Saturday, August 16, 2003
Black-out: Follow-up:
"We’ll have time to look at it and determine whether or not our grid needs to be modernized. I happen to think it does, and have said so all along.” - Bush, 8/14-15
They lie as they breathe. Actually, in June of 2001, Bush opposed and the congressional GOP voted down legislation that would have provided $350 million worth of loans to modernize the nation’s power grid. We did know then of weaknesses in reliability and capacity. Studies by the Energy Department showing that the grid was in desperate need of upgrades were cited. Yet, the Bush Administration lobbied against it and the Republicans voted it down three separate times. Every issue, every issue...
What's Happening Iraq:
The Resistance:NPR did more programming on who is shooting at the US troops, admitting that they are not merely Saddamites, that it's a growing and increasingly organized resistance.
The Sydney Morning Herald (smh.com, Paul McGeough) developed that motif, finding that the U.S. faces "a new guerilla movement with growing popular support":
The Pentagon, the US military and American analysts are reluctant to acknowledge popular support for the Iraqi resistance. If the accounts of the resistance given to the Herald in interviews in the past 10 days are accurate, what is emerging in Iraq is a centrally controlled movement, driven as much by nationalism as the mosque, a movement that has left Saddam and the Baath Party behind and already is getting foreign funds for its bid to drive out the US army.
Just as Iraqi children are being coached to lie when foreigners inquire about their parents or the whereabouts of their homes, the families of resistance fighters deny their involvement in the war.
Finally, the Globe and Mail (Orly Hallpern) reports that Iraqi men are volunteering in droves for the Mahdi Army, an anti-U.S. occupation Shia force, named after a long-lost imam. While no guns have been distributed, one recruiter, who turned away a man trying to sign up his five-year-old son, said: "We don't have the ability, like a state, to import weapons, but everyone has his own gun at home anyway.
WMD Follow-up. Whoops. As the Guardian (Vikram Dodd, Nicholas Watt and Richard Norton Taylor) et al are reporting this AM,
Tony Blair's headline-grabbing claim that Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes of an order to do so was based on hearsay information... The "Hutton inquiry" continues on Monday, and the Government continues to reel from the revelations.
Missile Sting: Follow-up: The FBI blamed the BBC for ruining its attempt to infiltrate al-Qaida when correspondent Tom Mangold ran an "exclusive" 10 O'Clock News report about the missile sting. The senior US government officials told Newsweek magazine that the ultimate aim of the elaborate sting was to catch Mr Lakhani - who has no terrorist links - and turn him into a government informant who might lead them to terrorists trying to buy weapons. The BBC demurred, saying that American correspondents were on the case as well. Mangold cited an ABC report, an internal "news flash" about the story that went out before his report. Whatever!
Pay Cut: Follow-up: All media carried the effort to quash the political quasi-firestorm that greeted the Pentagon's cutting the pay of serviceman by $225 as of September 30. Officially, the Pentagon denied that it would occur, then added that if it did, they would make up the pay "in other ways."
Single Payer Health Care Follow-up: Last Tuesday I buried well into that blog the news that almost 8000 physicians had signed a call for a single payer system. The Boston Globe actually placed that news on the front page on Wednesday, much to the surprise of many. Love that Globe! That same day, the hearing for the single payer bill in Massachusetts was re-scheduled for January, terrible timing for seniors to rally on the state house steps! Calls of protest are encouraged. ACTION: Call the office of the Legislature's Health Care Committee (1-617-722-2130) with the following message:
1. It is simply unacceptable that the hearing for S. 686, the Mass.
Health Care Trust bill, has been moved from October 8 to January 21.
2. You expect the House Chair of the Committee, Rep. Koutoujian, to
find a way to move the hearing for S. 686 back to its original date of October.
Economy: Polls. Here the news keeps getting better. That's why the "Bush Economic Team" is traveling the country saying that the economy is fine, that the upturn that's begun is because of the Bush tax cuts kicking in. Not surprising that this week had more positive economic reports in the media. Remember this stuff works. In 1983, polls found that the public thought little of the Reagan education policies. Reagan then went on a speaking tour re education, but changed no policy. His poll numbers went up dramatically.
Specifically, only 36 percent of those surveyed now approve of Bush's economic performance, while 52% disapprove.(CBS)
California:
Ain't this the perfect example of the celebrity culture and the dumbed-down electorate. Arnold announces his run on the Tonight Show, he's thus far only been interviewed by an entertainment reporter; countless interviewees say variations on 'we know who he is; he's the terminator and we need someone strong; I'll vote for him.'
More importantly, this is a blatantly anti-democratic operation, a coup engineered by the Right wing of the Republican party (that isn't happy w/ Arnold), pushing a recall less than a year after an election. Gray Davis has presided over a sizable surplus becoming a huge deficit (sound familiar??), and yet he's the lesser of the guilty parties as to the state's energy problem as well as the budget.(blame Cheney/Ken Lay and the Legislature)
This is a reminder that the Republicans organize and fight. They are not fair, (nor balanced), and they want to win. They will again make every effort, try every trick to win, including expanded efforts to eliminate voters by purging the voter rolls. They will try to dominate the media with more misleading information, as the Iraq prelude was but one example of their 'style.'
So, resist the media spin that the California election is a circus. It is a coup. We can't wait for better media reports, for a further change in the momentum. We must roll up those sleeves...
California Addendum: The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has taken the issue to the federal courts, saying the recall vote is "a fiasco waiting to happen". They hope to have the federal courts step in to delay the election.
Middle East: Rumblings, but little in the major media, that the "peace process" is in trouble. Both sides are gearing up for renewed conflict, Haaretz reports Israel's intelligence chief noting that the cease-fire is in "steep decline", and Israeli warplanes flew at low altitudes over the Syrian President's residence. They had avoided Syrian airspace since 2000 when they ended their 22-year occupation of South Lebanon.
-R
"We’ll have time to look at it and determine whether or not our grid needs to be modernized. I happen to think it does, and have said so all along.” - Bush, 8/14-15
They lie as they breathe. Actually, in June of 2001, Bush opposed and the congressional GOP voted down legislation that would have provided $350 million worth of loans to modernize the nation’s power grid. We did know then of weaknesses in reliability and capacity. Studies by the Energy Department showing that the grid was in desperate need of upgrades were cited. Yet, the Bush Administration lobbied against it and the Republicans voted it down three separate times. Every issue, every issue...
What's Happening Iraq:
The Resistance:NPR did more programming on who is shooting at the US troops, admitting that they are not merely Saddamites, that it's a growing and increasingly organized resistance.
The Sydney Morning Herald (smh.com, Paul McGeough) developed that motif, finding that the U.S. faces "a new guerilla movement with growing popular support":
The Pentagon, the US military and American analysts are reluctant to acknowledge popular support for the Iraqi resistance. If the accounts of the resistance given to the Herald in interviews in the past 10 days are accurate, what is emerging in Iraq is a centrally controlled movement, driven as much by nationalism as the mosque, a movement that has left Saddam and the Baath Party behind and already is getting foreign funds for its bid to drive out the US army.
Just as Iraqi children are being coached to lie when foreigners inquire about their parents or the whereabouts of their homes, the families of resistance fighters deny their involvement in the war.
Finally, the Globe and Mail (Orly Hallpern) reports that Iraqi men are volunteering in droves for the Mahdi Army, an anti-U.S. occupation Shia force, named after a long-lost imam. While no guns have been distributed, one recruiter, who turned away a man trying to sign up his five-year-old son, said: "We don't have the ability, like a state, to import weapons, but everyone has his own gun at home anyway.
WMD Follow-up. Whoops. As the Guardian (Vikram Dodd, Nicholas Watt and Richard Norton Taylor) et al are reporting this AM,
Tony Blair's headline-grabbing claim that Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes of an order to do so was based on hearsay information... The "Hutton inquiry" continues on Monday, and the Government continues to reel from the revelations.
Missile Sting: Follow-up: The FBI blamed the BBC for ruining its attempt to infiltrate al-Qaida when correspondent Tom Mangold ran an "exclusive" 10 O'Clock News report about the missile sting. The senior US government officials told Newsweek magazine that the ultimate aim of the elaborate sting was to catch Mr Lakhani - who has no terrorist links - and turn him into a government informant who might lead them to terrorists trying to buy weapons. The BBC demurred, saying that American correspondents were on the case as well. Mangold cited an ABC report, an internal "news flash" about the story that went out before his report. Whatever!
Pay Cut: Follow-up: All media carried the effort to quash the political quasi-firestorm that greeted the Pentagon's cutting the pay of serviceman by $225 as of September 30. Officially, the Pentagon denied that it would occur, then added that if it did, they would make up the pay "in other ways."
Single Payer Health Care Follow-up: Last Tuesday I buried well into that blog the news that almost 8000 physicians had signed a call for a single payer system. The Boston Globe actually placed that news on the front page on Wednesday, much to the surprise of many. Love that Globe! That same day, the hearing for the single payer bill in Massachusetts was re-scheduled for January, terrible timing for seniors to rally on the state house steps! Calls of protest are encouraged. ACTION: Call the office of the Legislature's Health Care Committee (1-617-722-2130) with the following message:
1. It is simply unacceptable that the hearing for S. 686, the Mass.
Health Care Trust bill, has been moved from October 8 to January 21.
2. You expect the House Chair of the Committee, Rep. Koutoujian, to
find a way to move the hearing for S. 686 back to its original date of October.
Economy: Polls. Here the news keeps getting better. That's why the "Bush Economic Team" is traveling the country saying that the economy is fine, that the upturn that's begun is because of the Bush tax cuts kicking in. Not surprising that this week had more positive economic reports in the media. Remember this stuff works. In 1983, polls found that the public thought little of the Reagan education policies. Reagan then went on a speaking tour re education, but changed no policy. His poll numbers went up dramatically.
Specifically, only 36 percent of those surveyed now approve of Bush's economic performance, while 52% disapprove.(CBS)
California:
Ain't this the perfect example of the celebrity culture and the dumbed-down electorate. Arnold announces his run on the Tonight Show, he's thus far only been interviewed by an entertainment reporter; countless interviewees say variations on 'we know who he is; he's the terminator and we need someone strong; I'll vote for him.'
More importantly, this is a blatantly anti-democratic operation, a coup engineered by the Right wing of the Republican party (that isn't happy w/ Arnold), pushing a recall less than a year after an election. Gray Davis has presided over a sizable surplus becoming a huge deficit (sound familiar??), and yet he's the lesser of the guilty parties as to the state's energy problem as well as the budget.(blame Cheney/Ken Lay and the Legislature)
This is a reminder that the Republicans organize and fight. They are not fair, (nor balanced), and they want to win. They will again make every effort, try every trick to win, including expanded efforts to eliminate voters by purging the voter rolls. They will try to dominate the media with more misleading information, as the Iraq prelude was but one example of their 'style.'
So, resist the media spin that the California election is a circus. It is a coup. We can't wait for better media reports, for a further change in the momentum. We must roll up those sleeves...
California Addendum: The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has taken the issue to the federal courts, saying the recall vote is "a fiasco waiting to happen". They hope to have the federal courts step in to delay the election.
Middle East: Rumblings, but little in the major media, that the "peace process" is in trouble. Both sides are gearing up for renewed conflict, Haaretz reports Israel's intelligence chief noting that the cease-fire is in "steep decline", and Israeli warplanes flew at low altitudes over the Syrian President's residence. They had avoided Syrian airspace since 2000 when they ended their 22-year occupation of South Lebanon.
-R
