Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Social Security: Victory? Even the smug David Brooks seems to be throwing in the towel, blaming the Democrats intransigence, foolishness / selfishness of a stubborn public, Republican miscalculation. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/15/opinion/15brooks.html?hp
The Washington Post poll showed that the support dropped a bit further for the Right’s Social Security plan. One should note the bad news in the poll, that the incessant talk of crisis, broke, etc. has resulted in 71% now agreeing that the program is headed for a “crisis,” and two-thirds of that number believe that the system requires a major overhaul. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35231-2005Mar14?language=printer
Senate Amendment Vote. To express the sense of the Senate that Congress should reject any Social Security plan that requires deep benefit cuts or a massive increase in debt.
A 50-50 vote. In addition to all 44 Democrats and Independent Jeffords, the amendment also garnered votes from five Republicans -- Collins, Snowe, Dewine, Specter, and Graham. It’s helpful that with these exceptions, the Republicans are now on record as favoring deep cuts in Social Security as well as massuve debt. http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=1&vote=00049
What’s Happening, Iraq: Looting of weapons sites: Unfortunately, no public figures announced that this admission was further evidence that we never did care about wmd; why else would we allow weapons to be carted off and, assumedly, doled out / sold to the highest bidder? Do note that the looted material included "equipment that could be used to make missile parts, chemical weapons or centrifuges essential for enriching uranium for atom bombs."
Still another reason for impeachment.
Italy Withdraws: The Shrinking Coalition of the Drilling
Italy will begin withdrawing its 3,000 troops from Iraq in September, the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, announced today.
"We will begin to reduce our contingent even before the end of the year, starting in September, in agreement with our allies," he said in an interview on state television RAI.
Withdrawing Italian troops "will depend on the capability of the Iraqi government to give itself structures for acceptable security," the ANSA news agency quoted Mr Berlusconi as saying. "I've spoken about it with Tony Blair, and it's the public opinion of our countries that expects this decision."
The move will be a blow to the US, which has struggled to find countries willing to contribute troops following a wave of kidnappings and beheadings of foreigners in Iraq and an ongoing bloody insurgency. Italy's 3,000 troops, deployed in Nasiriyah, southern Iraq, constitute the fourth largest contingent after the US, Britain and South Korea. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1438372,00.html
Non-Combat “Ailments” Increase. Not surprising that there is more chest pain, back pain, hernias, as "We've never gone to war with guys as old as this before." http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=26839&archive=true
Halliburton: Houston Chronicle on the overcharges; excess over billing 108 million.
Iraq needed fuel. Halliburton Co. was ordered to get it there — quick. So the Houston-based contractor charged the Pentagon $27.5 million to ship $82,100 worth of cooking and heating fuel. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/3085603
The LATimes also had a piece on corruption in the reconstruction projects. A U.S. contractor repeatedly warned a top U.S. general overseeing a reconstruction project for the Iraqi army that a Lebanese middleman might be funneling kickbacks to the Iraqi defense ministry, noting this past November, "If we proceed down the road we are currently on, there will be serious legal issues that will land us all in jail," the contractor wrote in November. Eight days later he was killed in an ambush near Baghdad. The FBI is supposedly investigating the killing. The U.S. military is still working with the middleman. $24 million is still missing. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-contract15mar15,0,4285507.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Vanity Fair has a report on a Halliburton subsidiary’s [KBR] excessive billing for living expenses and more.
"If the administration shares our concern about not wasting taxpayers' money, you would think they would want to learn from the auditors and whistle-blowers what has gone wrong," Congressman Waxman says. Instead, the government has ignored its own auditors—both at the Pentagon and at the G.A.O.—who found glaring irregularities in KBR's books on Iraq. "Why has the administration turned away?" Waxman says. "I don't know as I have an answer to that question." http://www.vanityfair.com/commentary/content/printables/050307roco02?print=true
Prisoner Abuse / Murder Those “few bad apples” certainly were everywhere.
At least 26 prisoners have died in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002 in what Army and Navy investigators have concluded or suspect were acts of criminal homicide, according to military officials.
The number of confirmed or suspected cases is much higher than any accounting the military has previously reported. A Pentagon report sent to Congress last week cited only six prisoner deaths caused by abuse, but that partial tally was limited to what the author, Vice Adm. Albert T. Church III of the Navy, called "closed, substantiated abuse cases" as of last September. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/16/politics/16abuse.html?hp&ex=1111035600&en=943ed6fbc944e7de&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Same Sex Marriage Ruling; Two ways to look at this: (1) Progress, and (2) an issue for Junior and his successor
A trial court judge ruled Monday that California's ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, comparing it to archaic laws that once blocked interracial marriage and promoted "separate but equal" segregation.
If upheld on appeal, the decision could lead to California becoming the second state in the nation -- after Massachusetts -- in which gay men and lesbians have the same access to marriage licenses as heterosexual couples. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34254-2005Mar14.html
Fake News: The Bushies won’t abide by the finding of the General Accountability Office (formerly the General Accounting Office, if you’re confused) that fake news ain’t kosher. The legal advice that such is perfectly legal comes from and, then note, should come from the Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel. This is the very office that issued the opinion that the president can defy federal law in the name of national security (torture, yes!), and then retracted that memo when Gonzales was being confirmed.
The Bush administration, rejecting an opinion from the Government Accountability Office, said last week that it is legal for federal agencies to feed TV stations prepackaged news stories that do not disclose the government's role in producing them. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35010-2005Mar14.html
Fair and Balanced ?
Washington Post's Howard Kurtz reports on a new study of TV news. No surprise: Fox News is much more opinion than news.
"In covering the Iraq war last year, 73 percent of the stories on Fox News included the opinions of the anchors and journalists reporting them, a new study says. By contrast, 29 percent of the war reports on MSNBC and 2 percent of those on CNN included the journalists' own views. These findings -- the figures were similar for coverage of other stories -- 'seem to challenge' Fox's slogan of 'we report, you decide,' says the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
Bill O'Reilly, host of the "no-spin zone," is a bona fide leader in dialing in the spin: "As for the most popular prime-time shows, nearly every story -- 97 percent -- contained opinion on Fox's 'O'Reilly Factor'; 24 percent on MSNBC's 'Hardball with Chris Matthews'; and 0.9 percent on CNN's 'Larry King Live.'" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/nation/columns/kurtzhoward/?nav=pq
CBS After Dan Rather: Liberal CBS? Examples are terribly numerous
Recall:
* In late September, CBS postponed a prepared report questioning one of the Bush administration's rationales for invading Iraq until after the election, noting that it didn’t want to influence the election.
*Media Matters for America reviewed three months of CBS Evening News broadcasts and found that the program featured Republicans and conservatives far more often than Democrats and progressives.
* Last month, Bob Schieffer, Rather’s replacement, downplayed the costs of Bush's plan to privatize Social Security, claiming that "critics" say the plan would cost trillions of dollars and would do nothing to extend the solvency of the program. Of course, that isn't just something "critics" say -- it's the truth as Bush administration itself has admitted. Schieffer’s brother is a former co-owner with Bush of the Texas Ranger baseball team.
* As Media Matters notes, ‘Schieffer introduced a segment about Chile's privatized Social Security system that downplayed the serious problems the system caused. While acknowledging that some critics say the program has flaws, CBS' Trish Regan concluded: "Still, most people who consistently contribute to their accounts, like Hector Espinoza, says the system works." In January, The New York Times explained that problems with Chile's system are far deeper than the CBS report indicates.’ http://mediamatters.org/items/200503110008
Arctic Drilling: Critical vote today/tomorrow. Predictions are for a very close vote, as some Republican moderates will join Democrats. The key, as noted in today’s WaPost article, was the Repubs changing the rules.
Because the refuge drilling provision is attached to the budget, supporters need only a 51-vote majority for approval. If opening the refuge were considered as separate legislation, a 60-vote majority would be needed to block a filibuster, a delaying tactic that has previously been used to defeat drilling. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38235-2005Mar15.html
Bush the Comic…or Idiot. Seems that Junior has been turned loose so as to allow his inner frat boy to take center stage. Prepare to grimace…or worse
The crowd is silent. Bush's face freezes in a guess-you-had-to-be-there smile.
Laughter comes eventually, in deference to the president's game effort, if not his joke (showing that it's possible to hate the joke but love the jokester). There are smiling grimaces and shaking heads, looks of amused disbelief that ask:
Did the Leader of the Free World really just go off on such a goofball digression?
In fact he did, and has been doing so often during otherwise sober discussions on Social Security, energy policy and foreign affairs. Like many politicians, Bush has always used humor as an icebreaker or all-purpose tool of endearment. But he has recently been unleashing (or inflicting) his inner-laugh-riot to a point where he is resembling a Texas auctioneer pitching private accounts on the Borscht Belt.
Last Wednesday Bush began a speech in Columbus, Ohio, by mentioning the international body-building competition that was held there the previous weekend. "When the vice president heard I was coming, he asked me to pick up an application form for next year's competition," the president joked, and what better image to begin a speech on energy policy? http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32281-2005Mar13?language=printer
-R
The Washington Post poll showed that the support dropped a bit further for the Right’s Social Security plan. One should note the bad news in the poll, that the incessant talk of crisis, broke, etc. has resulted in 71% now agreeing that the program is headed for a “crisis,” and two-thirds of that number believe that the system requires a major overhaul. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35231-2005Mar14?language=printer
Senate Amendment Vote. To express the sense of the Senate that Congress should reject any Social Security plan that requires deep benefit cuts or a massive increase in debt.
A 50-50 vote. In addition to all 44 Democrats and Independent Jeffords, the amendment also garnered votes from five Republicans -- Collins, Snowe, Dewine, Specter, and Graham. It’s helpful that with these exceptions, the Republicans are now on record as favoring deep cuts in Social Security as well as massuve debt. http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=1&vote=00049
What’s Happening, Iraq: Looting of weapons sites: Unfortunately, no public figures announced that this admission was further evidence that we never did care about wmd; why else would we allow weapons to be carted off and, assumedly, doled out / sold to the highest bidder? Do note that the looted material included "equipment that could be used to make missile parts, chemical weapons or centrifuges essential for enriching uranium for atom bombs."
Still another reason for impeachment.
Italy Withdraws: The Shrinking Coalition of the Drilling
Italy will begin withdrawing its 3,000 troops from Iraq in September, the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, announced today.
"We will begin to reduce our contingent even before the end of the year, starting in September, in agreement with our allies," he said in an interview on state television RAI.
Withdrawing Italian troops "will depend on the capability of the Iraqi government to give itself structures for acceptable security," the ANSA news agency quoted Mr Berlusconi as saying. "I've spoken about it with Tony Blair, and it's the public opinion of our countries that expects this decision."
The move will be a blow to the US, which has struggled to find countries willing to contribute troops following a wave of kidnappings and beheadings of foreigners in Iraq and an ongoing bloody insurgency. Italy's 3,000 troops, deployed in Nasiriyah, southern Iraq, constitute the fourth largest contingent after the US, Britain and South Korea. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1438372,00.html
Non-Combat “Ailments” Increase. Not surprising that there is more chest pain, back pain, hernias, as "We've never gone to war with guys as old as this before." http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=26839&archive=true
Halliburton: Houston Chronicle on the overcharges; excess over billing 108 million.
Iraq needed fuel. Halliburton Co. was ordered to get it there — quick. So the Houston-based contractor charged the Pentagon $27.5 million to ship $82,100 worth of cooking and heating fuel. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/3085603
The LATimes also had a piece on corruption in the reconstruction projects. A U.S. contractor repeatedly warned a top U.S. general overseeing a reconstruction project for the Iraqi army that a Lebanese middleman might be funneling kickbacks to the Iraqi defense ministry, noting this past November, "If we proceed down the road we are currently on, there will be serious legal issues that will land us all in jail," the contractor wrote in November. Eight days later he was killed in an ambush near Baghdad. The FBI is supposedly investigating the killing. The U.S. military is still working with the middleman. $24 million is still missing. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-contract15mar15,0,4285507.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Vanity Fair has a report on a Halliburton subsidiary’s [KBR] excessive billing for living expenses and more.
"If the administration shares our concern about not wasting taxpayers' money, you would think they would want to learn from the auditors and whistle-blowers what has gone wrong," Congressman Waxman says. Instead, the government has ignored its own auditors—both at the Pentagon and at the G.A.O.—who found glaring irregularities in KBR's books on Iraq. "Why has the administration turned away?" Waxman says. "I don't know as I have an answer to that question." http://www.vanityfair.com/commentary/content/printables/050307roco02?print=true
Prisoner Abuse / Murder Those “few bad apples” certainly were everywhere.
At least 26 prisoners have died in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002 in what Army and Navy investigators have concluded or suspect were acts of criminal homicide, according to military officials.
The number of confirmed or suspected cases is much higher than any accounting the military has previously reported. A Pentagon report sent to Congress last week cited only six prisoner deaths caused by abuse, but that partial tally was limited to what the author, Vice Adm. Albert T. Church III of the Navy, called "closed, substantiated abuse cases" as of last September. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/16/politics/16abuse.html?hp&ex=1111035600&en=943ed6fbc944e7de&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Same Sex Marriage Ruling; Two ways to look at this: (1) Progress, and (2) an issue for Junior and his successor
A trial court judge ruled Monday that California's ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, comparing it to archaic laws that once blocked interracial marriage and promoted "separate but equal" segregation.
If upheld on appeal, the decision could lead to California becoming the second state in the nation -- after Massachusetts -- in which gay men and lesbians have the same access to marriage licenses as heterosexual couples. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34254-2005Mar14.html
Fake News: The Bushies won’t abide by the finding of the General Accountability Office (formerly the General Accounting Office, if you’re confused) that fake news ain’t kosher. The legal advice that such is perfectly legal comes from and, then note, should come from the Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel. This is the very office that issued the opinion that the president can defy federal law in the name of national security (torture, yes!), and then retracted that memo when Gonzales was being confirmed.
The Bush administration, rejecting an opinion from the Government Accountability Office, said last week that it is legal for federal agencies to feed TV stations prepackaged news stories that do not disclose the government's role in producing them. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35010-2005Mar14.html
Fair and Balanced ?
Washington Post's Howard Kurtz reports on a new study of TV news. No surprise: Fox News is much more opinion than news.
"In covering the Iraq war last year, 73 percent of the stories on Fox News included the opinions of the anchors and journalists reporting them, a new study says. By contrast, 29 percent of the war reports on MSNBC and 2 percent of those on CNN included the journalists' own views. These findings -- the figures were similar for coverage of other stories -- 'seem to challenge' Fox's slogan of 'we report, you decide,' says the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
Bill O'Reilly, host of the "no-spin zone," is a bona fide leader in dialing in the spin: "As for the most popular prime-time shows, nearly every story -- 97 percent -- contained opinion on Fox's 'O'Reilly Factor'; 24 percent on MSNBC's 'Hardball with Chris Matthews'; and 0.9 percent on CNN's 'Larry King Live.'" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/nation/columns/kurtzhoward/?nav=pq
CBS After Dan Rather: Liberal CBS? Examples are terribly numerous
Recall:
* In late September, CBS postponed a prepared report questioning one of the Bush administration's rationales for invading Iraq until after the election, noting that it didn’t want to influence the election.
*Media Matters for America reviewed three months of CBS Evening News broadcasts and found that the program featured Republicans and conservatives far more often than Democrats and progressives.
* Last month, Bob Schieffer, Rather’s replacement, downplayed the costs of Bush's plan to privatize Social Security, claiming that "critics" say the plan would cost trillions of dollars and would do nothing to extend the solvency of the program. Of course, that isn't just something "critics" say -- it's the truth as Bush administration itself has admitted. Schieffer’s brother is a former co-owner with Bush of the Texas Ranger baseball team.
* As Media Matters notes, ‘Schieffer introduced a segment about Chile's privatized Social Security system that downplayed the serious problems the system caused. While acknowledging that some critics say the program has flaws, CBS' Trish Regan concluded: "Still, most people who consistently contribute to their accounts, like Hector Espinoza, says the system works." In January, The New York Times explained that problems with Chile's system are far deeper than the CBS report indicates.’ http://mediamatters.org/items/200503110008
Arctic Drilling: Critical vote today/tomorrow. Predictions are for a very close vote, as some Republican moderates will join Democrats. The key, as noted in today’s WaPost article, was the Repubs changing the rules.
Because the refuge drilling provision is attached to the budget, supporters need only a 51-vote majority for approval. If opening the refuge were considered as separate legislation, a 60-vote majority would be needed to block a filibuster, a delaying tactic that has previously been used to defeat drilling. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38235-2005Mar15.html
Bush the Comic…or Idiot. Seems that Junior has been turned loose so as to allow his inner frat boy to take center stage. Prepare to grimace…or worse
The crowd is silent. Bush's face freezes in a guess-you-had-to-be-there smile.
Laughter comes eventually, in deference to the president's game effort, if not his joke (showing that it's possible to hate the joke but love the jokester). There are smiling grimaces and shaking heads, looks of amused disbelief that ask:
Did the Leader of the Free World really just go off on such a goofball digression?
In fact he did, and has been doing so often during otherwise sober discussions on Social Security, energy policy and foreign affairs. Like many politicians, Bush has always used humor as an icebreaker or all-purpose tool of endearment. But he has recently been unleashing (or inflicting) his inner-laugh-riot to a point where he is resembling a Texas auctioneer pitching private accounts on the Borscht Belt.
Last Wednesday Bush began a speech in Columbus, Ohio, by mentioning the international body-building competition that was held there the previous weekend. "When the vice president heard I was coming, he asked me to pick up an application form for next year's competition," the president joked, and what better image to begin a speech on energy policy? http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32281-2005Mar13?language=printer
-R
