Friday, November 12, 2004
From the Mouths:
“As you have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war. The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians. In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions." - AG Nominee Alberto Gonzales, to Bush
"The more Maureen Loud [sic] gets on 'Meet the Press' and writes those columns, the redder these states get. I mean, they don't want some high brow hussy from New York City explaining to them that they're idiots and telling them that they're stupid." –Zell Miller, denouncing NY Times op ed columnist Maureen Dowd
Health Care and Retirees. Haunting story about companies suing retirees.
Many companies have already cut back company-paid health-care coverage for retirees from their salaried staffs. But until recently, employers generally were barred from touching unionized retirees' benefits because they are spelled out in labor contracts. Now, some are taking aggressive steps to pare those benefits as well, including going to court.
In the past two years, employers have sued union retirees across the country. In the suits, they ask judges to rule that no matter what labor contracts say, they have a right to change the benefits. Some companies also argue that contract references to "lifetime" coverage don't mean the lifetime of the retirees, but the life of the labor contract. Since the contracts expired many years ago, the promises, they say, have expired too.
They have little to lose by trying. Typically, as such legal cases drag on, the employers save money as some of the retirees, who have to pay growing portions of their health-care costs, forgo costly care, drop out of the plans or die. If companies lose in court, the worst that happens is they have to resume paying benefits. They don't face punitive damages or penalties. And they may not have to resume benefits for those retirees who dropped out of the health plans.
The retirees, by contrast, often find themselves in a bind -- unsure of their recourse and facing, as they age, the court system's typical long waits for legal resolution. The U.S. Labor Department is of little help. Retired workers "aren't our constituents anymore," says a spokeswoman for the department.
Unions often do go to bat for retirees. The United Auto Workers and the Steelworkers have been the most active in filing suits to protect retirees whose benefits a company has unilaterally changed. But unions aren't allowed to strike or file unfair-labor-practice complaints on behalf of retirees.
Employers that want to cut union retirees' health coverage or make retirees pay a larger portion could just impose changes and wait to be sued. But by suing first, they stand a chance of choosing the jurisdiction.
Employers that sue retirees name one person or a handful. They may choose people at random, retirees who have complained, or people who were active in the union that negotiated the contract at issue. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110003711129469246,00.html?mod=home%5Fpage%5Fone%5Fus
Tanks Sent to Anti-War Protest Really! An LA protest with a small number merely chanting, and two tanks appeared. And, yet, no media coverage. There is a confirming video. I thought Tiananmen Square was in China.
At 7:50 PM two armored tanks showed up at an anti-war protest in front of the federal building in Westwood. The tanks circled the block twice, the second time parking themselves in the street and directly in front of the area where most of the protesters were gathered. Enraged, some of the people attempted to block the tanks, but police quickly cleared the street. The people continued to protest the presence of the tanks, but about ten minutes the tanks drove off. It is unclear as to why the tanks were deployed to this location. http://www.la.indymedia.org/news/2004/11/118865.php
Nuclear Power Industry Hopeful of Revival- Wall Street Journal:
With the re-election of President Bush, the nuclear power industry thinks the next two to three years may be the time to push hard for regulatory approval of new nuclear power plants, the Wall Street Journal reported. DOE has told two separate power consortiums that it will share the expected $500-million cost to seek approval for new reactors. The groups said they hope to win NRC approval by 2009.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109996476958968447,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one
Election Fraud: Some growing media interest, though not the NY Times. Aaron Brown did a news segment that was less dismissive than Peter Jennings. The Boston Phoenix covers it:
BUSH HAS, at the moment, won Ohio by 136,483 votes, but a number of considerations throw that lead into serious doubt. For one thing, that number will likely diminish when the state’s approximately 155,000 provisional ballots are processed. Most of those who had to use provisional ballots probably were first-time voters whose names had not made it onto their precinct lists, observers say, and first-timers went 54-46 for Kerry in Ohio, according to exit polls.
Another 92,672 votes were discarded, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, mostly due to now-familiar problems with punch-card ballots. Those punch-card machines are — surprise, surprise — predominantly used in urban areas that tend to vote Democratic. In Cuyahoga County — two-to-one Kerry country — a voter reported misaligned holes and out-of-order pages on the punch ballots to Election Protection, a nonpartisan coalition of organizations led by People for the American Way Foundation, which was monitoring elections in select states, including Ohio.
Punch cards also probably slowed down the voting process, suggests Carlo LoParo, spokesperson for the Ohio secretary of state, as voters with memories of Florida made super-extra-sure to remove the chads they produce completely. "People were a little more methodical, making sure they didn’t leave any hanging chads," agrees Dan Trevas, communications director for the Ohio Democratic Party.
But wait — wasn’t the Help America Vote Act of 2002 supposed to help rid states of these machines? Why, yes — in fact, Ohio received $133 million from the federal government specifically to replace those old clunkers with new DRE and optical-scan machines. The state even contracted with venders. But then Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell — a Republican — had a change of heart.http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/other_stories/multi-page/documents/04256171.asp
And, Keith Olbermann soldiers on:
John Kerry or no John Kerry, there could still be recounts in Ohio and New Hampshire— courtesy of the two candidates who got far more grief than votes during the presidential campaign.
David Cobb of the Green Party told a California radio station late yesterday afternoon that he is “quite likely to be demanding a recount in Ohio,” with a final decision to be reached and announced during the day
The New Hampshire Assistant Attorney General, meanwhile, told us at Countdown that negotiations are ongoing with Ralph Nader, who at a news conference yesterday not only demanded a recount in a minimum of four districts, but also added another bizarre touch to the proceedings by launching into a brief but surprisingly high-quality Richard Nixon impression. In any event, if Nader and Cobb are at the edges, questions about Ohio moved back into the mainstream yesterday with another cogent article in The Cincinnati Enquirer. The rationale for the bizarre “lockdown” of the vote-counting venue in Warren County on election night suddenly broke down when it was contradicted by spokespersons from the FBI and Ohio’s primary homeland security official.
County Emergency Services Director Frank Young said last week that in a face-to-face meeting with an FBI agent, he was warned that Warren County, outside Cincinnati, faced a “terrorist threat.” County Commissioners President Pat South amplified, insisting to us at Countdown that her jurisdiction had received a series of memos from Homeland Security about the threat. “These memos were sent out statewide, not just to Warren County, and they included a lot of planning tools and resources to use for election day security.
“In a face to face meeting between the FBI and our director of Emergency Services,” Ms. South continued, “we were informed that on a scale from 1 to 10, the tri-state area of Southwest Ohio was ranked at a high 8 to a low 9 in terms of security risk. Warren County in particular, was rated at 10.”
But the Bureau says it issued no such warning.
“The FBI did not notify anyone in Warren County of any specific terrorist threat to Warren County before Election Day,” FBI spokesman Michael Brooks told Enquirer reporters Erica Solvig and Dan Horn. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/
Kerry Position:
Dan Hoffheimer, the statewide counsel for the Kerry campaign, said they are not trying to challenge the election but are only carrying out Kerry's promise to make sure that all the votes in Ohio are counted.
"We're not expecting to change the outcome of the election," Hoffheimer said.
In unofficial returns, Bush outpolled Kerry by 136,000 votes in Ohio.
Hoffheimer said the goal is to identify any voting problems and quell doubts about the legitimacy of the Ohio election being raised on the Internet. http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/state/10152922.htmI
Official Word from the Times: No problemo! Amazing how they all but ignored the disenfranchisement, dirty tricks, etc. and now pronounce the election on the up and up.
In the space of seven days, an online market of dark ideas surrounding last week's presidential election took root and multiplied.
But while the widely read universe of Web logs was often blamed for the swift propagation of faulty analyses, the blogosphere, as it has come to be known, spread the rumors so fast that experts were soon able to debunk them, rather than allowing them to linger and feed conspiracy theories. Within days of the first rumors of a stolen election, in fact, the most popular theories were being proved wrong - though many were still reluctant to let them go. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/12/politics/12theory.html?hp&ex=1100322000&en=bef1453564cd6e4e&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Appointments: Gonzales. So, is he worse than Ashcroft? The Abu Ghraib-Guantanamo memo man who trashed Geneva infuriated GOPers John Warner, Lindsey Graham and John McCain. And, he was counsel for Enron, for a time. Sounds like our kind of guy!
Democrats Comment: Still no backbone?
"I think he's a pretty solid guy...If you had said to me six months ago I can have Gonzales or Ashcroft, it wouldn't have been a hard choice." – Joe Biden
We will have to review his record very carefully, but I can tell you already he's a better candidate than John Ashcroft." –Chuck Schumer
Of less import, but of at least marginal interest is the reportedly imminent naming of Dr. W. David Hager to run the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee. Apparently, the committee has not met for more than two years, during which time its charter lapsed. As a result, the Bush Administration must fill all eleven positions with new members. This position does not require Congressional approval.
[The FDA’s Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee makes crucial decisions on matters relating to drugs used in the practice of obstetrics, gynecology and related specialties, including hormone therapy, contraception, treatment for infertility, and medical alternatives to surgical procedures for sterilization and pregnancy termination.]
Hager is the author of “As Jesus Cared for Women: Restoring Women Then and Now.” The book blends biblical accounts of Christ healing women with case studies from Hager’s practice. His views of reproductive health care are far outside the mainstream for reproductive technology.
Hager is a practicing OB/GYN who describes himself as “pro-life” and refuses to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women.
In the book Hager wrote with his wife, entitled “Stress and the Woman’s Body,” he suggests that women who suffer from premenstrual syndrome should seek help from reading the bible and praying.
What’s Happening, Iraq:
Fallujah: The military try to put on a success face, trumpeting their advance. But, since we’ve been hearing about this attack for almost 2 months, it’s no surprise that a large percentage of the population, including the fighters, have left. Today’s news is of widespread attacks elsewhere, especially in Mosul, where police stations were overrun and looted. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/12/international/middleeast/12mosul.html?oref=login&pagewanted=all
Naomi Klein has a take:
In another demonstration of their commitment to freedom, the first goal of the U.S. soldiers in Fallujah was to ambush the city's main hospital. Why? Apparently because it was the source of the "rumours" about high civilian casualties the last time U.S. troops laid siege to Fallujah, sparking outrage in Iraq and across the Arab world. "It's a centre of propaganda," an unnamed senior American officer told The New York Times. Without doctors to count the dead, the outrage would be presumably be muted – except that, of course, the attacks on hospitals have sparked their own outrage, further jeopardizing the legitimacy of the upcoming elections.
According to The New York Times, the Fallujah General Hospital was easy to capture, since the doctors and patients put up no resistance. There was, however, one injury, "an Iraqi soldier who accidentally discharged his Kalashnikov rifle, injuring his lower leg."
I think that means he shot himself in the foot. He's not the only one. http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/20459
Casualties Fuzzy math? 69 wounded or 227?
Eighteen U.S. troops have been killed and another 69 wounded in this week's offensive to take control of the rebel-held Iraqi city Falluja, a senior U.S. Marine Corps commander said on Thursday.
A spokeswoman at the U.S. military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, the usual destination for seriously wounded U.S. troops stationed in Iraq or Afghanistan, said 102 Americans arrived from Iraq in two plane loads on Thursday. They joined 125 wounded troops who arrived there from Monday to Wednesday. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=3&u=/nm/20041111/ts_nm/iraq_falluja_killed_dc
Meanwhile, tragic and humbling for Allawi to have relatives kidnapped.
More Election Post-Mortems
Blame it on gay marriage? Laura Conaway, Village Voice
Maybe you're not willing to blame John Kerry's statistically narrow defeat on the 11 state initiatives banning same-sex marriage. Go ahead, wrangle the numbers until you reach a rosier conclusion. Then ask yourself this: If you voted for Kerry, or at least against George Bush, wouldn't you have perhaps preferred that the gay marriage question come up some other time, any other time?
To a point, I can sympathize. In 2000, I certainly thought Ralph Nader should have picked some other time. His run seemed to me quixotic and immoral, as did the votes of almost all his supporters. The whole enterprise was self-indulgent and doomed, and the Naderites should just have come off it. They didn't, and it changed the immediate fate of the free world.
You could say the very same about gay people's desire to marry.
Except that we're not talking about a protest vote for a minor candidate. We're talking about full citizenship for one of this nation's most denigrated minorities. http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0445/conaway.php
Frank Rich: Enough talk about the Red States and moral values.
There's only one problem with the storyline proclaiming that the country swung to the right on cultural issues in 2004. Like so many other narratives that immediately calcify into our 24/7 media's conventional wisdom, it is fiction. Everything about the election results - and about American culture itself - confirms an inescapable reality: John Kerry's defeat notwithstanding, it's blue America, not red, that is inexorably winning the culture war, and by a landslide. Kerry voters who have been flagellating themselves since Election Day with a vengeance worthy of "The Passion of the Christ" should wake up and smell the Chardonnay.
The blue ascendancy is nearly as strong among Republicans as it is among Democrats. Those whose "moral values" are invested in cultural heroes like the accused loofah fetishist Bill O'Reilly and the self-gratifying drug consumer Rush Limbaugh are surely joking when they turn apoplectic over MTV. William Bennett's name is now as synonymous with Las Vegas as silicone. The Democrats' Ashton Kutcher is trumped by the Republicans' Britney Spears. Excess and vulgarity, as always, enjoy a vast, bipartisan constituency, and in a democracy no political party will ever stamp them out. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/arts/14rich.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=
Arctic and Global Warming: Good news? Hard to spin this one, but some are trying.
The polar route has clear attractions for shippers -- from Osaka, Japan, to Rotterdam, the Netherlands, a trip around the polar sea could save about two weeks on a 45-day voyage through the Suez or Panama Canals.
Yet the Arctic report also says a thaw may add complexities. The Northwest Passage through a maze of islands north of Canada, for instance, might become more clogged by icebergs if ice bridges blocking northern channels thaw out.
The report, by 250 scientists, says the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet partly because darker ground and water, once uncovered, soak up more heat than snow and ice. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=Z3MULXRXFK1SMCRBAEZSFFA?type=scienceNews&storyID=6771552&pageNumber=1
-R
“As you have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war. The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians. In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions." - AG Nominee Alberto Gonzales, to Bush
"The more Maureen Loud [sic] gets on 'Meet the Press' and writes those columns, the redder these states get. I mean, they don't want some high brow hussy from New York City explaining to them that they're idiots and telling them that they're stupid." –Zell Miller, denouncing NY Times op ed columnist Maureen Dowd
Health Care and Retirees. Haunting story about companies suing retirees.
Many companies have already cut back company-paid health-care coverage for retirees from their salaried staffs. But until recently, employers generally were barred from touching unionized retirees' benefits because they are spelled out in labor contracts. Now, some are taking aggressive steps to pare those benefits as well, including going to court.
In the past two years, employers have sued union retirees across the country. In the suits, they ask judges to rule that no matter what labor contracts say, they have a right to change the benefits. Some companies also argue that contract references to "lifetime" coverage don't mean the lifetime of the retirees, but the life of the labor contract. Since the contracts expired many years ago, the promises, they say, have expired too.
They have little to lose by trying. Typically, as such legal cases drag on, the employers save money as some of the retirees, who have to pay growing portions of their health-care costs, forgo costly care, drop out of the plans or die. If companies lose in court, the worst that happens is they have to resume paying benefits. They don't face punitive damages or penalties. And they may not have to resume benefits for those retirees who dropped out of the health plans.
The retirees, by contrast, often find themselves in a bind -- unsure of their recourse and facing, as they age, the court system's typical long waits for legal resolution. The U.S. Labor Department is of little help. Retired workers "aren't our constituents anymore," says a spokeswoman for the department.
Unions often do go to bat for retirees. The United Auto Workers and the Steelworkers have been the most active in filing suits to protect retirees whose benefits a company has unilaterally changed. But unions aren't allowed to strike or file unfair-labor-practice complaints on behalf of retirees.
Employers that want to cut union retirees' health coverage or make retirees pay a larger portion could just impose changes and wait to be sued. But by suing first, they stand a chance of choosing the jurisdiction.
Employers that sue retirees name one person or a handful. They may choose people at random, retirees who have complained, or people who were active in the union that negotiated the contract at issue. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110003711129469246,00.html?mod=home%5Fpage%5Fone%5Fus
Tanks Sent to Anti-War Protest Really! An LA protest with a small number merely chanting, and two tanks appeared. And, yet, no media coverage. There is a confirming video. I thought Tiananmen Square was in China.
At 7:50 PM two armored tanks showed up at an anti-war protest in front of the federal building in Westwood. The tanks circled the block twice, the second time parking themselves in the street and directly in front of the area where most of the protesters were gathered. Enraged, some of the people attempted to block the tanks, but police quickly cleared the street. The people continued to protest the presence of the tanks, but about ten minutes the tanks drove off. It is unclear as to why the tanks were deployed to this location. http://www.la.indymedia.org/news/2004/11/118865.php
Nuclear Power Industry Hopeful of Revival- Wall Street Journal:
With the re-election of President Bush, the nuclear power industry thinks the next two to three years may be the time to push hard for regulatory approval of new nuclear power plants, the Wall Street Journal reported. DOE has told two separate power consortiums that it will share the expected $500-million cost to seek approval for new reactors. The groups said they hope to win NRC approval by 2009.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109996476958968447,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one
Election Fraud: Some growing media interest, though not the NY Times. Aaron Brown did a news segment that was less dismissive than Peter Jennings. The Boston Phoenix covers it:
BUSH HAS, at the moment, won Ohio by 136,483 votes, but a number of considerations throw that lead into serious doubt. For one thing, that number will likely diminish when the state’s approximately 155,000 provisional ballots are processed. Most of those who had to use provisional ballots probably were first-time voters whose names had not made it onto their precinct lists, observers say, and first-timers went 54-46 for Kerry in Ohio, according to exit polls.
Another 92,672 votes were discarded, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, mostly due to now-familiar problems with punch-card ballots. Those punch-card machines are — surprise, surprise — predominantly used in urban areas that tend to vote Democratic. In Cuyahoga County — two-to-one Kerry country — a voter reported misaligned holes and out-of-order pages on the punch ballots to Election Protection, a nonpartisan coalition of organizations led by People for the American Way Foundation, which was monitoring elections in select states, including Ohio.
Punch cards also probably slowed down the voting process, suggests Carlo LoParo, spokesperson for the Ohio secretary of state, as voters with memories of Florida made super-extra-sure to remove the chads they produce completely. "People were a little more methodical, making sure they didn’t leave any hanging chads," agrees Dan Trevas, communications director for the Ohio Democratic Party.
But wait — wasn’t the Help America Vote Act of 2002 supposed to help rid states of these machines? Why, yes — in fact, Ohio received $133 million from the federal government specifically to replace those old clunkers with new DRE and optical-scan machines. The state even contracted with venders. But then Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell — a Republican — had a change of heart.http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/other_stories/multi-page/documents/04256171.asp
And, Keith Olbermann soldiers on:
John Kerry or no John Kerry, there could still be recounts in Ohio and New Hampshire— courtesy of the two candidates who got far more grief than votes during the presidential campaign.
David Cobb of the Green Party told a California radio station late yesterday afternoon that he is “quite likely to be demanding a recount in Ohio,” with a final decision to be reached and announced during the day
The New Hampshire Assistant Attorney General, meanwhile, told us at Countdown that negotiations are ongoing with Ralph Nader, who at a news conference yesterday not only demanded a recount in a minimum of four districts, but also added another bizarre touch to the proceedings by launching into a brief but surprisingly high-quality Richard Nixon impression. In any event, if Nader and Cobb are at the edges, questions about Ohio moved back into the mainstream yesterday with another cogent article in The Cincinnati Enquirer. The rationale for the bizarre “lockdown” of the vote-counting venue in Warren County on election night suddenly broke down when it was contradicted by spokespersons from the FBI and Ohio’s primary homeland security official.
County Emergency Services Director Frank Young said last week that in a face-to-face meeting with an FBI agent, he was warned that Warren County, outside Cincinnati, faced a “terrorist threat.” County Commissioners President Pat South amplified, insisting to us at Countdown that her jurisdiction had received a series of memos from Homeland Security about the threat. “These memos were sent out statewide, not just to Warren County, and they included a lot of planning tools and resources to use for election day security.
“In a face to face meeting between the FBI and our director of Emergency Services,” Ms. South continued, “we were informed that on a scale from 1 to 10, the tri-state area of Southwest Ohio was ranked at a high 8 to a low 9 in terms of security risk. Warren County in particular, was rated at 10.”
But the Bureau says it issued no such warning.
“The FBI did not notify anyone in Warren County of any specific terrorist threat to Warren County before Election Day,” FBI spokesman Michael Brooks told Enquirer reporters Erica Solvig and Dan Horn. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/
Kerry Position:
Dan Hoffheimer, the statewide counsel for the Kerry campaign, said they are not trying to challenge the election but are only carrying out Kerry's promise to make sure that all the votes in Ohio are counted.
"We're not expecting to change the outcome of the election," Hoffheimer said.
In unofficial returns, Bush outpolled Kerry by 136,000 votes in Ohio.
Hoffheimer said the goal is to identify any voting problems and quell doubts about the legitimacy of the Ohio election being raised on the Internet. http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/state/10152922.htmI
Official Word from the Times: No problemo! Amazing how they all but ignored the disenfranchisement, dirty tricks, etc. and now pronounce the election on the up and up.
In the space of seven days, an online market of dark ideas surrounding last week's presidential election took root and multiplied.
But while the widely read universe of Web logs was often blamed for the swift propagation of faulty analyses, the blogosphere, as it has come to be known, spread the rumors so fast that experts were soon able to debunk them, rather than allowing them to linger and feed conspiracy theories. Within days of the first rumors of a stolen election, in fact, the most popular theories were being proved wrong - though many were still reluctant to let them go. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/12/politics/12theory.html?hp&ex=1100322000&en=bef1453564cd6e4e&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Appointments: Gonzales. So, is he worse than Ashcroft? The Abu Ghraib-Guantanamo memo man who trashed Geneva infuriated GOPers John Warner, Lindsey Graham and John McCain. And, he was counsel for Enron, for a time. Sounds like our kind of guy!
Democrats Comment: Still no backbone?
"I think he's a pretty solid guy...If you had said to me six months ago I can have Gonzales or Ashcroft, it wouldn't have been a hard choice." – Joe Biden
We will have to review his record very carefully, but I can tell you already he's a better candidate than John Ashcroft." –Chuck Schumer
Of less import, but of at least marginal interest is the reportedly imminent naming of Dr. W. David Hager to run the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee. Apparently, the committee has not met for more than two years, during which time its charter lapsed. As a result, the Bush Administration must fill all eleven positions with new members. This position does not require Congressional approval.
[The FDA’s Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee makes crucial decisions on matters relating to drugs used in the practice of obstetrics, gynecology and related specialties, including hormone therapy, contraception, treatment for infertility, and medical alternatives to surgical procedures for sterilization and pregnancy termination.]
Hager is the author of “As Jesus Cared for Women: Restoring Women Then and Now.” The book blends biblical accounts of Christ healing women with case studies from Hager’s practice. His views of reproductive health care are far outside the mainstream for reproductive technology.
Hager is a practicing OB/GYN who describes himself as “pro-life” and refuses to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women.
In the book Hager wrote with his wife, entitled “Stress and the Woman’s Body,” he suggests that women who suffer from premenstrual syndrome should seek help from reading the bible and praying.
What’s Happening, Iraq:
Fallujah: The military try to put on a success face, trumpeting their advance. But, since we’ve been hearing about this attack for almost 2 months, it’s no surprise that a large percentage of the population, including the fighters, have left. Today’s news is of widespread attacks elsewhere, especially in Mosul, where police stations were overrun and looted. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/12/international/middleeast/12mosul.html?oref=login&pagewanted=all
Naomi Klein has a take:
In another demonstration of their commitment to freedom, the first goal of the U.S. soldiers in Fallujah was to ambush the city's main hospital. Why? Apparently because it was the source of the "rumours" about high civilian casualties the last time U.S. troops laid siege to Fallujah, sparking outrage in Iraq and across the Arab world. "It's a centre of propaganda," an unnamed senior American officer told The New York Times. Without doctors to count the dead, the outrage would be presumably be muted – except that, of course, the attacks on hospitals have sparked their own outrage, further jeopardizing the legitimacy of the upcoming elections.
According to The New York Times, the Fallujah General Hospital was easy to capture, since the doctors and patients put up no resistance. There was, however, one injury, "an Iraqi soldier who accidentally discharged his Kalashnikov rifle, injuring his lower leg."
I think that means he shot himself in the foot. He's not the only one. http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/20459
Casualties Fuzzy math? 69 wounded or 227?
Eighteen U.S. troops have been killed and another 69 wounded in this week's offensive to take control of the rebel-held Iraqi city Falluja, a senior U.S. Marine Corps commander said on Thursday.
A spokeswoman at the U.S. military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, the usual destination for seriously wounded U.S. troops stationed in Iraq or Afghanistan, said 102 Americans arrived from Iraq in two plane loads on Thursday. They joined 125 wounded troops who arrived there from Monday to Wednesday. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=3&u=/nm/20041111/ts_nm/iraq_falluja_killed_dc
Meanwhile, tragic and humbling for Allawi to have relatives kidnapped.
More Election Post-Mortems
Blame it on gay marriage? Laura Conaway, Village Voice
Maybe you're not willing to blame John Kerry's statistically narrow defeat on the 11 state initiatives banning same-sex marriage. Go ahead, wrangle the numbers until you reach a rosier conclusion. Then ask yourself this: If you voted for Kerry, or at least against George Bush, wouldn't you have perhaps preferred that the gay marriage question come up some other time, any other time?
To a point, I can sympathize. In 2000, I certainly thought Ralph Nader should have picked some other time. His run seemed to me quixotic and immoral, as did the votes of almost all his supporters. The whole enterprise was self-indulgent and doomed, and the Naderites should just have come off it. They didn't, and it changed the immediate fate of the free world.
You could say the very same about gay people's desire to marry.
Except that we're not talking about a protest vote for a minor candidate. We're talking about full citizenship for one of this nation's most denigrated minorities. http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0445/conaway.php
Frank Rich: Enough talk about the Red States and moral values.
There's only one problem with the storyline proclaiming that the country swung to the right on cultural issues in 2004. Like so many other narratives that immediately calcify into our 24/7 media's conventional wisdom, it is fiction. Everything about the election results - and about American culture itself - confirms an inescapable reality: John Kerry's defeat notwithstanding, it's blue America, not red, that is inexorably winning the culture war, and by a landslide. Kerry voters who have been flagellating themselves since Election Day with a vengeance worthy of "The Passion of the Christ" should wake up and smell the Chardonnay.
The blue ascendancy is nearly as strong among Republicans as it is among Democrats. Those whose "moral values" are invested in cultural heroes like the accused loofah fetishist Bill O'Reilly and the self-gratifying drug consumer Rush Limbaugh are surely joking when they turn apoplectic over MTV. William Bennett's name is now as synonymous with Las Vegas as silicone. The Democrats' Ashton Kutcher is trumped by the Republicans' Britney Spears. Excess and vulgarity, as always, enjoy a vast, bipartisan constituency, and in a democracy no political party will ever stamp them out. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/arts/14rich.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=
Arctic and Global Warming: Good news? Hard to spin this one, but some are trying.
The polar route has clear attractions for shippers -- from Osaka, Japan, to Rotterdam, the Netherlands, a trip around the polar sea could save about two weeks on a 45-day voyage through the Suez or Panama Canals.
Yet the Arctic report also says a thaw may add complexities. The Northwest Passage through a maze of islands north of Canada, for instance, might become more clogged by icebergs if ice bridges blocking northern channels thaw out.
The report, by 250 scientists, says the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet partly because darker ground and water, once uncovered, soak up more heat than snow and ice. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=Z3MULXRXFK1SMCRBAEZSFFA?type=scienceNews&storyID=6771552&pageNumber=1
-R
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Belated Apologies: …to all those that I misled in the final days when I predicted that Kerry would triumph. Normally someone who espouses ‘low expectations’ (such as advising my son to self-protect against Red Sox disappointments), I yielded to my hope for a dose of sanity. Maybe my judgment was skewed by the World Series result.
One Week Later: Are we Depressed? Dazed? Enraged? A multiplicity of emotions, for many of us. I certainly have been monitoring as to where I’m at.
I was talking last night with a student of mine who has two sons in the military- one in Iraq, one just back and, questionably, heading back. She described her partially deaf son serving as a ‘radio man’ near Baghdad, despite his hearing problem and his well-documented poor enunciation. She was aghast, “He, a ‘radio guy’ That’s so dumb!” That reference led us to the military’s shortage of body armor and humvees without armor, which led us to the Bush campaign accusing Kerry of ‘not supporting the troops and voting against body armor’ when it was the Administration that sent the troops horribly unprepared for the war…and Kerry’s failure to confront such…and…
The Energy, the Outrage. Palpable. Intact.
I've commented on the directing of that energy. While encouraging those with information about the election irregularities to keep at it, the basic direction seems clear- to build / support structures and institutions that will combat the Right’s control. That includes, but is not limited to, electoral politics. The Right took over many state legislatures and state houses in the past decades and that has to be combated. The Right’s control of the media must be contested. Aside from the specifics in the last blog, I’ll add that we should encourage George Soros to establish an alternative to Fox News.
The Cheating: Again, we probably won’t know if it was decisive. Not that they didn’t try. Aside from ripping up Democrat registrations, there was possible voter intimidation, plenty of suppression, a high ballot spoilage rate; a large number of provisional ballots; no availability of provisional ballots; military, absentee, and provisional ballots lost, not counted, and/or not allowed to be created; lack of voting booths in poor, minority and urban precincts in the swing states, and thus 3-9 hour lines… and many giving up, etc.
The only ‘mainstream journalist who’s followed the story the past week is Keith Olbermann. His Countdown on MSNBC has exposed a pattern of electoral fraud, especially in Florida and Ohio. Only there can you find actual investigations plus Michigan Rep. John Conyers calling for a full-scale investigation by the General Accounting Office. Olbermann’s legal commentator, Jonathan Turley from George Washington U., commented that a successful Kerry challenge was “not likely”, but “not impossible,” but with less chance if the candidate himself stays out. The former ESPN host extraordinaire, Olbermann has integrity and a temper, and would quit if tampered with. [He also had a marvelous blog for each of the debates on msnbc.com.]
A sensible political action would be to support his efforts, via a simple email to Olbermann@msnbc.com.
Kerry Says He’s Available. Get some perspective, John
Democrat John F. Kerry plans to use his Senate seat and long lists of supporters to remain a major voice in American politics despite losing the presidential race last Tuesday, and he is assessing the feasibility of trying again in 2008, friends and aides said yesterday.
Kerry will attend a post-election lame-duck Senate session that begins next week and has said he is "fired up" to play a highly visible role, the friends and aides said. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35224-2004Nov8.html
Electoral Post-Mortem:
Decisive Win? Yes, Bush got ‘more popular votes than any president in history.’ What a dumb claim. Who’s #2? Kerry, of course…followed by Reagan and Gore. So much for measuring population growth.
‘Decisive Electoral Margin’?: No, the second lowest since 1916, second only to 2000. Trivia: 3d lowest? 1916, Wilson over Charles Evan Hughes.
Bush's support among women increased by 5%, went up by 9 points among Latinos and increased by 7 points of those 60 and older. Most startling was his gain of 10 points among those with no high school education, typically a strong Democratic constituency.
Was it turnout of the Right that won for Bush? So many opinions. E.J. Dionne’s:
John Kerry was not defeated by the religious right. He was beaten by moderates who went -- reluctantly in many cases -- for President Bush. This will be hard for many Democrats to take. It's easier to salve those wounds by demonizing religious conservatives. But in the 2004 election, Democrats left votes on the table that could have created a Kerry majority.
Consider these findings from the network exit polls: About 38 percent of those who thought abortion should be legal in most cases went to Bush. Bush got 22 percent from voters who favored gay marriage and 52 percent among those who favor civil unions. Bush even managed 16 percent among voters who thought the president paid more attention to the interests of large corporations than to those of "ordinary Americans." A third of the voters who favored a government more active in solving problems went to Bush.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35437-2004Nov8.html
The World Responds: We don’t trust your economy. This bears following.
The U.S. has a current account deficit, a budget deficit and a president who appears unconcerned about dollar weakness," said Shahab Jalinoos, senior currency strategist at ABN AMRO. "No one can see any reason to buy the dollar at the moment."
The latest bout of dollar weakness began in the middle of last week as investors took the view the administration of re-elected President Bush would do little to alleviate the country's structural problems.
The budget deficit is about $427 billion, or 3.7 percent of gross domestic product, while the current account, the broadest measure of trade, hit a record $166.18 billion shortfall in the second quarter. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=businessNews&storyID=6745993
Arlen Specter Grovels: The incoming chair of the Judiciary Committee first tells Bush that he can’t nominate any supreme court nominees that are anti-Choice. After a short day of being savaged by the Right, he backs off, says he didn’t mean it, begs for forgiveness. Pride, dignity, they doth not exist.
They tried to rid him in the primary; now, they’ll make him suffer. His chairmanship is in trouble.
What’s Happening, Iraq: Fallujah The Bush Group haven’t learned their lessons. More death, much more, including, thus far 10? 12? 16? Americans. Reporters, once again embedded, have their reportage reduced to ‘reporting’ the battle scene, save NPR’s Anne Garrels’ repeated references to the mass desertions from the Iraqi army. A typical comment from the Independent:
All embraced the US government rationale with nary a critical word or indication of how much opposition there is to this massacre posing as an offensive.
According to The Independent in London, many of the "insurgents" have already left the doomed town to attack elsewhere, AND "many of the 10,000 US troops have had no major combat experience; in one unit, 95% are inexperienced." Prediction: The attack will be bloody, It will, as in wars past, destroy the town top save it, And it will be tragic, another exhibit in the still to be built Museum of War Crimes. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=580338
Protests: Can’t expect Nancy Pelosi to lead a charge.
Called for, nationally: IMMEDIATELY: call local media outlets and members of Congress to denounce the attack
"*THURSDAY – SATURDAY: Organize actions outside and inside Congressional offices to demand an end to the assault on Falluja and an end to the occupation (action ideas below)
"*NEXT TUESDAY, 11/16: Protest in Washington, DC on the day that Congress goes back into session; details to be announced
"*Leaflet and talking points available online at http://www.unitedforpeace.org
In Boston, there’s a 4:45 – 6PM protest, Wednesday, Downtown Crossing.
What’s Happening, Iran: Progress, of sorts
Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi of Iran on Monday praised the outcome of weekend talks with European negotiators, saying that a preliminary agreement had been reached to suspend Iran's production of enriched uranium immediately. But he emphasized that any suspension would be only temporary.
"We hope that the deal between Iran and Europeans can be finalized and create necessary confidence," Mr. Kharrazi said of the 22 hours of difficult negotiations in Paris on Friday and Saturday between an Iranian delegation and senior officials of France, Germany, Britain and the European Union.
But, he added, "The talk is about continuing the suspension for a short period to build confidence." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/09/international/middleeast/09iran.html?pagewanted=print&position=
So, who needs a draft? Such a scandal, so little publicity. The backdoor draft continues…and deepens.
David M. Miyasato enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve in 1987, served three years of active duty during the first Gulf War and received an honorable discharge in 1991. He remained on inactive status for five more years, until 1996. Since then, the Kaua'i resident has married, started an auto window tinting business and this year, he and his wife had their first child.
But in September, Miyasato received a letter from the Army recalling him to active duty and directing him to report to a military facility in South Carolina on Tuesday.
"I was shocked," Miyasato said yesterday. "I never expected to see something like that after being out of the service for 13 years."
Miyasato is now suing the Secretary of the Army, asking a court to prevent the Army from ordering him to active duty. He is also asking for a court judgment declaring that he fulfilled all his obligations to the military. http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2004/Nov/06/ln/ln10p.html/?print=on
Bush, Israel’s Friend? A dissent [Gideon Levy]
The headlines in the mass circulation papers here screamed, "The friend stays" and "Bush is good for Israel," but from Israel's point of view he is one of the worst presidents ever. An American president who will give Israel four more years of freedom to act as it pleases in the territories is not a friend of this country. A true friend would save Israel from itself, as some European leaders are trying to do by means of the criticism they hurl at Israeli government policy. In a situation in which Israel is not restraining itself, restraint imposed from the outside is a supreme national interest, even if it involves exerting pressure that at times can be brutal. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/498284.html
The President’s Supporters. We’re supposed to be healing, so I hesitate to mention again the U. of Maryland PIPA poll that found that:
72% still believe that there were WMD's in Iraq.
75% believe that Iraq was providing substantial support for Al Qaeda.
66% believe that Bush supports participation in the International Criminal Court.
72% believe that he supports the treaty banning land mines. http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Pres_Election_04/html/new_10_21_04.html
-R
One Week Later: Are we Depressed? Dazed? Enraged? A multiplicity of emotions, for many of us. I certainly have been monitoring as to where I’m at.
I was talking last night with a student of mine who has two sons in the military- one in Iraq, one just back and, questionably, heading back. She described her partially deaf son serving as a ‘radio man’ near Baghdad, despite his hearing problem and his well-documented poor enunciation. She was aghast, “He, a ‘radio guy’ That’s so dumb!” That reference led us to the military’s shortage of body armor and humvees without armor, which led us to the Bush campaign accusing Kerry of ‘not supporting the troops and voting against body armor’ when it was the Administration that sent the troops horribly unprepared for the war…and Kerry’s failure to confront such…and…
The Energy, the Outrage. Palpable. Intact.
I've commented on the directing of that energy. While encouraging those with information about the election irregularities to keep at it, the basic direction seems clear- to build / support structures and institutions that will combat the Right’s control. That includes, but is not limited to, electoral politics. The Right took over many state legislatures and state houses in the past decades and that has to be combated. The Right’s control of the media must be contested. Aside from the specifics in the last blog, I’ll add that we should encourage George Soros to establish an alternative to Fox News.
The Cheating: Again, we probably won’t know if it was decisive. Not that they didn’t try. Aside from ripping up Democrat registrations, there was possible voter intimidation, plenty of suppression, a high ballot spoilage rate; a large number of provisional ballots; no availability of provisional ballots; military, absentee, and provisional ballots lost, not counted, and/or not allowed to be created; lack of voting booths in poor, minority and urban precincts in the swing states, and thus 3-9 hour lines… and many giving up, etc.
The only ‘mainstream journalist who’s followed the story the past week is Keith Olbermann. His Countdown on MSNBC has exposed a pattern of electoral fraud, especially in Florida and Ohio. Only there can you find actual investigations plus Michigan Rep. John Conyers calling for a full-scale investigation by the General Accounting Office. Olbermann’s legal commentator, Jonathan Turley from George Washington U., commented that a successful Kerry challenge was “not likely”, but “not impossible,” but with less chance if the candidate himself stays out. The former ESPN host extraordinaire, Olbermann has integrity and a temper, and would quit if tampered with. [He also had a marvelous blog for each of the debates on msnbc.com.]
A sensible political action would be to support his efforts, via a simple email to Olbermann@msnbc.com.
Kerry Says He’s Available. Get some perspective, John
Democrat John F. Kerry plans to use his Senate seat and long lists of supporters to remain a major voice in American politics despite losing the presidential race last Tuesday, and he is assessing the feasibility of trying again in 2008, friends and aides said yesterday.
Kerry will attend a post-election lame-duck Senate session that begins next week and has said he is "fired up" to play a highly visible role, the friends and aides said. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35224-2004Nov8.html
Electoral Post-Mortem:
Decisive Win? Yes, Bush got ‘more popular votes than any president in history.’ What a dumb claim. Who’s #2? Kerry, of course…followed by Reagan and Gore. So much for measuring population growth.
‘Decisive Electoral Margin’?: No, the second lowest since 1916, second only to 2000. Trivia: 3d lowest? 1916, Wilson over Charles Evan Hughes.
Bush's support among women increased by 5%, went up by 9 points among Latinos and increased by 7 points of those 60 and older. Most startling was his gain of 10 points among those with no high school education, typically a strong Democratic constituency.
Was it turnout of the Right that won for Bush? So many opinions. E.J. Dionne’s:
John Kerry was not defeated by the religious right. He was beaten by moderates who went -- reluctantly in many cases -- for President Bush. This will be hard for many Democrats to take. It's easier to salve those wounds by demonizing religious conservatives. But in the 2004 election, Democrats left votes on the table that could have created a Kerry majority.
Consider these findings from the network exit polls: About 38 percent of those who thought abortion should be legal in most cases went to Bush. Bush got 22 percent from voters who favored gay marriage and 52 percent among those who favor civil unions. Bush even managed 16 percent among voters who thought the president paid more attention to the interests of large corporations than to those of "ordinary Americans." A third of the voters who favored a government more active in solving problems went to Bush.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35437-2004Nov8.html
The World Responds: We don’t trust your economy. This bears following.
The U.S. has a current account deficit, a budget deficit and a president who appears unconcerned about dollar weakness," said Shahab Jalinoos, senior currency strategist at ABN AMRO. "No one can see any reason to buy the dollar at the moment."
The latest bout of dollar weakness began in the middle of last week as investors took the view the administration of re-elected President Bush would do little to alleviate the country's structural problems.
The budget deficit is about $427 billion, or 3.7 percent of gross domestic product, while the current account, the broadest measure of trade, hit a record $166.18 billion shortfall in the second quarter. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=businessNews&storyID=6745993
Arlen Specter Grovels: The incoming chair of the Judiciary Committee first tells Bush that he can’t nominate any supreme court nominees that are anti-Choice. After a short day of being savaged by the Right, he backs off, says he didn’t mean it, begs for forgiveness. Pride, dignity, they doth not exist.
They tried to rid him in the primary; now, they’ll make him suffer. His chairmanship is in trouble.
What’s Happening, Iraq: Fallujah The Bush Group haven’t learned their lessons. More death, much more, including, thus far 10? 12? 16? Americans. Reporters, once again embedded, have their reportage reduced to ‘reporting’ the battle scene, save NPR’s Anne Garrels’ repeated references to the mass desertions from the Iraqi army. A typical comment from the Independent:
All embraced the US government rationale with nary a critical word or indication of how much opposition there is to this massacre posing as an offensive.
According to The Independent in London, many of the "insurgents" have already left the doomed town to attack elsewhere, AND "many of the 10,000 US troops have had no major combat experience; in one unit, 95% are inexperienced." Prediction: The attack will be bloody, It will, as in wars past, destroy the town top save it, And it will be tragic, another exhibit in the still to be built Museum of War Crimes. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=580338
Protests: Can’t expect Nancy Pelosi to lead a charge.
Called for, nationally: IMMEDIATELY: call local media outlets and members of Congress to denounce the attack
"*THURSDAY – SATURDAY: Organize actions outside and inside Congressional offices to demand an end to the assault on Falluja and an end to the occupation (action ideas below)
"*NEXT TUESDAY, 11/16: Protest in Washington, DC on the day that Congress goes back into session; details to be announced
"*Leaflet and talking points available online at http://www.unitedforpeace.org
In Boston, there’s a 4:45 – 6PM protest, Wednesday, Downtown Crossing.
What’s Happening, Iran: Progress, of sorts
Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi of Iran on Monday praised the outcome of weekend talks with European negotiators, saying that a preliminary agreement had been reached to suspend Iran's production of enriched uranium immediately. But he emphasized that any suspension would be only temporary.
"We hope that the deal between Iran and Europeans can be finalized and create necessary confidence," Mr. Kharrazi said of the 22 hours of difficult negotiations in Paris on Friday and Saturday between an Iranian delegation and senior officials of France, Germany, Britain and the European Union.
But, he added, "The talk is about continuing the suspension for a short period to build confidence." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/09/international/middleeast/09iran.html?pagewanted=print&position=
So, who needs a draft? Such a scandal, so little publicity. The backdoor draft continues…and deepens.
David M. Miyasato enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve in 1987, served three years of active duty during the first Gulf War and received an honorable discharge in 1991. He remained on inactive status for five more years, until 1996. Since then, the Kaua'i resident has married, started an auto window tinting business and this year, he and his wife had their first child.
But in September, Miyasato received a letter from the Army recalling him to active duty and directing him to report to a military facility in South Carolina on Tuesday.
"I was shocked," Miyasato said yesterday. "I never expected to see something like that after being out of the service for 13 years."
Miyasato is now suing the Secretary of the Army, asking a court to prevent the Army from ordering him to active duty. He is also asking for a court judgment declaring that he fulfilled all his obligations to the military. http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2004/Nov/06/ln/ln10p.html/?print=on
Bush, Israel’s Friend? A dissent [Gideon Levy]
The headlines in the mass circulation papers here screamed, "The friend stays" and "Bush is good for Israel," but from Israel's point of view he is one of the worst presidents ever. An American president who will give Israel four more years of freedom to act as it pleases in the territories is not a friend of this country. A true friend would save Israel from itself, as some European leaders are trying to do by means of the criticism they hurl at Israeli government policy. In a situation in which Israel is not restraining itself, restraint imposed from the outside is a supreme national interest, even if it involves exerting pressure that at times can be brutal. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/498284.html
The President’s Supporters. We’re supposed to be healing, so I hesitate to mention again the U. of Maryland PIPA poll that found that:
72% still believe that there were WMD's in Iraq.
75% believe that Iraq was providing substantial support for Al Qaeda.
66% believe that Bush supports participation in the International Criminal Court.
72% believe that he supports the treaty banning land mines. http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Pres_Election_04/html/new_10_21_04.html
-R
Sunday, November 07, 2004
Opposing Karl Rove: His master plan remains in place, well captured in the Globe Sunday piece by James C. Moore, one of the authors of Bush’s Brain:
The marketplace of ideas is no different than the marketplace of products. If a product is not properly branded when it is launched, the consumers will brand if for the manufacturer. And few products ever get out from under an image stuck on them by consumers. Consequently, Coke did not become "the real thing" by accident. Senator Kerry the product did not have a reputation as a "flip-flopper," either, until he entered into the presidential "market." Before Kerry had figured out how he wanted to sell himself to the public, or what his messages were, Rove had attacked the foundational strengths of the senator's candidacy. The man who had been tested in combat and whose character was tempered by war was painted as a politician so craven that he embellished his service record to get medals he did not earn. Never mind that the Department of the Navy had sworn affidavits testifying to their commander's courage from men who were at Kerry's side as the bullets were flying.
Under Rove's tutelage, such lying has become an acceptable political tool for Republicans. Unfortunately, Senator Kerry got bad advice and ignored the guns of August aimed at him by Swift Boat deceivers. The wound left Kerry staggering and cost him, at a minimum, the 100,000-plus vote margin in Ohio. The president, however, was packaged, branded, and marketed so effectively by Rove that his image as a spiritual man dedicated to protecting us from evil seemingly overwhelmed the disaster that is the Iraqi conflict and our quickly devolving economy.
Privately, Rove has not yet declared victory. Just as he views Iraq as a solitary battle in the wider war on terrorism, Rove sees the president's reelection as only another step to the fruition of his dream of a one-party America. Trial lawyers, whose financial support has sustained the Democratic Party's whimpering vitality, will come under further attack in Congress. Labor unions, the other source of Democratic strength, also need to gird for Rove's armies of the right. Eventually, he will attain his goal of a Democratic Party too weak to compete and a government turned into a vestigial organ, too monetarily listless to help the poor or regulate business because every scarce tax dollar is servicing a monstrous federal deficit. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/11/07/how_karl_rove_won_the_election_for_bush?mode=PF
Facts to Consider:
* Bush Mandate: They talk of their “broad nation-wide victory”, but won a narrow victory and only emphasized- and mobilized around- gay marriage and ‘traditional values’. Voters did not endorse changing the tax code and social security.
* There is a great divide: A fine letter to the editor addresses this:
I am having trouble understanding just how Democratic leaders should go about reaching out to the white evangelical Christians in America's heartland. What is the common ground?
John Kerry had no problems talking about his faith and religious upbringing, and he invoked these themes often. He was not rejected by these voters because he had no faith, but because he could not share their "values." He does not believe that abortion should be outlawed, that gays are an abomination, that the environment should be trampled upon and gun control should be taken off the national agenda.
I see no way to bridge this divide.
Rachel LeibmanMontclair, N.J., Nov. 3, 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/06/opinion/l06kristof.html
*Tough Times To Come? The Iraq tragedy may further weaken the Administration, their financial house-of-cards may trigger a bona fide financial collapse. However, not only can’t we root for such, we can assume that their control of all levels of government and the media and their secrecy will spin and hide the potency such events so as to minimize damage. Too many are banking on the Right “overreaching” and self-destructing. Don’t count on it.
* Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, who worked for the Kerry/Edwards campaign, notes that a startling turnaround among the electorate has occurred- the more educated voters were in 2004, the more often they voted Democratic, while the less educated (white) voters went strongly for Bush. Republicans, he notes, are now the party of the working class.
* The Democrats: Their candidate was again hamstrung; their will to win, their doing everything necessary, was lacking. They will continue to talk Edwards, hopefully forget about Hillary, and pathetically push Obama forward, though he hasn’t yet served a day. Others- Senators Chris Dodd, Jon Corzine, Chuck Schumer- are thinking of leaving their national posts.
What the story leaves out (at least in tone) is how ambitious all three men are, and how each one was strongly considering a run even before the election results were known.
All would have a very strong shot at winning... and capturing statehouses (where redistricting power resides) is the slow but surest way out of the wilderness for Democrats. In addition, in these states, being replaced by Dem senators is a distinct possibility, even a likelihood (but not a lock).
Right now, NY and CT have Republican governors while NJ is simply a mess. We could do worse, even if it's their own reasons that drive them (this is politics, after all). http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/06/nyregion/06dodd.html?hp&ex=1099803600&en=5f117c6c02ad5429&ei=5094&partner=homepage
* The Right Works Harder. It was heartening to see so many get active this Fall. However, the more politicized Right works at it 4 years out of 4, not just for part of the presidential election year. Richard Viguerie, the champ fundraiser for the Right notes that
Every day I get up thinking what four, five, six, things can do today to advance the conservative agenda? We've been doing that for decades, and the left hasn't done that. The left has been thinking of it as a sprint, election from election. http://www.pbs.org/now/printable/transcript344_full_print.html
*Grover Norquist, leading ideologue of the Right- we need to know where he’s at:
"Once the minority of House and Senate are comfortable in their minority status, they will have no problem socializing with the Republicans. Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they've been fixed, then they are happy and sedate. They are contented and cheerful. They don't go around peeing on the furniture and such."
So, what to do: One view: Nick Kristof: I’m not a fan
What do the Democrats need to do? Here are four suggestions:
• Don't be afraid of religion. Offer government support for faith-based programs to aid the homeless, prisoners and AIDS victims. And argue theology with Republicans: there's much more biblical ammunition to support liberals than conservatives.
• Pick battles of substance, not symbolism. The battle over Georgia's Confederate flag cost Roy Barnes his governorship and perhaps Max Cleland his Senate seat, but didn't help one working mother or jobless worker. It was a gift to Republicans.
• Accept that today, gun control is a nonstarter. Instead of trying to curb guns, try to reduce gun deaths through better rules on licensing and storage, and on safety devices like trigger locks.
• Hold your nose and work with President Bush as much as you can because it's lethal to be portrayed as obstructionists. Sure, block another Clarence Thomas, but here's a rule of thumb: if an otherwise qualified Supreme Court nominee would turn the clock back 10 years, approve; back 25 years, vote no; back a half-century, filibuster.
"The first thing we have to do is shake the image of us as the obstructionist party," notes Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, who manages to thrive as a Democrat in the red sea. He says Democrats must show a willingness to compromise, to get things done, to defer to local sensibilities. "We have to show the American people," he says, "that Democrats aren't going to take away your guns, aren't going to take away your flags." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/06/opinion/06kristof.html
Fighting Back: Not the first entry about this, not the last; indeed, an ongoing, developing project. For now:
We can learn from Thomas Frank, who points out that the Right runs on “values”, then serves the business interests. Frank points out, but leaves to us to develop, the alternative platform of progressive populism. Many of us are noting that our “value”-laden issues include opposing pre-emptive war, socioeconomic injustice, racism, unemployment, denial of free access to health care, the death penalty, fiscal irresponsibility and the desecration of the environment.
Our opposition must be stronger, better organized, and it must fight back against the Right’s control of the Media. We must build and support structures / institutions to Combat the Right. [I’m not talking about the Democratic Party. Those wanting to work on that must fight the attempts to move rightward.] Here, I urge support for think tanks such as The Center for American Progress; for Media Matters, which monitors and debunks the lies of the Right media people such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity; Air America Radio which provides a morale-boosting home for progressive radio. I’m not shy of mentioning FITE- Fairness in Taxes for Everyone- which has developed a Talk Radio Initiative aimed at challenging the Right’s dominance of Talk Radio.
Links: http://www.americanprogress.org/site/c.biJRJ8OVF/b.8473/
http://www.mediamatters.org/
http://www.airamericaradio.com/
http://www.fairnessintaxes.org/
Environment: The ‘environmental lawyer-advocate’ Robert Kennedy Jr. talks movingly of his traveling the country- principally to “Red” states- where his talks are received with great enthusiasm. A critical issue, habitually relegated to second tier status.
What’s Happening, Iraq: Missing missiles
American intelligence agencies have tripled their formal estimate of shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile systems believed to be at large worldwide, since determining that at least 4,000 of the weapons in Iraq's prewar arsenals cannot be accounted for, government officials said Friday.
A new government estimate says a total of 6,000 of the weapons may be outside the control of any government, up from a previous estimate of 2,000, American officials said.
The officials said they did not know whether missiles from Iraq remain there or have been smuggled into other countries, though a senior administration official said Friday that "there is no evidence that they have left the country.''
It was unclear whether Iraqi military or intelligence personnel removed the missile systems during the initial invasion of Iraq or whether they disappeared from warehouses after major combat ended.
Shoulder-fired missiles - which are small, lethal and easy to use - are attractive weapons for terrorists. In recent months, Western intelligence and law enforcement agencies have repeatedly warned that Al Qaeda intends to use them to shoot down. planes.http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/06/politics/06weapons.html?ex=1100750909&ei=1&en=53d929b500bc7dd9
And the headline: Details are unnecessary.
52 Killed In Spate Of Attacks In Iraq
U.S. Forces, Insurgents Gird for Fallujah Battle http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30508-2004Nov6.html
Oh, and a "state of emergency” was declared, ostensibly tied to the upcoming assault on Fallujah. UN figures, foreign diplomats have warned that such an attack will only solidify the insurgency
Our President is a Liar; How Do We Integrate That?
I’ve long been musing about how our country is struggling with the notion that its president chronically lies, even about war, but since that it’s intolerable, so We deny. In other words, we’re psychically damaged; we’re a very unhealthy society. So, I was “glad” that Greg Thielman, addressed this on Moyers’ NOW on October 29, and have talked about it with great frequency. [Thielman was a foreign service official for 25 years and most recently part of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and research who had led a team of analysts in evaluating the intelligence prior to the invasion of Iraq.] The key grafs:
One has to give the President a little bit of running room and a little bit of slack in taking the information as far as the intelligence community can provide. And then going a little bit beyond that.
So I'm sympathetic to all of that. What I'm not sympathetic to is distorting information so completely that in the end, the public gets exactly the opposite understanding of a situation than you believe to be the case.
But I also understand that there is a psychological element here for the American people, a desire to believe the President of the United States.
The realization that the President of the United States would distort — would knowingly distort issues or even negligently misinform them on issues that will result in the death of America's sons and daughters is so monstrous, that most good and decent and patriotic Americans can't believe that. They don't want to believe that. That's just too awful to contemplate, that the President would do that to them. http://www.pbs.org/now/printable/transcript344_full_print.html
Political Action: Contacting PBS One amongst many. Moyers will be missed. (He leaves in December).
Withhold or curtail your annual contribution to your local PBS affiliate. PBS cut Bill Moyer’s “Now” in half in order to accommodate a show featuring the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. Do explain your action.
The Fraud Issue: Must give it its due. The Republicans have so institutionalized their voter suppression and other tactics that “we” have accepted their activity as part of the equation. Not good.
I am writing this because the media is inexplicably whitewashing what happened in Ohio, and Kerry's concession was likewise inexplicable. Hundreds of thousands of people were disenfranchised in Ohio.
People waited on line for as long as 10 hours. It appears to have only happened in Democratic-leaning precincts, principally (a) precincts where many African Americans lived, and (b) precincts near colleges. I spoke to a young man who got on line at 11:30 am and voted at 7 pm. When he left at 7 pm, the line was about 150 voters longer than when he'd arrived, which meant those people were going to wait even longer. In fact they waited for as much as 10 hours, and their voting was concluded at about 3 am. The reason this occurred was that they had 1 voting station per 1000 voters, while the adjacent precinct had 1 voting station per 184. Both precincts were within the same county, and managed by the same county board of elections. The difference between them is that the privileged polling place was in a rural, solidly Republican, area, while the one with long lines was in the college town of Gambier, OH.
Lines of 4 and 5 hours were the order of the day in many African-American neighborhoods.
Touch screen voting machines in Youngstown OH were registering "George W. Bush" when people pressed "John F. Kerry" ALL DAY LONG. This was reported immediately after the polls opened, and reported over and over again throughout the day, and yet the bogus machines were inexplicably kept in use THROUGHOUT THE DAY.
Countless other frauds occurred, such as postcards advising people of incorrect polling places, registered Democrats not receiving absentee ballots, duly registered young voters being forced to file provisional ballots even though their names and signatures appeared in the voting rolls, longtime active voting registered voters being told they weren't registered, bad faith challenges by Republican "challengers" in Democratic precincts, and on and on and on.
I was very proud of the way so many Ohioans fought so valiantly for their right to vote, and would not be turned away. Many, however, could not spend the entire day and were afraid of losing their jobs, due to the severe economic depression hitting Ohio.
I do not understand why Kerry conceded and did not fight to ensure that all Ohioans would have a chance to vote, and for their vote to be counted.
Ray BeckermanBeldock Levine & Hoffman LLP99 Park Ave (Ste 1600)New York, NY 10016 http://www.spectrumz.com/z/fair_use/2004/11_04.html
And, from Robert Parry:
But the most perplexing fact is that exit polls into the evening of Nov. 2 showed Kerry rolling to a clear victory nationally and carrying most of the battleground states, including Florida and Ohio, whose totals would have ensured Kerry’s victory in the Electoral College.
Significantly, polls also showed Republicans carrying the bulk of the tight Senate races. However, when the official results were tallied, the presidential exit polls proved wrong while the Senate polls proved right.
Explanations from the architects of the exit-poll sampling system also sound specious. Their report said Kerry voters were simply more willing than Bush voters to answer the exit pollsters’ questions. But this “chattiness thesis” seems more like a post-facto excuse than a serious argument.
Another explanation from some pundits was that the exit polls were adjusted by late in the day to rectify pro-Kerry exaggerations from the earlier samples. But that is not what happened. As the New York Times reported, “The presumption of a Kerry victory built a head of steam late in the day, when the national survey showed the senator with a statistically significant lead, one falling outside the survey’s margin of error.” http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/110604.html
Exit Polls and the Machines: Do we need an audit. Sure. Will we get one? Check the differential between the exit poll and what the machines produced. http://bestoftheblogs.com/exit.html
That Bulge on Bush’s back: (FAIR) Case closed?
Five days before the presidential election, the New York Times killed a story about the mysterious object George W. Bush wore on his back during the presidential debates, journalist Dave Lindorff reveals in an exclusive report on this week's CounterSpin, FAIR's weekly radio show. The spiked story included compelling photographic and scientific evidence that would have contradicted Bush's claim that the bulge on his back was just a matter of poor tailoring.
"The New York Times assigned three editors to this story and had it scheduled to run five days before the election, which would have raised questions about the president's integrity," said Lindorff. "But it was killed by top editors at the Times; clearly they were chickening out of taking this on before the election." http://www.fair.org/press-releases/bush-bulge.html
Other News:
Airlines in Trouble: Delta, United, Northwest
Three of the nation's largest airlines announced steep cost and job cuts yesterday in an effort to return to profitability and better position themselves for long-term survival.
UAL Corp., parent of United Airlines, asked a bankruptcy court judge yesterday to approve an additional $2 billion in cuts from its operations. The airline is seeking to modify its existing labor contracts to slash $725 million annually in worker pay and benefits. It also wants to eliminate its four employee pension plans. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29599-2004Nov5.html
Economy in Trouble (?) Not to cry wolf, but…
The dollar could slide still further, in spite of hitting an all-time low against the euro last week in the wake of George W. Bush's re-election, currency traders have said.
The dollar sell-off has resumed amid fears among traders that Mr Bush's victory will bring four more years of widening US budget and current account deficits, heightened geopolitical risks and a policy of "benign neglect" of the dollar.
India and Russia have reportedly been selling US assets, as well as petrodollar-rich Middle Eastern investors.
China, which has $515bn of reserves, was also said to be selling dollars and buying Asian currencies in readiness to switch the renminbi's dollar peg to a basket arrangement, something Chinese officials have increasingly hinted at. Any re-allocation could push the dollar sharply lower and Treasury yields markedly higher. http://news.ft.com/cms/s/257979a6-30f4-11d9-a595-00000e2511c8.html
Control Room Epilogue: Josh Rushing
The 32 year old Texas marine captain was the spokesperson for the military in the documentary about al Jazerra is out of the military. He left the military “in frustration and disappointment” when he was silenced after his comments in the film and in the Village Voice about the horrors of the war. He is without a job or direction, but hopes to stay involved in the media, and “is looking for an organization I can believe in.” http://www.npr.org/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=2&prgDate=30-Oct-2004
Blair Pushes Middle East initiative. He’s trying to revive his political fortunes, and correctly prioritizes the issue.
Tony Blair will fly to Washington this week to launch a new Middle East peace initiative alongside George Bush, in a bid to show he can reap the rewards of the special relationship.
The trip is a high risk one, since the Prime Minister's popularity at home drops every time he is pictured alongside the President. Wary of public opinion, he will not be collecting the controversial Congressional Medal of Honor he was awarded for his staunch support for the war on terror. http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5057197-103552,00.html
-R
The marketplace of ideas is no different than the marketplace of products. If a product is not properly branded when it is launched, the consumers will brand if for the manufacturer. And few products ever get out from under an image stuck on them by consumers. Consequently, Coke did not become "the real thing" by accident. Senator Kerry the product did not have a reputation as a "flip-flopper," either, until he entered into the presidential "market." Before Kerry had figured out how he wanted to sell himself to the public, or what his messages were, Rove had attacked the foundational strengths of the senator's candidacy. The man who had been tested in combat and whose character was tempered by war was painted as a politician so craven that he embellished his service record to get medals he did not earn. Never mind that the Department of the Navy had sworn affidavits testifying to their commander's courage from men who were at Kerry's side as the bullets were flying.
Under Rove's tutelage, such lying has become an acceptable political tool for Republicans. Unfortunately, Senator Kerry got bad advice and ignored the guns of August aimed at him by Swift Boat deceivers. The wound left Kerry staggering and cost him, at a minimum, the 100,000-plus vote margin in Ohio. The president, however, was packaged, branded, and marketed so effectively by Rove that his image as a spiritual man dedicated to protecting us from evil seemingly overwhelmed the disaster that is the Iraqi conflict and our quickly devolving economy.
Privately, Rove has not yet declared victory. Just as he views Iraq as a solitary battle in the wider war on terrorism, Rove sees the president's reelection as only another step to the fruition of his dream of a one-party America. Trial lawyers, whose financial support has sustained the Democratic Party's whimpering vitality, will come under further attack in Congress. Labor unions, the other source of Democratic strength, also need to gird for Rove's armies of the right. Eventually, he will attain his goal of a Democratic Party too weak to compete and a government turned into a vestigial organ, too monetarily listless to help the poor or regulate business because every scarce tax dollar is servicing a monstrous federal deficit. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/11/07/how_karl_rove_won_the_election_for_bush?mode=PF
Facts to Consider:
* Bush Mandate: They talk of their “broad nation-wide victory”, but won a narrow victory and only emphasized- and mobilized around- gay marriage and ‘traditional values’. Voters did not endorse changing the tax code and social security.
* There is a great divide: A fine letter to the editor addresses this:
I am having trouble understanding just how Democratic leaders should go about reaching out to the white evangelical Christians in America's heartland. What is the common ground?
John Kerry had no problems talking about his faith and religious upbringing, and he invoked these themes often. He was not rejected by these voters because he had no faith, but because he could not share their "values." He does not believe that abortion should be outlawed, that gays are an abomination, that the environment should be trampled upon and gun control should be taken off the national agenda.
I see no way to bridge this divide.
Rachel LeibmanMontclair, N.J., Nov. 3, 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/06/opinion/l06kristof.html
*Tough Times To Come? The Iraq tragedy may further weaken the Administration, their financial house-of-cards may trigger a bona fide financial collapse. However, not only can’t we root for such, we can assume that their control of all levels of government and the media and their secrecy will spin and hide the potency such events so as to minimize damage. Too many are banking on the Right “overreaching” and self-destructing. Don’t count on it.
* Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, who worked for the Kerry/Edwards campaign, notes that a startling turnaround among the electorate has occurred- the more educated voters were in 2004, the more often they voted Democratic, while the less educated (white) voters went strongly for Bush. Republicans, he notes, are now the party of the working class.
* The Democrats: Their candidate was again hamstrung; their will to win, their doing everything necessary, was lacking. They will continue to talk Edwards, hopefully forget about Hillary, and pathetically push Obama forward, though he hasn’t yet served a day. Others- Senators Chris Dodd, Jon Corzine, Chuck Schumer- are thinking of leaving their national posts.
What the story leaves out (at least in tone) is how ambitious all three men are, and how each one was strongly considering a run even before the election results were known.
All would have a very strong shot at winning... and capturing statehouses (where redistricting power resides) is the slow but surest way out of the wilderness for Democrats. In addition, in these states, being replaced by Dem senators is a distinct possibility, even a likelihood (but not a lock).
Right now, NY and CT have Republican governors while NJ is simply a mess. We could do worse, even if it's their own reasons that drive them (this is politics, after all). http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/06/nyregion/06dodd.html?hp&ex=1099803600&en=5f117c6c02ad5429&ei=5094&partner=homepage
* The Right Works Harder. It was heartening to see so many get active this Fall. However, the more politicized Right works at it 4 years out of 4, not just for part of the presidential election year. Richard Viguerie, the champ fundraiser for the Right notes that
Every day I get up thinking what four, five, six, things can do today to advance the conservative agenda? We've been doing that for decades, and the left hasn't done that. The left has been thinking of it as a sprint, election from election. http://www.pbs.org/now/printable/transcript344_full_print.html
*Grover Norquist, leading ideologue of the Right- we need to know where he’s at:
"Once the minority of House and Senate are comfortable in their minority status, they will have no problem socializing with the Republicans. Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they've been fixed, then they are happy and sedate. They are contented and cheerful. They don't go around peeing on the furniture and such."
So, what to do: One view: Nick Kristof: I’m not a fan
What do the Democrats need to do? Here are four suggestions:
• Don't be afraid of religion. Offer government support for faith-based programs to aid the homeless, prisoners and AIDS victims. And argue theology with Republicans: there's much more biblical ammunition to support liberals than conservatives.
• Pick battles of substance, not symbolism. The battle over Georgia's Confederate flag cost Roy Barnes his governorship and perhaps Max Cleland his Senate seat, but didn't help one working mother or jobless worker. It was a gift to Republicans.
• Accept that today, gun control is a nonstarter. Instead of trying to curb guns, try to reduce gun deaths through better rules on licensing and storage, and on safety devices like trigger locks.
• Hold your nose and work with President Bush as much as you can because it's lethal to be portrayed as obstructionists. Sure, block another Clarence Thomas, but here's a rule of thumb: if an otherwise qualified Supreme Court nominee would turn the clock back 10 years, approve; back 25 years, vote no; back a half-century, filibuster.
"The first thing we have to do is shake the image of us as the obstructionist party," notes Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, who manages to thrive as a Democrat in the red sea. He says Democrats must show a willingness to compromise, to get things done, to defer to local sensibilities. "We have to show the American people," he says, "that Democrats aren't going to take away your guns, aren't going to take away your flags." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/06/opinion/06kristof.html
Fighting Back: Not the first entry about this, not the last; indeed, an ongoing, developing project. For now:
We can learn from Thomas Frank, who points out that the Right runs on “values”, then serves the business interests. Frank points out, but leaves to us to develop, the alternative platform of progressive populism. Many of us are noting that our “value”-laden issues include opposing pre-emptive war, socioeconomic injustice, racism, unemployment, denial of free access to health care, the death penalty, fiscal irresponsibility and the desecration of the environment.
Our opposition must be stronger, better organized, and it must fight back against the Right’s control of the Media. We must build and support structures / institutions to Combat the Right. [I’m not talking about the Democratic Party. Those wanting to work on that must fight the attempts to move rightward.] Here, I urge support for think tanks such as The Center for American Progress; for Media Matters, which monitors and debunks the lies of the Right media people such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity; Air America Radio which provides a morale-boosting home for progressive radio. I’m not shy of mentioning FITE- Fairness in Taxes for Everyone- which has developed a Talk Radio Initiative aimed at challenging the Right’s dominance of Talk Radio.
Links: http://www.americanprogress.org/site/c.biJRJ8OVF/b.8473/
http://www.mediamatters.org/
http://www.airamericaradio.com/
http://www.fairnessintaxes.org/
Environment: The ‘environmental lawyer-advocate’ Robert Kennedy Jr. talks movingly of his traveling the country- principally to “Red” states- where his talks are received with great enthusiasm. A critical issue, habitually relegated to second tier status.
What’s Happening, Iraq: Missing missiles
American intelligence agencies have tripled their formal estimate of shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile systems believed to be at large worldwide, since determining that at least 4,000 of the weapons in Iraq's prewar arsenals cannot be accounted for, government officials said Friday.
A new government estimate says a total of 6,000 of the weapons may be outside the control of any government, up from a previous estimate of 2,000, American officials said.
The officials said they did not know whether missiles from Iraq remain there or have been smuggled into other countries, though a senior administration official said Friday that "there is no evidence that they have left the country.''
It was unclear whether Iraqi military or intelligence personnel removed the missile systems during the initial invasion of Iraq or whether they disappeared from warehouses after major combat ended.
Shoulder-fired missiles - which are small, lethal and easy to use - are attractive weapons for terrorists. In recent months, Western intelligence and law enforcement agencies have repeatedly warned that Al Qaeda intends to use them to shoot down. planes.http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/06/politics/06weapons.html?ex=1100750909&ei=1&en=53d929b500bc7dd9
And the headline: Details are unnecessary.
52 Killed In Spate Of Attacks In Iraq
U.S. Forces, Insurgents Gird for Fallujah Battle http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30508-2004Nov6.html
Oh, and a "state of emergency” was declared, ostensibly tied to the upcoming assault on Fallujah. UN figures, foreign diplomats have warned that such an attack will only solidify the insurgency
Our President is a Liar; How Do We Integrate That?
I’ve long been musing about how our country is struggling with the notion that its president chronically lies, even about war, but since that it’s intolerable, so We deny. In other words, we’re psychically damaged; we’re a very unhealthy society. So, I was “glad” that Greg Thielman, addressed this on Moyers’ NOW on October 29, and have talked about it with great frequency. [Thielman was a foreign service official for 25 years and most recently part of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and research who had led a team of analysts in evaluating the intelligence prior to the invasion of Iraq.] The key grafs:
One has to give the President a little bit of running room and a little bit of slack in taking the information as far as the intelligence community can provide. And then going a little bit beyond that.
So I'm sympathetic to all of that. What I'm not sympathetic to is distorting information so completely that in the end, the public gets exactly the opposite understanding of a situation than you believe to be the case.
But I also understand that there is a psychological element here for the American people, a desire to believe the President of the United States.
The realization that the President of the United States would distort — would knowingly distort issues or even negligently misinform them on issues that will result in the death of America's sons and daughters is so monstrous, that most good and decent and patriotic Americans can't believe that. They don't want to believe that. That's just too awful to contemplate, that the President would do that to them. http://www.pbs.org/now/printable/transcript344_full_print.html
Political Action: Contacting PBS One amongst many. Moyers will be missed. (He leaves in December).
Withhold or curtail your annual contribution to your local PBS affiliate. PBS cut Bill Moyer’s “Now” in half in order to accommodate a show featuring the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. Do explain your action.
The Fraud Issue: Must give it its due. The Republicans have so institutionalized their voter suppression and other tactics that “we” have accepted their activity as part of the equation. Not good.
I am writing this because the media is inexplicably whitewashing what happened in Ohio, and Kerry's concession was likewise inexplicable. Hundreds of thousands of people were disenfranchised in Ohio.
People waited on line for as long as 10 hours. It appears to have only happened in Democratic-leaning precincts, principally (a) precincts where many African Americans lived, and (b) precincts near colleges. I spoke to a young man who got on line at 11:30 am and voted at 7 pm. When he left at 7 pm, the line was about 150 voters longer than when he'd arrived, which meant those people were going to wait even longer. In fact they waited for as much as 10 hours, and their voting was concluded at about 3 am. The reason this occurred was that they had 1 voting station per 1000 voters, while the adjacent precinct had 1 voting station per 184. Both precincts were within the same county, and managed by the same county board of elections. The difference between them is that the privileged polling place was in a rural, solidly Republican, area, while the one with long lines was in the college town of Gambier, OH.
Lines of 4 and 5 hours were the order of the day in many African-American neighborhoods.
Touch screen voting machines in Youngstown OH were registering "George W. Bush" when people pressed "John F. Kerry" ALL DAY LONG. This was reported immediately after the polls opened, and reported over and over again throughout the day, and yet the bogus machines were inexplicably kept in use THROUGHOUT THE DAY.
Countless other frauds occurred, such as postcards advising people of incorrect polling places, registered Democrats not receiving absentee ballots, duly registered young voters being forced to file provisional ballots even though their names and signatures appeared in the voting rolls, longtime active voting registered voters being told they weren't registered, bad faith challenges by Republican "challengers" in Democratic precincts, and on and on and on.
I was very proud of the way so many Ohioans fought so valiantly for their right to vote, and would not be turned away. Many, however, could not spend the entire day and were afraid of losing their jobs, due to the severe economic depression hitting Ohio.
I do not understand why Kerry conceded and did not fight to ensure that all Ohioans would have a chance to vote, and for their vote to be counted.
Ray BeckermanBeldock Levine & Hoffman LLP99 Park Ave (Ste 1600)New York, NY 10016 http://www.spectrumz.com/z/fair_use/2004/11_04.html
And, from Robert Parry:
But the most perplexing fact is that exit polls into the evening of Nov. 2 showed Kerry rolling to a clear victory nationally and carrying most of the battleground states, including Florida and Ohio, whose totals would have ensured Kerry’s victory in the Electoral College.
Significantly, polls also showed Republicans carrying the bulk of the tight Senate races. However, when the official results were tallied, the presidential exit polls proved wrong while the Senate polls proved right.
Explanations from the architects of the exit-poll sampling system also sound specious. Their report said Kerry voters were simply more willing than Bush voters to answer the exit pollsters’ questions. But this “chattiness thesis” seems more like a post-facto excuse than a serious argument.
Another explanation from some pundits was that the exit polls were adjusted by late in the day to rectify pro-Kerry exaggerations from the earlier samples. But that is not what happened. As the New York Times reported, “The presumption of a Kerry victory built a head of steam late in the day, when the national survey showed the senator with a statistically significant lead, one falling outside the survey’s margin of error.” http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/110604.html
Exit Polls and the Machines: Do we need an audit. Sure. Will we get one? Check the differential between the exit poll and what the machines produced. http://bestoftheblogs.com/exit.html
That Bulge on Bush’s back: (FAIR) Case closed?
Five days before the presidential election, the New York Times killed a story about the mysterious object George W. Bush wore on his back during the presidential debates, journalist Dave Lindorff reveals in an exclusive report on this week's CounterSpin, FAIR's weekly radio show. The spiked story included compelling photographic and scientific evidence that would have contradicted Bush's claim that the bulge on his back was just a matter of poor tailoring.
"The New York Times assigned three editors to this story and had it scheduled to run five days before the election, which would have raised questions about the president's integrity," said Lindorff. "But it was killed by top editors at the Times; clearly they were chickening out of taking this on before the election." http://www.fair.org/press-releases/bush-bulge.html
Other News:
Airlines in Trouble: Delta, United, Northwest
Three of the nation's largest airlines announced steep cost and job cuts yesterday in an effort to return to profitability and better position themselves for long-term survival.
UAL Corp., parent of United Airlines, asked a bankruptcy court judge yesterday to approve an additional $2 billion in cuts from its operations. The airline is seeking to modify its existing labor contracts to slash $725 million annually in worker pay and benefits. It also wants to eliminate its four employee pension plans. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29599-2004Nov5.html
Economy in Trouble (?) Not to cry wolf, but…
The dollar could slide still further, in spite of hitting an all-time low against the euro last week in the wake of George W. Bush's re-election, currency traders have said.
The dollar sell-off has resumed amid fears among traders that Mr Bush's victory will bring four more years of widening US budget and current account deficits, heightened geopolitical risks and a policy of "benign neglect" of the dollar.
India and Russia have reportedly been selling US assets, as well as petrodollar-rich Middle Eastern investors.
China, which has $515bn of reserves, was also said to be selling dollars and buying Asian currencies in readiness to switch the renminbi's dollar peg to a basket arrangement, something Chinese officials have increasingly hinted at. Any re-allocation could push the dollar sharply lower and Treasury yields markedly higher. http://news.ft.com/cms/s/257979a6-30f4-11d9-a595-00000e2511c8.html
Control Room Epilogue: Josh Rushing
The 32 year old Texas marine captain was the spokesperson for the military in the documentary about al Jazerra is out of the military. He left the military “in frustration and disappointment” when he was silenced after his comments in the film and in the Village Voice about the horrors of the war. He is without a job or direction, but hopes to stay involved in the media, and “is looking for an organization I can believe in.” http://www.npr.org/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=2&prgDate=30-Oct-2004
Blair Pushes Middle East initiative. He’s trying to revive his political fortunes, and correctly prioritizes the issue.
Tony Blair will fly to Washington this week to launch a new Middle East peace initiative alongside George Bush, in a bid to show he can reap the rewards of the special relationship.
The trip is a high risk one, since the Prime Minister's popularity at home drops every time he is pictured alongside the President. Wary of public opinion, he will not be collecting the controversial Congressional Medal of Honor he was awarded for his staunch support for the war on terror. http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5057197-103552,00.html
-R
