Friday, August 13, 2004
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
"We can change America one soul at a time by encouraging people to spread something government cannot spread, which is love."- President Junior
No, they aren’t the “Liberal Media” Dan Rather, in a discussion with the other anchors, last month.
Bill Kristol, whom I don't think anybody would accuse of being liberal says, and I'm quoting here, I brought this so I could quote him directly, far be it if I missed one word. "I admit it, the liberal media were never that powerful and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures." Pat Buchanan, not exactly a bomb-throwing bolshevik, Pat Buchanan says; "The truth is I have gotten fairer, more comprehensive coverage of my ideas than I ever imagined I would receive." Another quote: "I've gotten balanced coverage and broad coverage, all we could have asked. We kid about the liberal media but every Republican on Earth does that.” http://209.208.176.243/bin/blogExcerpts.cfm?blogId=1&prg=3
The Liberal Media, II Fair.org notes a line stepped over
Note that one of the supporters thanked by Bush for appearing with him at his campaign rally is Joe Scarborough, formerly a Republican congressmember from Florida but currently an MSNBC talkshow host. (In a photograph of the rally, Scarborough can be seen standing behind Bush on the platform.) Does MSNBC think it's OK for its hosts to be campaigning for presidential candidates? If so, where is the pro-Kerry host on MSNBC's schedule that would balance out Scarborough's partisanship? http://www.fair.org/views.html
Who is Porter Goss, the CIA Designee? More than you want to know:
A true partisan, Goss will be a distraction from matters of state that should be addressed. CIA agency veteran Ray McGovern termed Bush’s designating Goss "the ultimate in politicization." As Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, he’s been Cheney’s boy and has been particularly appalling re former CIA head Tenet. Goss was a vocal supporter of Tenet until Tenet was heavily criticized in the June report on intelligence, Goss- smelling the chance to become the CIA chief- suddenly became one of Tenet’s fiercest critics. As the LA Times then noted, “Where was Mr. Intelligence Committee Chairman all those years?”
His past includes his having blocked efforts to investigate Abu Ghraib and Ahmed Chalabi. Arguably more disturbing was his opposition to a Plame investigation, which was a vivid demonstration about his priorities... (do note the last line)
Goss says CIA leak not worthy of committee actionRep. Porter Goss said Thursday that the uproar over allegations that White House officials purposely identified a covert CIA agent appears largely political and doesn't yet merit an investigation by the House Select Committee on Intelligence, which he chairs.Goss, who was a CIA agent himself from the early 1960s to 1971, said he takes such leaks seriously, but he distinguished between a willful violation of federal law and an inadvertent disclosure. Goss also said no one from the intelligence agencies has raised the issue with him since syndicated columnist Robert Novak identified the agent in a column July 14."I would say there's a much larger dose of partisan politics going on right now than there is worry about national security," said Goss, R-Sanibel. "But I would never take lightly a serious allegation backed up by evidence that there was a willful -- and I emphasize willful, inadvertent is something else -- willful disclosure, and I haven't seen any evidence." Goss said he would act if he did have evidence of that sort."Somebody sends me a blue dress and some DNA, I'll have an investigation," Goss said. http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2003310030460
Finally, there’s a passage from Gail Sheehy’s piece on the Jersey moms, as they sought info about the 9/11 attacks.
The four moms—Kristen Breitweiser, Patty Casazza, Mindy Kleinberg and Lorie van Auken—use tactics more like those of a leaderless cell. They have learned how to deposit their assorted seven children with select grandmothers before dawn and rocket down the Garden State Parkway to Washington. They have become experts at changing out of pedal-pushers and into proper pantsuits while their S.U.V. is stopped in traffic, so they can hit the Capitol rotunda running. They have talked strategy with Senator John McCain and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle. They once caught Congressman Porter Goss hiding behind his office door to avoid them. (my emphasis.) http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Just_Four_Moms_from_New_Jersey
Sanity from Abroad: What’s With these Terror Alerts? Jeffrey Fleishman reports on Europeans wondering what’s up
Heightened terror alerts and high-profile arrests of suspected Islamic extremists have international security experts and officials concerned that the Bush administration's actions could jeopardize investigations into the Al Qaeda network. European terrorism analysts acknowledge that the U.S. and its allies are under threat by Al Qaeda, but some suggest that the White House is unnecessarily adding to public anxiety with vague and dated intelligence about possible attacks. Some in Western Europe suspect the administration is using fear to improve its chances in the November election.Terrorism experts say too much publicity about possible plots and raids of Islamic extremist networks, including the arrest of 13 suspects in Britain last week, could hurt wider investigations. American politicians have called for an examination of that contention. Officials in Pakistan reportedly said Tuesday that Washington's recent disclosure of the arrest of a suspected Al Qaeda operative, Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, allowed other extremists under surveillance to disappear."It causes a problem. There's no doubt about that," said Charles Heyman, editor of Jane's World Armies. "The moment you make any announcement, you tell the other side what you know. As a rule of thumb, you should keep quiet about what you know." http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-terror11aug11.story
Iran: We know that the focus on the invasion of Iraq was a massive distraction from more important issues and threats. Fareed Zakaria notes that Iran is one of those, that it won’t be easy to deal with, regardless of who wins on November 2.
The threat to the United States from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, if they ever existed, is in the past. Iran, on the other hand, is the problem of the future. Over the past two years, thanks to tips from Iranian opposition groups and investigations by the International Atomic Energy Agency, it has become clear that Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons. In the words of the agency, Iran has "a practically complete front-end of a nuclear fuel cycle," which leads most experts to believe it is two to three years away from having a nuclear bomb.
European countries were as worried by this development as Washington, and because the United States has no relations with Iran, Europe stepped in last fall and negotiated a deal with Tehran. It was an excellent agreement, under which Iran pledged to stop developing fissile material (the core ingredient of a nuclear bomb) and to keep its nuclear program transparent. The only problem is, Iran has recently announced that it isn't going to abide by the deal. As the IAEA's investigation became more serious, Tehran became more secretive. One month ago the agency condemned Iran for its failure to cooperate. Tehran responded by announcing that it would resume work in prohibited areas.
http://65.54.186.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=a463f5c0d3aeda989c68ef63d2a0e42b&lat=1092236018&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fletters%2ewashingtonpost%2ecom%2fW7RH045E3292FEBA439543FBA38830
Oh yes, and North Korea: Mike Allen and Walter Pincus of the Washington Post have a tidbit about North Korea…and Goss
On June 1, Goss took part in a Bush-Cheney conference call with reporters to critique Kerry's first national security speech. He described one of Kerry's nonproliferation proposals as "naive," and answered "clearly yes," to a question about whether Bush's policy toward North Korea was producing results. North Korea, he said, is "no longer making the progress they were making at Yongbyon [their key nuclear production site] and other places because we have called their bluff."
In fact, since the Bush administration confronted the Pyongyang government, North Korea has thrown out inspectors, removed nuclear fuel from internationally monitored storage, and may have increased the size of its nuclear arsenal, according to U.S. intelligence. http://65.54.186.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=8fb100f1513d12bad5f540d8460062d0&lat=1092236068&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fletters%2ewashingtonpost%2ecom%2fW7RH045D87056EBA439543FBB48120
Single Payer Health in Massachusetts. The long road continues…[brief posting on boston.com]:
Gov. Mitt Romney's administration has rejected a study that would assess the cost of providing health care coverage to all Massachusetts residents.
Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, acting on behalf of an out-of-state Romney, sent the bill back to the Legislature unsigned, which is the equivalent to a veto. The Legislature can only overturn vetoes during formal sessions, which have ended for the year.
The bill called for a study of the feasibility of establishing a health care trust fund, which would cover the cost of health care provided to Massachusetts residents. The Legislature passed the bill during the last week of the session.
Romney said the study would duplicate the effort of a study just completed two years ago, which analyzed the cost implications of three different models of reform. He said the new study would impose a ''costly and unrealistic administrative burden.''
Sen. Steven Tolman, D-Boston, who sponsored the bill, said that the final language was the result of a compromise between the House and Senate. He said it would answer questions that the two-year-old study did not address.
He said it would also give the Legislature more answers when it returns next year to consider a constitutional amendment that would guarantee health coverage to all Massachusetts residents. The Legislature gave the amendment the first round of approval this year, but must reaffirm its support during the 2005-2006 session before it goes to the ballot for the voters' consideration.
Halliburton: More bad news for Cheney’s company.
Pentagon auditors have concluded that Halliburton Co. hasn't adequately accounted for more than $1.8 billion of work in Iraq and Kuwait, a finding that is likely to increase pressure on the government to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in payments to the company.
The amount, disclosed in a Pentagon report, represents 43% of the $4.18 billion that Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root has so far billed the Pentagon for its work feeding and housing troops in the region. A move to withhold substantial payments to KBR could create new headaches for Halliburton, whose KBR unit filed for bankruptcy-court protection under the weight of billions of dollars of asbestos claims. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109217890916788112,00.html?mod=home%5Fpage%5Fone%5Fus
Election Fraud: Dry Run in Venezuela?
Greg Palast, who has covered the Florida ‘problem’ since November, 2000 raises the question of whether American ‘interference’ will be decisive in this weekend’s vote.
… Chavez is expected to win this coming Sunday's recall vote. That is, if the elections are free and fair. They won't be. Some months ago, a little birdie faxed to me what appeared to be confidential pages from a contract between John Ashcroft's Justice Department and a company called ChoicePoint, Inc., of Atlanta. The deal is part of the War on Terror.
Justice offered up to $67 million, of our taxpayer money, to ChoicePoint in a no-bid deal, for computer profiles with private information on every citizen of half a dozen nations. The choice of which nation's citizens to spy on caught my eye. While the September 11th highjackers came from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon and the Arab Emirates, ChoicePoint's menu offered records on Venezuelans, Brazilians, Nicaraguans, Mexicans and Argentines. How odd. Had the CIA uncovered a Latin plot to sneak suicide tango dancers across the border with exploding enchiladas?" http://www.gregpalast.com/
Election Fraud, II: Republicans Collecting Their Lawyers
With the Democrats threatening to file lawsuits in anticipation of post-presidential election fallout, Republicans are amassing their own team of legal eagles, headed in Florida by Gov. Jeb Bush's former deputy general counsel.
Hayden Dempsey, who left Bush's office to join the prominent Greenberg Traurig firm last year, confirmed Monday he has been tapped as the statewide chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign's legal defense team, Lawyers for Bush.
While the Democrats have made no secret about their cadre of lawyers — Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry reportedly has 2,000 lawyers ready to defend him — Republicans, including Dempsey, remain tight-lipped about their legal brigade. http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/epaper/2004/08/10/a4a_gopvote_0810.html
Kerry re authorizing the Iraq invasion
I’m not supportive of his vote then or his ‘Knowing then what I know now I would still vote as I did.’ But it did broach still another media misrepresentation. The resolution of October, 2002 was NOT a vote for war. It didn’t demand the use of force. It “authorized the use of the United States Armed Forces against Iraq” under the specific condition that they were found to be a threat to our security. And, the resolution supported diplomatic efforts. So, while Kerry certainly wasn’t naïve in voting as he did, he’s not being inconsistent or a ‘flip-flopper’.
Confidence: Overconfidence?
"Everybody knows it's going to be tight ... but I think the odds are high -- 60-40 -- that Kerry will prevail," said Convention Permanent Chairman Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico. "We realize there is a lot of anti-Bush sentiment. It's out there and you take advantage of it.""Absent a mistake by us, Kerry's the next president, declared Bob Mulholland, a Democratic national committeeman and delegate from California."I'm pretty conservative, but I think the rest of the party thinks Kerry has it won," said Lawrence Gates, the Democratic state chairman from Kansas. "I think Bush caused it. It's black and white. Bush has polarized the country, and become more arrogant when he should have taken a humble pill.""Bush blew it in a myriad of ways," said Kentucky Democratic State Chairman Bill Garmer, listing job losses, the budget surplus swallowed by new deficits, and "a war that won't work because all the reasons put forth turned out not to be true.""It's more like it's ours to lose than to win now," said Harold Schaitberger, president of the International Association of Firefighters, as he arrived at a convention party at Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's family compound in Hyannis. "Everybody in the party is now optimistic. I've never seen the party as energized, united and enthused."It's not unusual for political leaders to boast about their prospects at their party's national convention, but this year many Democrats appear to be believe their own hype.The Democrats' cockiness is evident to independent observers and could be their downfall. http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/benson072704.html
-R
No, they aren’t the “Liberal Media” Dan Rather, in a discussion with the other anchors, last month.
Bill Kristol, whom I don't think anybody would accuse of being liberal says, and I'm quoting here, I brought this so I could quote him directly, far be it if I missed one word. "I admit it, the liberal media were never that powerful and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures." Pat Buchanan, not exactly a bomb-throwing bolshevik, Pat Buchanan says; "The truth is I have gotten fairer, more comprehensive coverage of my ideas than I ever imagined I would receive." Another quote: "I've gotten balanced coverage and broad coverage, all we could have asked. We kid about the liberal media but every Republican on Earth does that.” http://209.208.176.243/bin/blogExcerpts.cfm?blogId=1&prg=3
The Liberal Media, II Fair.org notes a line stepped over
Note that one of the supporters thanked by Bush for appearing with him at his campaign rally is Joe Scarborough, formerly a Republican congressmember from Florida but currently an MSNBC talkshow host. (In a photograph of the rally, Scarborough can be seen standing behind Bush on the platform.) Does MSNBC think it's OK for its hosts to be campaigning for presidential candidates? If so, where is the pro-Kerry host on MSNBC's schedule that would balance out Scarborough's partisanship? http://www.fair.org/views.html
Who is Porter Goss, the CIA Designee? More than you want to know:
A true partisan, Goss will be a distraction from matters of state that should be addressed. CIA agency veteran Ray McGovern termed Bush’s designating Goss "the ultimate in politicization." As Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, he’s been Cheney’s boy and has been particularly appalling re former CIA head Tenet. Goss was a vocal supporter of Tenet until Tenet was heavily criticized in the June report on intelligence, Goss- smelling the chance to become the CIA chief- suddenly became one of Tenet’s fiercest critics. As the LA Times then noted, “Where was Mr. Intelligence Committee Chairman all those years?”
His past includes his having blocked efforts to investigate Abu Ghraib and Ahmed Chalabi. Arguably more disturbing was his opposition to a Plame investigation, which was a vivid demonstration about his priorities... (do note the last line)
Goss says CIA leak not worthy of committee actionRep. Porter Goss said Thursday that the uproar over allegations that White House officials purposely identified a covert CIA agent appears largely political and doesn't yet merit an investigation by the House Select Committee on Intelligence, which he chairs.Goss, who was a CIA agent himself from the early 1960s to 1971, said he takes such leaks seriously, but he distinguished between a willful violation of federal law and an inadvertent disclosure. Goss also said no one from the intelligence agencies has raised the issue with him since syndicated columnist Robert Novak identified the agent in a column July 14."I would say there's a much larger dose of partisan politics going on right now than there is worry about national security," said Goss, R-Sanibel. "But I would never take lightly a serious allegation backed up by evidence that there was a willful -- and I emphasize willful, inadvertent is something else -- willful disclosure, and I haven't seen any evidence." Goss said he would act if he did have evidence of that sort."Somebody sends me a blue dress and some DNA, I'll have an investigation," Goss said. http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2003310030460
Finally, there’s a passage from Gail Sheehy’s piece on the Jersey moms, as they sought info about the 9/11 attacks.
The four moms—Kristen Breitweiser, Patty Casazza, Mindy Kleinberg and Lorie van Auken—use tactics more like those of a leaderless cell. They have learned how to deposit their assorted seven children with select grandmothers before dawn and rocket down the Garden State Parkway to Washington. They have become experts at changing out of pedal-pushers and into proper pantsuits while their S.U.V. is stopped in traffic, so they can hit the Capitol rotunda running. They have talked strategy with Senator John McCain and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle. They once caught Congressman Porter Goss hiding behind his office door to avoid them. (my emphasis.) http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Just_Four_Moms_from_New_Jersey
Sanity from Abroad: What’s With these Terror Alerts? Jeffrey Fleishman reports on Europeans wondering what’s up
Heightened terror alerts and high-profile arrests of suspected Islamic extremists have international security experts and officials concerned that the Bush administration's actions could jeopardize investigations into the Al Qaeda network. European terrorism analysts acknowledge that the U.S. and its allies are under threat by Al Qaeda, but some suggest that the White House is unnecessarily adding to public anxiety with vague and dated intelligence about possible attacks. Some in Western Europe suspect the administration is using fear to improve its chances in the November election.Terrorism experts say too much publicity about possible plots and raids of Islamic extremist networks, including the arrest of 13 suspects in Britain last week, could hurt wider investigations. American politicians have called for an examination of that contention. Officials in Pakistan reportedly said Tuesday that Washington's recent disclosure of the arrest of a suspected Al Qaeda operative, Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, allowed other extremists under surveillance to disappear."It causes a problem. There's no doubt about that," said Charles Heyman, editor of Jane's World Armies. "The moment you make any announcement, you tell the other side what you know. As a rule of thumb, you should keep quiet about what you know." http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-terror11aug11.story
Iran: We know that the focus on the invasion of Iraq was a massive distraction from more important issues and threats. Fareed Zakaria notes that Iran is one of those, that it won’t be easy to deal with, regardless of who wins on November 2.
The threat to the United States from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, if they ever existed, is in the past. Iran, on the other hand, is the problem of the future. Over the past two years, thanks to tips from Iranian opposition groups and investigations by the International Atomic Energy Agency, it has become clear that Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons. In the words of the agency, Iran has "a practically complete front-end of a nuclear fuel cycle," which leads most experts to believe it is two to three years away from having a nuclear bomb.
European countries were as worried by this development as Washington, and because the United States has no relations with Iran, Europe stepped in last fall and negotiated a deal with Tehran. It was an excellent agreement, under which Iran pledged to stop developing fissile material (the core ingredient of a nuclear bomb) and to keep its nuclear program transparent. The only problem is, Iran has recently announced that it isn't going to abide by the deal. As the IAEA's investigation became more serious, Tehran became more secretive. One month ago the agency condemned Iran for its failure to cooperate. Tehran responded by announcing that it would resume work in prohibited areas.
http://65.54.186.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=a463f5c0d3aeda989c68ef63d2a0e42b&lat=1092236018&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fletters%2ewashingtonpost%2ecom%2fW7RH045E3292FEBA439543FBA38830
Oh yes, and North Korea: Mike Allen and Walter Pincus of the Washington Post have a tidbit about North Korea…and Goss
On June 1, Goss took part in a Bush-Cheney conference call with reporters to critique Kerry's first national security speech. He described one of Kerry's nonproliferation proposals as "naive," and answered "clearly yes," to a question about whether Bush's policy toward North Korea was producing results. North Korea, he said, is "no longer making the progress they were making at Yongbyon [their key nuclear production site] and other places because we have called their bluff."
In fact, since the Bush administration confronted the Pyongyang government, North Korea has thrown out inspectors, removed nuclear fuel from internationally monitored storage, and may have increased the size of its nuclear arsenal, according to U.S. intelligence. http://65.54.186.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=8fb100f1513d12bad5f540d8460062d0&lat=1092236068&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fletters%2ewashingtonpost%2ecom%2fW7RH045D87056EBA439543FBB48120
Single Payer Health in Massachusetts. The long road continues…[brief posting on boston.com]:
Gov. Mitt Romney's administration has rejected a study that would assess the cost of providing health care coverage to all Massachusetts residents.
Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, acting on behalf of an out-of-state Romney, sent the bill back to the Legislature unsigned, which is the equivalent to a veto. The Legislature can only overturn vetoes during formal sessions, which have ended for the year.
The bill called for a study of the feasibility of establishing a health care trust fund, which would cover the cost of health care provided to Massachusetts residents. The Legislature passed the bill during the last week of the session.
Romney said the study would duplicate the effort of a study just completed two years ago, which analyzed the cost implications of three different models of reform. He said the new study would impose a ''costly and unrealistic administrative burden.''
Sen. Steven Tolman, D-Boston, who sponsored the bill, said that the final language was the result of a compromise between the House and Senate. He said it would answer questions that the two-year-old study did not address.
He said it would also give the Legislature more answers when it returns next year to consider a constitutional amendment that would guarantee health coverage to all Massachusetts residents. The Legislature gave the amendment the first round of approval this year, but must reaffirm its support during the 2005-2006 session before it goes to the ballot for the voters' consideration.
Halliburton: More bad news for Cheney’s company.
Pentagon auditors have concluded that Halliburton Co. hasn't adequately accounted for more than $1.8 billion of work in Iraq and Kuwait, a finding that is likely to increase pressure on the government to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in payments to the company.
The amount, disclosed in a Pentagon report, represents 43% of the $4.18 billion that Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root has so far billed the Pentagon for its work feeding and housing troops in the region. A move to withhold substantial payments to KBR could create new headaches for Halliburton, whose KBR unit filed for bankruptcy-court protection under the weight of billions of dollars of asbestos claims. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109217890916788112,00.html?mod=home%5Fpage%5Fone%5Fus
Election Fraud: Dry Run in Venezuela?
Greg Palast, who has covered the Florida ‘problem’ since November, 2000 raises the question of whether American ‘interference’ will be decisive in this weekend’s vote.
… Chavez is expected to win this coming Sunday's recall vote. That is, if the elections are free and fair. They won't be. Some months ago, a little birdie faxed to me what appeared to be confidential pages from a contract between John Ashcroft's Justice Department and a company called ChoicePoint, Inc., of Atlanta. The deal is part of the War on Terror.
Justice offered up to $67 million, of our taxpayer money, to ChoicePoint in a no-bid deal, for computer profiles with private information on every citizen of half a dozen nations. The choice of which nation's citizens to spy on caught my eye. While the September 11th highjackers came from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon and the Arab Emirates, ChoicePoint's menu offered records on Venezuelans, Brazilians, Nicaraguans, Mexicans and Argentines. How odd. Had the CIA uncovered a Latin plot to sneak suicide tango dancers across the border with exploding enchiladas?" http://www.gregpalast.com/
Election Fraud, II: Republicans Collecting Their Lawyers
With the Democrats threatening to file lawsuits in anticipation of post-presidential election fallout, Republicans are amassing their own team of legal eagles, headed in Florida by Gov. Jeb Bush's former deputy general counsel.
Hayden Dempsey, who left Bush's office to join the prominent Greenberg Traurig firm last year, confirmed Monday he has been tapped as the statewide chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign's legal defense team, Lawyers for Bush.
While the Democrats have made no secret about their cadre of lawyers — Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry reportedly has 2,000 lawyers ready to defend him — Republicans, including Dempsey, remain tight-lipped about their legal brigade. http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/epaper/2004/08/10/a4a_gopvote_0810.html
Kerry re authorizing the Iraq invasion
I’m not supportive of his vote then or his ‘Knowing then what I know now I would still vote as I did.’ But it did broach still another media misrepresentation. The resolution of October, 2002 was NOT a vote for war. It didn’t demand the use of force. It “authorized the use of the United States Armed Forces against Iraq” under the specific condition that they were found to be a threat to our security. And, the resolution supported diplomatic efforts. So, while Kerry certainly wasn’t naïve in voting as he did, he’s not being inconsistent or a ‘flip-flopper’.
Confidence: Overconfidence?
"Everybody knows it's going to be tight ... but I think the odds are high -- 60-40 -- that Kerry will prevail," said Convention Permanent Chairman Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico. "We realize there is a lot of anti-Bush sentiment. It's out there and you take advantage of it.""Absent a mistake by us, Kerry's the next president, declared Bob Mulholland, a Democratic national committeeman and delegate from California."I'm pretty conservative, but I think the rest of the party thinks Kerry has it won," said Lawrence Gates, the Democratic state chairman from Kansas. "I think Bush caused it. It's black and white. Bush has polarized the country, and become more arrogant when he should have taken a humble pill.""Bush blew it in a myriad of ways," said Kentucky Democratic State Chairman Bill Garmer, listing job losses, the budget surplus swallowed by new deficits, and "a war that won't work because all the reasons put forth turned out not to be true.""It's more like it's ours to lose than to win now," said Harold Schaitberger, president of the International Association of Firefighters, as he arrived at a convention party at Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's family compound in Hyannis. "Everybody in the party is now optimistic. I've never seen the party as energized, united and enthused."It's not unusual for political leaders to boast about their prospects at their party's national convention, but this year many Democrats appear to be believe their own hype.The Democrats' cockiness is evident to independent observers and could be their downfall. http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/benson072704.html
-R
Tuesday, August 10, 2004
Bush on Taxing the Extremely Rich [in Virginia]: Bush also said high taxes on the rich are a failed strategy because "the really rich people figure out how to dodge taxes anyway." http://www.dailypress.com/news/local/virginia/dp-va--bushvisit0809aug09,0,6920595.story?coll=dp-headlines-virginia
Kerry: Knowing what I now know, I’d still vote for the war
Speaking of holding your nose…
Senator John Kerry said Monday that he would have voted to give the president the authority to invade Iraq even if he had known all he does now about the apparent dearth of unconventional weapons or a close connection to Al Qaeda.
"I believe it's the right authority for a president to have," said Mr. Kerry, who has faced criticism throughout his presidential campaign for that October 2002 vote.
But Mr. Kerry, the Democratic nominee, extended his attack on President Bush's prosecution of the war, saying he had not used the Congressional authority effectively. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/10/politics/campaign/10kerry.html
Khan Follow-up: How the U.S. blew an apparently important al-Qaeda sting by identifying the key source. From the BBC
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice strongly denied that US officials were responsible for the leak. "We did not, of course, publicly disclose his name," Ms Rice told CNN television on Sunday. She said Mr Khan's identity had been given "on background" - that is for the journalists' information, not publication. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3548678.stm
Uh, Condi, giving the name ‘on background’ IS disclosing the name.
Juan Cole:
Bush Administration outing of Khan Enabled 5 al-Qaeda Cell Members to Escape CaptureNeville Dean of PA News reports that a magistrate has given British police only until Tuesday to finish questioning 9 of 13 men arrested August 3 on suspicion of being part of an al-Qaeda cell. The men had been in email correspondence with Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, who since mid-July has been functioning as a double agent for the Pakistani government. He was arrested in Lahore on July 13 and "flipped." The Bush administration revealed Khan's name to US journalists on Sunday August 1 on background, and it appeared in the US press on Monday. The Bush administration thus effectively outed Khan as a double agent (he sent emails to his London contacts as late as Monday).The British MI5 was forced to have the London cell of 13 arrested immediately on Tuesday, fearing that they would flee now that they knew Khan had been arrested two weeks earlier. The British do not, however, appear to have finished gathering enough evidence to prosecute the 13 in the courts successfully. It now turns out, according to Neville, that "Reports last week also claimed that five al Qaida militants were on the run in the UK after escaping capture in last Tuesday’s raids." If this is true, it is likely that the 5 went underground on hearing that Khan was in custody. That is, the loose lips of the Bush administration enabled them to flee arrest. http://www.juancole.com/
Ross Gelbspan: C’mon progressives; a Prius isn’t the solution. He writes of the need to organize to confront the quickly deteriorating environmental situation.
The vast majority of climate groups shun confrontation and work instead to get people to reduce their personal energy footprints. That can certainly help spread awareness of the issue. But by persuading concerned citizens to cut back on their personal energy use, these groups are promoting the implicit message that climate change can be solved by individual resolve. It cannot. Moreover, this message blames the victim: People are made to feel guilty if they own a gas guzzler or live in a poorly insulated home. In fact, people should be outraged that the government does not require automakers to sell cars that run on clean fuels, that building codes do not reduce heating and cooling energy requirements by 70 percent and that government energy policies do not mandate decentralized, home-based or regional sources of clean electricity.
What many groups offer their followers instead is the consolation of a personal sense of righteousness that comes from living one's life a bit more frugally. That feeling of righteousness, coincidentally, is largely reserved for wealthier people who can afford to exercise some control over their housing and transportation expenditures. Many poorer people--who cannot afford to trade in their 1990 gas guzzlers for shiny new Toyota Priuses--are deprived of the chance to enjoy the same sense of righteousness, illusory though it may be.
Given the lock on Congress and the White House by the carbon lobby, there is no way the US government will pursue a rapid global energy transition without a massive uprising of popular will. Environmentalists should therefore be forging alliances with other activists who focus on international development, campaign finance reform, corporate accountability, public health, labor, environmental justice and human rights--not to mention with communities of faith--to mobilize a broad, inclusive constituency around the issue. http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20040816&s=gelbspan
Greed: The Greed Standard. Doug Dowd, on ZNet
The greed standard we have allowed to be set for ourselves is fully and dangerously represented among our CEO's, most obscenely in the pharmaceutical industry. Its top nine CEO's average $19 million a year in pay and between them they own $900 million in unexercised stock options. What does this have to do with greed?
A little arithmetic concerning those numbers reveals their meaning. Suppose each of the CEOs finds ways to spend $1,000 every day, 365 days a year. That would come to a bit more than $1 million every three years. At the end of that three years, assuming they hadn't invested the remaining $18 million or the incoming other two $19 millions and hadn't cashed in their options, they would still have $56 million in the bank.
As CEOs of the parmaceutical companies -- whose average profits are the highest of all the Fortune 500 industries -- they are the ones who succeed in keeping prescription drug prices high and rising in double-digits every year; they who prevent less expensive imports, they who spend who knows how much on their more than 600 lobbyists, they who are at least partially responsible for premature deaths and desperate lives for millions of people… http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2004-08/02dowd.cfm
Fun: Bush audio on “sovereignty” Short, humorous moment as Bush speaks to ‘minority journalists’. Listen for the audience reaction. http://www.majorityreportradio.com/weblog/archives/000581.php
For those who lack sound, time, or prefer print, this is Albor Ruiz’ take from the NY Daily News:
It was a tough crowd, no doubt, made up of professional journalists of color from all over the U.S. who gathered last week in the nation's capital to attend Unity 2004. With more than 7,500 registrants, Unity 2004 was, by far, the largest journalistic convention ever in the U.S.
The President and his campaign people were, or course, aware of the fact that whatever was said in the gigantic Washington Convention Center ballroom would resonate well beyond its walls. Actually, they - like Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry, who addressed the convention the day before - knew it would be news across the country.
That is why it was surprising, disconcerting and even a little frightening to listen to his opening remarks, punctuated by a strange syntax and mysterious logic.
"You can't read a newspaper if you can't read," the President said at one point when he spoke about the success his administration has had in teaching children how to read. When responding to a question posed by a Native American journalist on what he thought about the sovereignty of the Indian tribes in the U.S., Bush could only respond with something like "sovereignty is well ... sovereignty, and if you have sovereignty you are sovereign." Say what? http://www.nydailynews.com/08-08-2004/news/politics/v-pfriendly/story/220138p-188900c.html
What’s Happening, Iraq: Much more fighting, especially intense in Najav. And, Aljazeera shut down. Rummy may have had a hand. Their response:
“Aljazeera expressed regret for the unjustified move, and said it was contrary to pledges made by the interim Iraqi government to start a new era of free speech and openness. Aljazeera said it held the Iraqi authorities responsible for the safety of Aljazeera staff in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq.”
Plame Scandal Follow-up
A federal judge ordered a reporter held for civil contempt on Monday and ruled that journalists at NBC News and Time magazine must testify in the investigation into whether the Bush administration illegally leaked a covert CIA officer's name to the media. U.S. District Chief Judge Thomas Hogan rejected requests to quash subpoenas to Tim Russert of NBC's "Meet the Press" and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine for violating their First Amendment rights.
The subpoenas, issued by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, require that Russert and Cooper appear before a federal grand jury to testify about conversations with an unidentified government official who was a confidential source. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=615&e=3&u=/nm/20040809/pl_nm/bush_leak_dc
Clinton on Kerry: On a national radio interview. ‘He was a terrific senator; he should talk about his record. He supported welfare reform, balanced budget amendment, putting more police on the street, etc…’
Gads. Some liberal.
Observing the U.S. Election: Very needed.
A team of international observers will monitor the presidential election in November, according to the U.S. State Department.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe was invited to monitor the election by the State Department. The observers will come from the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights.
It will be the first time such a team has been present for a U.S. presidential election.
"The U.S. is obliged to invite us, as all OSCE countries should," spokeswoman Urdur Gunnarsdottir said. "It's not legally binding, but it's a political commitment. They signed a document 10 years ago to ask OSCE to observe elections." http://cnn.allpolitics.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=CNN.com+-+International+team+to+monitor+presidential+election+-+Aug+8%2C+2004&expire=-1&urlID=11261375&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2004%2FALLPOLITICS%2F08%2F08%2Finternational.observers%2F&partnerID=2001
On the Democratic Platform: Stephen Zunes of ZNet:
Even the Republican Party under Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 did not openly challenge such basic international principles as the illegitimacy of invading a sovereign nation because of unsubstantiated claims they might some day be a potential security threat.
Yet not only have Senators John Kerry and John Edwards continued to defend their support of the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, the 2004 Democratic platform complains that the administration “did not send sufficient forces to accomplish the mission.” The most direct challenge to Bush administration policies in Iraq contained in the platform is its alleged failures to adequately equip American forces.
The only thing the 2004 Democratic Party platform could offer opponents of the war is a sentence which acknowledges “People of good will disagree about whether America should have gone to war in Iraq.” As the Los Angeles Times editorialized, “Indeed they do. That is why we have elections, and it would have been nice if the opposition party had the guts to actually oppose it.”
A Platform in Defense of Unilateralism
While the foreign policy segments of this year’s Democratic Party platform had some positive elements, there are serious problems not only in what it did not say, but also in much of what it did say.
For example, the platform justifies the ongoing U.S. military occupation of Iraq by claiming “having gone to war, we cannot afford to fail at peace. We cannot allow a failed state in Iraq that inevitably would become a haven for terrorists and a destabilizing force in the Middle East.” This ignores the fact that Iraq’s instability and the influx of foreign terrorists is a direct consequence of the U.S. invasion and occupation authorized and supported by the Democratic Party’s presidential and vice presidential nominees.
----
For example, the platform calls for strategies to “end the Castro regime as soon as possible and enable the Cuban people to take their rightful place in the democratic community of the Americas.” Significantly, there are no similar calls anywhere in the platform to end any of the scores of non-socialist dictatorships currently in power throughout the world or of enabling the people oppressed by these regimes—many of which receive significant U.S. military and economic support—to join the democratic community of nations. http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0408shift.html
More on Sibel Edmonds, FBI translator, whistle blower. Ritt Goldstein
… perhaps the most explosive charge she makes concerns information the bureau was said to have received four months prior to September 2001, information warning of the September 11 plan. While both President Bush and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice have repeatedly denied that there was any indication that airplanes would be used as a terror weapon, Edmonds revealed that in April 2001 the bureau had information that bin Laden was "planning a major terrorist attack in the United States targeting four to five major cities"; "the attack was going to involve airplanes"; some of those involved were already "in the United States"; and the attack would be "in a few months". Edmonds states that the information came from "a long-term FBI informant/asset" and that it was sent to the "special agent in charge of counter-terrorism" in Washington. She also charges that after September 11 "the agents and translators were told to 'keep quiet' regarding this issue". Further to that, she writes, "The Phoenix Memo, received months prior to the [September 11] attacks, specifically warned FBI HQ of pilot training and their possible link to terrorist activities against the United States. Four months prior to the terrorist attacks the Iranian asset provided the FBI with specific information regarding the 'use of airplanes', 'major US cities as targets', and 'Osama bin Laden issuing the order' ... "All this information went to the same place: FBI Headquarters in Washington, DC, and the FBI Washington Field Office, in Washington DC. Yet your report claims that not having a central place where all intelligence could be gathered as one of the main factors in our intelligence failure. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FH05Aa03.html
Jobs : Follow-Up: The quality of the new jobs. From the NY Times (Edmund Andrews) and the LA Times (Warren Vieth):
But a growing number of analysts say the evidence increasingly suggests that the current recovery has indeed been tilted toward lower-paying jobs. Industries ranked in the bottom fifth for wages and salaries have added 477,000 jobs since January, while industries in the top fifth for wages had no increase at all, according to an analysis of Labor Department payroll data by Economy.com, an economic research firm.
"Since employment peaked, we've lost many more higher-paying jobs than lower-paying jobs,'' said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com. "In recovery, we've created more lower-paying jobs than higher-paying jobs." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/09/business/09jobs.html
"Supposedly there's a whole mess of new jobs being created, but they're not jobs we can live with," said Anderson, a 50-year-old factory worker whose career in manufacturing will come to an end today."Look at this," he said, leafing through a stack of recent job postings. "They're paying $9 an hour. Five years ago, it would have paid maybe $18…. This one is paying $12…. Here's one for $8.75…. These are the great new jobs that are opening up in Green Bay."Anderson's frustration reflects a characteristic of the current recovery. Yes, the U.S. economy is creating new jobs. But to some of the workers who have been displaced during the downturn of the last three years, the new jobs look a lot worse than their old jobs.Since December, Wisconsin has recovered all of the jobs it lost over the previous three years, turning a 76,000-job deficit into a net gain of 700.But not all jobs are created equal. Although the lion's share of Wisconsin's losses were in the high-paying manufacturing sector, most of the gains have been in service industries with widely varying pay scales, some quite low. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/2004/la-na-wisconsin9aug09,1,1714529.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Kuttner and Election Nightmares
Bob Kuttner writes of 3 possible alarms, Florida again having a fraud problem, the touch screen problem bearing ‘fruit, and Kerry winning the popular vote but losing the electoral count. His remedies:
Remedy No. 1: International Election Observers
Jimmy Carter should assemble a team of international human-rights observers to monitor our shaky democracy. At least the cruder forms of ballot theft and intimidation would be tamped down.
Remedy No. 2: Ballot Boxes
Until they get the bugs out of electronic voting, we should go back to old-fashioned paper ballots. Everyone can figure them out, and they leave a perfect paper trail for recounts. Much of the democratic world still uses them.
Remedy No. 3: Abolish the Electoral College and Be a True Democracy
Alas, fat chance.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=8255
-R
Kerry: Knowing what I now know, I’d still vote for the war
Speaking of holding your nose…
Senator John Kerry said Monday that he would have voted to give the president the authority to invade Iraq even if he had known all he does now about the apparent dearth of unconventional weapons or a close connection to Al Qaeda.
"I believe it's the right authority for a president to have," said Mr. Kerry, who has faced criticism throughout his presidential campaign for that October 2002 vote.
But Mr. Kerry, the Democratic nominee, extended his attack on President Bush's prosecution of the war, saying he had not used the Congressional authority effectively. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/10/politics/campaign/10kerry.html
Khan Follow-up: How the U.S. blew an apparently important al-Qaeda sting by identifying the key source. From the BBC
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice strongly denied that US officials were responsible for the leak. "We did not, of course, publicly disclose his name," Ms Rice told CNN television on Sunday. She said Mr Khan's identity had been given "on background" - that is for the journalists' information, not publication. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3548678.stm
Uh, Condi, giving the name ‘on background’ IS disclosing the name.
Juan Cole:
Bush Administration outing of Khan Enabled 5 al-Qaeda Cell Members to Escape CaptureNeville Dean of PA News reports that a magistrate has given British police only until Tuesday to finish questioning 9 of 13 men arrested August 3 on suspicion of being part of an al-Qaeda cell. The men had been in email correspondence with Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, who since mid-July has been functioning as a double agent for the Pakistani government. He was arrested in Lahore on July 13 and "flipped." The Bush administration revealed Khan's name to US journalists on Sunday August 1 on background, and it appeared in the US press on Monday. The Bush administration thus effectively outed Khan as a double agent (he sent emails to his London contacts as late as Monday).The British MI5 was forced to have the London cell of 13 arrested immediately on Tuesday, fearing that they would flee now that they knew Khan had been arrested two weeks earlier. The British do not, however, appear to have finished gathering enough evidence to prosecute the 13 in the courts successfully. It now turns out, according to Neville, that "Reports last week also claimed that five al Qaida militants were on the run in the UK after escaping capture in last Tuesday’s raids." If this is true, it is likely that the 5 went underground on hearing that Khan was in custody. That is, the loose lips of the Bush administration enabled them to flee arrest. http://www.juancole.com/
Ross Gelbspan: C’mon progressives; a Prius isn’t the solution. He writes of the need to organize to confront the quickly deteriorating environmental situation.
The vast majority of climate groups shun confrontation and work instead to get people to reduce their personal energy footprints. That can certainly help spread awareness of the issue. But by persuading concerned citizens to cut back on their personal energy use, these groups are promoting the implicit message that climate change can be solved by individual resolve. It cannot. Moreover, this message blames the victim: People are made to feel guilty if they own a gas guzzler or live in a poorly insulated home. In fact, people should be outraged that the government does not require automakers to sell cars that run on clean fuels, that building codes do not reduce heating and cooling energy requirements by 70 percent and that government energy policies do not mandate decentralized, home-based or regional sources of clean electricity.
What many groups offer their followers instead is the consolation of a personal sense of righteousness that comes from living one's life a bit more frugally. That feeling of righteousness, coincidentally, is largely reserved for wealthier people who can afford to exercise some control over their housing and transportation expenditures. Many poorer people--who cannot afford to trade in their 1990 gas guzzlers for shiny new Toyota Priuses--are deprived of the chance to enjoy the same sense of righteousness, illusory though it may be.
Given the lock on Congress and the White House by the carbon lobby, there is no way the US government will pursue a rapid global energy transition without a massive uprising of popular will. Environmentalists should therefore be forging alliances with other activists who focus on international development, campaign finance reform, corporate accountability, public health, labor, environmental justice and human rights--not to mention with communities of faith--to mobilize a broad, inclusive constituency around the issue. http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20040816&s=gelbspan
Greed: The Greed Standard. Doug Dowd, on ZNet
The greed standard we have allowed to be set for ourselves is fully and dangerously represented among our CEO's, most obscenely in the pharmaceutical industry. Its top nine CEO's average $19 million a year in pay and between them they own $900 million in unexercised stock options. What does this have to do with greed?
A little arithmetic concerning those numbers reveals their meaning. Suppose each of the CEOs finds ways to spend $1,000 every day, 365 days a year. That would come to a bit more than $1 million every three years. At the end of that three years, assuming they hadn't invested the remaining $18 million or the incoming other two $19 millions and hadn't cashed in their options, they would still have $56 million in the bank.
As CEOs of the parmaceutical companies -- whose average profits are the highest of all the Fortune 500 industries -- they are the ones who succeed in keeping prescription drug prices high and rising in double-digits every year; they who prevent less expensive imports, they who spend who knows how much on their more than 600 lobbyists, they who are at least partially responsible for premature deaths and desperate lives for millions of people… http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2004-08/02dowd.cfm
Fun: Bush audio on “sovereignty” Short, humorous moment as Bush speaks to ‘minority journalists’. Listen for the audience reaction. http://www.majorityreportradio.com/weblog/archives/000581.php
For those who lack sound, time, or prefer print, this is Albor Ruiz’ take from the NY Daily News:
It was a tough crowd, no doubt, made up of professional journalists of color from all over the U.S. who gathered last week in the nation's capital to attend Unity 2004. With more than 7,500 registrants, Unity 2004 was, by far, the largest journalistic convention ever in the U.S.
The President and his campaign people were, or course, aware of the fact that whatever was said in the gigantic Washington Convention Center ballroom would resonate well beyond its walls. Actually, they - like Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry, who addressed the convention the day before - knew it would be news across the country.
That is why it was surprising, disconcerting and even a little frightening to listen to his opening remarks, punctuated by a strange syntax and mysterious logic.
"You can't read a newspaper if you can't read," the President said at one point when he spoke about the success his administration has had in teaching children how to read. When responding to a question posed by a Native American journalist on what he thought about the sovereignty of the Indian tribes in the U.S., Bush could only respond with something like "sovereignty is well ... sovereignty, and if you have sovereignty you are sovereign." Say what? http://www.nydailynews.com/08-08-2004/news/politics/v-pfriendly/story/220138p-188900c.html
What’s Happening, Iraq: Much more fighting, especially intense in Najav. And, Aljazeera shut down. Rummy may have had a hand. Their response:
“Aljazeera expressed regret for the unjustified move, and said it was contrary to pledges made by the interim Iraqi government to start a new era of free speech and openness. Aljazeera said it held the Iraqi authorities responsible for the safety of Aljazeera staff in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq.”
Plame Scandal Follow-up
A federal judge ordered a reporter held for civil contempt on Monday and ruled that journalists at NBC News and Time magazine must testify in the investigation into whether the Bush administration illegally leaked a covert CIA officer's name to the media. U.S. District Chief Judge Thomas Hogan rejected requests to quash subpoenas to Tim Russert of NBC's "Meet the Press" and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine for violating their First Amendment rights.
The subpoenas, issued by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, require that Russert and Cooper appear before a federal grand jury to testify about conversations with an unidentified government official who was a confidential source. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=615&e=3&u=/nm/20040809/pl_nm/bush_leak_dc
Clinton on Kerry: On a national radio interview. ‘He was a terrific senator; he should talk about his record. He supported welfare reform, balanced budget amendment, putting more police on the street, etc…’
Gads. Some liberal.
Observing the U.S. Election: Very needed.
A team of international observers will monitor the presidential election in November, according to the U.S. State Department.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe was invited to monitor the election by the State Department. The observers will come from the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights.
It will be the first time such a team has been present for a U.S. presidential election.
"The U.S. is obliged to invite us, as all OSCE countries should," spokeswoman Urdur Gunnarsdottir said. "It's not legally binding, but it's a political commitment. They signed a document 10 years ago to ask OSCE to observe elections." http://cnn.allpolitics.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=CNN.com+-+International+team+to+monitor+presidential+election+-+Aug+8%2C+2004&expire=-1&urlID=11261375&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2004%2FALLPOLITICS%2F08%2F08%2Finternational.observers%2F&partnerID=2001
On the Democratic Platform: Stephen Zunes of ZNet:
Even the Republican Party under Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 did not openly challenge such basic international principles as the illegitimacy of invading a sovereign nation because of unsubstantiated claims they might some day be a potential security threat.
Yet not only have Senators John Kerry and John Edwards continued to defend their support of the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, the 2004 Democratic platform complains that the administration “did not send sufficient forces to accomplish the mission.” The most direct challenge to Bush administration policies in Iraq contained in the platform is its alleged failures to adequately equip American forces.
The only thing the 2004 Democratic Party platform could offer opponents of the war is a sentence which acknowledges “People of good will disagree about whether America should have gone to war in Iraq.” As the Los Angeles Times editorialized, “Indeed they do. That is why we have elections, and it would have been nice if the opposition party had the guts to actually oppose it.”
A Platform in Defense of Unilateralism
While the foreign policy segments of this year’s Democratic Party platform had some positive elements, there are serious problems not only in what it did not say, but also in much of what it did say.
For example, the platform justifies the ongoing U.S. military occupation of Iraq by claiming “having gone to war, we cannot afford to fail at peace. We cannot allow a failed state in Iraq that inevitably would become a haven for terrorists and a destabilizing force in the Middle East.” This ignores the fact that Iraq’s instability and the influx of foreign terrorists is a direct consequence of the U.S. invasion and occupation authorized and supported by the Democratic Party’s presidential and vice presidential nominees.
----
For example, the platform calls for strategies to “end the Castro regime as soon as possible and enable the Cuban people to take their rightful place in the democratic community of the Americas.” Significantly, there are no similar calls anywhere in the platform to end any of the scores of non-socialist dictatorships currently in power throughout the world or of enabling the people oppressed by these regimes—many of which receive significant U.S. military and economic support—to join the democratic community of nations. http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0408shift.html
More on Sibel Edmonds, FBI translator, whistle blower. Ritt Goldstein
… perhaps the most explosive charge she makes concerns information the bureau was said to have received four months prior to September 2001, information warning of the September 11 plan. While both President Bush and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice have repeatedly denied that there was any indication that airplanes would be used as a terror weapon, Edmonds revealed that in April 2001 the bureau had information that bin Laden was "planning a major terrorist attack in the United States targeting four to five major cities"; "the attack was going to involve airplanes"; some of those involved were already "in the United States"; and the attack would be "in a few months". Edmonds states that the information came from "a long-term FBI informant/asset" and that it was sent to the "special agent in charge of counter-terrorism" in Washington. She also charges that after September 11 "the agents and translators were told to 'keep quiet' regarding this issue". Further to that, she writes, "The Phoenix Memo, received months prior to the [September 11] attacks, specifically warned FBI HQ of pilot training and their possible link to terrorist activities against the United States. Four months prior to the terrorist attacks the Iranian asset provided the FBI with specific information regarding the 'use of airplanes', 'major US cities as targets', and 'Osama bin Laden issuing the order' ... "All this information went to the same place: FBI Headquarters in Washington, DC, and the FBI Washington Field Office, in Washington DC. Yet your report claims that not having a central place where all intelligence could be gathered as one of the main factors in our intelligence failure. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FH05Aa03.html
Jobs : Follow-Up: The quality of the new jobs. From the NY Times (Edmund Andrews) and the LA Times (Warren Vieth):
But a growing number of analysts say the evidence increasingly suggests that the current recovery has indeed been tilted toward lower-paying jobs. Industries ranked in the bottom fifth for wages and salaries have added 477,000 jobs since January, while industries in the top fifth for wages had no increase at all, according to an analysis of Labor Department payroll data by Economy.com, an economic research firm.
"Since employment peaked, we've lost many more higher-paying jobs than lower-paying jobs,'' said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com. "In recovery, we've created more lower-paying jobs than higher-paying jobs." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/09/business/09jobs.html
"Supposedly there's a whole mess of new jobs being created, but they're not jobs we can live with," said Anderson, a 50-year-old factory worker whose career in manufacturing will come to an end today."Look at this," he said, leafing through a stack of recent job postings. "They're paying $9 an hour. Five years ago, it would have paid maybe $18…. This one is paying $12…. Here's one for $8.75…. These are the great new jobs that are opening up in Green Bay."Anderson's frustration reflects a characteristic of the current recovery. Yes, the U.S. economy is creating new jobs. But to some of the workers who have been displaced during the downturn of the last three years, the new jobs look a lot worse than their old jobs.Since December, Wisconsin has recovered all of the jobs it lost over the previous three years, turning a 76,000-job deficit into a net gain of 700.But not all jobs are created equal. Although the lion's share of Wisconsin's losses were in the high-paying manufacturing sector, most of the gains have been in service industries with widely varying pay scales, some quite low. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/2004/la-na-wisconsin9aug09,1,1714529.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Kuttner and Election Nightmares
Bob Kuttner writes of 3 possible alarms, Florida again having a fraud problem, the touch screen problem bearing ‘fruit, and Kerry winning the popular vote but losing the electoral count. His remedies:
Remedy No. 1: International Election Observers
Jimmy Carter should assemble a team of international human-rights observers to monitor our shaky democracy. At least the cruder forms of ballot theft and intimidation would be tamped down.
Remedy No. 2: Ballot Boxes
Until they get the bugs out of electronic voting, we should go back to old-fashioned paper ballots. Everyone can figure them out, and they leave a perfect paper trail for recounts. Much of the democratic world still uses them.
Remedy No. 3: Abolish the Electoral College and Be a True Democracy
Alas, fat chance.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=8255
-R
Sunday, August 08, 2004
The Bush Administration ‘Outs’ Another Agent
This time the Administration blew the cover of a double agent, one Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, the alleged source of info that led to the latest alert concerning financial institutions in N.Y. and D.C.
Reuters:
"The New York Times published a story on Monday saying U.S. officials had disclosed that a man arrested secretly in Pakistan was the source of the bulk of information leading to the security alerts. The newspaper named him as Khan, although it did not say how it had learned his name. U.S. officials subsequently confirmed the name to other news organizations on Monday morning. None of the reports mentioned that Khan was working under cover at the time, helping to catch al Qaeda suspects."
Essentially, Khan had been apprehended by Pakistani military intelligence and had been turned into a double agent, and had been employed to penetrate al-Qaeda cells. Then, a “senior Administration official” told the Reuters reporters his name, ending his employ and apparently forcing the British to make premature (still lacking evidence) arrests of an al-Qaeda cell.
It’s not clear as to the motivation for the outing, but it’s clearly another example of their incompetence. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=2&u=/nm/20040806/ts_nm/security_dc
We ticked off our allies:
It turns out that both the United Kingdom and Pakistan are extremely angry with Bush for going public with the details gleaned from the computers of Khan and Ghailani.
Sunday’s programs picked it up.
Blitzer then revealed that he had discussed the Khan case with US National Security Adviser Condaleeza Rice on background. He reported that she had admitted that the Bush administration had in fact revealed Khan's name to the press. She said she did not know if Khan was a double agent working for the Pakistani government. (!!!) www.juancole.com
National Preparedness Month
Clear your calendar for this one. Its officially for September, timed for the Republican convention. The kick-off event will be a preparedness quiz in the patriotic Parade magazine on August 29.
Overview
Throughout September 2004, the US Department of Homeland Security, American Red Cross, American Prepared Campaign, the National Association of Broadcasters, the US Department of Education and other partners, will host a series of events to highlight the importance of citizen emergency preparedness.
During National Preparedness Month, coalition partners will promote the basic steps all Americans can take to prepare for emergencies through a variety of activities. http://www.gsa.gov/Portal/gsa/ep/contentView.do?pageTypeId=8199&channelId=-13260&P=WCA&contentId=16903&contentType=GSA_BASIC
Jobs Report: The facts, if you missed it, were that 32,000 jobs were created in July and that June’s number was revised downward from 112,000 to 78,000. We need to create about 150,000 each month to keep up with population growth. And this doesn’t measure the growing number who are either underemployed or out of the labor market.
If there were no election, we’d be focused on our stagnant economy and fretting as to what our children / grandchildren will find in a wilted American economy. But since it’s an election year, it’s “good news”, i.e. bad news for Bush.
Breaking with Bush: More rumblings from the “moderate” Republicans. John McCain defends Kerry against the latest swift boat nonsense, and Thomas Kean of the 8/11 Commission issued an unexpected statement:
The chairman of the Sept. 11 commission said on Wednesday that voters in November's presidential election should weigh how President Bush and Senator John Kerry respond to the commission's final report in determining how they vote. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/05/politics/campaign/05panel.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position
What’s Happening, Iraq: Reports of escalated fighting. Again, our military sought to capture Mahdi army leaders and to capture al-Sadr, the Shi’ite cleric-leader.
Related: PM Allawi makes like Saddam. This is The New Iraq …kinda like the old, no?. From The Oregonian
From his post several stories above ground level, he watched as men in plainclothes beat blindfolded and bound prisoners in the enclosed grounds of the Iraqi Interior Ministry.
He immediately radioed for help. Soon after, a team of Oregon Army National Guard soldiers swept into the yard and found dozens of Iraqi detainees who said they had been beaten, starved and deprived of water for three days.
In a nearby building, the soldiers counted dozens more prisoners and what appeared to be torture devices -- metal rods, rubber hoses, electrical wires and bottles of chemicals. Many of the Iraqis, including one identified as a 14-year-old boy, had fresh welts and bruises across their back and legs.
The soldiers disarmed the Iraqi jailers, moved the prisoners into the shade, released their handcuffs and administered first aid. Lt. Col. Daniel Hendrickson of Albany, Ore., the highest ranking American at the scene, radioed for instructions. http://oregonlive.com/special/oregonian/iraq/index.ssf?/base/front_page/109196614530740.xml
And a rather bizarre turn, as the Chilabis are in trouble. Arrest warrants were issued for former Pentagon favorite Ahmed (counterfeiting) and his nephew Salem (murder). Yet, Salem remains head of the war crimes tribunal charged with trying Saddam et al.
Bob Herbert’s Outrage The New York Times op ed. columnist revs up:
No one has a clue how this madness will end. As G.I.'s continue to fight and die in Iraq, the national leaders who put them needlessly in harm's way are now flashing orange alert signals to convey that Al Qaeda - the enemy that should have been in our sights all along - is poised to strike us again.
It's as if the government were following a script from the theater of the absurd. Instead of rallying our allies to a coordinated and relentless campaign against Al Qaeda after Sept. 11, we insulted the allies, gave them the back of our hand and arrogantly sent the bulk of our forces into the sand trap of Iraq.
Now we're in a fix. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/05/politics/campaign/05panel.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position
Polls: In sum, Kerry’s small bump from the convention has him at least temporarily in the lead; Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Michigan are consistently Kerry’s; he needs Ohio or Florida. But, it’s only August.
National:
The Economist: Kerry 48 – 43%
Democracy Corps: Kerry 49 - 44%
Time Magazine: Kerry: 48 - 43% (4% for Nader)
Investors Business Daily: Kerry 45- 42%
State polls:
California: Kerry 51%, Bush 40% (Field Poll)
Michigan: Kerry 52%, Bush 41% (Survey USA)
New Hampshire: Kerry 49%, Bush 42% (American Research Group)
Florida: Kerry 48%, Bush 48% (Strategic Vision)
Florida: Kerry 50%, Bush 43% (American Research Group)
Pennsylvania: Kerry 51%, Bush 43% (Strategic Vision
New Jersey: Kerry 49%, Bush 36% (Quinnipiac)
Ohio: Bush 49%, Kerry 45% (Strategic Vision)
Minnesota: Kerry 49%, Bush 45% (Strategic Vision)
Iowa: Kerry 49%, Bush 46% (Strategic Vision)
Arkansas: Bush 46% Kerry 46% (Rasmussen)
New Mexico: Kerry 50% Bush 43% Badnarik 5%(Rasmussen)
Michigan: Kerry 50%, Bush 44% (Rasmussen)
Oregon: Kerry 47%, Bush 41% (Rasmussen)
New Jersey: Kerry 51%, Bush 38% (Rasmussen)
Florida: Kerry 47%, Bush 45% (Rasmussen)
Pennsylvania: Kerry 46%, Bush 45% (Rasmussen)
New Jersey: Kerry 52%, Bush 32% (Star-Ledger/Eagleton)
Ohio: Bush 47%, Kerry 44% (Columbus Dispatch)
Prozac, Prozac Everywhere. From the Guardian (GB)
It should make us happy, but environmentalists are deeply alarmed: Prozac, the anti-depression drug, is being taken in such large quantities that it can now be found in Britain's drinking water.
Environmentalists are calling for an urgent investigation into the revelations, describing the build-up of the antidepressant as 'hidden mass medication'. The Environment Agency has revealed that Prozac is building up both in river systems and groundwater used for drinking supplies.
Experts say that Prozac finds its way into rivers and water systems from treated sewage water. Some believe the drugs could affect their reproductive ability.
European studies have also expressed disquiet over the impact of pharmaceuticals building up in the environment, warning that an effect on wildlife and human health 'cannot be excluded'.
'It is extremely unlikely that there is a risk, as such drugs are excreted in very low concentrations,' a DWI spokesman said. 'Advanced treatment processes installed for pesticide removal are effective in removing drug residues,' he added. http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,11381,1278793,00.html
-R
This time the Administration blew the cover of a double agent, one Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, the alleged source of info that led to the latest alert concerning financial institutions in N.Y. and D.C.
Reuters:
"The New York Times published a story on Monday saying U.S. officials had disclosed that a man arrested secretly in Pakistan was the source of the bulk of information leading to the security alerts. The newspaper named him as Khan, although it did not say how it had learned his name. U.S. officials subsequently confirmed the name to other news organizations on Monday morning. None of the reports mentioned that Khan was working under cover at the time, helping to catch al Qaeda suspects."
Essentially, Khan had been apprehended by Pakistani military intelligence and had been turned into a double agent, and had been employed to penetrate al-Qaeda cells. Then, a “senior Administration official” told the Reuters reporters his name, ending his employ and apparently forcing the British to make premature (still lacking evidence) arrests of an al-Qaeda cell.
It’s not clear as to the motivation for the outing, but it’s clearly another example of their incompetence. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=2&u=/nm/20040806/ts_nm/security_dc
We ticked off our allies:
It turns out that both the United Kingdom and Pakistan are extremely angry with Bush for going public with the details gleaned from the computers of Khan and Ghailani.
Sunday’s programs picked it up.
Blitzer then revealed that he had discussed the Khan case with US National Security Adviser Condaleeza Rice on background. He reported that she had admitted that the Bush administration had in fact revealed Khan's name to the press. She said she did not know if Khan was a double agent working for the Pakistani government. (!!!) www.juancole.com
National Preparedness Month
Clear your calendar for this one. Its officially for September, timed for the Republican convention. The kick-off event will be a preparedness quiz in the patriotic Parade magazine on August 29.
Overview
Throughout September 2004, the US Department of Homeland Security, American Red Cross, American Prepared Campaign, the National Association of Broadcasters, the US Department of Education and other partners, will host a series of events to highlight the importance of citizen emergency preparedness.
During National Preparedness Month, coalition partners will promote the basic steps all Americans can take to prepare for emergencies through a variety of activities. http://www.gsa.gov/Portal/gsa/ep/contentView.do?pageTypeId=8199&channelId=-13260&P=WCA&contentId=16903&contentType=GSA_BASIC
Jobs Report: The facts, if you missed it, were that 32,000 jobs were created in July and that June’s number was revised downward from 112,000 to 78,000. We need to create about 150,000 each month to keep up with population growth. And this doesn’t measure the growing number who are either underemployed or out of the labor market.
If there were no election, we’d be focused on our stagnant economy and fretting as to what our children / grandchildren will find in a wilted American economy. But since it’s an election year, it’s “good news”, i.e. bad news for Bush.
Breaking with Bush: More rumblings from the “moderate” Republicans. John McCain defends Kerry against the latest swift boat nonsense, and Thomas Kean of the 8/11 Commission issued an unexpected statement:
The chairman of the Sept. 11 commission said on Wednesday that voters in November's presidential election should weigh how President Bush and Senator John Kerry respond to the commission's final report in determining how they vote. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/05/politics/campaign/05panel.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position
What’s Happening, Iraq: Reports of escalated fighting. Again, our military sought to capture Mahdi army leaders and to capture al-Sadr, the Shi’ite cleric-leader.
Related: PM Allawi makes like Saddam. This is The New Iraq …kinda like the old, no?. From The Oregonian
From his post several stories above ground level, he watched as men in plainclothes beat blindfolded and bound prisoners in the enclosed grounds of the Iraqi Interior Ministry.
He immediately radioed for help. Soon after, a team of Oregon Army National Guard soldiers swept into the yard and found dozens of Iraqi detainees who said they had been beaten, starved and deprived of water for three days.
In a nearby building, the soldiers counted dozens more prisoners and what appeared to be torture devices -- metal rods, rubber hoses, electrical wires and bottles of chemicals. Many of the Iraqis, including one identified as a 14-year-old boy, had fresh welts and bruises across their back and legs.
The soldiers disarmed the Iraqi jailers, moved the prisoners into the shade, released their handcuffs and administered first aid. Lt. Col. Daniel Hendrickson of Albany, Ore., the highest ranking American at the scene, radioed for instructions. http://oregonlive.com/special/oregonian/iraq/index.ssf?/base/front_page/109196614530740.xml
And a rather bizarre turn, as the Chilabis are in trouble. Arrest warrants were issued for former Pentagon favorite Ahmed (counterfeiting) and his nephew Salem (murder). Yet, Salem remains head of the war crimes tribunal charged with trying Saddam et al.
Bob Herbert’s Outrage The New York Times op ed. columnist revs up:
No one has a clue how this madness will end. As G.I.'s continue to fight and die in Iraq, the national leaders who put them needlessly in harm's way are now flashing orange alert signals to convey that Al Qaeda - the enemy that should have been in our sights all along - is poised to strike us again.
It's as if the government were following a script from the theater of the absurd. Instead of rallying our allies to a coordinated and relentless campaign against Al Qaeda after Sept. 11, we insulted the allies, gave them the back of our hand and arrogantly sent the bulk of our forces into the sand trap of Iraq.
Now we're in a fix. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/05/politics/campaign/05panel.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position
Polls: In sum, Kerry’s small bump from the convention has him at least temporarily in the lead; Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Michigan are consistently Kerry’s; he needs Ohio or Florida. But, it’s only August.
National:
The Economist: Kerry 48 – 43%
Democracy Corps: Kerry 49 - 44%
Time Magazine: Kerry: 48 - 43% (4% for Nader)
Investors Business Daily: Kerry 45- 42%
State polls:
California: Kerry 51%, Bush 40% (Field Poll)
Michigan: Kerry 52%, Bush 41% (Survey USA)
New Hampshire: Kerry 49%, Bush 42% (American Research Group)
Florida: Kerry 48%, Bush 48% (Strategic Vision)
Florida: Kerry 50%, Bush 43% (American Research Group)
Pennsylvania: Kerry 51%, Bush 43% (Strategic Vision
New Jersey: Kerry 49%, Bush 36% (Quinnipiac)
Ohio: Bush 49%, Kerry 45% (Strategic Vision)
Minnesota: Kerry 49%, Bush 45% (Strategic Vision)
Iowa: Kerry 49%, Bush 46% (Strategic Vision)
Arkansas: Bush 46% Kerry 46% (Rasmussen)
New Mexico: Kerry 50% Bush 43% Badnarik 5%(Rasmussen)
Michigan: Kerry 50%, Bush 44% (Rasmussen)
Oregon: Kerry 47%, Bush 41% (Rasmussen)
New Jersey: Kerry 51%, Bush 38% (Rasmussen)
Florida: Kerry 47%, Bush 45% (Rasmussen)
Pennsylvania: Kerry 46%, Bush 45% (Rasmussen)
New Jersey: Kerry 52%, Bush 32% (Star-Ledger/Eagleton)
Ohio: Bush 47%, Kerry 44% (Columbus Dispatch)
Prozac, Prozac Everywhere. From the Guardian (GB)
It should make us happy, but environmentalists are deeply alarmed: Prozac, the anti-depression drug, is being taken in such large quantities that it can now be found in Britain's drinking water.
Environmentalists are calling for an urgent investigation into the revelations, describing the build-up of the antidepressant as 'hidden mass medication'. The Environment Agency has revealed that Prozac is building up both in river systems and groundwater used for drinking supplies.
Experts say that Prozac finds its way into rivers and water systems from treated sewage water. Some believe the drugs could affect their reproductive ability.
European studies have also expressed disquiet over the impact of pharmaceuticals building up in the environment, warning that an effect on wildlife and human health 'cannot be excluded'.
'It is extremely unlikely that there is a risk, as such drugs are excreted in very low concentrations,' a DWI spokesman said. 'Advanced treatment processes installed for pesticide removal are effective in removing drug residues,' he added. http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,11381,1278793,00.html
-R
