Friday, July 30, 2004
Al-Qaeda arrest:
So predictable that many of us anticipated it, only it was supposed to be bin Laden, not the latest to be made into a “big achievement”.
Pakistan says it has arrested a senior al Qaeda figure wanted for the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed hundreds of people.
Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat identified the man as Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani and said he was a Tanzanian national wanted for the synchronised bombings that killed more than 200 people at the U.S. embassy in Kenya and 11 at the embassy in Tanzania.
"He carried head money of $25 million (14 million pounds)," Hayat told Reuters. "It is a big achievement for our security forces."
Hayat said Ghailani was one of 14 people arrested at the weekend when security forces raided a suspected militant hideout in the city of Gujarat, about 175 km (110 miles) southeast of the capital Islamabad. http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=556318§ion=news
Kerry Speech: Solid, even moving; energetic, but not over-the-top. I was reminded of being in meetings with him and being impressed with his focus and his intelligence and his decency- [even if he repeatedly called me “Dick”]. Hopefully those dolts who remain undecided in the swing states will grasp that this is a full person who is infinitely more decent and capable than the towel-snapper occupying the White House.
Content: calling for health care as a right, an energy policy that relies on American ingenuity and invention, “not the Saudi royal family”, no soldier will be held hostage to Middle East oil, God is not on our side, we are on God’s side, cutting middle class and small business taxes and rolling back taxes on the wealthiest, not refrain of “family values”, but valuing families, and you don’t value families by cutting after school programs and cops while giving tax breaks to Enron. JFK gave us hope, and we will finish the job, which starts with The Truth- restoring trust and credibility to the White House; promising never to mislead us into war, not to have secret meetings with polluters and promising to appoint a Secretary of Defense who will listen to the military and an Attorney General who upholds the constitution.
The networks- ABC, CBS, NBC- are consigned to relic status. Much more should have been shown, including Kerry’s ‘band of brothers’ and Max Cleland.
[More] Media: USA Today was the most recent to employ a Right-wing “journalist”, Ann Coulter to cover the Democratic convention. Her foul initial piece, however, resulted in her firing.
Salon’s Eric Boehlert offers his thoughts:
[As to] USA Today’s decision to hire Ann Coulter to cover the convention: They got what they asked for, even though they were unwilling to print it, as you can tell from this. I think it would be a healthy thing for journalism for someone to be fired over this. I mean, for all the nonsense we’ve read during the past week asking the question of whether the legitimization of bloggers by the DNC is a good thing, it seems to me a journalistic institution that would pull a stunt like this one has no business telling anyone anything about professional ethics. Ditto the cable folks. Really, do Chris Matthews, Joe Scarborough, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity have anything to teach Josh Marshall, Brad DeLong or Atrios about how to distinguish illusion from reality and present it to an audience in an illuminating fashion?
USA Today editorial page editor Brian Gallagher, defending the choice, told a reporter Coulter "was a voice from [the conservative] side with standing and visibility." Notice how credibility was not a requirement. By contrast, for the Republican convention in August, USA Today has tapped Academy Award-winning director Michael Moore to file dispatches.
Are the two really compatible? Nowhere in his movie "Fahrenheit 9/11" does Moore suggest, for instance, that Republicans hate America or that Bush's Cabinet members are akin to Iraqi terrorists. Moore is an accomplished and, yes, partisan filmmaker; Coulter is a factually challenged name-caller. Could USA Today honestly not tell the difference?
This is just the latest example of mainstream press outlets embracing discredited, right-wing pundits in an effort to prove their "balance." And don't think the political pressure from the right isn't real. On the eve of the convention, at a media panel held at Harvard University, NBC anchor Tom Brokaw talked about how conservative activists "feel they have to go to war against the networks every day." http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/07/27/coulter/
One of the Lying Liars: Sean Hannity
Al Franken spends some of his time catching the chronic liars of the Right doing their thing. Sean Hannity, not an especially bright bulb, but VERY popular, dared to come on Franken’s radio show where Franken confronted him with his having accused Howard Dean of saying that Bush knew about 9/11 before it happened. Hannity denied it, and Franken played a bit from Hannity’s show, containing the quote, “…and Howard Dean saying the president knew about 9/11 ahead of time.”
Then, from Hannity- “I misspoke.”Text found at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,106408,00.html
Have to do more- a lot more- of this exposing…
Cambridge Talks
Lots of luminaries giving talks this week. Michael Moore’s presence made for a massive crowd on Tuesday:
And I know a lot of people have seen my film and the obvious bad guy in the movie is George W. Bush. But there's the unstated villain in the film. And that's our national media.
You've seen the film. Right? A lot of them are mad at me right now because I can't go on a show without them, you know. But I would be mad if I were them too, because the film outs them. It outs them as being for the Bush administration. It outs them as people who were cheerleaders for this war. It outs them as, to be kind to those who are actually good journalists, journalists who fell asleep on the job. Journalists who didn't ask the hard questions. The one thing I hear when people come out of the theater over and over again is I never saw that on the news. Right? I never saw those Black congressmen being shut down one after another. Did anyone see that?
I didn't know there was a riot at the inauguration parade. I never saw the egg hit the limo. I never saw that! I don't hear from the amputees who sit in our hospitals, 5,000 or 6,000 of them. How come I don't hear from them on the nightly news? I don't hear from the mothers. I don't see them on the evening news, the mothers of children who have been killed in Iraq and who state their opposition to this war. I haven't seen them on the news. http://www.alternet.org/election04/19385/
What’s Happening, Iraq:
Democracy: Press Limitations: The Financial Times (Nicolas Pelham) notes that Prime Minister Allawi has established a “media committee to impose restrictions on print and broadcast media,” underlining “an aggressive new attitude towards press freedoms…” http://financialtimes.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=Iraq+sets+up+committee+to+impose+restrictions+on+news+reporting&expire=&urlID=11128783&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ft.com%2Fs01%2Fservlet%2FContentServer%3Fpagename%3DFT.com%2FStoryFT%2FFullStory%26c%3DStoryFT%26cid%3D1087374001384%26p%3D1012571727169&partnerID=1703
British papers were the first to note that Saddam was rumored to have had a (minor) stroke. Who’s to know? His lawyers have reportedly not been allowed to see him. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/tm_objectid=14467737&method=full&siteid=50143&headline=saddam-s--stroke--name_page.html
And, the latest U.S. idea for sharing the security function:
Ayad Allawi today welcomed Saudi Arabia's US-backed proposals to help build a joint force of Muslim nations to establish security in Iraq. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1271597,00.html
What’s Happening, Afghanistan: A very bad sign. Doctors Without Borders decides Afghanistan is too dangerous, and withdraws.
The international aid agency Doctors Without Borders announced Wednesday that it was withdrawing from Afghanistan after 24 years to protest the government's failure to lock up the killers of five of its staff members and out of concern for the safety of the rest of its workers in the country.
The lack of progress on the case - even though a prime suspect has been identified - as well as threats from the Taliban forced the decision, Kenny Gluck, the group's operational director, said at a news conference in Kabul. The risk of more attacks remains too high, he said.
"We are scared that the lack of a credible government investigation and credible prosecution sends a message that it is acceptable to kill aid workers," he said. "We feel there is not a framework in which we can put unarmed aid workers who are trying to provide assistance."
The decision to pull out by such a prominent aid agency - Doctors Without Borders won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999 and works in 80 countries - has shaken the government and the aid community in Afghanistan. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/29/international/asia/29afgh.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Elections: Karzai has opposition, but the people think the fix is in.
For many Afghans, casting a ballot seems irrelevant. They believe that the result of the election has been decided already in Washington. They believe that the election is not about determining whom the Afghans want as their leader, but about anointing Washington's choice, Karzai, as Afghanistan's "democratically elected president". Karzai has led Afghanistan since the Taliban regime was ousted in the US-led "war against terrorism" in December 2001. Several presidential candidates maintain that election rules clearly favor Karzai and that every effort is being made to ensure that he returns, with the rules of the electoral game denying candidates a level playing field. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/FG29Ag01.html
What’s Happening, South Africa: Truly awful. The statistics: one in eight South Africans is HIV positive; in Durban, South Africa’s third-largest city, a survey two years ago found that 35% of women were HIV positive.
At S Cemetery in Umlazi Township, Innocent Gasa's handiwork is everywhere: endless mounds of fresh red earth topped with headstones, unpainted wooden crosses, or, for the most miserable, bricks bearing a painted identifying number. Mr. Gasa has dug graves on this lumpy, unkempt, Halloween-spooky hilltop for two years now, five holes a week, 52 weeks a year, well over 500 holes in all.
Which may seem peculiar, seeing as S Cemetery exhausted its last space for new graves five years ago. City records sum up its status succinctly, even dismissively: "Full."
But in Durban, "full'' is a term of art. This city is being battered by an AIDS pandemic so sweeping that people are dying faster than the city can find space to bury them. And so gravediggers like Mr. Gasa are reopening existing graves - the city calls it "recycling'' - and interring fresh bones atop the old ones.
The job gives Mr. Gasa nightmares. "I think it is not a good thing, to take out the bones'' for reburial, he said during a break in his spadework. "But we have no choice."
Every time southern Africa's AIDS epidemic threatens to exhaust its store of superlatives, some new, sobering extreme rises to the fore. The latest is Durban, where 51 of the 53 municipal cemeteries are officially filled to capacity, and a surging death rate threatens to overwhelm the remaining two within a couple of years.
"Five years ago, we used to have about 120 funerals a weekend, but this number has now jumped to 600," Thembinkosi Ngcobo, who heads the municipal department of parks and cemeteries, said in an interview this week. "In order to cope with the current rate of mortality - we hope it is not going to increase - we will need to have 12.1 hectares every year of new gravesites." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/29/international/africa/29durb.html?pagewanted=print&position
9/11 Postscript: Administration now seeks to act
Richard Cohen of the Washington Post writes of the “farce”- The Adminstration, having done so little since 9/11, now realizing that they had best get active, however belatedly.
Why the sudden alacrity? It's because the chairman and vice chairman of the Sept. 11 commission, Republican Thomas Kean and Democrat Lee Hamilton, have been all over the airwaves warning that another terrorist attack could be imminent and that the nation's intelligence apparatus, so obviously broken, has yet to be fixed. They recommended a host of measures, some of which -- improved border and port security, an integrated "watch list," etc. -- you would have thought would have been implemented on Sept. 12, 2001. Insistently, the commissioners recommended speed. To paraphrase: Lives are in danger and little is being done. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16762-2004Jul26?language=printer
Economy: Deficit climbing
They know it, but won’t announce it till the Dem’s convention is over. Knowing their technique, it’ll probably be announced late Friday so as to not draw attention. Then, they’ll spin it as ‘not as bad as feared, proof that the economy is improving.’
The White House will project soon that this year's federal deficit will exceed $420 billion, congressional aides said, a record figure certain to ignite partisan warfare over President Bush's handling of the economy. The annual summertime analysis is expected out this Friday, said several congressional aides speaking on condition of anonymity Tuesday. That would be well after the frequently ignored legal deadline of July 15. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=5&u=/ap/20040728/ap_on_go_pr_wh/budget_deficit
We shouldn’t forget that our fiscal condition was welcomed (and fostered) by the Republican Right. Recall the NY Times of August 25, 2001: Bush was quoted (from his faux “ranch” in Crawford) that there was a ‘benefit’ to the already quickly dwindling surplus, as it would create “a fiscal straitjacket for Congress” which was “incredibly positive.”
And, our place in the world is at stake. David Rothkopf, in the WaPost:
As American voters contemplate their choices in this presidential campaign year, the world's investors have been voting with their money. The early results are in -- and they don't look good for the United States.
Last month, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released figures showing that last year for the first time, China supplanted the United States as the No. 1 destination for foreign direct investment worldwide -- that is, money that goes into factories, equipment, real estate or existing companies. And in a blow to fans of "freedom fries," No. 2 was France. Though other major economies also suffered a drop-off in this category , no nation fell as far in percentage terms as the United States.
While such numbers fluctuate and foreign direct investment is just one type of capital flow, this dramatic swing can be seen as further evidence that in the 21st century, America is going to have to fight hard for its piece of the global investment pie -- money that translates directly into new jobs and the industries of tomorrow. Clearly, the world economy is shifting around us and our place atop it is being challenged. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10805-2004Jul24?language=printer
And, interest in our financial investments may be fading.
At a time when U.S. trade deficits are growing to historic proportions, foreign interest in U.S. stocks and bonds may be fading. If this continues, there could be consequences for U.S. interest rates and the dollar. Foreign purchases of securities in the U.S. in May came to $56.4 billion. While that was large enough to finance the current-account deficit, it was down 26% from April and represented the lowest monthly total in seven months. It also marked the fourth consecutive monthly decline of such purchases by foreigners. The report on foreign purchases included bad news for U.S. stocks, revealing that May was the third consecutive month foreigners have been net sellers. That hadn't happened in nearly a decade. Potentially more troubling was the slowdown in Asian purchases of U.S. debt -- especially in Japan, which holds 16% of all U.S. Treasurys. That country's nascent economic recovery has eased the government's concerns about maintaining a weak currency to boost exports, in turn reducing the Bank of Japan's need to intervene and buy dollars. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109078406964673107,00.html?mod=todays_us_money_and_investing
Finally, the NY Times (David Cay Johnston) notes Americans’ shrinking income.
The overall income Americans reported to the government shrank for two consecutive years after the Internet stock market bubble burst in 2000, the first time that has effectively happened since the modern tax system was introduced during World War II, newly disclosed information from the Internal Revenue Service shows.
The total adjusted gross income on tax returns fell 5.1 percent, to just over $6 trillion in 2002, the most recent year for which data is available, from $6.35 trillion in 2000. Because of population growth, average incomes declined even more, by 5.7 percent.
Adjusted for inflation, the income of all Americans fell 9.2 percent from 2000 to 2002, according to the new I.R.S. data.
While the recession that hit the economy in 2001 in the wake of the market plunge was considered relatively mild, the new information shows that its effect on Americans' incomes, particularly those at the upper end of the spectrum, was much more severe. Earlier government economic statistics provided general evidence that incomes suffered in the first years of the decade, but the full impact of the blow and what groups it fell hardest on were not known until the I.R.S. made available on its Web site the detailed information from tax returns.
The unprecedented back-to-back declines in reported incomes was caused primarily by the combination of the big fall in the stock market and the erosion of jobs and wages in well-paying industries in the early years of the decade.
In the past, overall personal income rose from one year to the next with relentless monotony, the growth rate changing in response to fluctuations in economic activity but almost never falling.
But now, with many more ordinary employees joining high-level executives in having part of their compensation dependent on stock options and bonus plans, a volatile and relatively unpredictable new element has been introduced to the incomes of millions of workers. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/29/business/29tax.html
Kerry and Iraq: A good summary from the LA Times . It makes sense, yet makes one wince, as it paved the way for that ‘flip flopper’ label.
Less than two days before the Senate vote Oct. 11, Kerry said his gut told him to vote for the resolution. But his speech on the Senate floor was riddled with reservations and caveats.Despite the doubts he had expressed about the administration's commitment to diplomacy, Kerry said he would back the resolution on the strength of assurances from Bush and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell that they would not go to war unilaterally or without exhausting diplomatic options."Let there be no doubt or confusion," Kerry said. "I will support a multilateral effort to disarm [Hussein] by force, if we ever exhaust those other options as the president has promised. But I will not support a unilateral U.S. war against Iraq unless that threat is imminent and the multilateral effort has not proven possible."There was nothing in the resolution that guaranteed those conditions would be met. Nonetheless, he was one of 29 Democrats to vote for the resolution, which passed 77 to 23.In his Senate speech, Kerry had said, "I will be among the first to speak out" if Bush failed to seek international support and go to war as a last resort.In December, less than a week after he announced he was exploring a presidential bid, Kerry accused Bush of forcing the war debate to distract attention from economic problems.In January, he criticized Bush for what he called a "hell-bent-for-leather" dash to war without allowing more time for weapons inspection and diplomacy. "The United States should never go to war because it wants to," he said. "The United States should go to war because we have to."In the fall of 2003, his criticism of Bush's polices led to his vote against the $87-billion bill financing continued operations in Iraq. Only 12 senators voted against the financing measure, and only three — besides Kerry — voted for the war and against the second measure. Among them was Kerry's eventual running mate, John Edwards.Critics say Kerry's vote was politically motivated. The surprise leader in the Democratic presidential race had become Dean, who was riding a strong tide of antiwar sentiment among party activists.Kerry said he voted against the bill because Bush had gone to war recklessly and without a plan for postwar Iraq. He called it a "principled" vote designed to pressure the administration to change its policies.But even nonpartisan analysts say that voting for the war resolution and then opposing the subsequent funding measure is a key part of the GOP attack on him as a flip-flopper."The strategic blunder is that he's allowed Bush to make the case that this guy is all over the map," said Shanto Iyengar, a Stanford University political scientist. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-kerryiraq29jul29,1,1267485,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Kevin Phillips on 9/11, Condi and Responsibility
MOYERS: It does describe Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Advisor, and her deputy, Steven Hadley, as not having regarded the coordination of domestic agencies as part of their responsibility after they took office even as warnings of a possible attack continued to grow.
Now Condoleezza Rice, it's her job as the National Security Advisor to coordinate the agencies of national security. She clearly failed.
PHILLIPS: Well, this is exactly the problem that we're getting to here. Phil Zelikow, the executive director of the Commission, used to work for Condoleezza Rice. He's the last person who's going to say, "Condi screwed it up." You get this all across the way, all the mechanisms in which one of these commissions work.
From the people who were selected to run them, the people who were selected to staff them. They have to know about the subject matter to some extent. But that generally means they have ties, connections, patrons, obligations and they don't want to name names.
MOYERS: If this had happened on Clinton's watch, if 9/11 happened on Clinton's watch, would there be calls for Condoleezza Rice's firing?
PHILLIPS: You know, it's a fascinating coincidence. But the Clinton National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, is being hatcheted by the Republicans for something it may or may not be a tempest in a teapot with having to do with documents that he mishandled. Shouldn't we be asking the question why is Sandy Berger being pursued right at this point?
Is it to take people's minds off whether the National Security Advisor whose failure was much greater was Condoleezza Rice? The Republicans and, you know, you know and I know from having been in politics, people do these games. I mean, sometimes you attack somebody to make the issue move away from the people on your side. I would say yes. I mean, if Condoleezza Rice has been somebody with the Democrats and 9/11 had happened, I think the Republicans would be all over her. http://www.pbs.org/now/printable/transcript330_full_print.html
-R
So predictable that many of us anticipated it, only it was supposed to be bin Laden, not the latest to be made into a “big achievement”.
Pakistan says it has arrested a senior al Qaeda figure wanted for the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed hundreds of people.
Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat identified the man as Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani and said he was a Tanzanian national wanted for the synchronised bombings that killed more than 200 people at the U.S. embassy in Kenya and 11 at the embassy in Tanzania.
"He carried head money of $25 million (14 million pounds)," Hayat told Reuters. "It is a big achievement for our security forces."
Hayat said Ghailani was one of 14 people arrested at the weekend when security forces raided a suspected militant hideout in the city of Gujarat, about 175 km (110 miles) southeast of the capital Islamabad. http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=556318§ion=news
Kerry Speech: Solid, even moving; energetic, but not over-the-top. I was reminded of being in meetings with him and being impressed with his focus and his intelligence and his decency- [even if he repeatedly called me “Dick”]. Hopefully those dolts who remain undecided in the swing states will grasp that this is a full person who is infinitely more decent and capable than the towel-snapper occupying the White House.
Content: calling for health care as a right, an energy policy that relies on American ingenuity and invention, “not the Saudi royal family”, no soldier will be held hostage to Middle East oil, God is not on our side, we are on God’s side, cutting middle class and small business taxes and rolling back taxes on the wealthiest, not refrain of “family values”, but valuing families, and you don’t value families by cutting after school programs and cops while giving tax breaks to Enron. JFK gave us hope, and we will finish the job, which starts with The Truth- restoring trust and credibility to the White House; promising never to mislead us into war, not to have secret meetings with polluters and promising to appoint a Secretary of Defense who will listen to the military and an Attorney General who upholds the constitution.
The networks- ABC, CBS, NBC- are consigned to relic status. Much more should have been shown, including Kerry’s ‘band of brothers’ and Max Cleland.
[More] Media: USA Today was the most recent to employ a Right-wing “journalist”, Ann Coulter to cover the Democratic convention. Her foul initial piece, however, resulted in her firing.
Salon’s Eric Boehlert offers his thoughts:
[As to] USA Today’s decision to hire Ann Coulter to cover the convention: They got what they asked for, even though they were unwilling to print it, as you can tell from this. I think it would be a healthy thing for journalism for someone to be fired over this. I mean, for all the nonsense we’ve read during the past week asking the question of whether the legitimization of bloggers by the DNC is a good thing, it seems to me a journalistic institution that would pull a stunt like this one has no business telling anyone anything about professional ethics. Ditto the cable folks. Really, do Chris Matthews, Joe Scarborough, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity have anything to teach Josh Marshall, Brad DeLong or Atrios about how to distinguish illusion from reality and present it to an audience in an illuminating fashion?
USA Today editorial page editor Brian Gallagher, defending the choice, told a reporter Coulter "was a voice from [the conservative] side with standing and visibility." Notice how credibility was not a requirement. By contrast, for the Republican convention in August, USA Today has tapped Academy Award-winning director Michael Moore to file dispatches.
Are the two really compatible? Nowhere in his movie "Fahrenheit 9/11" does Moore suggest, for instance, that Republicans hate America or that Bush's Cabinet members are akin to Iraqi terrorists. Moore is an accomplished and, yes, partisan filmmaker; Coulter is a factually challenged name-caller. Could USA Today honestly not tell the difference?
This is just the latest example of mainstream press outlets embracing discredited, right-wing pundits in an effort to prove their "balance." And don't think the political pressure from the right isn't real. On the eve of the convention, at a media panel held at Harvard University, NBC anchor Tom Brokaw talked about how conservative activists "feel they have to go to war against the networks every day." http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/07/27/coulter/
One of the Lying Liars: Sean Hannity
Al Franken spends some of his time catching the chronic liars of the Right doing their thing. Sean Hannity, not an especially bright bulb, but VERY popular, dared to come on Franken’s radio show where Franken confronted him with his having accused Howard Dean of saying that Bush knew about 9/11 before it happened. Hannity denied it, and Franken played a bit from Hannity’s show, containing the quote, “…and Howard Dean saying the president knew about 9/11 ahead of time.”
Then, from Hannity- “I misspoke.”Text found at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,106408,00.html
Have to do more- a lot more- of this exposing…
Cambridge Talks
Lots of luminaries giving talks this week. Michael Moore’s presence made for a massive crowd on Tuesday:
And I know a lot of people have seen my film and the obvious bad guy in the movie is George W. Bush. But there's the unstated villain in the film. And that's our national media.
You've seen the film. Right? A lot of them are mad at me right now because I can't go on a show without them, you know. But I would be mad if I were them too, because the film outs them. It outs them as being for the Bush administration. It outs them as people who were cheerleaders for this war. It outs them as, to be kind to those who are actually good journalists, journalists who fell asleep on the job. Journalists who didn't ask the hard questions. The one thing I hear when people come out of the theater over and over again is I never saw that on the news. Right? I never saw those Black congressmen being shut down one after another. Did anyone see that?
I didn't know there was a riot at the inauguration parade. I never saw the egg hit the limo. I never saw that! I don't hear from the amputees who sit in our hospitals, 5,000 or 6,000 of them. How come I don't hear from them on the nightly news? I don't hear from the mothers. I don't see them on the evening news, the mothers of children who have been killed in Iraq and who state their opposition to this war. I haven't seen them on the news. http://www.alternet.org/election04/19385/
What’s Happening, Iraq:
Democracy: Press Limitations: The Financial Times (Nicolas Pelham) notes that Prime Minister Allawi has established a “media committee to impose restrictions on print and broadcast media,” underlining “an aggressive new attitude towards press freedoms…” http://financialtimes.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=Iraq+sets+up+committee+to+impose+restrictions+on+news+reporting&expire=&urlID=11128783&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ft.com%2Fs01%2Fservlet%2FContentServer%3Fpagename%3DFT.com%2FStoryFT%2FFullStory%26c%3DStoryFT%26cid%3D1087374001384%26p%3D1012571727169&partnerID=1703
British papers were the first to note that Saddam was rumored to have had a (minor) stroke. Who’s to know? His lawyers have reportedly not been allowed to see him. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/tm_objectid=14467737&method=full&siteid=50143&headline=saddam-s--stroke--name_page.html
And, the latest U.S. idea for sharing the security function:
Ayad Allawi today welcomed Saudi Arabia's US-backed proposals to help build a joint force of Muslim nations to establish security in Iraq. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1271597,00.html
What’s Happening, Afghanistan: A very bad sign. Doctors Without Borders decides Afghanistan is too dangerous, and withdraws.
The international aid agency Doctors Without Borders announced Wednesday that it was withdrawing from Afghanistan after 24 years to protest the government's failure to lock up the killers of five of its staff members and out of concern for the safety of the rest of its workers in the country.
The lack of progress on the case - even though a prime suspect has been identified - as well as threats from the Taliban forced the decision, Kenny Gluck, the group's operational director, said at a news conference in Kabul. The risk of more attacks remains too high, he said.
"We are scared that the lack of a credible government investigation and credible prosecution sends a message that it is acceptable to kill aid workers," he said. "We feel there is not a framework in which we can put unarmed aid workers who are trying to provide assistance."
The decision to pull out by such a prominent aid agency - Doctors Without Borders won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999 and works in 80 countries - has shaken the government and the aid community in Afghanistan. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/29/international/asia/29afgh.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Elections: Karzai has opposition, but the people think the fix is in.
For many Afghans, casting a ballot seems irrelevant. They believe that the result of the election has been decided already in Washington. They believe that the election is not about determining whom the Afghans want as their leader, but about anointing Washington's choice, Karzai, as Afghanistan's "democratically elected president". Karzai has led Afghanistan since the Taliban regime was ousted in the US-led "war against terrorism" in December 2001. Several presidential candidates maintain that election rules clearly favor Karzai and that every effort is being made to ensure that he returns, with the rules of the electoral game denying candidates a level playing field. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/FG29Ag01.html
What’s Happening, South Africa: Truly awful. The statistics: one in eight South Africans is HIV positive; in Durban, South Africa’s third-largest city, a survey two years ago found that 35% of women were HIV positive.
At S Cemetery in Umlazi Township, Innocent Gasa's handiwork is everywhere: endless mounds of fresh red earth topped with headstones, unpainted wooden crosses, or, for the most miserable, bricks bearing a painted identifying number. Mr. Gasa has dug graves on this lumpy, unkempt, Halloween-spooky hilltop for two years now, five holes a week, 52 weeks a year, well over 500 holes in all.
Which may seem peculiar, seeing as S Cemetery exhausted its last space for new graves five years ago. City records sum up its status succinctly, even dismissively: "Full."
But in Durban, "full'' is a term of art. This city is being battered by an AIDS pandemic so sweeping that people are dying faster than the city can find space to bury them. And so gravediggers like Mr. Gasa are reopening existing graves - the city calls it "recycling'' - and interring fresh bones atop the old ones.
The job gives Mr. Gasa nightmares. "I think it is not a good thing, to take out the bones'' for reburial, he said during a break in his spadework. "But we have no choice."
Every time southern Africa's AIDS epidemic threatens to exhaust its store of superlatives, some new, sobering extreme rises to the fore. The latest is Durban, where 51 of the 53 municipal cemeteries are officially filled to capacity, and a surging death rate threatens to overwhelm the remaining two within a couple of years.
"Five years ago, we used to have about 120 funerals a weekend, but this number has now jumped to 600," Thembinkosi Ngcobo, who heads the municipal department of parks and cemeteries, said in an interview this week. "In order to cope with the current rate of mortality - we hope it is not going to increase - we will need to have 12.1 hectares every year of new gravesites." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/29/international/africa/29durb.html?pagewanted=print&position
9/11 Postscript: Administration now seeks to act
Richard Cohen of the Washington Post writes of the “farce”- The Adminstration, having done so little since 9/11, now realizing that they had best get active, however belatedly.
Why the sudden alacrity? It's because the chairman and vice chairman of the Sept. 11 commission, Republican Thomas Kean and Democrat Lee Hamilton, have been all over the airwaves warning that another terrorist attack could be imminent and that the nation's intelligence apparatus, so obviously broken, has yet to be fixed. They recommended a host of measures, some of which -- improved border and port security, an integrated "watch list," etc. -- you would have thought would have been implemented on Sept. 12, 2001. Insistently, the commissioners recommended speed. To paraphrase: Lives are in danger and little is being done. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16762-2004Jul26?language=printer
Economy: Deficit climbing
They know it, but won’t announce it till the Dem’s convention is over. Knowing their technique, it’ll probably be announced late Friday so as to not draw attention. Then, they’ll spin it as ‘not as bad as feared, proof that the economy is improving.’
The White House will project soon that this year's federal deficit will exceed $420 billion, congressional aides said, a record figure certain to ignite partisan warfare over President Bush's handling of the economy. The annual summertime analysis is expected out this Friday, said several congressional aides speaking on condition of anonymity Tuesday. That would be well after the frequently ignored legal deadline of July 15. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=5&u=/ap/20040728/ap_on_go_pr_wh/budget_deficit
We shouldn’t forget that our fiscal condition was welcomed (and fostered) by the Republican Right. Recall the NY Times of August 25, 2001: Bush was quoted (from his faux “ranch” in Crawford) that there was a ‘benefit’ to the already quickly dwindling surplus, as it would create “a fiscal straitjacket for Congress” which was “incredibly positive.”
And, our place in the world is at stake. David Rothkopf, in the WaPost:
As American voters contemplate their choices in this presidential campaign year, the world's investors have been voting with their money. The early results are in -- and they don't look good for the United States.
Last month, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released figures showing that last year for the first time, China supplanted the United States as the No. 1 destination for foreign direct investment worldwide -- that is, money that goes into factories, equipment, real estate or existing companies. And in a blow to fans of "freedom fries," No. 2 was France. Though other major economies also suffered a drop-off in this category , no nation fell as far in percentage terms as the United States.
While such numbers fluctuate and foreign direct investment is just one type of capital flow, this dramatic swing can be seen as further evidence that in the 21st century, America is going to have to fight hard for its piece of the global investment pie -- money that translates directly into new jobs and the industries of tomorrow. Clearly, the world economy is shifting around us and our place atop it is being challenged. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10805-2004Jul24?language=printer
And, interest in our financial investments may be fading.
At a time when U.S. trade deficits are growing to historic proportions, foreign interest in U.S. stocks and bonds may be fading. If this continues, there could be consequences for U.S. interest rates and the dollar. Foreign purchases of securities in the U.S. in May came to $56.4 billion. While that was large enough to finance the current-account deficit, it was down 26% from April and represented the lowest monthly total in seven months. It also marked the fourth consecutive monthly decline of such purchases by foreigners. The report on foreign purchases included bad news for U.S. stocks, revealing that May was the third consecutive month foreigners have been net sellers. That hadn't happened in nearly a decade. Potentially more troubling was the slowdown in Asian purchases of U.S. debt -- especially in Japan, which holds 16% of all U.S. Treasurys. That country's nascent economic recovery has eased the government's concerns about maintaining a weak currency to boost exports, in turn reducing the Bank of Japan's need to intervene and buy dollars. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109078406964673107,00.html?mod=todays_us_money_and_investing
Finally, the NY Times (David Cay Johnston) notes Americans’ shrinking income.
The overall income Americans reported to the government shrank for two consecutive years after the Internet stock market bubble burst in 2000, the first time that has effectively happened since the modern tax system was introduced during World War II, newly disclosed information from the Internal Revenue Service shows.
The total adjusted gross income on tax returns fell 5.1 percent, to just over $6 trillion in 2002, the most recent year for which data is available, from $6.35 trillion in 2000. Because of population growth, average incomes declined even more, by 5.7 percent.
Adjusted for inflation, the income of all Americans fell 9.2 percent from 2000 to 2002, according to the new I.R.S. data.
While the recession that hit the economy in 2001 in the wake of the market plunge was considered relatively mild, the new information shows that its effect on Americans' incomes, particularly those at the upper end of the spectrum, was much more severe. Earlier government economic statistics provided general evidence that incomes suffered in the first years of the decade, but the full impact of the blow and what groups it fell hardest on were not known until the I.R.S. made available on its Web site the detailed information from tax returns.
The unprecedented back-to-back declines in reported incomes was caused primarily by the combination of the big fall in the stock market and the erosion of jobs and wages in well-paying industries in the early years of the decade.
In the past, overall personal income rose from one year to the next with relentless monotony, the growth rate changing in response to fluctuations in economic activity but almost never falling.
But now, with many more ordinary employees joining high-level executives in having part of their compensation dependent on stock options and bonus plans, a volatile and relatively unpredictable new element has been introduced to the incomes of millions of workers. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/29/business/29tax.html
Kerry and Iraq: A good summary from the LA Times . It makes sense, yet makes one wince, as it paved the way for that ‘flip flopper’ label.
Less than two days before the Senate vote Oct. 11, Kerry said his gut told him to vote for the resolution. But his speech on the Senate floor was riddled with reservations and caveats.Despite the doubts he had expressed about the administration's commitment to diplomacy, Kerry said he would back the resolution on the strength of assurances from Bush and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell that they would not go to war unilaterally or without exhausting diplomatic options."Let there be no doubt or confusion," Kerry said. "I will support a multilateral effort to disarm [Hussein] by force, if we ever exhaust those other options as the president has promised. But I will not support a unilateral U.S. war against Iraq unless that threat is imminent and the multilateral effort has not proven possible."There was nothing in the resolution that guaranteed those conditions would be met. Nonetheless, he was one of 29 Democrats to vote for the resolution, which passed 77 to 23.In his Senate speech, Kerry had said, "I will be among the first to speak out" if Bush failed to seek international support and go to war as a last resort.In December, less than a week after he announced he was exploring a presidential bid, Kerry accused Bush of forcing the war debate to distract attention from economic problems.In January, he criticized Bush for what he called a "hell-bent-for-leather" dash to war without allowing more time for weapons inspection and diplomacy. "The United States should never go to war because it wants to," he said. "The United States should go to war because we have to."In the fall of 2003, his criticism of Bush's polices led to his vote against the $87-billion bill financing continued operations in Iraq. Only 12 senators voted against the financing measure, and only three — besides Kerry — voted for the war and against the second measure. Among them was Kerry's eventual running mate, John Edwards.Critics say Kerry's vote was politically motivated. The surprise leader in the Democratic presidential race had become Dean, who was riding a strong tide of antiwar sentiment among party activists.Kerry said he voted against the bill because Bush had gone to war recklessly and without a plan for postwar Iraq. He called it a "principled" vote designed to pressure the administration to change its policies.But even nonpartisan analysts say that voting for the war resolution and then opposing the subsequent funding measure is a key part of the GOP attack on him as a flip-flopper."The strategic blunder is that he's allowed Bush to make the case that this guy is all over the map," said Shanto Iyengar, a Stanford University political scientist. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-kerryiraq29jul29,1,1267485,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Kevin Phillips on 9/11, Condi and Responsibility
MOYERS: It does describe Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Advisor, and her deputy, Steven Hadley, as not having regarded the coordination of domestic agencies as part of their responsibility after they took office even as warnings of a possible attack continued to grow.
Now Condoleezza Rice, it's her job as the National Security Advisor to coordinate the agencies of national security. She clearly failed.
PHILLIPS: Well, this is exactly the problem that we're getting to here. Phil Zelikow, the executive director of the Commission, used to work for Condoleezza Rice. He's the last person who's going to say, "Condi screwed it up." You get this all across the way, all the mechanisms in which one of these commissions work.
From the people who were selected to run them, the people who were selected to staff them. They have to know about the subject matter to some extent. But that generally means they have ties, connections, patrons, obligations and they don't want to name names.
MOYERS: If this had happened on Clinton's watch, if 9/11 happened on Clinton's watch, would there be calls for Condoleezza Rice's firing?
PHILLIPS: You know, it's a fascinating coincidence. But the Clinton National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, is being hatcheted by the Republicans for something it may or may not be a tempest in a teapot with having to do with documents that he mishandled. Shouldn't we be asking the question why is Sandy Berger being pursued right at this point?
Is it to take people's minds off whether the National Security Advisor whose failure was much greater was Condoleezza Rice? The Republicans and, you know, you know and I know from having been in politics, people do these games. I mean, sometimes you attack somebody to make the issue move away from the people on your side. I would say yes. I mean, if Condoleezza Rice has been somebody with the Democrats and 9/11 had happened, I think the Republicans would be all over her. http://www.pbs.org/now/printable/transcript330_full_print.html
-R
Wednesday, July 28, 2004
Convention:
The Liberal Media: Plenty to complain about, though hardly novel. Two examples: When the Democrats went through their 9/11 remembrance, ABC/CBS/NBC talked over it; Then Fox talked through the national anthem. You can be sure that won’t happen with the Republicans.
The radio was full of conservative voices commenting on Kerry’s failings, too rarely challenged or labeled as partisan. One grievous example is the presence of a Right “Truth Squad” that is criticizing much of what is said. One member, Brent Bozell (founder of a conservative media group, the “Media Research Center”) is introduced simply as “part of the truth squad” and he repeats the oft-mentioned Lie that Ken Lay was very chummy w/ Clinton, sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom 13 times. This stuff goes unchallenged, and the non-thinkers come to accept it as fact.
Carter: The most blunt: Praising Kerry, “He showed up when assigned to duty.” Again the media: As he went through how our credibility has been harmed by the Bushies amorality, two cable networks interrupted his speech and talked over it.
Clinton: Quiet, almost subtly effective in portraying the Democrats as the peace and prosperity party, vs the unilateral, preemptive Republicans, that they are cooperative and idealistic, not selfish and unilateral, cooperating only when they have to, that they stand for hope, not fear. Made Howard Dean seem awfully small/ordinary.
Bush explains Kerry’s Tax Plans: Unintentional humor
In the campaign, you'll hear, we're only going to tax the rich," Bush said. "That's what you'll hear. Now, this from a fellow who has promised about $2 trillion of new spending thus far. And only taxing the rich, first of all, creates a huge tax gap, which means buyer beware. "You see, if you can't raise enough by taxing the rich, guess who gets to pay next?" Bush asked. "Yes, the not-rich. That's all of us." That's all of us? Somehow, I think some "not rich" folks are doing better than the rest of us "not rich."
So it turns out that Bush, unlike your typical grandsons of senators, sons of presidents and graduates of fancy prep schools, Yale and Harvard business school, is just another "not rich" guy, a regular working stiff. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the average annual wage for the Cedar Rapids area is $34,600. So that crowd was clearly "not rich."
But who else are the "not rich"? Well, Bush last year reported an income of only $822,000, and his assets were worth as much as $19 million. That includes his 1,583-acre ranch in Crawford, Tex.
Clearly not rich. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13915-2004Jul25.html
Labor and Kerry: SEIU head lacks passion for the ticket.
Breaking sharply with the enforced harmony of the Democratic National Convention, the president of the largest AFL-CIO union said Monday that both organized labor and the Democratic Party might be better off in the long run if Sen. John F. Kerry loses the election.
Andrew L. Stern, the head of the 1.6 million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU), said in an interview with The Washington Post that both the party and its longtime ally, the labor movement, are "in deep crisis," devoid of new ideas and working with archaic structures.
Stern argued that Kerry's election might stifle needed reform within the party and the labor movement. He said he still believes that Kerry overall would make a better president than President Bush, and his union has poured huge resources into that effort. But he contends that Kerry's election would have the effect of slowing the "evolution" of the dialogue within the party.
Asked whether if Kerry became president it would help or hurt those internal party deliberations, Stern said, "I think it hurts."
Stern's dissatisfaction with the AFL-CIO and the Democratic Party is not new, but his decision to voice his frustration on the opening day of a carefully scripted convention was an unwelcome surprise to Kerry's convention managers, who had been proclaiming their delight at the absence of any internal conflicts. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16387-2004Jul26?language=printer
Kevin Phillips on Kerry: The thoughtful conservative on NOW:
MOYERS: Let's turn to the Democrats. John Kerry supported the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and passage of the Patriot Act. He is on the record as saying he would consider sending even more troops to Iraq. The Democratic platform next week will call for at least 20,000 more troops to be sent. Is he offering an echo and not a choice?
PHILLIPS: I think in some ways he is. It puts me in mind of back in 1968 and '69, when Nixon came in, he would talk about how we have to get tougher and do more things or all kinds of possibilities on Vietnam. But in fact there really wasn't a strategy. And he just got suckered into extending sort of what was there and Vietnamizing and getting out.
And now we're — how do you say it — Iraqifying? And is it another mess? Is it another quagmire? Are we Vietnamizing with, you know, Bedouins? What is this? I don't think the Democratic policy process is worth much more than the Republican policy process.
And my big problem with John Kerry is I can't figure out… I hope he's a seven on a scale of one to ten, but I think he's a five. I don't think he's saying anything. But the ex-politician in me can say, well, would I want to say a whole lot? No, I wouldn't.
MOYERS: The ECONOMIST has a cover this week, look at it, says, "He robot?" And it says, "It's high time for Kerry to show what he's made of."
PHILLIPS: Yeah, and that's I guess what we're worried about. When we say we hope he's a seven and worry that he's a five, you know, is there stuffing in there? What is there? What makes him tick? I don't understand how somebody can run for the Democratic presidential nomination and not be outraged at a lot of stuff that's gone on in the last 10 or 15 years. http://www.pbs.org/now/printable/transcript330_full_print.html
Richard Dreyfuss: The actor doesn’t mince his words…
Dreyfuss called Bush ``arrogant and incompetent'' and said ``his appeal to patriotism is simplistic and thuggish.''Dreyfuss added, ``He is the enemy of thoughtfulness.''``I wasn't raised in George Bush's America, and I wouldn't be comfortable in it,'' Dreyfuss said. ``In this America, you point toward a sin and you are pointed at. You are the irritant not the gatekeeper. You smell funny -- sinister funny. Terrorist-friendly. You mention due process and the silence is not respectful, it is ominous.''The delegates gave him a standing ovation, which led Dreyfuss to give a few last remarks, urging them to counter the Republicans' every attack and ``be consistent and in their face.' ' http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/9255219.htm?1c
Danny Schechter on the Democrats: The veteran media commentator observes:
They have pre-sanitized the event, and squeezed any debate or controversy out of it. They have cooperated with the marginalization of debate and have insured that the war, THE ISSUE dividing Americans and America from the world, is barely mentioned, "STRENGTH is their watchword as if they plan to out macho Bush and challenge the school yard bully with a tougher guy. They have turned Kerry into an unlikely caricature. The anti-war activist is now the war hero proud of serving America in a war he once eloquently denounced. The liberal policy wonk is now the middle of the road say nothing candidate. The Bush bashing that arouses and motivates the base has been banned from the arena. http://64.224.42.246/weblog/dannylog.cfm
Electoral Shenanigans: Florida, again; Enough to keep us nervous.
Almost all the electronic records from the first widespread use of touch-screen voting in Miami-Dade County have been lost, stoking concerns that the machines are unreliable as the presidential election draws near.
The records disappeared after two computer system crashes last year, county elections officials said, leaving no audit trail for the 2002 gubernatorial primary. A citizens group uncovered the loss this month after requesting all audit data from that election.
A county official said a new backup system would prevent electronic voting data from being lost in the future. But members of the citizens group, the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition, said the malfunction underscored the vulnerability of electronic voting records and wiped out data that might have shed light on what problems, if any, still existed with touch-screen machines here. The group supplied the results of its request to The New York Times.
"This shows that unless we do something now - or it may very well be too late - Florida is headed toward being the next Florida," said Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, a lawyer who is the chairwoman of the coalition. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/28/politics/campaign/28vote.final.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
What’s Happening, Iraq: July was a casualty month. The first month of the “transition” showed “no let-up.” Mark Turner for the Financial Times:
The spate of post-transition violence in Iraq showed no sign of let-up yesterday, as insurgents bombed an airfield in Mosul, a senior interior ministry official was assassinated in Baghdad, gunmen opened fire on five women cleaners working for the US company Bechtel in Basra, and kidnappers seized two Jordanian drivers." http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1087374001379
What’s Happening, Iraq and Afghanistan: From Lakhdar Brahimi, former UN special envoy to Iraq in Deutsch Press Agentur, conveyed by Juan Cole:
' [Brahimi] said Iraq would no doubt recover from the chaos in which it was presently. ''The question is only, how long will it take? And what will the normalization cost?'' The price up till now had already been very high . . . Brahimi said the resistance in Iraq was difficult to analyze. Alongside the old cadres of the Baath regime of Saddan Hussein, there was a strong group of Iraqis which for patriotic reasons attacked any form of occupation. . . Here, action was needed by the Interim Government of Iyad Allawi.''It must prove that it has real sovereignty, and that it's not just a puppet of the Americans. But that's difficult with 150,000 foreign soldiers in the country.'' . . .Asked whether the Iraq war had harmed the ''war on terrorism'', Brahimi said: ''The Iraq war was unnecessary. It created more problems than it solved - and it brought terrorism to Iraq.'' Brahimi, who was formerly U.N. envoy for Afghanistan, warned that the country was on a dangerous course. The regional warlords had too much power and influence. ''There are presently developments similar to those events of 1992 which led the Taliban to success.'' www.juancole.com
What’s Happening, Thailand: Unrest
Thailand has ordered the closure of at least two Islamic boarding schools, saying the staff were linked to unrest that has left more than 250 people dead in the kingdom's Muslim-majority south.
The government said the schools were used as bases to launch attacks since January and hinted at harsher measures against rebels who had targeted Thai Buddhists, security officials and civil servants. http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A525EE1D-0091-4309-8CA1-3186A7B5DFE7.htm
Sharon and Land Grabbing: Grab now, give back (some) later- hoping to establish new ‘facts on the ground.’
Months after Ariel Sharon announced his dramatic plan to pull Jewish settlers out of Gaza, portraying it as a sacrifice for peace, the government is grabbing more land for West Bank settlements.
Israeli peace groups and Palestinian officials say thousands of homes are under construction in the main settlements, in addition to an expansion of Jewish outposts that are illegal under Israeli law. Mr Sharon has promised the US he will dismantle the outposts, which are usually clusters of containers or trailer homes serviced by government-built roads, but has failed to do so.
One Israeli group, Settlement Watch, says in the three months to May, West Bank settlements expanded by 26 hectares (65 acres).The government has approved construction of thousands more homes in the three main settlement blocs on the West Bank, encouraged by an apparent endorsement by George Bush for their eventual annexation.
In a letter to Mr Sharon, Mr Bush praised the Gaza pullout and agreed that "in light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centres", it was unrealistic to expect a full return to the 1967 borders. http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1269880,00.html
What's Happening, Iran: Part of the Axis of Evil; the 9/11 Commission thought they had more links to al-Qaeda than Iraq. Ho hum.
Iran starts atom tests in defiance of EU deal: The Telegraph (Anton La Guardia)
Iran has broken the seals on nuclear equipment monitored by United Nations inspectors and is once again building and testing machines that could make fissile material for nuclear weapons.
Teheran's move, revealed to The Daily Telegraph yesterday by western sources, breaks a deal with European countries under which Iran suspended "all uranium enrichment activity".
It will also exacerbate fears that the regional power is determined to make an atomic bomb within a few years.
Enrichment is the most controversial part of Iran's "peaceful" nuclear programme because the same technology used to make low-enriched uranium to fuel nuclear reactors can be used to refine material for bombs.
America has in recent weeks renewed its call for Iran to be referred to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;sessionid=3UINBUQWD1QBVQFIQMFSM5OAVCBQ0JVC?xml=/news/2004/07/27/wiran27.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/07/27/ixportal.html
-R
The Liberal Media: Plenty to complain about, though hardly novel. Two examples: When the Democrats went through their 9/11 remembrance, ABC/CBS/NBC talked over it; Then Fox talked through the national anthem. You can be sure that won’t happen with the Republicans.
The radio was full of conservative voices commenting on Kerry’s failings, too rarely challenged or labeled as partisan. One grievous example is the presence of a Right “Truth Squad” that is criticizing much of what is said. One member, Brent Bozell (founder of a conservative media group, the “Media Research Center”) is introduced simply as “part of the truth squad” and he repeats the oft-mentioned Lie that Ken Lay was very chummy w/ Clinton, sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom 13 times. This stuff goes unchallenged, and the non-thinkers come to accept it as fact.
Carter: The most blunt: Praising Kerry, “He showed up when assigned to duty.” Again the media: As he went through how our credibility has been harmed by the Bushies amorality, two cable networks interrupted his speech and talked over it.
Clinton: Quiet, almost subtly effective in portraying the Democrats as the peace and prosperity party, vs the unilateral, preemptive Republicans, that they are cooperative and idealistic, not selfish and unilateral, cooperating only when they have to, that they stand for hope, not fear. Made Howard Dean seem awfully small/ordinary.
Bush explains Kerry’s Tax Plans: Unintentional humor
In the campaign, you'll hear, we're only going to tax the rich," Bush said. "That's what you'll hear. Now, this from a fellow who has promised about $2 trillion of new spending thus far. And only taxing the rich, first of all, creates a huge tax gap, which means buyer beware. "You see, if you can't raise enough by taxing the rich, guess who gets to pay next?" Bush asked. "Yes, the not-rich. That's all of us." That's all of us? Somehow, I think some "not rich" folks are doing better than the rest of us "not rich."
So it turns out that Bush, unlike your typical grandsons of senators, sons of presidents and graduates of fancy prep schools, Yale and Harvard business school, is just another "not rich" guy, a regular working stiff. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the average annual wage for the Cedar Rapids area is $34,600. So that crowd was clearly "not rich."
But who else are the "not rich"? Well, Bush last year reported an income of only $822,000, and his assets were worth as much as $19 million. That includes his 1,583-acre ranch in Crawford, Tex.
Clearly not rich. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13915-2004Jul25.html
Labor and Kerry: SEIU head lacks passion for the ticket.
Breaking sharply with the enforced harmony of the Democratic National Convention, the president of the largest AFL-CIO union said Monday that both organized labor and the Democratic Party might be better off in the long run if Sen. John F. Kerry loses the election.
Andrew L. Stern, the head of the 1.6 million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU), said in an interview with The Washington Post that both the party and its longtime ally, the labor movement, are "in deep crisis," devoid of new ideas and working with archaic structures.
Stern argued that Kerry's election might stifle needed reform within the party and the labor movement. He said he still believes that Kerry overall would make a better president than President Bush, and his union has poured huge resources into that effort. But he contends that Kerry's election would have the effect of slowing the "evolution" of the dialogue within the party.
Asked whether if Kerry became president it would help or hurt those internal party deliberations, Stern said, "I think it hurts."
Stern's dissatisfaction with the AFL-CIO and the Democratic Party is not new, but his decision to voice his frustration on the opening day of a carefully scripted convention was an unwelcome surprise to Kerry's convention managers, who had been proclaiming their delight at the absence of any internal conflicts. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16387-2004Jul26?language=printer
Kevin Phillips on Kerry: The thoughtful conservative on NOW:
MOYERS: Let's turn to the Democrats. John Kerry supported the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and passage of the Patriot Act. He is on the record as saying he would consider sending even more troops to Iraq. The Democratic platform next week will call for at least 20,000 more troops to be sent. Is he offering an echo and not a choice?
PHILLIPS: I think in some ways he is. It puts me in mind of back in 1968 and '69, when Nixon came in, he would talk about how we have to get tougher and do more things or all kinds of possibilities on Vietnam. But in fact there really wasn't a strategy. And he just got suckered into extending sort of what was there and Vietnamizing and getting out.
And now we're — how do you say it — Iraqifying? And is it another mess? Is it another quagmire? Are we Vietnamizing with, you know, Bedouins? What is this? I don't think the Democratic policy process is worth much more than the Republican policy process.
And my big problem with John Kerry is I can't figure out… I hope he's a seven on a scale of one to ten, but I think he's a five. I don't think he's saying anything. But the ex-politician in me can say, well, would I want to say a whole lot? No, I wouldn't.
MOYERS: The ECONOMIST has a cover this week, look at it, says, "He robot?" And it says, "It's high time for Kerry to show what he's made of."
PHILLIPS: Yeah, and that's I guess what we're worried about. When we say we hope he's a seven and worry that he's a five, you know, is there stuffing in there? What is there? What makes him tick? I don't understand how somebody can run for the Democratic presidential nomination and not be outraged at a lot of stuff that's gone on in the last 10 or 15 years. http://www.pbs.org/now/printable/transcript330_full_print.html
Richard Dreyfuss: The actor doesn’t mince his words…
Dreyfuss called Bush ``arrogant and incompetent'' and said ``his appeal to patriotism is simplistic and thuggish.''Dreyfuss added, ``He is the enemy of thoughtfulness.''``I wasn't raised in George Bush's America, and I wouldn't be comfortable in it,'' Dreyfuss said. ``In this America, you point toward a sin and you are pointed at. You are the irritant not the gatekeeper. You smell funny -- sinister funny. Terrorist-friendly. You mention due process and the silence is not respectful, it is ominous.''The delegates gave him a standing ovation, which led Dreyfuss to give a few last remarks, urging them to counter the Republicans' every attack and ``be consistent and in their face.' ' http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/9255219.htm?1c
Danny Schechter on the Democrats: The veteran media commentator observes:
They have pre-sanitized the event, and squeezed any debate or controversy out of it. They have cooperated with the marginalization of debate and have insured that the war, THE ISSUE dividing Americans and America from the world, is barely mentioned, "STRENGTH is their watchword as if they plan to out macho Bush and challenge the school yard bully with a tougher guy. They have turned Kerry into an unlikely caricature. The anti-war activist is now the war hero proud of serving America in a war he once eloquently denounced. The liberal policy wonk is now the middle of the road say nothing candidate. The Bush bashing that arouses and motivates the base has been banned from the arena. http://64.224.42.246/weblog/dannylog.cfm
Electoral Shenanigans: Florida, again; Enough to keep us nervous.
Almost all the electronic records from the first widespread use of touch-screen voting in Miami-Dade County have been lost, stoking concerns that the machines are unreliable as the presidential election draws near.
The records disappeared after two computer system crashes last year, county elections officials said, leaving no audit trail for the 2002 gubernatorial primary. A citizens group uncovered the loss this month after requesting all audit data from that election.
A county official said a new backup system would prevent electronic voting data from being lost in the future. But members of the citizens group, the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition, said the malfunction underscored the vulnerability of electronic voting records and wiped out data that might have shed light on what problems, if any, still existed with touch-screen machines here. The group supplied the results of its request to The New York Times.
"This shows that unless we do something now - or it may very well be too late - Florida is headed toward being the next Florida," said Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, a lawyer who is the chairwoman of the coalition. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/28/politics/campaign/28vote.final.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
What’s Happening, Iraq: July was a casualty month. The first month of the “transition” showed “no let-up.” Mark Turner for the Financial Times:
The spate of post-transition violence in Iraq showed no sign of let-up yesterday, as insurgents bombed an airfield in Mosul, a senior interior ministry official was assassinated in Baghdad, gunmen opened fire on five women cleaners working for the US company Bechtel in Basra, and kidnappers seized two Jordanian drivers." http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1087374001379
What’s Happening, Iraq and Afghanistan: From Lakhdar Brahimi, former UN special envoy to Iraq in Deutsch Press Agentur, conveyed by Juan Cole:
' [Brahimi] said Iraq would no doubt recover from the chaos in which it was presently. ''The question is only, how long will it take? And what will the normalization cost?'' The price up till now had already been very high . . . Brahimi said the resistance in Iraq was difficult to analyze. Alongside the old cadres of the Baath regime of Saddan Hussein, there was a strong group of Iraqis which for patriotic reasons attacked any form of occupation. . . Here, action was needed by the Interim Government of Iyad Allawi.''It must prove that it has real sovereignty, and that it's not just a puppet of the Americans. But that's difficult with 150,000 foreign soldiers in the country.'' . . .Asked whether the Iraq war had harmed the ''war on terrorism'', Brahimi said: ''The Iraq war was unnecessary. It created more problems than it solved - and it brought terrorism to Iraq.'' Brahimi, who was formerly U.N. envoy for Afghanistan, warned that the country was on a dangerous course. The regional warlords had too much power and influence. ''There are presently developments similar to those events of 1992 which led the Taliban to success.'' www.juancole.com
What’s Happening, Thailand: Unrest
Thailand has ordered the closure of at least two Islamic boarding schools, saying the staff were linked to unrest that has left more than 250 people dead in the kingdom's Muslim-majority south.
The government said the schools were used as bases to launch attacks since January and hinted at harsher measures against rebels who had targeted Thai Buddhists, security officials and civil servants. http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A525EE1D-0091-4309-8CA1-3186A7B5DFE7.htm
Sharon and Land Grabbing: Grab now, give back (some) later- hoping to establish new ‘facts on the ground.’
Months after Ariel Sharon announced his dramatic plan to pull Jewish settlers out of Gaza, portraying it as a sacrifice for peace, the government is grabbing more land for West Bank settlements.
Israeli peace groups and Palestinian officials say thousands of homes are under construction in the main settlements, in addition to an expansion of Jewish outposts that are illegal under Israeli law. Mr Sharon has promised the US he will dismantle the outposts, which are usually clusters of containers or trailer homes serviced by government-built roads, but has failed to do so.
One Israeli group, Settlement Watch, says in the three months to May, West Bank settlements expanded by 26 hectares (65 acres).The government has approved construction of thousands more homes in the three main settlement blocs on the West Bank, encouraged by an apparent endorsement by George Bush for their eventual annexation.
In a letter to Mr Sharon, Mr Bush praised the Gaza pullout and agreed that "in light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centres", it was unrealistic to expect a full return to the 1967 borders. http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1269880,00.html
What's Happening, Iran: Part of the Axis of Evil; the 9/11 Commission thought they had more links to al-Qaeda than Iraq. Ho hum.
Iran starts atom tests in defiance of EU deal: The Telegraph (Anton La Guardia)
Iran has broken the seals on nuclear equipment monitored by United Nations inspectors and is once again building and testing machines that could make fissile material for nuclear weapons.
Teheran's move, revealed to The Daily Telegraph yesterday by western sources, breaks a deal with European countries under which Iran suspended "all uranium enrichment activity".
It will also exacerbate fears that the regional power is determined to make an atomic bomb within a few years.
Enrichment is the most controversial part of Iran's "peaceful" nuclear programme because the same technology used to make low-enriched uranium to fuel nuclear reactors can be used to refine material for bombs.
America has in recent weeks renewed its call for Iran to be referred to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;sessionid=3UINBUQWD1QBVQFIQMFSM5OAVCBQ0JVC?xml=/news/2004/07/27/wiran27.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/07/27/ixportal.html
-R
Monday, July 26, 2004
Who We Are:
* Nearly 18 percent of the Florida's population are elderly. By the mid-2020s at the latest, the United States as a whole will have an age structure as old as that of Florida today.
* “The number of Americans under the control of the criminal justice system grew by 130,700 last year to reach a new high of nearly 6.9 million, according to a Justice Department report released today.
The total includes people in jail and prison as well as those on probation and parole. This is about 3.2 percent of the adult population in the United States, the report said.” http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/26/national/26parole.html
* There’s been a 17% drop in real U.S. wages between 1972 and 1992. A 17% decline amounts to an awfully big pay cut; it rivals the plummet in wages during the Great Depression, though this period is twice as long. Confirming word is supplied by the Bureau of Labor Statistics that can be found here. http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?ce
* Nearly Half of All Presidential Voters Have Seen or Plan to See Fahrenheit 911, according to Hollywood stats.
Nearly half of the American electorate has seen or plans to see Fahrenheit 911, Michael Moore’s film critique of the Bush Administration, before the November elections, a new survey revealed today.
The film is the most viewed commercial documentary in American film history and held at a strong number #2 box office position this week after breaking records during its opening week.
Movie-goers and intended movie-goers represent a broad and diverse slice of the electorate and spread across the country, including the so-called battleground states. Fully 23% of voters who intend to see the film self-identify as Bush voters, while another 10% say they are supporting Nader or undecided. Forty one percent of potential movie viewers reside in battleground states, which mirrors the national average of 40% of voters residing in battleground states. http://www.moviecitynews.com/notepad/2004/040707_pr.html
9/11 Commission: Charles / Charley Pierce’s take
So, it was the acronyms who did it.
CIA, FBI, NSC, but not the NSA, God knows. DOT. DoD. The acronyms did it. Fire all the acronyms
I don't know at what point my head exploded. Maybe it was when Tom Kean was complimenting Bill O'Reilly on the latter's analytical abilities, or when Condi Rice was waxing all serious with Sean Hannity. Maybe it was earlier, when Lee Hamilton suggested that nobody was reading enough Tom Clancy. (After yesterday, and given the dive he took 20 years ago on Iran-Contra, Hamilton is now the Greg Louganis of the national security state.) I mean, Christ's sweet name, a failure of imagination? Not on the part of Gary Hart or Warren Rudman or Al Gore, or Coleen Rowley, or the people in Phoenix, or poor, dead John O'Neill. Their imaginations didn't fail. In fact, the single most preposterous part of yesterday's report was its tsk-tsking of how the recommendations of previous commissions were ignored. Who ignored them?
Nobody.
It was the acronyms.
Everybody's guilty so nobody is.
Read the footnotes, and remember, every time a conversation with either George Bush or Dick Cheney is cited, that this testimony was not given under oath, and under circumstances that were flatly bizarre, and that the testimony was given by two men who fought hard against the very existence of the commission, especially the former, who has made no mistake that he can recall, and is not specifically contradicted in any way by this report. Instead, it was an exercise designed -- as was the Tower Commission before it -- to reassure us that the problem is in structural institutional details, and not in the men tasked to do great deeds for us so that we don't strain ourselves in the exercise of self-government. (To his everlasting credit, Bob Kerrey seemed to be rather pissed on this very point.)
I, for one, completely trust the administration that brought Elliott Abrams back into public service, hired John Ashcroft and Ted Olson to oversee the Justice Department, and continues to employ Paul Wolfowitz to appoint a new "Intelligence Czar," essentially handing to that person a job it took J. Edgar Hoover 50 years to build for himself. I'm feeling very bipartisan about that.
Also, the Democratic people better get ready. The report may be bipartisan, but it's political utility won't be. If the specific blame isn't in the report, it's going to be part of the campaign whether John Kerry wants it to be or not. After all, this fall, we all get to decide whether, finally, after more than three years, somebody besides 300,000 baggage handlers will actually lose a job behind the atrocities of September 11, 2001.http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/
NY Times editorial on Administration’s Iraqi Prison Scandal
A newly released report by the Army's inspector general shows that Mr. Rumsfeld's team may be turning over stones, but it's not looking under them.
The authors of this 300-page whitewash say they found no "systemic" problem - even though there were 94 documented cases of prisoner abuse, including some 40 deaths, 20 of them homicides; even though only four prisons of the 16 they visited had copies of the Geneva Conventions; even though Abu Ghraib was a cesspool with one shower for every 50 inmates; even though the military police were improperly involved in interrogations; even though young people plucked from civilian life were sent to guard prisoners - 50,000 of them in all - with no training.
Never mind any of that. The report pins most of the blame on those depressingly familiar culprits, a few soldiers who behaved badly. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/24/opinion/24sat1.html
Plame Scandal:
The clock is ticking. July is almost over and still no word on the prosecution. Can this investigation be taking 18 months to decide on indictments? In the meantime, there’s been a bevy of information / articles targeting Joe Wilson, an indication that the Administration remains nervous.
What’s Happening, Iraq: Abductions http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/26/international/middleeast/26iraq.html?hp
Not everyone wants Jenna Bush to teach in Harlem.
Artists and Activists United for Peace, a black and Latino public-action group, plans to express its displeasure with the First Daughter at a rally on Sept. 2, during the Republican National Convention."We don't think she is of a high enough moral character to teach school, considering her past adventures," said group organizer John Penley. "Her taking this job is keeping a black person from getting the job. We think she and her sister should enlist in the military." Past adventures including two alleged abortions, an arrest for underage drinking, getting high with Ashton Kutcher, and swanning around the South of France drinking $250 bottles of vodka.http://www.nydailynews.com/news/gossip/story/214820p-184984c.html
''Man, that's all it took to buy the country?''
Above average piece in the NY Times magazine on the efforts to build a wired progressive infrastructure that can counter the Right’s Noise Machine of Rush/O’Reilly, Weekly Standard, Murdoch et al. Lots of entrepreneurial types who are prepared to commit millions in the belief that liberal politics needs to be rejuvenated outside of the traditional Democratic party http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/magazine/25DEMOCRATS.html
Polls: Still even. I’ll give it a rest till Kerry’s possible bounce can be measured.
Los Angeles Times: Kerry: 46, Bush 44%
Fox News: Bush 44%, Kerry 44%
USA Today/CNN/Gallup: Kerry 47%, Bush 46%
Quinnipiac: Kerry leading Bush, 46% to 43%.
AP analysis: Kerry "narrowly trails" Bush in the electoral tally
Missouri: Kerry 46%, Bush 44% (Kansas City Star)
Bush: 48%, Kerry 48% (Gallup)
Florida: Kerry 46%, Bush 46% (Sayfie)
Bush 48%, Kerry 46% (Mason-Dixon)
Bush 48%, Kerry 46% (Orlando Sentinel)
Kerry 49%, Bush 44% (Research 2000)
Bush 45%, Kerry 44%, Nader 2% (LA Times)
New Hampshire: Kerry 50%, Bush 45% (Granite State Poll)
Kerry 49 Bush 44 (Gallup)
Kerry 47%, Bush 45% (American Research Group)
Ohio: Bush 48%, Kerry 43% (Strategic Vision)
Kerry 47 Bush 45 (ARG)
Bush 47 Kerry 44 Nader 2 (Columbus Dispatch)
Kerry 47%, Bush 45% (American Research Group)
Pennsylvania: Kerry 48%, Bush 43% (Strategic Vision)
Oregon: Kerry 50%, Bush 42% (American Research Group)
Superstores, Good and Bad.
I’m no fan of them, but have come to realize they’re not all equal.
Wal-Mart Funds Bush, Costco Backs Kerry Financing '04 Campaign
Executives at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Costco Wholesale Corp., competitors in the $76 billion U.S. warehouse-club market, have taken their rivalry to a new level: national politics.
Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer and owner of Sam's Club warehouse stores, gives more money to Republican candidates than any other company. Its top three managers, including Chief Executive Officer H. Lee Scott, donated the individual maximum $2,000 to President George W. Bush, and Jay Allen, vice president for corporate affairs, raised at least $100,000 to re-elect the president, earning him the Bush campaign's designation of ``Pioneer.''
Wal-Mart -- two-thirds of whose 3,580 stores are in the ``red states'' that voted for Bush in 2000 -- is backing White House policies on everything from trade to limiting overtime pay.
Costco CEO Jim Sinegal, 68, is a Democrat who says Bush's $1.7 trillion in tax cuts unfairly benefit the wealthy. He opposed the Iraq war and supports Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts for president. And he's the only chief executive of a company in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index to donate money to independent political groups formed to oust Bush, Internal Revenue Service records show. http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=amSB.R0Q2nAQ&refer=us#
-R
* Nearly 18 percent of the Florida's population are elderly. By the mid-2020s at the latest, the United States as a whole will have an age structure as old as that of Florida today.
* “The number of Americans under the control of the criminal justice system grew by 130,700 last year to reach a new high of nearly 6.9 million, according to a Justice Department report released today.
The total includes people in jail and prison as well as those on probation and parole. This is about 3.2 percent of the adult population in the United States, the report said.” http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/26/national/26parole.html
* There’s been a 17% drop in real U.S. wages between 1972 and 1992. A 17% decline amounts to an awfully big pay cut; it rivals the plummet in wages during the Great Depression, though this period is twice as long. Confirming word is supplied by the Bureau of Labor Statistics that can be found here. http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?ce
* Nearly Half of All Presidential Voters Have Seen or Plan to See Fahrenheit 911, according to Hollywood stats.
Nearly half of the American electorate has seen or plans to see Fahrenheit 911, Michael Moore’s film critique of the Bush Administration, before the November elections, a new survey revealed today.
The film is the most viewed commercial documentary in American film history and held at a strong number #2 box office position this week after breaking records during its opening week.
Movie-goers and intended movie-goers represent a broad and diverse slice of the electorate and spread across the country, including the so-called battleground states. Fully 23% of voters who intend to see the film self-identify as Bush voters, while another 10% say they are supporting Nader or undecided. Forty one percent of potential movie viewers reside in battleground states, which mirrors the national average of 40% of voters residing in battleground states. http://www.moviecitynews.com/notepad/2004/040707_pr.html
9/11 Commission: Charles / Charley Pierce’s take
So, it was the acronyms who did it.
CIA, FBI, NSC, but not the NSA, God knows. DOT. DoD. The acronyms did it. Fire all the acronyms
I don't know at what point my head exploded. Maybe it was when Tom Kean was complimenting Bill O'Reilly on the latter's analytical abilities, or when Condi Rice was waxing all serious with Sean Hannity. Maybe it was earlier, when Lee Hamilton suggested that nobody was reading enough Tom Clancy. (After yesterday, and given the dive he took 20 years ago on Iran-Contra, Hamilton is now the Greg Louganis of the national security state.) I mean, Christ's sweet name, a failure of imagination? Not on the part of Gary Hart or Warren Rudman or Al Gore, or Coleen Rowley, or the people in Phoenix, or poor, dead John O'Neill. Their imaginations didn't fail. In fact, the single most preposterous part of yesterday's report was its tsk-tsking of how the recommendations of previous commissions were ignored. Who ignored them?
Nobody.
It was the acronyms.
Everybody's guilty so nobody is.
Read the footnotes, and remember, every time a conversation with either George Bush or Dick Cheney is cited, that this testimony was not given under oath, and under circumstances that were flatly bizarre, and that the testimony was given by two men who fought hard against the very existence of the commission, especially the former, who has made no mistake that he can recall, and is not specifically contradicted in any way by this report. Instead, it was an exercise designed -- as was the Tower Commission before it -- to reassure us that the problem is in structural institutional details, and not in the men tasked to do great deeds for us so that we don't strain ourselves in the exercise of self-government. (To his everlasting credit, Bob Kerrey seemed to be rather pissed on this very point.)
I, for one, completely trust the administration that brought Elliott Abrams back into public service, hired John Ashcroft and Ted Olson to oversee the Justice Department, and continues to employ Paul Wolfowitz to appoint a new "Intelligence Czar," essentially handing to that person a job it took J. Edgar Hoover 50 years to build for himself. I'm feeling very bipartisan about that.
Also, the Democratic people better get ready. The report may be bipartisan, but it's political utility won't be. If the specific blame isn't in the report, it's going to be part of the campaign whether John Kerry wants it to be or not. After all, this fall, we all get to decide whether, finally, after more than three years, somebody besides 300,000 baggage handlers will actually lose a job behind the atrocities of September 11, 2001.http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/
NY Times editorial on Administration’s Iraqi Prison Scandal
A newly released report by the Army's inspector general shows that Mr. Rumsfeld's team may be turning over stones, but it's not looking under them.
The authors of this 300-page whitewash say they found no "systemic" problem - even though there were 94 documented cases of prisoner abuse, including some 40 deaths, 20 of them homicides; even though only four prisons of the 16 they visited had copies of the Geneva Conventions; even though Abu Ghraib was a cesspool with one shower for every 50 inmates; even though the military police were improperly involved in interrogations; even though young people plucked from civilian life were sent to guard prisoners - 50,000 of them in all - with no training.
Never mind any of that. The report pins most of the blame on those depressingly familiar culprits, a few soldiers who behaved badly. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/24/opinion/24sat1.html
Plame Scandal:
The clock is ticking. July is almost over and still no word on the prosecution. Can this investigation be taking 18 months to decide on indictments? In the meantime, there’s been a bevy of information / articles targeting Joe Wilson, an indication that the Administration remains nervous.
What’s Happening, Iraq: Abductions http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/26/international/middleeast/26iraq.html?hp
Not everyone wants Jenna Bush to teach in Harlem.
Artists and Activists United for Peace, a black and Latino public-action group, plans to express its displeasure with the First Daughter at a rally on Sept. 2, during the Republican National Convention."We don't think she is of a high enough moral character to teach school, considering her past adventures," said group organizer John Penley. "Her taking this job is keeping a black person from getting the job. We think she and her sister should enlist in the military." Past adventures including two alleged abortions, an arrest for underage drinking, getting high with Ashton Kutcher, and swanning around the South of France drinking $250 bottles of vodka.http://www.nydailynews.com/news/gossip/story/214820p-184984c.html
''Man, that's all it took to buy the country?''
Above average piece in the NY Times magazine on the efforts to build a wired progressive infrastructure that can counter the Right’s Noise Machine of Rush/O’Reilly, Weekly Standard, Murdoch et al. Lots of entrepreneurial types who are prepared to commit millions in the belief that liberal politics needs to be rejuvenated outside of the traditional Democratic party http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/magazine/25DEMOCRATS.html
Polls: Still even. I’ll give it a rest till Kerry’s possible bounce can be measured.
Los Angeles Times: Kerry: 46, Bush 44%
Fox News: Bush 44%, Kerry 44%
USA Today/CNN/Gallup: Kerry 47%, Bush 46%
Quinnipiac: Kerry leading Bush, 46% to 43%.
AP analysis: Kerry "narrowly trails" Bush in the electoral tally
Missouri: Kerry 46%, Bush 44% (Kansas City Star)
Bush: 48%, Kerry 48% (Gallup)
Florida: Kerry 46%, Bush 46% (Sayfie)
Bush 48%, Kerry 46% (Mason-Dixon)
Bush 48%, Kerry 46% (Orlando Sentinel)
Kerry 49%, Bush 44% (Research 2000)
Bush 45%, Kerry 44%, Nader 2% (LA Times)
New Hampshire: Kerry 50%, Bush 45% (Granite State Poll)
Kerry 49 Bush 44 (Gallup)
Kerry 47%, Bush 45% (American Research Group)
Ohio: Bush 48%, Kerry 43% (Strategic Vision)
Kerry 47 Bush 45 (ARG)
Bush 47 Kerry 44 Nader 2 (Columbus Dispatch)
Kerry 47%, Bush 45% (American Research Group)
Pennsylvania: Kerry 48%, Bush 43% (Strategic Vision)
Oregon: Kerry 50%, Bush 42% (American Research Group)
Superstores, Good and Bad.
I’m no fan of them, but have come to realize they’re not all equal.
Wal-Mart Funds Bush, Costco Backs Kerry Financing '04 Campaign
Executives at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Costco Wholesale Corp., competitors in the $76 billion U.S. warehouse-club market, have taken their rivalry to a new level: national politics.
Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer and owner of Sam's Club warehouse stores, gives more money to Republican candidates than any other company. Its top three managers, including Chief Executive Officer H. Lee Scott, donated the individual maximum $2,000 to President George W. Bush, and Jay Allen, vice president for corporate affairs, raised at least $100,000 to re-elect the president, earning him the Bush campaign's designation of ``Pioneer.''
Wal-Mart -- two-thirds of whose 3,580 stores are in the ``red states'' that voted for Bush in 2000 -- is backing White House policies on everything from trade to limiting overtime pay.
Costco CEO Jim Sinegal, 68, is a Democrat who says Bush's $1.7 trillion in tax cuts unfairly benefit the wealthy. He opposed the Iraq war and supports Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts for president. And he's the only chief executive of a company in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index to donate money to independent political groups formed to oust Bush, Internal Revenue Service records show. http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=amSB.R0Q2nAQ&refer=us#
-R
