bush personally ordered and he's guilty and liable and he's going to be re-elected apparently because the media's asleep and [garbled] for Bush. AJ: Well, the media is owned by the same military industrial complex that carried out the attacks.

SH: Yeah, the media is only interested in maintaining the official government fantasy that this was a little lone Arab. These Arabs couldn't even steer that plane down a runway.

AJ: Stay there Stanley, final segment coming up. BREAK

AJ: Mr. Hilton, when you talk to these FBI agents, when you talk to these military men and women, what's their attitude? They've got to be pretty freaked out to have the big picture and know what actually happened on 9/11.

SH: Yes, you know it's like clouds just before a thunderstorm in the sense that they are sort of pregnant with rage. They are just enraged at the criminal politicians who have perverted and misused the government to murder its own citizens and pursue these dubious political ends. And many of them, in increasing numbers, are willing to talk and will talk under subpoena - but only under subpoena because the official party line of the government is shut up and don't talk to the trial lawyer. But more and more, they are very outraged that part of the government has done this to its own people, to its own people. I mean you have to go back to Stalin to see something - not even Hitler did this to his own people. You have to look at Stalin who murdered the Kulaks, the Russians for his own dubious gains. Also we've got - we have a Stalinist mentality in this country. And, if these people pose as patriots and wrap themselves in the flag, it's disgusting. I wanted also to point out that the Japanese television network, Asahi, is going to be airing a special on primetime tomorrow, on September 11th. They interviewed me for eight hours a couple of weeks ago. I'll be on that. I wish - of course, the America media don't care so they are not going to care. But in Japan, people are very serious in interviewing me and others. And we have a website now, called deprogram.info, if more people are interested: www.deprogram.info. But the other thing, I just wanted to say that if anything happens to me - and I don't know why - because I'm being threatened here now. And it seems you can't bring a case in this country anymore against criminals in power without being threatened. And this is how they operate. The stakes are pretty high when you've got a world historical level of treason and fraud by this government against it's own people. I guess this is what you have to expect.

AJ: Stanley, the globalists, the new world order crowd, definitely intend to carry out more terror attacks. I know they would have carried out more attacks if we wouldn't have done what we've been up to, if you wouldn't have been out there boldly speaking out and many others. And then their electronic Berlin wall has a bunch of cracks in it now. Thanks to good people like yourself and many others who are speaking out and telling the truth. But do you think that they may carry out what they've been hyping - a suitcase nuke attack, a biological release to try to smokescreen all of this? I know it's a catch 22, you've got to expose the murderers. We've got to get the word out on this but some government people that I've talk to say, "Yeah, but if you do that, they are going to go even more hard core and must totally try to take over." But I say regardless, they are already doing that. So what do you say to that?

SH: Well, yeah, I think they have an agenda. They have contingency plans. I think they are laying low now because there are an increasing number of people, like myself, who are openly challenging them and accusing them of criminal conduct. I think they would have done it again if we had not spoken up. I think they're planning, what they would like to do is silence any dissenters. That's why we are trying to get the Patriot Act declared unconstitutional in this lawsuit also.

AJ: Let's talk about polls. In the beginning a patriot is a scarce man, hated and feared, but in time when his cause succeeds, the timid join him, because then it costs nothing to be a patriot. You are one of those guys who hit the barbwire for us, or figuratively jumped on the hand grenade for America. But when you've got a Zogby poll, who is highly respected, half of New Yorkers believe that the government was involved. When you have a Canadian poll, 63% on average believe that the U.S. government was involved. And some groups, as high as 76% in polls believe the government was involved. European polls, two- thirds show the same thing. We have German defense ministers and technology ministers and another member of their government now, three of them going public, known conservatives, and progressives. You have an environment minister, Michael Meacher, saying that if they didn't do it, they sure as hell knew what was going on. Look, if anybody who is a thinking person looks at the evidence, their official story is impossible. Then you investigate and they are involved in it. Comments to this massive awakening and what's happening.

SH: Well, I think that's why they want the Patriot Act to suppress political dissent. They have to, they're anticipating, they are not dumb individuals. I know these people personally, Wolfowitz. These are criminal individuals but they are smart and so they anticipated political dissent. And that's why, like the Nazis, their forebears, and their blood brothers, the Nazis and the Stalinists, they're all for political repression. Every corrupt and criminal government has done this - they suppress their own people: Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, Mao Tse-Tung, that's why we have the Patriot Act. So it's hand in hand. They had it planned to go right up to September 11th, this was all part of the plan. You have to do it. It was part of my senior thesis. You must follow through the terrorists attacks with a political suppression mechanism in the law. And that's why they want Patriot I and Patriot II and their plans are to continue launching more terrorist attacks to justify even more repression. The goal is to make this a one party dictatorship in this country, to pursue their dubious ends with their blood brothers like the Saudi Royal family. And also, historical blood brothers, such as the Nazi Germany and the Communist Russian. That's the goal

AJ: You've got to go in just a minute or two. But I wanted to also tell you about New York. Sound cannons that are used in Iraq, they're against us. Men in black ski masks. 41,000 police, accredited media being arrested randomly. Children being arrested, people in wheelchairs, 2000 plus people put in a camp with barbwire fences inside with no bathrooms. You had to have permission to go to the porta-potties. Police screaming at you. It had nothing to do with terrorism. They are openly setting the precedent for martial law.

SH: Well, that's right, the word terrorist is now being overly broad and overly defined [garbled] and also, you know, it's like the word communist was used for anything during the McCarthy witch hunt. And anybody can be called a terrorist by Bush's definition. But the irony is that the number one terrorist in the world is living at the White House at the oval office today. That's the real irony. For sheer hypocrisy, I think he deserves the world prize and ought to be in the Ripley book, Believe It or Not, and the Guinness book of world records for sheer brazen chicanery and fraud.

AJ: Let me ask you a question on this because this is the experience that I had. Watching television, watching the killers, watching those that are guilty, stand up there as our saviors is incredibly painful. It's like watching Ted Bundy being the judge at his own trial. I mean it is just painful to know who these people are. To see them putting America in a shredder. Now we are going to have forced psychological testing of every American, forced drugging, you know Pan-American unions, I mean it's just all happening, it's in our face, Stanley.

SH: Yeah, it's very disturbing and as one who has studied the theory and concept of dictatorships, I personally interviewed Albert Speer, who was Hitler's armaments minister. I interviewed him in 1981 in Munich. And I've studied the psychology and history of totalitarianism and there is no question that it's very frightening. And it has, today, with high technology, albeit for the first time in history, the chance of having a world empire dominated by corrupt, technologically oriented government - an elite government. And they've got now what people like Napoleon and Hitler didn't have, which is the technological means to dominate not only their own country but others - the world.

AJ: The answer is to expose them as the terrorists, to show how PNAC [Project for the New American Century] said we need helpful Pearl Harbor events, to show how Northwoods called for the exact 9/11-style attacks, to show their own plans. And to force people to face this horror. What are they going to do in a year or two when 80% of us, not half of us, know the truth?

SH: Well, that's why they want repression and, then again, the ancient old diversion, launch another terrorist attack to get people to pitch it away. I mean who knows what they'll do next. I mean their capacity for ingenious creation of these events is sort of unraveled. I mean there is no limit. My guess is they are going to try another stunt - maybe a stunt just before the election to justify getting Bush reelected. Although it seems like he is running against a straw man or a ghost right now, anyway. But, my guess is they'll try some other tactic to get people's attention away from 9/11 if it gets to be too much attention. What you really want is for the public to just lose interest because the public - and it's like remember the Alamo, you know, people don't forget things like that. To me it's like the Alamo, remember 9/11, that ought to be the slogan for this outrageous act of treason. That's what it is. It's not

AJ: We are at a crossroads, I don't think they anticipated this much resistance, Stanley.

SH: Yeah, I hope they are truly wrong and as incompetent as they are corrupt and guilty. That means their incompetence is exceeded only by their corruption and their guilt. And eventually, if enough people are going to get outraged enough, these people in the bureaucracy and in the civil service and our military, and eventually we can get people under subpoena these individuals will be exposed.

AJ: Stanley, their whole operation hinges on us being naïve and not recognizing evil. This is what they got with Hitler and others. People couldn't recognize evil so they continued to repeat succumbing to it. We are recognizing it this time. We are putting our lives, our treasure, our future on the line for freedom because we cannot let these blood-thirsty control freak terrorists capture us and use us and turn us into the empire and have a draft and use us as their slaves to invade the planet. And that's their PNAC plan. Stanley Hilton, I know you've got to get to court. God bless you. I want to thank you for being here with us today. Can we get you back on next week?

SH: Sure, just give me a call.

AJ: God bless you my friend. Any closing comments?

SH: My closing comments would be, I think people ought to just think about the consequence of having someone like Bush in the White House and the danger for the future that these sorts of individuals pose. This is not just a historical event of the past. This is part of the plan and the camera is still rolling. They have an agenda. These individuals are extremely dangerous. They are armed and dangerous. They pose a clear and dangerous threat to every freedom-loving person not only American but in the whole world.

AJ: You are absolutely right Stanley Hilton. They have captured the government. They have not captured the peoples' minds and they are counting on us not facing up to it.

SH: And they are counting on the repressive Patriot Act and threats and chief judges and FBI agents threatening people who are exposing them. That's what they are counting on.

AJ: But you're not backing down are you, my friend.

SH: No, I'm not

AJ: Well, we all stand with you, my brother, and God bless you.

SH: All right. Thank you.

To hear Alex's interview with Stanley Hilton -
http://www.prisonplanet.tv/audio/091204hilton.htm

Disclaimer

Republicans Screw the Working Class AGAIN

2006-08-02T08:34:00.000-07:00

Original article and active links at: www.huffingtonpost.com

Republican Bill to Lower Wages in Seven States

By now, most people know that the Republican majority in the House of Representatives passed another tax cut for the wealthy late last week. They did this by almost eliminating the estate tax on multimillion dollar estates and, along the way -- to give their GOP brethren a chance to appear caring and noble before the November elections -- they grudgingly attached an increase in the minimum wage.

Their message to Democrats was clear: If you want low-income Americans, who have not seen the federal minimum wage rise in almost a decade, to get a tiny bit more money, you need to provide yet more tax breaks for the very richest families in the country.

The political ploy, which would raise the minimum wage over three years to $7.25 an hour from $5.15, outraged Democrats in both the House and the Senate.

Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) called the Republican scheme "the most ethically repugnant, intellectually dishonest, morally bankrupt ploy I have ever seen in a legislative body." He went on to say to House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) that "... apparently shame has become entirely irrelevant to you and your party."

On Monday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) called it a "transparent and cynical trick" adding that "Republicans have offered to give America a raise if, and only if, their wealthiest friends also get billions of dollars in tax breaks."

"Republicans are threatening to deny a $2.10 raise for 11 million Americans unless they can give away hundreds of billions to less than .2 of 1 percent of the American people," said a frustrated Reid. "The $2.10 raise is over a period of years. It should be immediate. The $2.10 an hour raise occurs if the richest of the rich get billions of dollars. It is political blackmail that reeks of desperation."

But here's the really sick part: The Republican minimum wage bill, which may come to a vote on the Senate floor by the end of this week, would actually cut the salaries of hundreds of thousands of workers across seven states. The way the law passed by the House last week is written, employers in every state would be allowed to lower the base wage they pay and count tips earned toward meeting minimum wage requirements. Most states already have laws that provide for a lower minimum wage for workers such as waiters and waitresses who earn tips but, if passed, the new federal law would override laws in seven states that mandate no minimum wage difference for those earning tips at their jobs.

The Republican law would dictate a rock-bottom minimum of $2.13 per hour for workers receiving gratuities in all states -- including those seven -- with the difference between that and their state-mandated minimum wage made up with the tips that they currently get above and beyond the higher wage.

So, for a waiter in California, the new law would amount to a salary cut of $4.62 per hour, where the person who used to make $6.75 per hour plus tips, would now only make $2.13 an hour plus tips. Similarly, a bartender in Alaska would lose $5.02 an hour. If they failed to make enough tips to hit their state's minimum wage, the employer would make up the difference.

"Everything that has been achieved in seven states to support low-wage workers who earn tips is destroyed by this bill," said Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) "This bill would slash the salaries of thousands of workers."

Ted Kennedy (D-MA), who has tried many times in this Congress to get standalone bills for a minimum wage increase passed -- and was shot down every time by the Republican majority -- jumped all over this outrage on Monday.

"What this proposal contains is an ingenious proposal, suggested by the restaurant association," said Kennedy. "They say: People who work for tips in the restaurants, they often make $5.25 an hour. They often make that in tips. So why are we required to pay them? They were able to persuade Republicans -- this is strictly a Republican proposal -- to say: If they are going to receive tips, you are only required to pay $2.13 an hour. The rest can be made up in tips. That person still effectively gets the minimum wage. But the restaurant doesn't have to pay that. Do you hear me? They don't have to pay the worker the $5.15 an hour."

But I suppose this is to be expected from the same National Restaurant Association that fought Kennedy's last attempt at raising the wage rate saying " A federal wage increase to $7.25 per hour, as proposed by Sen. Kennedy, is the largest increase in the entry-level wage rate ever proposed."

Because, as the restaurant guys figure, they want to keep claiming that all of their workers are entry-level and they sure as hell don't want to give that big of a pay raise and actually have someone who works 40 hours a week making a whopping $15K per year.

And you need only take a look at the charts below to see why the GOP-controlled House takes these guys so seriously: See the chart at www.opensource.org or at original article site.

It's nice that they choose to hang with Tom DeLay to that extent but just look at how much money they've given to the current Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert. 40,000.00

Go figure.

We can only continue to hope that Americans will take the Iraq war, the time wasted on nonsensical wedge issues and add it with a healthy dose of screwing working families with legislation like this to decide how they want to vote this fall.

Said Kennedy on Monday: " Most Americans believe a job ought to get you out of poverty. But those on the other [Republican] side believe if you have a minimum wage job, you ought to remain in poverty. That is a very big, very major difference."

You can reach Bob Geiger at geiger.bob@gmail.com

Foreign Policy

2006-08-01T15:07:00.000-07:00

Congress and the Israeli Attack on Lebanon: A Critical Reading
Stephen Zunes | July 22, 2006

Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org

On July 20, the U.S. House of Representatives, by an overwhelming 410-8 margin, voted to unconditionally endorse Israel's ongoing attacks on Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. The Senate passed a similar resolution defending the Israeli attack earlier in the week by a voice vote, but included a clause that “urges all sides to protect innocent civilian life and infrastructure.” By contrast, the House version omits this section and even praises Israel for “minimizing civilian loss,” despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The resolution also praises President George W. Bush for “fully supporting Israel,” even though Bush has blocked diplomatic efforts for a cease-fire and has isolated the United States in the international community by supporting the Israeli attacks.

The resolution reveals a bipartisan consensus on the legitimacy of U.S. allies to run roughshod over international legal norms. The resolution even goes so far as to radically reinterpret the United Nations Charter by claiming that Israel's attacks on Lebanon's civilian infrastructure is an act of legitimate self-defense under Article 51 despite a broad consensus of international legal scholars to the contrary.

In short, both Democrats and Republicans are now on record that, in the name of “fighting terrorism,” U.S. allies—and, by extension, the United States as well—can essentially ignore international law and inflict unlimited damage on the civilian infrastructure of a small and largely defenseless country, even a pro-Western democracy like Lebanon.

Below are the key provisions of the resolution followed by a critical annotation:

Whereas in a completely unprovoked attack that occurred in undisputed Israeli territory on July 12, 2006, operatives of the terrorist group Hezbollah operating out of southern Lebanon killed three Israeli soldiers and took two others hostage;

Though clearly an illegal and provocative act, Hezbollah's action was not “completely unprovoked.” Israel has held three Lebanese citizens for several years who were seized by Israeli forces from within Lebanon and Hezbollah had apparently hoped to work out some kind of swap, as both sides have successfully negotiated previously on several occasions. The seizure of the Israeli soldiers on the Lebanese border was also apparently done in retaliation for the ongoing Israeli assaults on civilian population centers in the Gaza Strip.

Whereas Israel fully complied with United Nations Security Council Resolution 425 (1978) by completely withdrawing its forces from Lebanon, as certified by the United Nations Security Council and affirmed by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on June 16, 2000, when he said, ‘Israel has withdrawn from [Lebanon] in full compliance with Security Council Resolution 425;'

Israel's current re-conquest of Lebanese territory along its northern border places Israel once again in violation of UN Security Council resolution 425 and nine subsequent resolutions demanding the withdrawal of their forces from Lebanon. Furthermore, Israel never fully complied with UNSC 425: While UN Secretary General Annan indeed recognized in his June 2000 statement that Israel had fully removed its ground forces from Lebanese territory, he has also criticized the repeated Israeli violations of Lebanese air space well prior to the recent outbreak of fighting as “provocative” and “at variance” with Israel's fulfillment of the resolution's demands for a withdrawal of ground troops from Lebanon.

Whereas despite the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559, the Government of Lebanon has failed to disband and disarm Hezbollah, allowing Hezbollah instead to amass 13,000 rockets … and has integrated Hezbollah into the Lebanese Government;

First of all, UN Security Council resolution 1559 does not call for Hezbollah or any other Lebanese political party to be disbanded, only for their armed militias to be disbanded.

Second, the only extent to which Hezbollah has been “integrated … into the Lebanese government” is in naming Hezbollah member Mohammed Fneish to the power and hydraulic resources ministry, one of 24 cabinet posts. Representatives of all Lebanese parties that receive more than a handful of seats in parliamentary elections traditionally get at least one seat in the cabinet.

Third, in a UN Security Council meeting this past January that considered a report on the implementation of resolution 1559, the United States and the other members approved a statement that “notes with concern the report's suggestion that there have been movements of arms … into Lebanese territory and, in this context, commends the Government of Lebanon for undertaking measures against such movements.” In other words, the Lebanese government has not “allowed” Hezbollah to amass new weaponry; the problem is that their small and weak security forces—now weakened further by Israeli attacks—have simply been unable to prevent it.

This clause in the Congressional resolution therefore appears to be designed to try to justify Israel's decision to attack not just the Hezbollah militia, but Lebanon as a whole.

Whereas Hezbollah's strength derives significantly from the direct financial, military, and political support it receives from Syria and Iran …

Both Syrian and Iranian support for Hezbollah has declined significantly over the past dozen years, particularly since the withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces from southern Lebanon.

In reality, Hezbollah's strength derives primarily from popular support within the Shiite Muslim minority in Lebanon which has suffered from heightened poverty and displacement as a result of the U.S.-backed Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon between 1978 and 2000, the U.S.-backed Israeli bombardment of the Shiite-populated areas of the country from the 1970s through the 1990s, and the U.S.-backed neoliberal economic policies of the Lebanese government that have decimated the traditional economy. As a result of the violence and misguided economic policies, hundreds of thousands of Shiites were forced to leave their rural villages in the south to the vast shantytowns on the southern outskirts of Beirut where many found support through a broad network of Hezbollah-sponsored social services. As a result of gratitude for such assistance and anger at Israel and the United States for their situation, many became backers of Hezbollah's populist, albeit extremist, political organization. In the wake of the forced departure of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the destruction of the secular leftist Lebanese National Movement by successive interventions from Syria, Israel, and the United States during the 1980s, the radical Islamist Hezbollah rose to fill the vacuum. In other words, “Hezbollah's strength” was very much an outgrowth of U.S. and Israeli policy. Indeed, the group did not even exist until a full four years after Israel began its occupation of southern Lebanon.

Whereas Iranian Revolutionary Guards continue to operate in southern Lebanon, providing support to Hezbollah and reportedly controlling its operational activities;

The vast majority of Iranian Revolution Guards returned to Iran years ago. While they played a critical role in the initial setup of Hezbollah's armed militia in the early to mid-1980s following Israel's invasion and occupation of southern Lebanon, their presence today is quite small and they are certainly not “controlling Hezbollah's operational activities.” The number of active Hezbollah combatants declined significantly since the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 (until the call-up of reserves following the initial Israeli attacks) and the movement had long since shifted its primary focus to electoral politics and providing social services for the Shiite community. Furthermore, despite claims by the Bush administration and its supporters that Hezbollah is simply acting as a proxy for Iran, it seems highly unlikely that a populist political party would instruct its militia to provoke a devastating war simply to please a foreign backer.

Whereas the House of Representatives has repeatedly called for full implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559;

The House of Representatives never called for the full implementation of UN Security Council resolution 425 and nine subsequent resolutions calling for Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon during Israel's 22-year occupation of the southern part of that country. Nor has the House ever called for the full implementation of UN Security Council resolutions 446, 451, 465, and 472 calling on Israel to withdraw its illegal settlements from the occupied West Bank and Golan Heights or dozens of other UN Security Council resolutions currently being violated by Israel, Morocco, Turkey, Pakistan, or other U.S. allies. As in the Bush administration, there appears to be a strong bipartisan sense in Congress that UN Security Council resolutions should only apply to governments and movements the United States does not like.

Whereas President George W. Bush stated on July 12, 2006, ‘Hezbollah's terrorist operations threaten Lebanon's security and are an affront to the sovereignty of the Lebanese Government. Hezbollah's actions are not in the interest of the Lebanese people, whose welfare should not be held hostage to the interests of the Syrian and Iranian regimes,' and has repeatedly affirmed that Syria and Iran must be held to account for their shared responsibility in the recent attacks;

As the pro-Western government of Lebanese Prime Minster Fuad Siniora has insisted and as recent events have confirmed, the major threat to Lebanon's security and the most serious affront to its sovereignty is clearly the U.S.-backed Israeli government, not Hezbollah. And Hezbollah's political and military activities, like that of other Lebanese political parties, are based primarily upon what the movement's leadership—however wrongly and cynically—believe is in the best interest of advancing their political agenda and not that of the Syrian and Iranian governments (whose interests in Lebanon are often at variance with each other as well.) It is also disappointing that such an overwhelming majority of Democrats would be willing to cite President Bush as an authority on the situation in Lebanon following a series of demonstrably false claims he has made about that country and the current conflict.

Resolved, That the House of Representatives … condemns Hamas and Hezbollah for engaging in unprovoked and reprehensible armed attacks against Israel on undisputed Israeli territory, for taking hostages, for killing Israeli soldiers, and for continuing to indiscriminately target Israeli civilian populations with their rockets and missiles;

Though such condemnation is appropriate, it is noteworthy that this resolution does not also condemn Israeli attacks against sovereign Lebanese territory and its targeting of civilian population centers, essentially backing the racist notion that Israeli territory and Israeli civilians are more important than that of Lebanese territory and civilians. It is also important to note that not a single Israeli civilian had been killed from Hezbollah attacks since well before Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon six years ago until Israel started killing Lebanese civilians when it launched its attacks on July 12.

… further condemns Hamas and Hezbollah for cynically exploiting civilian populations as shields, locating their equipment and bases of operation, including their rockets and other armaments, amidst civilian populations, including in homes and mosques;

This clause appears to be designed to blame the Lebanese, not the Israeli armed forces, for the deaths of innocent civilians. As Human Rights Watch has noted, “Deploying military forces within populated areas is a violation of international humanitarian law, but that does not release Israel from its obligations to take all feasible precautions to minimize harm to civilians and civilian property during military operations.” While it is not unusual for outgunned guerrilla movements with popular local support to have equipment in close proximity to civilian population, none of the offices of members of Congress who supported the bill which I have contacted has been able to cite any independently documented cases in the current conflict where Hezbollah has engaged in “exploiting civilian populations as shields.” (Two offices cited Israeli government claims to this effect, but the Israeli government has previously made similar claims that were later proved false.)

… recognizes Israel's longstanding commitment to minimizing civilian loss and welcomes Israel's continued efforts to prevent civilian casualties;

This runs directly counter to reports by international journalists, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the United Nations that indicate that Israel has not been committed to “minimizing civilian loss” or preventing civilian casualties. As of this writing, well over 300 Lebanese civilians have been killed, the vast majority being nowhere near Hezbollah military installations. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour, a former Canadian Supreme Court Justice, declared that Israel's “indiscriminate shelling of cities constitutes a foreseeable and unacceptable targeting of civilians. Similarly, the bombardment of sites with innocent civilians is unjustifiable.” (She also correctly criticized Hezbollah's attacks into civilian areas in Israel.)

None of the Congressional offices I contacted was able to provide me with any data countering these reports. In supporting this resolution, 410 House members have gone on record challenging the credibility of these reputable human rights organizations and UN agencies, which have courageously defended the rights of victims or war and repression for decades. Supporters of this resolution have apparently demonstrated their willingness to misrepresent the truth in order to strengthen President Bush's efforts to undermine international humanitarian law.

… demands the Governments of Iran and Syria to direct Hamas and Hezbollah to immediately and unconditionally release Israeli soldiers which they hold captive;

Regardless of whether Iran and Syria are willing to work for the release of Israeli soldiers, neither government has the power to “direct” Hamas and Hezbollah to do anything. The decision by Congress to overstate the leverage that Iran and Syria have over these movements—like similar exaggerations of Soviet and Cuban leverage over leftist revolutionaries in Central America during the 1980s—appears to be based less on reality and more on helping to promote the right-wing global agenda of a Republican administration.

… affirms that all governments that have provided continued support to Hamas or Hezbollah share responsibility for the hostage-taking and attacks against Israel and, as such, should be held accountable for their actions [and] condemns the Governments of Iran and Syria for their continued support for Hezbollah and Hamas in their armed attacks against Israelis and their other terrorist activities;

This appears to provide the legal justification for future military action against Syria and Iran.

Ironically, however, the biggest supporters of Hamas have not been Syria or Iran but Saudi Arabia and other U.S.-backed monarchies in the Persian Gulf. Furthermore, the ruling parties of the U.S.-backed Iraqi government and their militias have long maintained close ties to Hezbollah. By only mentioning Syria and Iran, however, Congress is clearly not concerned about “all governments” that support these groups but only governments that the United States does not consider allies.

Furthermore, given that Israeli attacks have taken far more civilian lives than the Hezbollah and Hamas attacks, why should not the Bush administration also be condemned for its support of Israel's armed attacks against Lebanese and Palestinians?

… supports Israel's right to take appropriate action to defend itself, including to conduct operations both in Israel and in the territory of nations which pose a threat to it, which is in accordance with international law, including Article 51 of the United Nations Charter;

Article 33 requires all parties to “ first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice,” which Israel has refused to do. Article 51 does allow countries the right to resist an armed attack but not to use a minor border incident as an excuse to launch a full-scale war against an entire country, particularly when the armed group that violated the border was a private militia and not the army of the country in question.

Article 51 also states that self-defense against such attacks is justified only “ until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security,” which may explain why the Bush administration—with the near-unanimous support of Congress—has blocked the UN Security Council from imposing a cease fire or taking any other action. Such a radical reinterpretation of Article 51 allows the Bush administration and future U.S. administrations to justify massive military strikes against foreign countries in reaction to relatively minor incidents provoked by irregular forces within that country.

The International Red Cross, long recognized as the guardian of the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war, has declared that Israel has been violating the principle of proportionality in the conventions as well as the prohibition against collective punishment. Similarly, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour—who served as chief prosecutor in the international war crimes tribunals on Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia—has gone on record declaring that the armed forces of both Hezbollah and the Israeli government have been engaging in war crimes. None of the Congressional offices I contacted was willing to provide documentation that challenged these assessments.

… commends the President of the United States for fully supporting Israel as it responds to these armed attacks by terrorist organizations and their state sponsors;

President Bush is virtually alone among the United States' Western allies and the international community as a whole in his unconditional support for Israel's assault on Lebanon. Since President Bush's most significant role since the outbreak of the fighting has been to block diplomatic efforts by the United Nations, the European community, and others to arrange a cease-fire, this resolution is essentially an endorsement of indefinite war. It is disappointing that all but seven of the House's 201 Democrats would once again give their unconditional support for President Bush regarding a Middle East policy based primarily on the use of force. In backing President Bush in this resolution, Congress has gone on record challenging the broad international consensus that, however reprehensible the actions of Hezbollah and Hamas may be, Israel's actions are excessive and in violation of international legal norms.

… urges the President of the United States to bring the full force of political, diplomatic, and economic sanctions available to the Government of the United States against the Governments of Syria and Iran;

Given that the Bush administration and Congress already have implemented strict political, diplomatic, and economic sanctions against Syria and Iran, it is unclear what more could be done. Indeed, with such strict sanctions already in place, it is difficult for President Bush to exercise any additional leverage short of military action.

… demands the Government of Lebanon to do everything in its power to find and free the kidnapped Israeli soldiers being held in the territory of Lebanon;

Israel has been bombing Lebanese army and other government facilities and has destroyed virtually every bridge connecting the central part of the country (where most of the central government's police and military apparatus is based) to Hezbollah strongholds in the south (where the Israeli soldiers are presumably being held). It is hard to understand, therefore, how the Lebanese government could do much at this point to find and free the Israeli soldiers. It is also noteworthy that the resolution says nothing about Lebanese citizens kidnapped by Israeli forces who are currently being held in Israel.

… calls on the United Nations Security Council to condemn these unprovoked acts and to take action to ensure full and immediate implementation of United Nations Security Council 1559 (2004), which requires Hezbollah to be dismantled and the departure of all Syrian personnel and Iranian Revolutionary Guards from Lebanon;

First of all, it is the United States that has prevented the UN Security Council from passing a resolution condemning the capture of the Israeli soldiers and the rocket attacks on Israel because of the threat to veto any resolution which is also critical of the Israeli attacks.

Second, UNSC resolution 1559 requires the “dismantling and disarming of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias,” which would certainly include Hezbollah's militia, but not Hezbollah's far more extensive political apparatus and social service networks. With the Lebanese government unable to force the dismantling and disarming of Hezbollah as long as its armed forces and its transportation infrastructure are under U.S.-backed Israeli attacks, it is hard to understand how the Security Council could “take action to ensure full and immediate implementation” of the resolution other than to authorize the use of force by other countries under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. But such use of force cannot legally be implemented in an internal security issue without the consent of the recognized government.

Third, the report to the UN Security Council on the implementation of UNSC 1559 in January of this year noted that Syria had complied with provisions for the withdrawal of its forces from Lebanon and did not note the ongoing presence of Iranian Revolutionary Guard. (There are reports of a small number of Iranian advisers still in the country, though it is unclear whether foreign military advisers constitute “foreign forces” under the resolution, particularly since a number of Western nations, including the United States, have sent military advisers to Lebanon since the Syrian withdrawal last year.)

In any case, after its forces entered Lebanon last week, Israel clearly violated UNSC resolution 1559. The resolution calls for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Lebanon. Congress, however apparently believes Israel is somehow exempt from this resolution.

Stephen Zunes is a professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco and Middle East editor for Foreign Policy in Focus. He is the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003).

WTC Movie...How about some authentic answers to some unanswered questions

2006-07-31T15:18:00.000-07:00

EXPERTS CLAIM OFFICIAL 9/11 STORY IS A HOAX
Scholars for 9/11 Truth call for verification and publication by an international consortium.

Duluth, MN (PRWEB) January 30, 2006 -- A group of distinguished experts and scholars, including Robert M. Bowman, James H. Fetzer, Wayne Madsen, John McMurtry, Morgan Reynolds, and Andreas von Buelow, have concluded that senior government officials have covered up crucial facts about what really happened on 9/11.

They have joined with others in common cause as members of "Scholars for 9/11 Truth" (S9/11T), because they are convinced, based on their own research, that the administration has been deceiving the nation about critical events in New York and Washington, D.C.

These experts suggest these events may have been orchestrated by elements within the administration to manipulate Americans into supporting policies at home and abroad they would never have condoned absent "another Pearl Harbor."

They believe that this White House is incapable of investigating itself and hope the possibility that Congress might hold an unaccountable administration accountable is not merely naive or wishful thinking.

They are encouraging news services around the world to secure scientific advice by taking advantage of university resources to verify or to falsify their discoveries. Extraordinary situations, they believe, require extraordinary measures.

If this were done, they contend, one of the great hoaxes of history would stand naked before the eyes of the world and its perpetrators would be clearly exposed, which may be the only hope for saving this nation from ever greater abuse.

They hope this might include The New York Times, which, in their opinion, has repeatedly failed to exercise the leadership expected from our nation's newspaper of record by a series of inexplicable lapses. It has failed to vigorously investigate tainted elections, lies leading to the war in Iraq, or illegal NSA spying on the American people, major unconstitutional events. In their view, The Times might compensate for its loss of stature by helping to reveal the truth about one of the great turning-point events of modern history.

Stunning as it may be to acknowledge, they observe, the government has brought but one indictment against anyone and, to the best of their knowledge, has not even reprimanded anyone for incompetence or dereliction of duty. The official conspiracy theory--that nineteen Arab hijackers under control of one man in the wilds of Afghanistan brought this about--is unsupportable by the evidential data, which they have studied. They even believe there are good reasons for suspecting that video tapes officially attributed to Osama bin Laden are not genuine.

They have found the government's own investigation to be severely flawed. The 9/11 Commission, designated to investigate the attack, was directed by Philip Zelikow, part of the Bush transition team in the NSA sector and the co-author of a book with Condoleezza Rice. A Bush supporter and director of national security affairs, he could hardly be expected to conduct an objective and impartial investigation.

They have discovered that The 9/11 Commission Report is replete with omissions, distortions, and factual errors, which David Ray Griffin has documented in his book, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions. The official report, for example, entirely ignores the collapse of WTC7, a 47-story building, which was hit by no airplanes, was only damaged by a few small fires, and fell seven hours after the attack.

Here are some of the kinds of considerations that these experts and scholars find profoundly troubling:

In the history of structural engineering, steel-frame high-rise buildings have never been brought down due to fires either before or since 9/11, so how can fires have brought down three in one day? How is this possible?

The BBC has reported that at least five of the nineteen alleged "hijackers" have turned up alive and well living in Saudi Arabia, yet according to the FBI, they were among those killed in the attacks. How is this possible?

Frank DeMartini, a project manager for the WTC, said the buildings were designed with load redistribution capabilities to withstand the impact of airliners, whose effects would be like "puncturing mosquito netting with a pencil." Yet they completely collapsed. How is this possible?

Since the melting point of steel is about 2,700°F, the temperature of jet fuel fires does not exceed 1,800°F under optimal conditions, and UL certified the steel used to 2,000°F for six hours, the buildings cannot have collapsed due to heat from the fires. How is this possible?

Flight 77, which allegedly hit the building, left the radar screen in the vicinity of the Ohio/Kentucky border, only to "reappear" in very close proximity to the Pentagon shortly before impact. How is this possible?

Foreign "terrorists" who were clever enough to coordinate hijacking four commercial airliners seemingly did not know that the least damage to the Pentagon would be done by hitting its west wing. How is this possible?

Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, in an underground bunker at the White House, watched Vice President Cheney castigate a young officer for asking, as the plane drew closer and closer to the Pentagon, "Do the orders still stand?" The order cannot have been to shoot it down, but must have been the opposite. How is this possible?

A former Inspector General for the Air Force has observed that Flight 93, which allegedly crashed in Pennsylvania, should have left debris scattered over an area less than the size of a city block; but it is scattered over an area of about eight square miles. How is this possible?

A tape recording of interviews with air traffic controllers on duty on 9/11 was deliberately crushed, cut into very small pieces, and distributed in assorted places to insure its total destruction. How is this possible?

The Pentagon conducted a training exercise called "MASCAL" simulating the crash of a Boeing 757 into the building on 24 October 2000, and yet Condoleezza Rice, among others, has repeatedly asserted that "no one ever imagined" a domestic airplane could be used as a weapon. How is this possible?
Their own physics research has established that only controlled demolitions are consistent with the near-gravity speed of fall and virtually symmetrical collapse of all three of the WTC buildings. While turning concrete into very fine dust, they fell straight-down into their own footprints.
These experts and scholars have found themselves obliged to conclude that the 9/11 atrocity represents an instance of the approach--which has been identified by Karl Rove, the President's closest adviser--

You mean Bush really isn't qualified....LOL

2006-07-19T12:38:00.000-07:00

Conservative Anger Grows Over Bush's Foreign Policy

Original article and link at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/18/AR2006071801373.html?sub=AR

By Michael Abramowitz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 19, 2006; Page A01

At a moment when his conservative coalition is already under strain over domestic policy, President Bush is facing a new and swiftly building backlash on the right over his handling of foreign affairs.

Conservative intellectuals and commentators who once lauded Bush for what they saw as a willingness to aggressively confront threats and advance U.S. interests said in interviews that they perceive timidity and confusion about long-standing problems including Iran and North Korea, as well as urgent new ones such as the latest crisis between Israel and Hezbollah.

Criticism comes from the right for President Bush.

"It is Topic A of every single conversation," said Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank that has had strong influence in staffing the administration and shaping its ideas. "I don't have a friend in the administration, on Capitol Hill or any part of the conservative foreign policy establishment who is not beside themselves with fury at the administration."

Conservatives complain that the United States is hunkered down in Iraq without enough troops or a strategy to crush the insurgency. They see autocrats in Egypt and Russia cracking down on dissenters with scant comment from Washington, North Korea firing missiles without consequence, and Iran playing for time to develop nuclear weapons while the Bush administration engages in fruitless diplomacy with European allies. They believe that a perception that the administration is weak and without options is emboldening Syria and Iran and the Hezbollah radicals they help sponsor in Lebanon.

Most of the most scathing critiques of the administration from erstwhile supporters are being expressed within think tanks and in journals and op-ed pages followed by a foreign policy elite in Washington and New York.

But the Bush White House has always paid special attention to the conversation in these conservative circles. Many of the administration's signature ideas -- regime change in Iraq, and special emphasis on military "preemption" and democracy building around the globe -- first percolated within this intellectual community. In addition, these voices can be a leading indicator of how other conservatives from talk radio to Congress will react to policies.

As the White House listens to what one official called the "chattering classes," it hears a level of disdain from its own side of the ideological spectrum that would have been unthinkable a year ago. It is an odd irony for a president who has inflamed liberals and many allies around the world for what they see as an overly confrontational, go-it-alone approach. The discontent on the right could also color the 2008 presidential debate.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who is considering a bid for president, called the administration's latest moves abroad a form of appeasement. "We have accepted the lawyer-diplomatic fantasy that talking while North Korea builds bombs and missiles and talking while the Iranians build bombs and missiles is progress," he said in an interview. "Is the next stage for Condi to go dancing with Kim Jong Il?" he asked, referring to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the North Korean leader.

"I am utterly puzzled," Gingrich added. WHICH ISN'T SURPRISING...I'D USE THE WORD CLUELESS with an added POSTURING for good measure.

Kenneth Adelman, a Reagan administration arms-control official who is close to Vice President Cheney, said he believes foreign policy innovation for White House ended with Bush's second inaugural address, a call to spread democracy throughout the world.

"What they are doing on North Korea or Iran is what [Sen. John F.] Kerry would do, what a normal middle-of-the-road president would do," he said. "This administration prided itself on molding history, not just reacting to events. Its a normal foreign policy right now. It's the triumph of Kerryism."

Not all conservatives subscribe to such views. Some prominent conservatives, including William F. Buckley Jr. and George Will, have been skeptical of the mission in Iraq and, in Will's case, much of the ability of America to build democracy abroad. In his syndicated column yesterday, Will referred to the neoconservative complaints in observing that the administration is "suddenly receiving some criticism so untethered from reality as to defy caricature."

That constitution is just a piece of paper.......

2006-07-18T16:51:00.000-07:00

By Murray Waas, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee today that President Bush personally halted an internal Justice Department investigation into whether Gonzales and other senior department officials acted within the law in approving and overseeing the administration's domestic surveillance program.

President Bush made the decision to deny the security clearances for the investigators, Alberto Gonzales said in his testimony before the Senate.

The investigation, by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, was halted when lawyers who were going to conduct the investigation were denied the security clearances that would have allowed them to view classified documents related to the surveillance program. President Bush made the decision to deny the security clearances for the investigators, Gonzales said in his testimony today.

"The president of the United States makes the decision," Gonzales said in response to a question by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who wanted to know who denied the clearances to the investigators.

The statement by Gonzales stunned some senior Justice Department officials, who were led to believe that Gonzales himself had made the decision to deny the clearances after consulting with intelligence agencies whose activities would be scrutinized, a senior federal law enforcement official said in an interview.

Gonzales was questioned by Specter in light of a May 27 story in National Journal that reported that the OPR investigation was quashed because of the refusal to allow investigators security clearances. Senior Justice Department officials told National Journal then that the investigators were seeking only information and documents relating to the National Security Agency's surveillance program that were already in the Justice Department's possession.

A senior Justice official said that the refusal to grant the clearances was "unprecedented" and questioned whether the clearances were denied because investigators might find "misconduct by those who were attempting to defeat" the probe from being conducted. The official made the comments without knowing that Bush had made the decision to refuse the clearances.

During the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing today, Specter asked Gonzales, "Why wasn't OPR given clearances as so many other lawyers in the Department of Justice were given clearance?"

"The president of the United States makes decisions about who is ultimately given access, " Gonzales responded.

Pressing the attorney general further, Specter asked, "Did the president make the decision not to clear OPR?"

Gonzales responded, "As with all decisions that are non-operational in terms of who has access to the program, the president of the United States makes the decision."

Michael Shaheen, who headed the OPR from its inception until 1997, said in a telephone interview in May that his staff "never, ever was denied a clearance" and that OPR had conducted numerous investigations involving the activities of attorneys general. "No attorney general has ever said no to me," Shaheen said.

A spokesman for the Justice Department didn't immediately return a phone call asking for more information on Gonzales's disclosure today.

The investigation was launched in January by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility -- a small ethics watchdog set up in 1975 after department officials were implicated in the Watergate scandal. OPR investigates "allegations of misconduct involving department attorneys that relate to the exercise of their authority to investigate, litigate, or provide legal advice," according to the office's policies and procedures.

Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., and three other Democrats -- John Lewis of Georgia, Henry Waxman of California, and Lynn Woolsey of California -- requested the OPR investigation after the surveillance program was revealed in late 2005 and asked the agency to determine whether it complied with existing law.

OPR's lead counsel, H. Marshall Jarrett, wrote to Hinchey in early February to say he had launched the investigation. "I am writing to acknowledge receipt of your January 9, 2006, letter, in which you asked this office to investigate the Department of Justice's role in authorizing, approving, and auditing certain surveillance activities of the National Security Agency, and whether such activities are permissible under existing law. For your information, we have initiated an investigation. Thank you for bringing your concerns to our attention."

But Jarrett subsequently wrote [PDF] to Hinchey, "We have been unable to make any meaningful progress in our investigation because OPR has been denied security clearances for access to information about the NSA program. Beginning in January 2006, this office made a series of requests for the necessary clearances. On May 9, 2006, we were informed that our requests had been denied. Without these clearances, we cannot investigate this matter and therefore have closed our investigation."

When Hinchey and other Democratic House members inquired of Jarrett as to why he was not able to obtain the necessary clearances, Jarrett wrote them back on June 8 that he could not answer their questions because to do so "would require me to disclose client confidences and internal Justice Department deliberations, which I am precluded from doing."

In a phone interview today, Hinchey said that he was "not terribly surprised by the news" that it was President Bush who stymied the Justice probe by denying the clearances. He questioned whether Bush took the action to protect his own attorney general from the inquiry.

"It was the president of the United States himself who prevented this investigation from going forward. In obstructing the investigation, he was protecting the people around him, and not protecting the Constitution," Hinchey said.

Hinchey also asserted that "Congress has been complicit" with the administration in "disregarding the Constitution by not conducting its own inquiry into the matter: This has been a rubber-stamp Congress that has not stood up to the administration and for the separation of powers provisions in the Constitution," he said.

Previous coverage of pre-war intelligence and the CIA leak investigation from Murray Waas. Shane Harris also contributed to this story.

Americans should be Hysterical About This

2006-07-17T14:30:00.000-07:00

Nuking the Economy
Forget Iran—Americans Should be Hysterical About This
By Paul Craig Roberts
In five years the US economy only created 70,000 jobs in architecture and engineering, many of which are clerical. Little wonder engineering enrollments are shrinking. There are no jobs for graduates. The talk about engineering shortages is absolute ignorance.Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics re-benchmarked the payroll jobs data back to 2000. Thanks to Charles McMillion of MBG Information Services, I have the adjusted data from January 2001 through January 2006. If you are worried about terrorists, you don’t know what worry is.
Job growth over the last five years is the weakest on record. The US economy came up more than 7 million jobs short of keeping up with population growth. That’s one good reason for controlling immigration. An economy that cannot keep up with population growth should not be boosting population with heavy rates of legal and illegal immigration.

Over the past five years the US economy experienced a net job loss in goods-producing activities. The entire job growth was in service-providing activities--primarily credit intermediation, health care and social assistance, waiters, waitresses and bartenders, and state and local government.

Job growth over the last five years is the weakest on record. The US economy came up more than 7 million jobs short of keeping up with population growth.US manufacturing lost 2.9 million jobs, almost 17% of the manufacturing work force. The wipeout is across the board. Not a single manufacturing payroll classification created a single new job.

The declines in some manufacturing sectors have more in common with a country undergoing saturation bombing during war than with a super-economy that is “the envy of the world.” Communications equipment lost 43% of its workforce. Semiconductors and electronic components lost 37% of its workforce. The workforce in computers and electronic products declined 30%. Electrical equipment and appliances lost 25% of its employees. The workforce in motor vehicles and parts declined 12%. Furniture and related products lost 17% of its jobs. Apparel manufacturers lost almost half of the work force. Employment in textile mills declined 43%. Paper and paper products lost one-fifth of its jobs. The work force in plastics and rubber products declined by 15%. Even manufacturers of beverages and tobacco products experienced a 7% shrinkage in jobs.

The knowledge jobs that were supposed to take the place of lost manufacturing jobs in the globalized “new economy” never appeared. The information sector lost 17% of its jobs, with the telecommunications work force declining by 25%. Even wholesale and retail trade lost jobs. Despite massive new accounting burdens imposed by Sarbanes-Oxley, accounting and bookkeeping employment shrank by 4%. Computer systems design and related lost 9% of its jobs. Today there are 209,000 fewer managerial and supervisory jobs than 5 years ago.

In five years the US economy only created 70,000 jobs in architecture and engineering, many of which are clerical. Little wonder engineering enrollments are shrinking. There are no jobs for graduates. The talk about engineering shortages is absolute ignorance. There are several hundred thousand American engineers who are unemployed and have been for years. No student wants a degree that is nothing but a ticket to a soup line. Many engineers have written to me that they cannot even get Wal-Mart jobs because their education makes them over-qualified.

Offshore outsourcing and offshore production have left the US awash with unemployment among the highly educated. The low measured rate of unemployment does not include discouraged workers. Labor arbitrage has made the unemployment rate less and less a meaningful indicator. In the past unemployment resulted mainly from turnover in the labor force and recession. Recoveries pulled people back into jobs.

Unemployment benefits were intended to help people over the down time in the cycle when workers were laid off. Today the unemployment is permanent, as entire occupations and industries are wiped out by labor arbitrage as corporations replace their American employees with foreign ones.

Economists who look beyond political press releases estimate the US unemployment rate to be between 7% and 8.5%. There are now hundreds of thousands of Americans who will never recover their investment in their university education.

Unless the BLS is falsifying the data or businesses are reporting the opposite of the facts, the US is experiencing a job depression. Most economists refuse to acknowledge the facts, because they endorsed globalization. It was a win-win situation, they said.

They were wrong.

At a time when America desperately needs the voices of educated people as a counterweight to the disinformation that emanates from the Bush administration and its supporters, economists have discredited themselves. This is especially true for “free market economists” who foolishly assumed that international labor arbitrage was an example of free trade that was benefitting Americans. Where is the benefit when employment in US export industries and import-competitive industries is shrinking? After decades of struggle to regain credibility, free market economics is on the verge of another wipeout.

No sane economist can possibly maintain that a deplorable record of merely 1,054,000 net new private sector jobs over five years is an indication of a healthy economy.No sane economist can possibly maintain that a deplorable record of merely 1,054,000 net new private sector jobs over five years is an indication of a healthy economy. The total number of private sector jobs created over the five year period is 500,000 jobs less than one year’s legal and illegal immigration! (In a December 2005 Center for Immigration Studies report based on the Census Bureau’s March 2005 Current Population Survey, Steven Camarota writes that there were 7.9 million new immigrants between January 2000 and March 2005.)

The economics profession has failed America. It touts a meaningless number while joblessness soars. Lazy journalists at the New York Times simply rewrite the Bush administration’s press releases.

On February 10 the Commerce Department released a record US trade deficit in goods and services for 2005--$726 billion. The US deficit in Advanced Technology Products reached a new high. Offshore production for home markets and jobs outsourcing has made the US highly dependent on foreign provided goods and services, while simultaneously reducing the export capability of the US economy. It is possible that there might be no exchange rate at which the US can balance its trade.

Polls indicate that the Bush administration is succeeding in whipping up fear and hysteria about Iran. The secretary of defense is promising Americans decades-long war. Is death in battle Bush’s solution to the job depression? Will Asians finance a decades-long war for a bankrupt country?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com. This article originally appeared at counterpunch.org and is published in the Baltimore Chronicle with permission of the author.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright © 2006 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved.

50 Easy Questions to Ask Any Republican

2006-07-13T06:52:00.000-07:00

by Robert J. Elisberg

Anyone can ask tough, intricate, confrontational questions. But all that ever does is start an argument, and it gets people nowhere. On the other hand, these are...well, easy. These are friendly questions. These are questions that allow another person to actually explain their thoughts, and explain fully. And to do so in as comfortable, as simple a way as possible. Without feeling attacked. Without feeling pressure. Without feeling no one cares what they have to say. Friendly. Easy.
Print them out, carry them around in your pocket, and the next time someone begins quoting from a Republican talking points memo, take the list out and ask.
1. What are the Top Seven best things that the Bush Administration has done?
2. Is the Iraq War is going well?
3. After three years thus far, when do you think Iraq might be able to "stand up" so that America can "stand down"?
4. For his part in the event, how would you rate the job the President did protecting New Orleans from devastation?
5. How do you think the rebuilding of New Orleans is going?
6. When Dick Cheney and the oil company and energy executives met in private to plan America's energy policy, how much of their goal was to benefit consumers?
7. Do you believe in the President's call for an Era of Personal Responsibility?
8. Since Republicans control the White House, Senate and House of Representatives, how personally responsible are they for conditions in America today?
9. Why do you think they haven't been able to find anyone who can verify that George Bush ever showed up for National Guard duty in Alabama?
10. Would you want Donald Rumsfeld to plan your daughter's wedding?
11. Are you aware that no government in the history of civilization, other than the Bush Administration, has lowered taxes during a war?
12. Are you married?
13. Do you personally feel threatened by gay marriage?
14. Since getting elected, do you think the President has been more a uniter or a divider?
15. How do you explain the President's approval rating going from a high of 90% to the current mid-30%?
16. Do you like the government collecting personal data on you without a warrant?
17. How much money do you have in your bank account, stocks and investments?
18. What's your partner's favorite sex position?
19. If you have nothing to hide, why aren't you answering?
20. Should we build a wall along the Mexican border?
21. Why isn't anyone building a wall along the Canadian border?
22. Does that terrorist gang arrested in Canada count as a threat?
23. If you shot someone in the face while drinking, how fast would the police show up to arrest you?
24. If Donald Rumsfeld had planned your daughter's wedding three years ago, would the guests still be there?
25. Even if no laws are broken, do you think it's okay to reveal the name of a covert agent?
26. During your lifetime, approximately how often have you changed your mind?
27. Why shouldn't people dismiss you as a flip-flopper?
28. Where do you think the Weapons of Mass Destruction might be?
29. Where do you think Osama bin Laden might be?
30. Is it fiscally responsible to cut taxes, increase spending and create a $9 trillion federal debt?
31. Are you glad liberals passed such programs as Social Security, Medicare, the Civil Rights Act, women's suffrage, federal deposit insurance, unemployment compensation, rural electrification, child labor laws, minimum wages and the 40-hour work week?
32. What are the Top Ten best things that conservatives have given to America?
33. If you were on life support, would you want a doctor you'd never met making a diagnosis about you via remote television?
34. Do you think man-made greenhouse gases have anything at all to do with depleting the ozone layer?
35. If Donald Rumsfeld had planned your daughter's wedding three years ago, and guests were still there, how many factions would they now be split into?
36. How good is it that the terrorist Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was killed?
37. Are you aware that in 2002 the Pentagon knew where al-Zarqawi was and presented three separate plans to kill him, but the Administration refused to act each time?
38. Is George W. Bush the kind of guy you'd want to sit down and have a beer with?
39. When he started talking about being a Born Again Christian, would you want to stay or leave?
40. Is Ray Romano the kind of guy you'd want to sit down and have a beer with?
41. Would you want him to be President?
42. Does the Administration have an environmental policy that benefits the environment?
43. Since George Bush campaigned for President strongly against nation building, in what ways are our actions in Iraq not nation building?
44. What's the maximum amount of time you'd want to spend alone with Dick Cheney?
45. After dismissing Saddam Hussein's old Iraqi army, was it a good idea to let them keep their rifles?
46. Would a policy that allows torture be something that makes you proud as an American?
47. Has the Mission been Accomplished?
48. Do you feel comforted that Dick Cheney is a heartbeat away from being President?
49. If Donald Rumsfeld had planned your daughter's wedding, and guests started fighting and were killed, would you expect to be allowed to view the caskets when they were returned home?
50. How glad do you think George Bush is that he's no longer active in the National Guard?

50 year study says conservatives 'followers'

2006-07-11T19:45:00.000-07:00

RAW STORY Original article and active links and video at : www.rawstory.com
Published: Tuesday July 11, 2006

In an interview with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, former Nixon counsel John Dean explained a largely unknown 50 year academic study. The data shows that conservatives are much more likely to follow authoritarian leaders.

Dean discovered the ongoing study while researching his new book, "Conservative Without Conscience."

Dean believes that the study helps to explain why the Republican party has been driven further right.

Rush Transcript

DEAN: Goldwater Republicanism is really R.I.P. It's been put to rest by most of the people who are now active in moving the movement further to the right than it's ever been. I think that Senator [Goldwater], before he departed, was very distressed with Conservatism. In fact, it was our conversations back in 1994 that started this book. That's really where I began. We wanted to find answers to the question, "Why were Republicans acting as they were?" -- Why Conservatives had taken over the party and were being followed as easily as they were in taking the party where [Goldwater] didn't want it to go.

OLBERMANN: What did you find? -- In less than the 200 pages that the book goes into.

DEAN: I ran into a massive study that has really been going on 50 years now by academics. They've never really shared this with the general public. It's a remarkable analysis of the authoritarian personality. Both those who are inclined to follow leaders and those who jump in front and want to be the leaders. It was not the opinion of social scientists. It was information they drew by questioning large numbers of people -- hundreds of thousands of people -- in anonymous testing where [the subjects] conceded their innermost feelings and reactions to things. And it came out that most of these people were pre-qualified to be conservatives and this, did indeed, fit with the authoritarian personality.

OLBERMANN: Did the studies indicate that this really has anything to do with the political point of view? Would it be easier to impose authoritarianism over the right than it would the left? Is it theoretically possible that it could have gone in either direction and it's just a question of people who like to follow other people?

DEAN: They have found, really, maybe a small, 1%, of the left who will follow authoritarianism. Probably the far left. As far as widespread testing, it's just overwhelmingly conservative orientation.

OLBERMANN: There is an extraordinary amount of academic work that you quote in the book. A lot of it is very unsettling. It deals with psychological principles that are frightening and may have faced other nations at other times. In German and Italy in the 30's, come into mind in particular. But, how does it apply now? To what degree should it scare us and to what degree is it something that might be forestalled?

DEAN: To me, it was something of an epiphany to run into this information. First, I'd never read about it before. I sort of worked my way into it until I found it. It's not generally known out there, what's going on. I think, from the best we can tell, these people -- the followers -- a few of them will change their ways when the realize that they are doing -- not even aware of what they are doing. The leaders, those inclined to dominate, they're not going to change for a second. They're going to be what they are. So, by and large, the reason I write about this is, I think we need to understand it. We need to realize that when you take a certain step of vote a certain way, heading in a certain direction, where this can end up. So, it's sort of a cautionary note. It's a warning as to where this can go. Other countries have gone there.

OLBERMANN: And the idea of leaders and followers going down this path or perhaps taking a country down this path requires -- this whole edifice requires and enemy. Communism, al Qaeda, Democrats, me... whoever for the two-minutes hate. I overuse the Orwellian analogies to nauseating proportions. But it really was, in reading what you wrote about, especially what the academics talked about. There was that two-minutes hate. There has to be an opponent, an enemy, to coalesce around or the whole thing falls apart. Is that the gist of it?

DEAN: It is one of the things, believe it or not, that still holds conservatism together. There is many factions in conservatism and their dislike or hatred of those they betray as liberal, who will basically be anybody who disagrees with them, is one of the cohesive factors. There are a few others but that's certainly one of the basics. There's no question that, particularly the followers, they're very aggressive in their effort to pursue and help their authority figure out or authority beliefs out. They will do what ever needs to be done in many regards. They will blindly follow. They stay loyal too long and this is the frightening part of it.

OLBERMANN: Let me read something from the book. Let me read this one quote then I have a question about it. "Many people believe that neoconservatives and many Republicans appreciate that they are more likely to maintain influence and control of the presidency if the nation remains under ever-increasing threats of terrorism, so they have no hesitation in pursuing policies that can provoke the potential terrorists throughout the world." That's ominous, not just in the sense that authoritarians involved in conservatism and now Republicanism would politicize counter-terror here which we've already argued that point on many occasions. Are you actually saying that they would set up -- encourage terrorism from other countries to set them up as a boogey man to have, again, that group to hate here -- more importantly, afraid of?

DEAN: What I'm saying is that there has been fear mongering, the likes of which we have not seen in a long time in this country. It happened early in the cold war. We got accustomed to it. We learned to live with it. We learned to understand what it was about and get it in proportion. We haven't done that yet with terrorism. And this administration is really capitalizing on it and using it for its' political advantage. No question, the academic testing show -- the empirical evidence shows -- when people are frightened, they tend to go to these authority figures. They tend to become more conservative. So, it's paid off for them politically to do this.

OLBERMANN: This all seems to require, not merely, venality or immorality but a kind of amorality where morals don't enter into it at all. "We're right. So anything we do to preserve our process, our power -- even if it by itself is wrong -- it's right in the greater sense." It's that wonderful rationalization that everybody uses in small doses throughout their lives. But, is this idea, this sort of psychological sort of review of the whole thing, does it apply to Dick Cheney? Does it apply to George Bush? Does it apply to Bill Frist? Who are the names on these authoritarian figures?

DEAN: You just named three that I discuss at some length in the book. I focused in the book, not on the Bush Administration and Cheney and The President because they had really been there done that, but what I wanted to understand is what they have done is made it legitimate to have authoritarianism. It was already operating on Capitol Hill after the '94 control by the Republicans in Congress. It recreated the mood. It restructured Congress itself in a very authoritarian style, in the House in particular. The Senate hasn't gone there yet but it's going there because more House members are moving over. This atmosphere is what Bush and Cheney walked into. They are authoritarian personalities. Cheney much more so than Bush. They have made it legitimate and they have taken way past where anybody's ever taken it in the United States.

OLBERMANN: Our society's best defense against that is what? Do we have to hope, as you suggested, the people that follow, wise up and break away from this sort of lockstep salute to, "of course, they're right, of course there are WMDs, of course there are terrorists, of course there is al Qaeda, of course everything is the way the president says it." Or do we rely on the hope that these are fanatics and fanatics always screw up because they would rather believe in their own cause than double-check their own math.

DEAN: The lead researcher in this field told me, he said, "I look at the numbers of the United States and I see about 23% of the population who are pure right-wing authoritarian followers." They're not going to change. They're going to march over the cliff. The best thing to deal with them -- and they're growing, and they have a tremendous influence on Republican politics -- The best defense is understanding them, to realize what they are doing, how they're doing it and how they operate. Then it can be kept in perspective and they can be seen for what they are.

Administration being held ACCOUNTABLE ?

2006-07-11T13:26:00.000-07:00

Rethinking Embattled Tactics in Terror War
Courts, Hill and Allies Press Administration

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 11, 2006; A01

Original article and active links at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/10/AR2006071001349_pf.html

Five years after the attacks on the United States, the Bush administration faces the prospect of reworking key elements of its anti-terrorism effort in light of challenges from the courts, Congress and European allies crucial to counterterrorism operations.

The Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee and other members of Congress have complained about not being briefed on classified surveillance programs and huge unprecedented databases used to monitor domestic and international phone calls, faxes, e-mails and bank transfers.

European governments and three international bodies are investigating secret prisons run by the CIA, and some countries have pledged not to allow the transport of terrorism suspects through their airports.

Six European allies have demanded that President Bush shut down the prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, citing violations of international law and mistreatment of detainees.

And the Supreme Court recently issued a rebuke of the military commissions created by the administration to try detainees, declaring that they violated the Geneva Conventions and were never properly authorized by Congress.

Accustomed to having its way on matters related to the nation's security, the administration is being forced to respond to criticism that it once brushed aside. The high court ruling rejected the White House's assertion that the president has nearly unlimited executive powers during a time of war, and now executive branch lawyers are reviewing whether other rules adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon will have to be revised, especially those concerning the Geneva Conventions.

"Part of the consideration internally is how to move forward and if the [court] decision does apply more broadly," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino. "We're weighing all the issues and taking a very careful look."

She disputed reports of a tug of war within the administration over changing the rules, characterizing the atmosphere instead as an "all hands on deck" debate in an effort "to find a path forward."

Congress, meanwhile, has signaled that it intends to play a major role in shaping the government's response to the court ruling. Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee will begin debating new legislation for trying detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Tomorrow and Thursday, the House and Senate Armed Services committees will begin considering their own proposals. Those two committees pushed through legislation late last year to bring prisoner interrogation rules in compliance with U.S. military and international law.

Also today, a subcommittee of the House Government Reform Committee will conduct a hearing to raise questions about the administration's strategy in Iraq, which Bush has described as an essential front in the terrorism fight.

"The Bush doctrine of 'trust us' is being questioned by the courts, Congress and the country, which is insisting on changing and strengthening their involvement," said former congressman Timothy J. Roemer (D-Ind.), a member of the independent commission that studied the Sept. 11 attacks.

"We are not a parliament, and when we function like a parliament we're unfaithful to the process and our system of government," said Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), who will preside over the Iraq hearing. "We hurt our country and both branches of government. If we had been more forceful . . . Abu Ghraib would have never happened."

In the international arena, the administration and the CIA are reexamining procedures for capturing, transporting and detaining terrorism suspects.

Pierre-Richard Prosper, formerly the State Department official charged with negotiating the return of Guantanamo Bay prisoners to their country of origin, said most countries agree with the goals of counterterrorism.

"But once you started actual implementation, you see the fractures taking place," he said. "I think what has to happen is the world will really need to take a look at these issues. This is a new game; what are the new rules going to be?"

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, confirmed on Sunday that he had criticized Bush in a May 18 letter for not briefing Congress on what he called a significant intelligence program, and said the failure to do so was a violation of law and an affront to him.

"I wanted to reinforce to the president and to the executive branch and the intelligence community how important . . . that they keep the legislative branch informed of what they are doing," Hoekstra said on "Fox News Sunday." "It is not optional for this president or any president or people in the executive community not to keep the intelligence committees fully informed of what they are doing."

Hoekstra said he and others in Congress were subsequently briefed by the administration on the program, but he declined to describe the program.

Beyond Congress, the administration faces a barrage of legal challenges by privacy and civil rights groups such as the one that led to the Supreme Court decision.

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit in Detroit, home to one of the largest Arab populations outside the Middle East, on behalf of scholars, lawyers, journalists and nonprofit groups challenging the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program. It alleges that the program hindered communications by phone and e-mail between the plaintiffs and people in the Middle East. The Center for Constitutional Rights has a parallel case pending before a federal judge in New York.

The Justice Department so far has persuaded many judges to dismiss such suits, along with those challenging the CIA's "rendition" program, under the "state secret privilege," which argues that allowing a case to proceed would damage national security.

Yesterday, the Justice Department made such a case before U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit. The ACLU, on behalf of the plaintiffs, renewed its call for a court ruling that would force the government to suspend its program of intercepting without a court order the international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens.

Staff writer Jonathan Weisman and researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Taylor Marsh: The Swiftboating of John Murtha

2006-07-11T09:22:00.000-07:00

July 10, 2006
Original article and active links at : http://www.patriotproject.com/2006/07/the_swiftboatin.php

A Patriot Project Exclusive by Taylor Marsh
Everything was okay until November 17, 2005.

But then all hell broke loose. Scott McClellan kicked it off.

"Congressman Murtha is a respected veteran and politician who has a record of supporting a strong America. So it is baffling that he is endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic party. .." - Press Secretary Scott McClellan (November 17, 2005)

Never mind that on November 15, 2005, the Senate voted 79-19 that 2006 “should be a period of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty.”

Free Republic ran with GOP Lawmakers Float Ethics Probe of Murtha on November 18, 2005, not wasting a moment's time, which was taken from Roll Call, both of which ran the day after Murtha announced his Iraq withdrawal plan. The ethics probe dealt with matters going back to 2004 and 2005. Why now?

If Rep. Murtha didn't have real military clout, being the first Vietnam veteran elected to the House, the Republican Party wouldn't have bothered with him. But he does, so they did. It has now escalated into a conservative campaign to swiftboat a decorated Marine veteran.

Once called one of the most hawkish members of Congress, Rep. John Murtha is now being presented as some anti war coward. His remarks about Haditha have unleashed just the latest salvo in the swiftboating strategy invented by conservatives, which they are now being forced to defend and explain.

Prior to 2005, The Cybercast News Service (CNS), purveyor of all things conservative and run by L. Brent Bozell III, had only one article about Rep. John Murtha. The headline was laudatory: Congressional Bill Would Establish Memorial for Victims of 9/11 (March 8, 2002). But on November 18, 2005, Bozell's team shot into action and hasn't stopped attacking Rep. Murtha since.

What happened to release the cascade of conservative vitriol now directed at Democratic Congressman and respected war veteran Jack Murtha?

''You can't fire the president unless you're in California,'' Mr. Murtha said. ''But somebody recommended this policy to him, and he took the recommendation. Somebody has to be held responsible, and he's got to make the decision who it was.'' ... Mr. Murtha is regarded by both parties as a respected voice on military matters. Citing poor supplies and support for the troops, he said he favored quick approval of the $87 billion Mr. Bush requested for Iraq but said the leaders needed to be replaced. He did not specify which. ...

THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ: CONGRESS; Democratic Hawk Urges Firing of Bush Aides (Times Select, September 17, 2003)

In September 2003, Iraq Toll Hits a Nerve With Murtha obviously resounded across red and blue states, as well as north and south boundaries. However, with John Murtha considered a hawk by anyone's standards, the conservatives had to change his legendary biography, but how?

Even before the president's press secretary, Republican majority leader of the House, Rep. Tom Delay, aka the Hammer, took a preemptive shot. The Hammer tried to assail Murtha's hawk status through the Democratic Party. Delay made Democrats the target, by accusing Murtha and others of saying "that American troops aren't up to the job." That was back in May, 2004. A few months later it simply wouldn't be enough. With Iraq unraveling and no way out, Murtha had begun to dismantle the conservative playbook on national security. This was serious.

Two years later, Arianna Huffington would call it the "Murtha Effect," which showed the conservative newspaper chain backed by Clinton hater Richard Melon Scaiffe, who is known as the "Funding Father of the Right," endorsing Murtha's Iraq withdrawal plan in January 2006.

As the old Missouri saying goes, them's fightin' words.

That fight began on November 17, 2005, the day Murtha presented his plan for redeployment from Iraq, which called for a "change in direction." After trying for years to get President Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld and the administration to change course, through letters and public pleas, the 37-year Marine veteran realized it wasn't going to happen. To say Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, didn't take Murtha's challenge lightly is an understatement.

Murtha's resolution included language the Republicans wanted to avoid, such as "the American people have not been shown clear, measurable progress" toward stability in Iraq. It also said troops should be withdrawn "at the earliest practicable date," although Murtha said in statements and interviews Thursday that the drawdown should begin now.

Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) drafted a simpler resolution calling for an immediate withdrawal of troops, saying it was a fair interpretation of Murtha's intent. Members were heatedly debating a procedural rule concerning the Hunter resolution when Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio) was recognized at 5:20 p.m. Schmidt won a special election in August, defeating Iraq war veteran Paul Hackett, and is so new to Congress that some colleagues do not know her name.

(snip)

It was past 10 p.m. when Murtha addressed a relatively subdued House. Hunter's resolution "is not what I envisioned" because it avoids a broader debate of the war, which "is not going as advertised," Murtha said. "The American people are way ahead of us" in wanting a strategy to bring the troops home, he added. "It's easy to sit in your air-conditioned offices and send them into battle."

(snip)

Top Democrats attacked the GOP tactic. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the Republicans "engaged in an act of deception that undermines any shred of dignity that might be left in this Republican Congress." She called Hunter's resolution "a political stunt" and "a disservice to our country and to our men and women in uniform."

House Rejects Iraq Pullout After GOP Forces a Vote
Democrats Enraged By Personal Attack

This was the day Rep. Jean Schmidt basically called Murtha a coward, and then was made to apologize for her remarks because she didn't have the evidence to back it up.

One of the oddest headlines of November 18th, however, was when NPR ran Long-time War Hawk, Murtha Is An Angry Dove. After decades of being a military hawk, because Murtha couldn't get a response from President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, after years of trying, Rep. John Murtha was now not just angry, but an "Angry Dove."

Murtha's "dark night of the soul" had reached a moment where he had to speak out. George W. Bush pitted against the 37-year Marine veteran was no contest and the Republicans knew it. Murtha had become a "one man tipping point" for President Bush. The "war room" was back.

But White House aides concede that they, too, were at fault for having assumed that Bush was personally unassailable and that events—and explanations of them—would take care of themselves. A war-room defense was "something we did well during the campaign," said Nicolle Wallace, Bush's communications director. "Maybe incorrectly, we had hoped or presumed that wouldn't be necessary after the election."

It is. The war room now is back, staffed with many of the same people who ran it in 2004, led by the Boy Genius himself, Karl Rove.

Bush at the Tipping Point, by Howard Fineman (Nov. 28, 2005 issue)

Murtha's call for redeployment on Iraq was called a "Cronkite moment," harkening back to when Walter Cronkite inspired LBJ to say, "That's it. If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America." With Murtha asserting the Iraq policies of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld had "failed," the entire conservative foreign policy platform was in the kill zone.

L. Brent Bozell III's first serious attack on Murtha since CNS praised Murtha for the 9/11 memorial legislation back in 2002, was coverage of Ken Mehlman claiming the Democrats were calling for "surrender." The next big story came on January 13, 2006, when Murtha's war hero status was called into question.

"[Murtha] is putting himself forward as some combat veteran with serious wounds and he's using that and it's dishonest and it's wrong," Bailey told Cybercast News Service on Jan. 9. Murtha served in the Marines on active duty and in the reserves from 1952 until his retirement as a colonel in 1990. He volunteered for service in Vietnam and was a First Marine Regiment intelligence officer in 1966 and 1967.

Murtha and Bailey, once allies, were forced to run against each other in a Democratic congressional primary in 1982 following redistricting. Murtha won the election.

Murtha has, in the past, publicly dismissed any questions about whether he deserved his two Purple Hearts, noting during his 1994 congressional campaign that "I am proud of my service in Vietnam."

In his Friday, Jan. 13, response to the Cybercast News Service investigation, Murtha again defended his military record.

"Questions about my record are clearly an attempt to distract attention from the real issue, which is that our brave men and women in uniform are dying and being injured every day in the middle of a civil war that can be resolved only by the Iraqis themselves," Murtha wrote in an email response.

"I volunteered for a year's duty in Vietnam. I was out in the field almost every single day. We took heavy casualties in my regiment the year that I was there. In my fitness reports, I was rated No. 1. My record is clear," Murtha added.

Murtha's War Hero Status Called Into Question

That CNS article appeared right before a "60 Minutes" interview, where Murtha would say the "'vast majority' of U.S. troops will be out of Iraq by year's end."

As Media Matters chronicled, CNS was the first to trumpet the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, with this little headline on May 3, 2004: Kerry 'Unfit to be Commander-in-Chief,' Say Former Military Colleagues.

The conservative Heritage Foundation is always on the case of anyone who is anti-war: Almost all oppose capitalism and believe in socialism; many are Communists. But they didn't get busy attacking Rep. Murtha until after November 17, 2005: Iraqis Look to Future, Dispelling the Myths About Iraq, Fighting the Good Fight, but who could resist their compilation of Facts and Analysis on the "progress in Iraq"? At least that piece made the effort to go back to when Murtha's complaints and pleas began.

Bill Kristol and the Weekly Standard started weighing in with Abandoning Iraq (November 28, 2005). Nobody was more pro Iraq war than Kristol's Standard. Murtha was big game to them.

But it was in December 2005, when conservative darling Ann Coulter gave one of her first swiftboat style attacks against Murtha, when she questioned Murtha's medals in her syndicated column on Townhall.com (which has just relaunched).

Newsbusters raised the rhetoric in early 2006 by also going after Murtha's medals: More On Murtha: CNSNews.com Suggests He Has Kerry-Like Purple Heart Stories (January 14, 2006).

CNS joined in with Murtha's War Hero Status Called Into Question, followed by this beauty: Murtha's Anti-War Stance Overshadows Abscam Past. Bozell's CNS "investigation" had begun. Fast-forwarding to June, we got Murtha's Path to Dem Leadership Role: GOP and Hoyer.

But what would an attack on a veteran be without Fox News, Sean Hannity and John O'Neill in the mix? Compliments of Media Matters we have the tape (May 23, 2006).

However, who could expect the Heritage Foundation to actually admit the Republican Party's modus operandi?

A draft resolution by the House International Relations Committee declares that "the United States will complete the mission in Iraq and prevail in the Global War on Terror and the struggle to protect freedom from the terrorist adversary." This resolution has been in the works since last November when the debate over Iraq turned into a debate over Rep. John Murtha and his motives for advocating an immediate withdrawal of American troops.

Destiny awaits (June 15, 2006)

A debate? What it became was an all out smear campaign targeting one of the most hawkish Democratic Party members in Congress, a decorated veteran, who dared to ask for accountability from a president, secretary of defense and an administration who doesn't know the meaning of the word.

L. Brent Bozell III also had his "Media Research Center" join the campaign on January 17, 2006: Murtha’s Mangled Medal Stories. Free Republic was on the job, picking the story up so more could get in on the action.

But it never stuck. After all, it's hard to argue with the Marine Corps. But they kept on trying.

Murky Jack Murtha from the American Spectator came on February 2, 2006, making sure that Abscam, Bozell's CNS and everything conservative were thrown into the mix. The American Spectator led the fight against President Bill Clinton. The attacks on Murtha continue on their blog.

Newsbusters led with this one on February 24, 2006: CBS Uniquely Showcases Murtha's Slam of Bush, Insistence Iraq Already in Civil War.

Skipping to recent days, on June 19, 2006, Pajamas Media trumpeted the "public meltdown" of Murtha.

The Real Jack Murtha, by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich's press secretary, Tony Blankley (June 21, 2006) was next, with many others picking up the attacks in between.

A story that had died almost a year earlier was now being resuscitated with all the Republicans blowing at once. From Power Line we got Jack Murtha and the culture of corruption (June 21, 2006), while simultaneously touting his congressional opponent, Diane Irey, whom I'll get to in a moment. Instapundit had Irey, complete with video.

Robert Novak joined the Republican pack with his syndicated column Murtha's Second Act, which was covered everywhere, including Bozell's CNS (June 22, 2006).

Rush Limbaugh touted both CNS and Novak's column on the same day (June 22, 2006), putting an emphasis on a case in which the FBI had no interest, where Murtha was concerned. Limbaugh links to the FBI site archives related to Abscam, but a search reveals nothing on Murtha. Out of ten Abmscam FBI FOIA files available online, ranging between 50 and 76 pages each, not one search yielded Murtha's name, but Rush links to the sites and the public's questions anyway. The links themselves are meant to prove Murtha's involvement in Abscam. Get the message? If not, John Fund helped out a few days later, reminding everyone that even though Murtha was cleared, he was still guilty.

It's hard to forget the recent correction the Florida Sun-Sentinel had to issue after the story (June 25, 2006) that screamed: Murtha says U.S. poses top threat to world peace. Drudge, of course, was on the job, but so was Keith Olbermann, because Murtha never said anything of the sort.

Correction

A South Florida Sun-Sentinel article on Sunday misinterpreted a comment from U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., at a town-hall meeting in North Miami.

In his speech, Murtha cited a recent poll, by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, that indicates a greater percentage of people in 10 of 14 foreign countries consider the U.S. presence in Iraq a greater danger to world peace than any threats posed by Iran or North Korea. Murtha said U.S. credibility was suffering because of continued U.S. military presence in Iraq and the perception that the United States is an occupying force.

Before the retraction, conservatives Bill O'Reilly (who claims he's an "independent"), Tucker Carlson and Newt Gingrich parroted the line, with Brit Hume not far behind. Hume and O'Reilly offered corrections, though with caveats.

It would have been much easier just to read the Christian Science Monitor headline (June 15, 2006), which came from a Pew Research Poll: US in Iraq greatest danger to global peace? Much of world says yes, in survey that also shows declining support for war on terror. But that would not have made their case.

You'd think this would have ended it.

But even after the correction, conservative bloggers went after Murtha yet again (July 6, 2006), with Wizbang! challenging people to "watch the whole video and come to the conclusion that Murtha doesn't agree with world opinion." Other conservative bloggers dutifully picked up the post, asking things like What did Murtha really say in Miami, with Outside the Beltway analyzing "the tone of the video," while one conservative blogger blared "Tokyo Murtha," complete with graphics no veteran deserves. BlackFive, winner of a 2005 Milbog award, mimicked Drudge, screaming "Wizbang! Exclusive - Murtha's Comments Exposed".

On June 27, 2006, conservative Newt Gingrich and right-wing talk radio host Mike Gallagher, sitting in for Sean Hannity, teamed up to not only suggest Murtha is "just plain crazy," but to trumpet their Americanism, when the only one between any of them who actually served in the military was Rep. John Murtha. Gingrich said Murtha is just playing politics: "bashing America, and bashing the military, and repudiating everything I've stood for my whole life."

Yet conservatives are aghast when Rep. Murtha tells the truth about House members, prominent conservatives and Vice President Dick Cheney: Nets Lead With Murtha, Highlight His Ridicule of Cheney's Lack of Military Service.

And there's only one reason why: “On military matters, no Democrat in Congress is more influential,” CBS Evening News anchor Bob Schieffer asserted in bucking up Murtha's credentials at the top of his newscast, insisting therefore “all of Washington listened” to him.

By the end of June, 2006, Media Matters had chronicled a long list proving the Republican Party had begun their full out assault on the Democratic Party, with a lot of help from others: Media coverage of Iraq debate steeped in GOP talking points.

But what about the conservative blogs? Michelle Malkin never, ever stops, unless, of course, she gets caught in her anti veteran spin. BlackFive chimes in, calling Murtha the Congressional Cowardice Caucus Chairman. Power Line on "mad Jack Murtha." Expose the Left has lots of links, but it all gets down to Murtha. Captains Quarters does double duty, trying to tie Murtha with Kerry's 1971 testimony before the Senate. Get it? Republicans and Conservatives asks: Who is the real John Murtha? AnkleBitingPundits offers If He Ran For President, Would Murtha’s VP Be Kim Jong Il? Even the usually restrained Right-Wing Nuthouse couldn't resist: OLD SOLDIERS SHOULD JUST FADE AWAY, with his usual all caps (exclamation mark required)! Jeff Goldstein calls Murtha "Chickenlittlehawk," then adds his extra touch: The war in Iraq is right because it is right. Who can argue with that logic?

The Wall Street Journal and John Fund get their licks in too, making sure to offer a "clarification" over the Sun-Sentinel mistaken Murtha quote. Big of them, isn't it? AOL Journal gets in on it too, with "The Murtha Brothers."

Coincidentally, an article no longer available has been kept alive by conservatives. Murtha's brother a defense department lobbyist? Did Murtha influence contracts his way? Seems fair game, but they deny it. But if that's fair, then what about Rep. Duncan Hunter's money shenanigans as Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, which are more varied and a lot deeper?

One of the big unknowns in the campaign against Rep. John Murtha remains Rep. Duncan Hunter. Newsweek reported that the FBI is investigating Brent "boom shaka laka" Wilkes’s ties to Duncan Hunter. It was Duncan Hunter's association that got me interested a couple of weeks ago, because where there are conservatives, money and defense contracts, corruption has been proven to follow. Just ask conservative Republican Duke Cunningham and the cast of characters around him that includes Duncan Hunter. The list is long, which a search on TPM Muckraker will reveal.

However, one member, Amanda Doss, who started Murthalied.com, has folded one tent and joined forces with BootMurtha. Evidently, she couldn't stand the heat. BootMurtha is run by Larry "proud to be swiftboating" Bailey. Doss's original site came out of KerryLied.com, which was helped along by WorldNetDaily. (Oh, there's also MurthaMustGo.)

That brings us to Tony Snesko, a prominent Swiftboat Veterans for Truth guy who "inspired Operation Street Corner," which is Doss's baby. A fitting name, if you ask me. But that's not the only thing interesting about Mr. Snesko. His wife, Valerie Snesko, works as the personal appointment secretary for Rep. Duncan Hunter. So it looks like we've come full circle. When I broke out with the Hunter - Murtha angle recently, I got a hold of an email that was reminiscent of the bad old days of the non denial denial.

In light of other E-mails I have received today, I am assuming that you are connecting me with Murtha, who I have said nothing against and I am not associated with the Murthalied. Tony

If Tony is getting emails he has only himself to blame, because he's listed as the contact number for an engagement featuring Rep. Duncan Hunter that appears on the National Republican Congressional Committee website.

It doesn't explain why conservative Rep. Duncan Hunter is selling out a fellow brother in arms.

Is Hunter's personal secretary being married to a former Swiftboat Veteran for Truth just a coincidence? Is it just a coincidence that the attacks on Murtha started immediately after Rep. Murtha dared to suggest redeployment of American troops from Iraq? Are all these people connected to each other and conservative causes, organizations, the Republican Party and their bloggers and writers, and the swiftboating acts against John Murtha all just one big coincidence?

It can't be to get Ms. Diane Irey elected instead of Murtha, because if you investigate her it turns out her husband went to Iraq to make money, only to have his partner end up murdered. You then find out the only claim to fame of Ms. Irey is the swiftboating of Rep. John Murtha. Irey has Vets4Irey, which is connected to Vets4Bush and was created by the same guy who allowed Senator John Kerry to be called a "traitor" on the site as part of the swiftboating of the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004. Maybe we should just call what's happening to Murtha a congressional fragging.

Oh, and speaking of fragging, what would the swiftboating of a Democratic veteran be without conservative Ann Coulter's latest comment about Rep. John Murtha: "The reason soldiers invented 'fragging.'" Hey, but not to worry, Ann, NewsMax has your back.

Now called "swiftboating," going after fellow combat veterans is a new phenomenon, invented by conservatives to go after veterans who buck the powers that be. It started with the swiftboating of Senator John McCain during the 2000 primaries and originated with George W. Bush's first presidential campaign. It has spread out to include former decorated veteran, former Senator Max Cleland, as well as retired generals who have criticized the Iraq war policies of President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld.

Hang on, because it's not over yet. After all, November elections are coming up and as Iraq goes, so goes the conservatives, the Republican Party and the national security image they are trying so desperately to salvage.

Taylor Marsh

A Loss for Competitive Elections...

2006-06-30T09:36:00.000-07:00

June 29, 2006
Editorial

The Supreme Court, in a badly fractured decision yesterday, largely upheld Tom DeLay's gerrymandering of the Texas Congressional districts. Instead of standing up for a fair electoral landscape, the court produced a ruling that did little to ensure the vibrancy of American democracy, and that itself had an unfortunate whiff of partisanship.

Given the strong negative feelings that voters have about Congress — in a recent Times poll, just 23 percent of those surveyed approved of the job lawmakers were doing — it is startling how few races are expected to be competitive this fall. This is largely because of increasingly sophisticated partisan gerrymandering that uses high-powered computers to draw lines that in many cases make voters all but irrelevant.

Texas' 2003 redistricting was an extreme case. Mr. DeLay, who was then the House majority leader, led a fierce and successful campaign to capture Texas' Legislature for the Republicans. (He is facing criminal charges of using illegal corporate campaign contributions to do it.) Then, even though Texas had already redistricted after the 2000 census, the Legislature took the rare step of redistricting again. The new lines were drawn in such a partisan way that Republicans ended up with nearly two-thirds of the state's Congressional delegation.

The Supreme Court has indicated in the past that gerrymandering can be so egregious that it violates the Constitution's equal protection clause. But the court has never set out a test to determine what constitutes such a violation, and it failed to do so again yesterday. The court has proved itself capable of thinking up elaborate tests when it wants to — it has made up standards virtually out of whole cloth, for example, to decide when Congress has infringed on states' rights. It is disappointing that the court is not as resourceful when it comes to protecting voters' rights. The court rightly struck down one Congressional district yesterday, citing the Voting Rights Act, but that did not begin to address the serious problems with the 2003 redistricting.

In this post-Bush-vs.-Gore era, the court's critics will note that it again split on partisan lines, with the most conservative justices most approving of the Texas lines. That was also true in a 2004 case in which it upheld, by a 5-to-4 vote, a pro-Republican redistricting in Pennsylvania. But that same year the court, disturbingly, affirmed a lower court's ruling striking down a pro-Democratic redistricting in Georgia as unconstitutional. It is disappointing that it could not have come up with a decision yesterday that had a greater appearance of fairness.

Bush & Co. Fashion

2006-06-29T18:23:00.000-07:00

Are You Pre-Pregnant?

Below the Belt: A Biweekly Column by NOW President Kim Gandy

June 28, 2006

I know you've all been waiting for this week's "Below the Belt" update on what's in style on the right-wing runway. While fashion magazines are paying close attention to recent wide belt trends, NOW is tuning into the latest blunders in this season's Bush & Co. collection. As usual, it's far from haute couture, and it's definitely cramping women's style.

How about that barefoot-in-the-kitchen pre-pregnant look? Last month, Bush and his co-designers kicked off the season with new federal guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control—urging women of certain ages to behave as if they are pre-pregnant at all times, and to take daily precautions to make their bodies the best baby-makers around. The must-have accessory for this pre-pregnant ensemble is a bottle of folic acid vitamins. Chic, no? To heck with keeping chronic conditions like asthma and diabetes under control in the interest of your ability live a long and healthy life—do it for the babies our government is so eager to see you incubate!

That pre-conceptive, Victorian-esque style is just one in a series of attempts by Bush & Co. to bring back old trends that are unfit for revival.

And how can we leave out their new designs for education—sex-segregated public schools—appearing in state legislature across the country? Last week, the Michigan State Senate voted to amend the state's anti-segregation Civil Rights Act to allow single gender public schools, classes and programs. The bill passed 32-5 last Thursday, a punch-in-the-face kind of tribute to the 34th anniversary of Title IX's passage. Bush & Co., predictably, was hot to the segregation-codification trend two years ago, when the administration proposed federal endorsement of single sex public schools across the country. Maybe it's just me, but I thought the whole separate-but-equal approach to education went out like using narcotics in children's cough medicine—permanently, because it wasn't a good idea in the first place.

But that's no surprise—Bush and his designers often reach back in time for inspiration, while filtering out any lessons history has to offer. For example, what's the deal with the stagnating minimum wage? According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the purchasing power of the minimum wage is now at its lowest level since the '55 Chevy was cool. Face it, poverty is just never going to be cool.

The $5.15/hr. minimum wage is less than one-third of the average wage for private sector, non-supervisory workers—and women are twice as likely as men to be working at or below minimum wage. In fact, a single mother with two children who is working 40 hours per week at minimum wage for a whole year receives $5,378 less than the 2005 federal poverty guidelines.

So, put it all together and what do we get? A Bush & Co. promo featuring a pre-pregnant mother popping vitamins and scheduling just-in-case "pre-conception care services"—neither of which she can afford because she's paid far below a living wage—while sending her kids off to sex-segregated public schools.

Let's not forget that in Bush World her children return home from their sex-segregated schools with "knowledge" about abstinence and creationism, and some sporty brochures they got from an army recruiter in the cafeteria.

Complete the picture with a local pharmacist who denies our struggling mother emergency contraception, and a senator who thinks she shouldn't get birth control either, and an administration whose idea of small government is taking up residence in her vagina.

We're not buying into Bush & Co.'s archaic and ugly designs for women and families, and I know you're not either. So pick up one of those chic NOW signs, and a sporty slogan tee from the NOW store and get active in high feminist fashion, because Bush & Co. is so two centuries ago.

How did U.S. assess Iraqi Bioweapon Production?

2006-06-29T14:02:00.000-07:00

HOW DID U.S. ASSESS IRAQI BIOWEAPON PRODUCTION?

One of the most vivid allegations made by the U.S. government regarding
Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was the claim that Iraqi had
developed mobile laboratories for the production of biological
weapons. The allegation, based on reports from a source known as
"Curveball," proved to be false.

But the U.S. intelligence assessment of the supposed mobile BW labs,
though erroneous, raised questions that still remain unanswered, wrote
bioweapons expert Milton Leitenberg of the University of Maryland.

According to a cryptic reference spotted by Leitenberg in the
Silberman-Robb WMD Commission report, U.S. contractors performed a
"replication" of the Iraqi design and found that "it works."

The exact nature of this "replication" and whether it led to the
production of actual BW agents are among several lingering questions
he posed.

See "Unresolved Questions Regarding US Government Attribution of a
Mobile Biological Production Capacity by Iraq" by Milton Leitenberg,
June 2006:

http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/unresolved.pdf

DHS, CRS ON SENSITIVE SECURITY INFORMATION

"Sensitive Security Information (SSI) is information that would be
detrimental to transportation security if publicly disclosed,"
according to a Department of Homeland Security directive released last
week under the Freedom of Information Act.

See DHS Management Directive 11056, "Sensitive Security Information,"
December 16, 2005:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/dhs/md11056.pdf

Confusingly, however, SSI is also a control marking used by the
Department of Agriculture to mean something quite different, observed
information policy expert Harold C. Relyea of the Congressional
Research Service in a new report on classification and other
information controls.

SSI "is both a concept and a control marking used by the Department of
Agriculture (USDA), on the one hand, and jointly by the Transportation
Security Administration (TSA) of the Department of Homeland Security
as well as by the Department of Transportation, on the other hand, but
with different underlying authorities, conceptualizations, and
management regimes for it," he wrote.

See "Security Classified and Controlled Information: History, Status,
and Emerging Management Issues," June 26, 2006:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/RL33494.pdf

While the number of different designations for "sensitive but
unclassified" information has been estimated at over 60, that number
approaches 100 if different agency definitions of the same designation
are taken into account, a Justice Department official told Secrecy
News.

Free Press the Next BushCo Victim ???

2006-06-29T11:37:00.000-07:00

See this at: www.thinkprogress.org

See this exceptional post by Glenn Greenwald:

Any doubts about whether the Bush administration intends to imprison unfriendly journalists (defined as "journalists who fail to obey the Bush administration's orders about what to publish") were completely dispelled this weekend. As I have noted many times before, one of the most significant dangers our country faces is the all-out war now being waged on our nation's media -- and thereby on the First Amendment's guarantee of a free press -- by the Bush administration and its supporters, who are furious that the media continues to expose controversial government policies and thereby subject them to democratic debate. After the unlimited outpouring of venomous attacks on the Times this weekend, I believe these attacks on our free press have become the country's most pressing political issue.

Documenting the violent rhetoric and truly extremist calls for imprisonment against the Times is unnecessary for anyone paying even minimal attention the last few days. On every cable news show, pundits and even journalists talked openly about whether the editors and reporters of the Times were traitors deserving criminal punishment. The Weekly Standard, always a bellwether of Bush administration thinking, is now actively crusading for criminal prosecution against the Times. And dark insinuations that the Times ought to be physically attacked are no longer the exclusive province of best-selling right-wing author Ann Coulter, but -- as Hume's Ghost recently documented -- are now commonly expressed sentiments among all sorts of "mainstream" Bush supporters. Bush supporters are now engaged in all-out, unlimited warfare against journalists who are hostile to the administration and who fail to adhere to the orders of the Commander-in-Chief about what to print.

The clear rationale underlying the arguments of Bush supporters needs to be highlighted. They believe that the Bush administration ought to be allowed to act in complete secrecy, with no oversight of any kind. George Bush is Good and the administration wants nothing other than to stop The Terrorists from killing us. There is no need for oversight over what they are doing because we can trust our political officials to do good on their own. We don't need any courts or any Congress or any media serving as a "watchdog" over the Bush administration. There is no reason to distrust what they do. We should -- and must -- let them act in total secrecy for our own good, for our protection. And anyone who prevents them from acting in total secrecy is not merely an enemy of the Bush administration, but of the United States, i.e., is a traitor.

It has come to this. The First Amendment is under attack. The very concept of a free press is under attack. The press may not always do its job properly, but, above all, it must be free to do its job. The White House, the Republican Congress, and the conservative organs that support them simply do not want to live in such a free society, a society with a press that is free to criticize them. However much they may talk the talk of freedom and democracy, their vision for America includes, it seems, one-party rule, a press that acts as that party's mouthpiece, and an ignorant citizenry that doesn't know the difference between truth and spin.

Where's George Orwell when you need him?

Arab Woman spells it out

2006-06-27T16:10:00.000-07:00

This Arab woman has big brass ones!!!! Worth it to watch this video.

http://switch5.castup.net/frames/20041020_MemriTV_Popup/video_480x360.asp?ai=214&ar=1050wmv&ak=null

You mean Global Warming isn't Junk Science???? What ????

2006-06-26T19:19:00.000-07:00

A Perfect Storm Descends on the Nation's Capital
Drenching Rains, a Fallen Elm, a Supreme Court Decision and President's Words on Global Warming
By BILL BLAKEMORE
June 26, 2006 — - A perfect storm of drenching rain, irony, political rancor, public fear and -- at the last minute like a fierce stroke of lightning -- word from the highest court in the land, descended on the nation's capital today.

This storm -- pulling in many parts of the global warming emergency -- also broke through the White House perimeters and helped bring down a century-old elm tree, laying it across the driveway.

Even President Bush was drawn into the storm this morning, talking about climate change in a way he may find difficult to explain.

The brewing battles of and about global warming are now being joined.

The massive downpours this morning shorting out government buildings with flooded basements, seizing up legislative communications, snarling traffic access to white columned buildings, fit exactly the pattern predicted decades ago as a consequence of global warming.

It's a simple fourth grade science lesson: the warmer the air, the more moisture it can hold.

Winds suck up more water vapor from oceans and farmlands -- leaving more agricultural drought behind -- and when they finally do dump that moisture out as rain, the downpours are much heavier.

Not just in the United States. Worldwide, such downpours have been increasing markedly over recent decades -- exactly as predicted by scientists.

In the 1980's, leading American climatologists stood in front of Congress, trying to get across the reality of this planetary threat.

One of the world's most resepected climatologists, NASA's James Hansen, even used a dice metaphor to make it clear.

If you paint one side of the die red, you'll roll red about one in six times. Paint four red, and you'll roll red on average four in six times.

Manmade greenhouse gas emissions, Hansen explained, were loading the dice so that we'd have such extreme weather far more frequently. And, exactly as predicted, we and the world have -- well above what the frequency of any natural weather cycles can explain.

Amidst this morning's capital chaos -- including that White House elm bowled over and uprooted in the storm-drenched ground -- the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in.

The nation's highest court announced that it will indeed hear the case brought against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on the grounds that it should have regulated carbon dioxide emissions in order to combat global warming.

The case is brought by a dozen states from New York and Massachusetts in the East (as well as Washington, D.C.) to California and Oregon in the West, along with a number of cities, plus some environmental groups.

Whatever the Supreme Court finally decides, their agreement to hear the case will only amplify news and discussion about what so many now -- including all credible scientists -- recognize as a grave planetary emergency.

And the president amid this morning's wind and rain?

In the White House, only hours after that old elm had fallen, Bush was addressed by a reporter, thus: "I know that you are not planning to see Al Gore's new movie, but do you agree with the premise that global warming is a real and significant threat to the planet?"

"I have said consistently," answered Bush, "that global warming is a serious problem. There's a debate over whether it's manmade or naturally caused. We ought to get beyond that debate and start implementing the technologies necessary ... to be good stewards of the environment, become less dependent on foreign sources of oil..."

The President -- as far as the extensive and repeated researches of this and many other professional journalists, as well as all scientists credible on this subject, can find -- is wrong on one crucial and no doubt explosive issue. When he said -- as he also did a few weeks ago -- that "There's a debate over whether it's manmade or naturally caused" ... well, there really is no such debate.

At least none above what is proverbially called "the flat earth society level."

Not one scientist of any credibility on this subject has presented any evidence for some years now that counters the massive and repeated evidence -- gathered over decades and come at in dozens of ways by all kinds of professional scientists around the world -- that the burning of fossil fuels is raising the world's average temperature.

Or that counters the findings that the burning of these fuels is doing so in a way that is very dangerous for mankind, that will almost certainly bring increasingly devastating effects in the coming decades.

One small group of special interest businesses leaders -- those of some fossil fuel companies -- have been well documented by journalist Ross Gelbspan and others to have been fighting a PR campaign for 15 years to keep the American public confused about the wide and deep scientific consensus on this.

They've aimed, as Gelbspan explains, to keep us thinking that (to borrow the president's words this morning) "There's a debate over whether it's manmade or naturally caused" -- though no open and thorough journalism this reporter knows of can find any such thing.

Drenching waters, president's words, high judges' scrutiny, worried voters, journalists scrambling to get their arms around this enormous story, oil executives looking at spread sheets while they explore for more oil in Canada and the Arctic, and one elm down ... so far.

Meteorologists predict more heavy rain this week along the mid-Atlantic seaboard.

Climatologists predict much the same for the coming decades.

Where Is The Voice of Sanity

2006-06-24T07:52:00.000-07:00

By Paul Levy

06/13/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- A little while ago I ran into a
friend I hadn't seen for awhile. He asked me what I had been up to. I told him
that I was writing a book about the collective psychosis that was wreaking
havoc on our planet. He asked me what made me think there was a collective
psychosis going on. His question left me speechless, literally not knowing
what to say. What made him think that there wasn't a collective psychosis, I
wondered. You could look in any direction and find endless examples which
proved that our species has gone out of our minds. There was so much
overwhelming evidence for the collective psychosis that I didn't even know
where to start. To see our collective madness, all we have to do is simply
look at what we're doing to each other, not to mention the very planet we
depend upon for our very survival. We seem to have gone so crazy that many
people haven't even noticed, as our madness has become normalized, which is
just further proof of our collective psychosis.

Where is the voice of the psychiatric establishment in pointing out the
obvious situation: not only that our leader is mad, but that Bush's madness is
a reflection of the fact that we, as a species, have fallen into a collective
psychosis? In a personal conversation I had with the late Harvard psychiatrist
John Mack about exactly this point, he expressed his opinion that the
psychiatric community doesn't see it as their job to deal with collective
pathological situations such as we are in. Amazingly, Mack was pointing to the
fact that the psychiatric community doesn't see it as their responsibility to
track collective psychic epidemics.

On the one hand, there is psychiatrist Justin Frank, author of the fine book
Bush on the Couch. Dr. Frank has my utmost respect for his incisive
psychoanalytic study of Bush, pointing out Bush's pathological condition in a
lucid and indisputable manner. Frank's analysis is extremely important and
very brilliant, illumining Bush's pathology in relationship to the
dysfunctional family system of which he is a part. Frank points out, both in
Bush's family as well as writ large on the world stage in the form of the
media and his supporters, the undeniable signs of the "enabling" behavior
typically seen in the disease of family alcoholism.

Frank's work has reached a very important edge, however, and is calling to be
unfolded further. By viewing Bush in relationship to his family system, Frank
reaches the limits of an understanding based solely on family dynamics. Like a
traditional psychoanalyst, Frank considers Bush as a "separate self" existing
apart from the greater unified and unifying field, that is to say the entire
universe, of which he is a part. And yet, at the same time that Bush exists as
a separate self who is autonomous and independent from the world at large, he
is interdependently embedded in and an _expression of the universe.

As long as psychoanalysis contemplates Bush as solely a "separate self,"
however, it is under a form of illusion, as we don't exist in isolation from
each other, but rather, in relation to each other. Though Frank's analysis of
Bush in his identity as a discrete, independently-existing person has
tremendous value, analogous to how the mechanical models of classical physics
have great general utility in understanding the workings of our world, any
analysis of an object or person isolated from the universe of which they are
an interconnected part is of necessity incomplete. As quantum physics points
out, we simply do not exist, in the ultimate sense, as isolated entities who
are separate from each other or our environment. Having reached the edge of
psychoanalysis, and limited by its worldview, it is not within the scope of
Frank's analysis to address the inherent psycho-spiritual condition that
pervades the underlying field, both in our country and our world at large, of
which
Bush is
merely a symbolic _expression. I imagine that Frank himself would be the first
to admit this, and would enthusiastically encourage others to further unfold
and place his findings in a larger psycho-spiritual context.

Frank points out the unconscious collusion in the silence and collective
denial towards Bush's behavior that pervades the field. Constrained by the
traditional discipline that he so faithfully represents, however, it is not
within Frank's purview to diagnose our species as a whole as being in the
midst of a psychic epidemic.

Frank's analysis is the pinnacle of psychoanalysis, beautifully illumining
Bush's pathology on the "personal" level. Because of the fact that Frank is
viewing Bush as an isolated person distinct and separate from the world around
him, he doesn't address the deeper level of the unifying field in which we're
all interconnected and interdependent. Ultimately, we are not able to
contemplate Bush's madness without looking in the mirror. Bush's madness is
truly our own.

Frank's analysis of Bush's "personal" pathology inspires and places a demand
on us to catapult off of his insights, like a springboard, into the
higher-order of the "transpersonal" (beyond the personal) dimension. Adding a
transpersonal viewpoint, which recognizes that we are fundamentally and
ultimately interconnected parts of the whole, actually complements and
completes Frank's analysis of Bush's "personal" psychology. Both of these
perspectives, the personal and the transpersonal, are incomplete by
themselves. When neither of these perspectives are marginalized, but are
simultaneously viewed together as both being true, they synergistically
cross-pollinate and illumine each other. The personal and transpersonal
interpenetrate each other so fully that they are not two separate perspectives
joined together, but are two aspects of a deeper unified field which contains
and unifies them.

Seen transpersonally, the figure of Bush is a symbol which re-presents and
reveals the collective psychosis that we have all fallen into. The figure of
Bush is a portal which simultaneously feeds and is an _expression of the
collective madness that is in everyone. Bush is merely a symptom, an embodied
reflection of a deeper underlying pathology that exists in the collective
unconscious of humanity which is giving shape to and in-forming world events.
Seen transpersonally, the figure of Bush is revealing something to us about
ourselves.

We are all complicit in the madness that is playing out in our world. Shedding
light on our shared responsibility for the deeper underlying psychological
roots of collective world events helps us to become truly empowered agents of
change in our world who can truly make a difference.

If the psychiatric establishment doesn't see it as their job to illumine the
fact that we are in the midst of a collective psychosis that is potentially
destroying our species, the question then arises: whose job is it? Cultural
anthropologists? Sociologists? Where is the voice of sanity who is pointing
out the collective madness that our species has fallen into? Who are the
people who study mass psychological events? What is playing out in the world
has its origins in the unconscious psyche of humanity. Whose job is it to map,
articulate and shed light on the psychic origins of collective world events?

A year or so ago I received an email from an irate Jungian analyst who was
very critical of my work. She expressed her outrage by saying "How dare I
write about Jung if I'm not a trained and certified Jungian analyst!" It was
her non-negotiable opinion that it was simply "wrong" that I should be writing
an analysis of the deeper, underlying psychological roots of world events if I
wasn't a professionally authorized "psychologist." I never wrote her back
because I felt there was no space for dialogue with her. Now I know what I
would say to her: I wouldn't write about Jung's brilliant insights that
illumine and heal the pathological aspects of our current world situation if
the people who's job it is to write about such things, such as herself, would
simply do their job. If people such as psychiatrists, psychologists,
therapists, and the mental health community as a whole would shed sufficient
light on the collective psychosis that is potentially destroying our species,
I would be happy to do other, much more fun-filled activities.

As people who recognize the insane nature of our situation, which is to be
sane in a world gone mad, it is our job to come to terms and deal with the
collective psychosis that is wreaking havoc on our planet. It is our job, our
calling, our vocation to deal with the indisputable fact that we are being
ruled by people who have fallen into a state of collective madness. It is our
responsibility to deal with the fact that everyone who supports Bush in his
madness: his administration, the corporate, congressional, judicial, military
industrial complex, the media, the voters that allegedly put him into office,
and ourselves as well if we are doing nothing about our situation, have all
fallen prey to a psychic epidemic that threatens the entire planet. If we
continue to insist on being under-employed by not stepping into our power and
creatively speaking our true voice to the abuse of power, we have no one to
blame but ourselves.

The evil that is being enacted on our planet could only happen because of a
sufficient number of people who are passively standing on the sideline and
doing nothing about it. Not doing anything about the evil we see being acted
out in the world is to ourselves become an unwitting instrument of evil, as
our in-action allows, enables, and feeds the further propagation of evil in
the field. Evil is truly calling us to pick up an empowered role, whatever
that is, and "act," as if we are actors in a play or characters in a dream.
Recognizing our responsibility for the collective situation we find ourselves
in, we access our ability to respond creatively in the world and act-ively do
something about it.

Something is being revealed to us about ourselves by the fact that we are
being ruled by people who are mad. Imagine, what would we do if we truly
recognized that our government is being run by people who have collectively
gone mad? What would we do if we realized that the leader of the most powerful
nation on the planet, the person with his finger on the button, is a genuine
psychopath? This is not a make believe question: How would we respond if
enough of us not only recognized that our leaders were truly insane, but that
we urgently needed to do something about it? What do we imagine we would do?
This is a very relevant question, as this is the true nature of our current
situation.

Do we go belly-up, imagining that there is nothing that we could possibly do
about our insane situation? Do we imagine ourselves collapsing into impotence,
being totally dis-empowered, unable to do anything about being ruled by a
bunch of psychopaths? Or do we imagine that enough of us, realizing the
gravitas of our situation, connect with each other and access our collective
genius so that we can truly make a positive change in the world? The question
is: Will the darkness that is manifesting in our world destroy our species or
wake us up to our true nature? The choice, and responsibility, is truly ours.

Paul Levy, is the author of The Madness of George Bush: A Reflection of Our
Collective Psychosis, which is available at his website
www.awakeninthedream.com.

< paul@awakeninthedream.com

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2006/05/12/goldberg/...

Two Psychiatrists Look at the Bush Administration

2006-06-22T17:49:00.000-07:00

A summary by Jack Dresser, Ph.D., with selected excerpts from two books:

Bush on the Couch by Justin A. Frank, M.D.
Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, George Washington University
and
The Superpower Syndrome by Robert Jay Lifton, M.D.
Distinguished Visiting Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, Harvard University

Psychiatrist Jerrold Post, M.D., founder of the CIAï¿½s Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior, stated, "the leader who cannot adapt to external realities because he adheres to an internally programmed life script...has displaced his private needs upon the state." **Applied psychoanalysis is a discipline used routinely by intelligence agencies since early in World War II ** to identify such distortions and predict political behavior through psychological profiles of foreign leaders. Although lacking the data of direct doctor-patient interaction, such analyses have far greater external data available to draw upon. Dr. Frank has applied these methods to George W. Bush. Dr. Lifton focuses on the theme of grandiosity and unresolved personal self-doubt projected into our foreign policy.

** Part of special ops/psyops intel TP

A Sense of Entitlement

A lifelong "sense of entitlement" has been exhibited by Mr. Bush, described by Washington psychoanalyst Justin Frank. Dr. Frank has published a comprehensive study of Mr. Bushï¿½s personality, based upon his many public statements, public actions, and the historical record provided by biographers, journalists, and others who have known him well and observed him closely over many years. Specifically, Mr. Bush feels and acts entitled to disregard the laws, rules and expectations governing ordinary people.

This has taken many forms over many years. He did not have to "pay attention" at Yale, to wait his turn in line to gain safety from war in the Texas Air National Guard, to observe the law regarding intoxicated driving, to file required reports on his Harken Energy stock sales with the SEC, or to respect the will of Florida voters. His has become our national outlaw ethic. He disrespects U.S.-signed treaties to reduce global warming and nuclear proliferation, and refuses to support the International Criminal Court. This fits the romanticized American outlaw image, but is an adolescent response to problems needing complex adult solutions.

Violating a principle common to all human societies, Bush entitles himself to lie without guilt. He has misled, misrepresented, and lied outright and continuously throughout his public life. This has been witnessed and described by many observers. There are volumes of documentation by writers of impeccable reliability recounting the Bush practice of saying anything to control the perceptions of others in order to get what he wants.

Bush's Orwellian descriptions that totally misrepresent known facts reveal his perceived exemption even from the laws of reality, suggesting disordered thinking. He also claims exemption from the laws of personal and public accountability. "I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation," he told journalist Bob Woodward.

Aggression and Cruelty

This is a lifelong pattern. As a child, little George blew up frogs with firecrackers inserted into their bodies. Lacking scholastic and athletic abilities, he used unkind teasing in school. In college, he hazed new fraternity pledges with branding irons on the buttocks. As Governor he mocked death-row inmates and smirked at their executions. As a political campaigner, he relies heavily on smug ridicule and mockery of opponents.

The smirk is one of Mr. Bush's characteristic expressions that has worried his political handlers is a telltale indication of sadism. It reveals pleasure in inflicting or observing pain, defeat or discomfort in others while attempting to suppress more overt and unbecoming expressions of his pleasure. He is a profoundly angry, destructive man who, in Dr. Frankï¿½s words, "needs to break things."

Dr. Lifton extends the analysis to the appointees surrounding Bush as well, all of whom avoided Vietnam service. Lifton describes the exaggerated aggression with which people may respond to "death guilt" or "survivor guilt" ï¿½ the knowledge that facing a common challenge others suffered while you didn't. This is often associated with a sense of "failed enactment" at the moment of truth. When such a wound to self esteem is repressed, it often becomes "transformed into impulses toward further violence." This may well unconsciously haunt our entire tough talking Republican leadership who hid out as young men while others died.

(TP Note: Does the above paragraph describe bush's repressed feelings of guilt for not going to Viet Nam? Does bush in his own feel he is fighting now like the man he wasn't in his youth, in the Iraqi war he created?)

Adult Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

Easily mistaken for resoluteness, Mr. Bush's impulsiveness, snap decisions, and disinterest in abstractions or complexities are all suggestive of adult ADHD. He is impatient and easily frustrated, with poor control of his emotions. On two known occasions, he has driven his car through property barriers in fits of temper. And of course, the continuing indications of dyslexia: Dr. Frank observes, "He may seem decisive, but his behavior represents the fall-back position of someone trying to manage the anxiety of not being able to think clearly."

Defensive Dyslexia. Mr. Bush has learned to use his legendary difficulties with language to avoid meaningful communication, to obfuscate meanings for tactical concealment. Unable to think and communicate with language in normal ways, he has learned to use it manipulatively ï¿½ to attack, dismiss, distract and intimidate, to control rather than communicate with others. Most alarming is his genuine inability to think clearly and to develop cognitive models that even remotely match the complex realities for which he is responsible.

Untreated alcoholism.

Mr. Bush displays common characteristics of a "dry drunk," struggling to protect self-esteem and cope with anxiety without the liquid crutch. Symptoms include inflated self-confidence, judgmental intolerance, denial of responsibility, avoidance of introspection, simplistic thinking, and compulsive daily habits that remove him from responsibility and stress. Without treatment, the alcohol is removed without the "ism." Instead, self-esteem is now protected by his born-again Christianity, which permits escape from accountability for his past while avoiding the self-examination and restitution of a 12-step program. Many of his actions are "dry" efforts to reduce anxiety by avoiding his inner world. In Dr. Frankï¿½s words, "Throughout his life, George W. Bush has taken many detours from the path to self-knowledge."

In addition, his annual physical detected nasal spider angiomas that might suggest continued alcohol abuse, and unusually low blood pressure typical of antisocial personality incapable of normal emotional responses.

The Overall Diagnosis: Megalomania

"The evidence suggests that behind Bushï¿½s exterior operates a powerful but obscure delusional system that drives his behavior," concludes Dr. Frank. Omnipotence and grandiosity are clearly reflected in Mr. Bushï¿½s identification with Godï¿½s purposes and his flouting of international opinion and international will. Omnipotent fantasy is a self-esteem protecting mechanism from early childhood, outgrown in normal development that Mr. Bush lacked. This childish omnipotence is identified and described by both authors.

Mr. Bushï¿½s personal grandiosity has been projected onto our nation. His megalomanic narcissism and lack of ego boundaries is translated into a vision of superimposing our "Freedom" throughout the world, welcomed or not. Jealousy, a centerpiece of Bushï¿½s psychological struggle since early childhood, is the motive attributed to "the enemy" through projection. The Bush grandiosity fits seamlessly with the neoconservative agenda, which explains Bushï¿½s choice of Cheney as Vice President and neoconservatives Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith to the top three civilian DOD posts, as well as Richard Perls and Elliot Abrams in other key administration posts. After collapse of the Soviet Union, these neoconservatives resurrected the 19th centuryï¿½s grandiose images of **Manifest Destiny,** the right to impose ourselves on others, that perfectly fits Mr. Bushï¿½s megalomania.

**Manifest Destiny, "ordained by God to rule the world" is the religion of the Yale, Eli, Skull and Crossbones fraternity.** TP

In Dr. Frankï¿½s judgment, "the enterprise he is poised to add to his history of failures is the future of our nation. Our collective denial helped put him in that position...Our sole treatment option ï¿½ for his benefit and for ours ï¿½ is to remove president Bush from office... before it is too late."

About the Review and Reviewer

Dr. Dresser is a behavioral scientist who served as an Army psychologist during the Vietnam era. He is not a psychiatrist or psychoanalyst, but feels these are important perspectives for public consideration, has attempted to carefully and concisely summarize their views, and recommends the reader to the works cited. It should be pointed out that Dr. Frank is a Kleinian psychoanalyst, but his observational foci and diagnostic conclusions would be consistent with other theories of psychological developmental as well.

What You Now Need to Believe To Be A Republican

2006-06-21T17:36:00.000-07:00

Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals, Arabs, and Hillary Clinton.

Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney and Rumsfeld did business with him,
and a bad guy when Bush couldn't find Bin Laden.
Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is Communist, but trade with Vietnam and China is vital to a spirit of international harmony.
A woman can't be trusted with decisions about her own body,
but multi-national corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind
without regulation.

The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in
speeches, while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay.

If condoms aren't addressed in schools , adolescents won't have sex.

A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle and antagonize our
long-time allies, then demand their cooperation and money.

Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy,
but providing healthcare to all Americans is socialism.

HMOs and insurance companies have the best interests
of the public at heart.
Global warming is junk science,
but creationism should be taught in schools.

A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable
offense, but a president lying to enlist support for a war in which
thousands die is solid defense policy.

Government should limit itself to the powers named in the
Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet.

The public has a right to know about Hillary's cattle trades,
but George Bush's and Dick Cheney's driving records
are none of our business.

Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you're a conservative radio host.
Then it's an illness and you need our prayers for your recovery.

Supporting "Executive Privilege" is imperative for every Republican
ever born, who will be born or who might be born in perpetuity.

What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national interest,
but what Bush did in the '80s is irrelevant.

There's nothing wrong with supporting drunken hunters who shoot
their friends, blaming the friends for looking too much like quail.

Friends don't let friends vote Republican.

A Misdirected War on Terror?

2006-06-20T17:19:00.000-07:00

A Misdirected War on Terror?
Ron Suskind's book, excerpted in TIME this week, reveals scary new details about al-Qaeda's plans —and the Bush administration's missteps
By MARK THOMPSON/WASHINGTON

Posted Tuesday, Jun. 20, 2006
Imagine a blueprint for a paint-can-like device spewing hydrogen-cyanide gas gleaned from a computer in Saudi Arabia. Virulent anthrax developed by terrorists in Afghanistan. Most fearful of all, a fateful campfire meeting outside the Kandahar, Afghanistan, where al Qaeda leaders met secretly with a senior Pakistani weapons experts to discuss making al-Qaeda the first nuclear-armed terrorists in history. That's the witch's brew of what the experts call NBC — nuclear, biological and chemical — weapons. It's the terrorists' trifecta and the scary spine of Ron Suskind's new book, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 (being released Tuesday by Simon and Schuster). The clear implication: It seems the Bush administration truncated its post-9/11 war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda — which were avidly seeking WMDs — to take on Saddam Hussein's Iraq, whose WMD programs had been suspended and put into the deep freeze under international pressure.

Suskind's tale that U.S. intelligence believed al-Qaeda plotted a hydrogen-cyanide gas attack on New York City subways in 2003 — only to have it aborted by al-Qaeda's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, because, some U.S. intelligence officials surmise, it wouldn't be dramatically bigger than al-Qaeda's 9/11 attacks — is excerpted in this week's issue of TIME. U.S. intelligence officials have confirmed Suskind's reporting, including Zawahiri's decision to halt the attack. A former Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Wall Street Journal, Suskind is also the author of the 2004 book The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill, which won acclaim as one of the first bare-knuckle accounts of the Bush administration's preoccupation with Saddam and its disdain for independent thinking by Cabinet members.

Suskind insists nothing revealed in the book will give any kind of edge to al-Qaeda. "I very carefully vetted everything — making sure it was something al-Qaeda already knew, or that al-Qaeda would not be advantaged by — over the past two years," he tells TIME. "Nothing in this book will in any way help those who have destructive intent and violent desires." Beyond the subway-gas plot, there are other disturbing revelations in Suskind's book that will serve as fodder for terror analysts and pundits to debate, and devour, in coming days:

The capture of Abu Zubaydah, the head of recruiting for al-Qaeda, by U.S. and Pakistani officials in Faisalabad, Pakistan, in 2002, was hailed by the Bush administration as a key blow to the al-Qaeda network. "The capture of Abu Zubaydah is very helpful in making it more difficult for them to successfully reorganize," said Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary at the time. "Al-Qaeda has many tentacles but one of them was cut off." But Suskind reports that the CIA learned that Zubaydah had suffered a head wound during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. In fact, in a diary captured by the CIA, he wrote as if he were three different people. In reality, Suskind reports, he actually was merely a low-level al-Qaeda drone, "like the guy you call who handles the company health plan." A CIA official told Suskind that Zubaydah was like "Joe Louis in the lobby of Caesar's Palace, shaking hands," after the fighter was punch drunk and well past his prime. Nonetheless, Bush characterized him as "one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States."

Suskind reports new details on Delta Force's shipment of a hatbox-sized container to Dulles Airport in Washington's Virginia suburbs in mid-2002. The round metal box, Army green with "US GOVERNMENT" emblazoned in yellow, purportedly contained the severed head of Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's top deputy. He supposedly had been killed in December 2001, and buried in an Afghan riverbed. With a $25 million bounty on his head, Afghan tribal chiefs provided the jawless head to the U.S. military. The skull, Suskind reports, still had a bit of skin attached to its crown when the container finally was opened inside a room at Dulles, and its forehead had an indentation, consistent with a lifetime of pressing one's head against stone or dirt to highlight one's commitment to Allah. "If it turns out to be Zawahiri's head, I hope you'll bring it here," Bush told his briefers — "half in jest," Suskind writes. But DNA testing ultimately revealed the skull wasn't Zawahiri's. It was shipped off to an FBI warehouse on Staten Island.

U.S. intelligence officials warned Britain in 2003 that the alleged leader of the July 7, 2005, suicide bombings in London had been in touch with extremists who were plotting to blow up synagogues in the United States, the book says. Mohammad Sidique Khan, one of the four suicide bombers who killed 52 people in London, was banned from flying to the United States in 2003.

The book also reports that the FBI teamed up with First Data Corp., the company that owns Western Union. That alliance provided Israel with vital information about Palestinian terrorists.

Suskind writes that CIA officials threatened to harm 9/11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's kids, ages seven and nine, if he didn't cooperate with his interrogators in Thailand. "So fine," Khalid Sheikh Mohammed responded to the threat, according to one of Susskind's sources. "They'll join Allah in a better place."

The book challenges the claim, made in Bob Woodward's book Plan of Attack, that CIA chief George Tenet told Bush in late 2002 that the case that Saddam had WMD was a "slam-dunk." That phrase has hung like a noose around Tenet ever since and been widely derided as perhaps the most notorious, and erroneous, claim to justify the invasion of Iraq. Tenet, Suskind says, was stunned to read what he had purportedly told the President when he saw an excerpt from the book in the Washington Post in April 2004. While the President wasn't quoted as a source for that remark, he had been interviewed by Woodward for the book. Tenet "wondered how the President could recall so clearly something Tenet himself didn't remember saying," Susskind writes, and felt the White House was setting him up as a "fall guy" for the bad intelligence that many in the CIA believed came from the Pentagon and members of Vice President Cheney's staff eager to overthrow Saddam.

Such score-settling has a long and honorable history in the annals of Washington reportage. But Suskind won't say if Tenet, or his allies, played a role as Suskind's key sources trying to set the "slam-dunk" record straight. "I can't get into the sourcing," he tells Time.

Original article at: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1206001,00.html?promoid=rss_top

Murtha closes down GOP Chickenhawk on floor....

2006-06-16T08:28:00.000-07:00

This is a list of heroes and chickenhawks.

Military service by prominent Democrats:

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle - 1st Lt., U.S. Air Force SAC 1969-72 .
Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) - Lt., U.S. Navy, 1962-67; Naval Reserve, 1968-74. (1, 2)
Senator Fritz Hollings (D-SC) - served as a U.S. Army officer in World War II, receiving the Bronze Star and seven campaign ribbons.
Senator Daniel Inouye, US Army 1943-'47; Medal of Honor, World War Two.
Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) - U.S. Army, 1951-1953. o
Senator John Kerry, Lt., U.S. Navy 1966-70; Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat V, and three awards of the Purple Heart for his service in combat.
Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) - U.S. Army Ranger, 1971-1979; Captain, Army Reserve 1979-91 (1)
Max Cleland, Former Senator, Captain, U.S. Army 1965-68; Silver Star & Bronze Star, Vietnam
Bob Kerrey, Former Senator, Lt. j.g., U.S. Navy 1966-69; Medal of Honor, Vietnam.
Rep. Richard Gephardt, former House Minority Leader - Missouri Air National Guard, 1965-71.
Rep. David Bonior, Representative, (D-MI) - Former House Minority Whip - Staff Sgt., Air Force, 1968-72
Rep. Mike Thompson, D-CA: Staff sergeant/platoon leader with the 173rd Airborne Brigade, U.S. Army; was wounded and received a Purple Heart.
Rep. Pete Stark, D-CA, served in the Air Force 1955-57
Wesley Clark, General, US Army.
Al Gore, Former Vice President - enlisted August 1969; sent to Vietnam January 1971.
Bill Clinton, did not serve.
Military service by prominent Republicans attacked by the right wing

John McCain, US Senator (AZ) - McCain's naval honors include the Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross. (Attacked by Bush Campaign for President as having become mentally unstable while a POW.)
Colin Powell. Secretary of State, General. US Army, Attacked by many on Radical Right for being an appeaser, soft on Saddam and other enemies

Lets thank all our right wing heroes for their "service" today.

Prominent right-wing Republicans and military service

George W. Bush - National Guard back when service there meant you did not see combat. Even so, went AWOL for a year.
Dick Cheney - did not serve.
John Ashcroft, Attorney General - did not serve.
Don Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense - served in the U.S. Navy (1954-57) as an aviator and flight instructor.
Rep. Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the House - avoided the draft, did not serve.
Rep. Tom Delay, House Majority Leader - avoided the draft, did not serve.
Rep. Roy Blunt, House Majority Whip (MO) - did not serve
Dick Armey, Former House Majority Leader - avoided the draft, did not serve.
Sen. Bill Frist , Senate Majority Leader (TN) - did not serve.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, Majority Whip, (KY) - did not serve.
Sen. Rick Santorum, (PA), third ranking Republican in the Senate - did not serve. (1)
Trent Lott, Former Senate Majority Leader (MS) - avoided the draft, did not serve.
Jeb Bush, Florida Governor - did not serve.
Karl Rove - avoided the draft, did not serve.
Newt Gingrich, Former Speaker of the House - avoided the draft, did not serve.
Bill Bennett, (author of Why We Fight), did not serve.
Antonin Scalia, Supreme Court Justice, did not serve.
Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court Justice, did not serve.
Phil Gramm, former Senator. Did not serve.
Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense, did not serve.
Spencer Abraham, Secretary of Energy, did not serve.
Rep. Henry Hyde, (IL) did not serve.
Jack Kemp, did not serve.
Sen. Don Nickles, (OK) did not serve.
J. C. Watts, Former Congressman, (OK), did not serve.
Bill Simon, did not serve.
Saxby Chambliss, did not serve.
Marc Racicot, avoided the draft despite a lottery number of 23. see http://www.billingsnews.com/story?storyid=3182&issue=98......

Right-wing preachers and pundits

P. J. O'Rourke (author of Give War a Chance), did not serve.
Bill Kristol, editor The Weekly Standard, did not serve.
Bill O'Reilly, Fox News celebrity, did not serve.
Sean Hannity, Fox News celebrity, did not serve.
Wolf Blitzer, CNN Newsman. Did not serve.
David Horowitz, Right Wing media hit man. Did not serve.
Mike Savage, Right Wing media hit man, did not serve.
George Will, columnist, did not serve.
Pat Robertson, politician/preacher, His US Senator daddy got him out of Korea when war began.
Ralph Reed, did not serve.
Jerry Falwell, preacher/politician, did not serve.
Ken Starr, did not serve.
Gary Bauer, politician/preacher, did not serve.
Alan Keyes, did not serve.
Roger Ailes, Fox News President, did not serve.

We have become uncivil and barbaric for proft....

2006-06-16T07:53:00.000-07:00

http://www.petatv.com/tvpopup/Prefs.asp?video=pam_anti_fur

If you are easily traumatized - DO NOT WATCH THIS.

This is graphic. Yesterday PETA people played this for Beyonce and hopefully her fur line will disappear. There is no justification for cruelty - certainly not profit.

I don't agree with all of PETA's tactics let's be clear on that. I am a carnivore, I just feel these animals should be given a quality of life not relegated to the abuse most suffer with strict confinement, force feeding, etc... and that their death be quick and painless.

The dominant political force of our time is the MEDIA.

2006-06-16T07:25:00.000-07:00

A Watershed Moment: Media Use Coulter to Suggest Blogs Are Impotent

Anybody who watched Ann Coulter's June 14th appearance on the Tonight Show had to realize that it was a watershed moment in the war between the establishment media and the progressive netroots, a community fresh off the successful YearlyKos convention. It was also a signal to Democrats that liberal ideology can be denigrated with impunity. Had the words "Jew" or "Christian" or "Conservative" been substituted for "Liberal" we'd be waking up to a national scandal.

Never mind that Jay Leno and George Carlin sat like trembling lambs while Coulter spewed gutter-level invective at millions of Americans - we've already seen the same obsequiousness from Larry King, Matt Lauer (who ended his faux-debate with Coulter by saying "always fun to have you") and others. The larger issue here is that despite an uproar from the progressive netroots, NBC saw fit to give Coulter a platform to continue her liberal-scapegoating and to slander women who lost their husbands on 9/11. (For the record, many rightwing bloggers denounced Coulter and several Democrats attacked her, but their focus was the substance of Coulter's words, not a criticism of the media outlets who continue to provide her a national forum.)

It's hard to deny that Coulter's words border on incitement. What she says is neither amusing nor smart nor humorous nor factual nor worthy of airing on a major media outlet. It treats a substantial segment of the population as sub-human, as creatures deserving of public scorn and worse (She said Jesus would say that "we are called upon to do battle" on liberalism). Careful not to violate Godwin's Law, I'll refrain from the obvious comparisons, but what we're dealing with here is a dangerous inflection point in American politics. When this kind of opprobrium is peddled by major media outlets, it's high time that the Democratic establishment and the larger progressive community understand that this is a make-or-break showdown with the media.

Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and their ilk have made an industry out of liberal-bashing. Coulter fits in perfectly with those hate-traffickers. And contrary to the false Michael Moore comparisons made by Leno and others, there is no progressive counterpart to these people on the national stage. The basic thrust of the left's critique is that George W. Bush and his administration are bad for America. It is in our tradition for citizens to defend the Constitution and to question the actions of their elected leaders. Rightwingers may characterize it as Bush Derangement Syndrome, but the progressive community, by and large, is going after government corruption and lies, not vilifying an entire group of Americans as Bin Laden-loving traitors.

The issue here is not the damage done to America's public discourse - we already know that liberals have become the equivalent of terrorists in the minds of millions of Americans. Nor is the issue the media's hunger for ratings ( what's next, snuff films?) The issue is the establishment media's symbiotic relationship with these rightwing blatherers:

"I've argued that the propagation of anti-left and pro-right narratives by the establishment media is more insidious - and thus more dangerous - than the cowardly bleating of people like Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Bill Bennett, Bill O'Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh. When Coulter is invited to spout her putrescence on Larry King Live, the legitimacy granted to her is CNN's fault, not Coulter's. After all, there's no shortage of desperate attention seekers willing to say and do outlandish things to get noticed. The question is, why does CNN grant an open forum to this particular whack-job and not others?

The symbiotic relationship between far right screamers and the establishment media dresses up extremist rhetoric in a veneer of decorum. When Tim Russert, David Broder, Chris Matthews, and the New York Times peek into the Clinton bedroom, they are using their supposed 'neutrality' to disseminate rightwing talking points, thereby magnifying the rightwing echo chamber."

I respect those who think ignoring Ann Coulter's hideous rantings is the best way to deal with her. In normal circumstances, she'd be relegated to fringe websites and would be seen as nothing more than a sleazy political circus act. These are not normal circumstances. Attacking someone as disturbed as Coulter is a meaningless endeavor, but as I've written previously:

"This race to the bottom by the establishment media leaves the progressive netroots in a quandary: if the only thing these so-called 'journalists' want is to create an uproar, how do we respond? Some bloggers advocate ignoring slime-traffickers like Coulter and Glenn Beck, others attack them for the scum they peddle. My preferred tactic is to excoriate the media outlet that gives them a forum - it may play into their need for attention, but I think it's imperative for us to create a public record of these media transgressions...

One thing is for sure: responding to Coulter's assertions is pointless. When she speaks the unspeakable about the 9/11 widows ("I have never seen people enjoying their husbands’ death so much") and when Glenn Beck does the same (calling hurricane survivors in New Orleans "scumbags" and saying he "hates" 9-11 families), reasoned discussion is not on the table."

There have been dozens of battles in the war between the blogs and the establishment media, from the Deborah Howell fiasco to Chris Matthews to Joe Klein to Tim Russert and more. Sites and blogs like Media Matters, dKos, Atrios, Crooks and Liars, FDL, Digby, Think Progress, TPM, and others are the netroots' front line in this increasingly bitter fight. This latest Coulter incident should be a wake-up call to the larger progressive community and to the Democratic leadership. Parading Coulter on national television is a statement from the establishment media that we don't matter, that our 'pressure' is meaningless, that our voices are worthless.

What's the proper course of action in response to this challenge? For the netroots, it's to keep growing and organizing, to hammer away at those in the media who enable the sliming of 9/11 widows, to respond to such media transgressions with ferocity of wit and will, and to badger elected Democrats and progressive leaders about the media problem.

For those on the left who still have blinders on, the response is to get a clue about what's happening. A good start is to read this series of essays from Jamison Foser, who explains the problem eloquently:

"The defining issue of our time is not the Iraq war. It is not the "global war on terror." It is not our inability (or unwillingness) to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable health care. Nor is it immigration, outsourcing, or growing income inequity. It is not education, it is not global warming, and it is not Social Security.

The defining issue of our time is the media.

The dominant political force of our time is not Karl Rove or the Christian Right or Bill Clinton. It is not the ruthlessness or the tactical and strategic superiority of the Republicans, and it is not your favorite theory about what is wrong with the Democrats.

The dominant political force of our time is the media.

Time after time, the news media have covered progressives and conservatives in wildly different ways -- and, time after time, they do so to the benefit of conservatives."

--guest blogged by Peter Daou

Original article and active links at: http://www.crooksandliars.com/stories/2006/06/15/aWatershedMomentMediaUseCoulterToSuggestBlogsAreImpotent.html