Friday, March 25, 2005
What’s Happening Kyrgyzstan: The increasingly undemocratic President Askar Akayev has been toppled; rigged elections are cited. This “Stan” was the most liberal, so the others are watching it closely. So are Moscow and the Bushies, as “we” both have bases there. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62138-2005Mar24.html
Labor News: All Wal-Mart… The Friday Al Franken show plans to address the UFCW campaign in hour #2 (1 – 2PM). You can reach it at www.airamericaradio.com or, in Greater Boston, 1200AM (Framingham) or 1430AM (Everett).
United Food and Commercial Workers have launched a campaign to get ABC's "Good Morning America" to dump Wal-Mart as a sponsor of the show's "Only in America" segment, on the grounds that, well, Wal-Mart specializes in selling underpriced Chinese crap to the people who used to work in factories until their jobs got sent overseas. The union says:
With this sponsorship, ABC News provides Wal-Mart both a format and visual framing to perpetuate a long-term myth—that Wal-Mart possesses a unique American patriotism manifested in practices that promote American values, respect workers, and privilege American-made products. http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/abcnews
Schiavo: The Courts have spoken, Jeb Bush looks to score points, the exploitation and lies continue, a few hysterics try to bring water to the incipient martyr who is being “starved” by her murderous husband and his accomplices, the Courts.
I’m not the only one to remain curious as to where the Democrats have been. This is another issue that they could have seized on. ‘Shame on you’ could easily be heaped on DeLay, Bush, Frist. The Democrats even have 70 - 80% on their side, yet remain passive.
David Sirota, of the CAP (Center for American Progress), cited in the WaPost:
Democratic strategist David Sirota said the Schiavo case creates three impressions. "Firstly, Republicans are zealots," he said. "Secondly, where the hell are the Democrats? And thirdly, well, at least the zealots believe in something strongly. And that's the problem for Democrats right now on this issue, and a whole host of others. The party seems unwilling to stand up for anything controversial."
"The calculus by Democrats is that they don't want to offend anyone," Sirota said. "But in trying not to offend anyone, they lose support from everyone. What many Democrats haven't yet learned from Republicans is that it is better to be loved by some, and hated by others, than try to be liked by everyone. Because when you do that, you are liked by no one." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59502-2005Mar23.html
Pat Buchanan, On “Hardball” with Chris Mathews: Precious
BUCHANAN: What George Bush ought to do right now is send federal marshals in and pick up Terri Schiavo and put that breathing tube back into her--excuse me, the food and hydration tube back into her, as this is taken up to the United States Supreme Court. He took an oath, Chris, to defend the Constitution of the United States. He has got an obligation, as well as these judges do, to defend that Constitution. And that means to protect this woman‘s life.
MATTHEWS: What happened to the 10th Amendment?
BUCHANAN: Look, the 10th Amendment has been dead as a door nail, Chris.
MATTHEWS: Well, it‘s our Constitution http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7286474/
Social Security: Can’t assume it’s over. Josh Marshall said it well
I must say, I hope the supporters of Social Security aren't resting on their collective laurels just because the president's jihad against the program got off to such an abysmal start.
Today, in newspapers and on websites across the country, headlines used words like 'broke', 'bankrupt' and 'bust' to describe what happens to Social Security when it starts running a deficit at some time in the middle of this century. Only weeks ago, President Bush was being forced to back off such misleading and deceptive language. And many Republicans were openly criticizing him for it. Now these are the words of choice in supposedly straight news reportage.
Supporters of Social Security really don't have the luxury of letting one lie or distortion go unchallenged or unanswered. www.talkingpointsmemo.com
What’s Happening, Iraq: The media provide a steady stream of reports that convey improvement, both as to quality of life and security for Iraqis. Today’s NY Times notes the “unusually quiet” Baghdad and hundreds of power workers holding a demonstration, chanting “no to terror".
Hard to know what’s real. Case in point: Media reports told of a raid, “U.S.-Backed Iraqis Raid Camp and Report Killing 80 Insurgents.” (NY Times). Yet, a wire service report, posted principally by foreign sources, provides contrast.
Up to 40 fighters were seen today at a Iraq lakeside training camp attacked by US and Iraqi forces a day before and said they had never left, an AFP correspondent who visited the site said.
The correspondent, who went with other journalists to the camp at Lake Tharthar, 200km north of Baghdad, said he saw 30 to 40 fighters there.
The remains of three burnt vehicles were seen on a dusty road leading to the camp in the village of Ain al-Hilwa. A few mud huts were partly destroyed and a few big craters gouged the ground.
One of the fighters, who called himself Mohammed Amer and claimed to belong to the Secret Islamic Army, said they had never left the base.
He also said only 11 of his comrades were killed in airstrikes on the site.
Iraqi commanders said 85 suspected insurgents were killed in an assault by Iraqi troops and US aircraft on the camp yesterday.
No one was captured and others had fled by boat, he said. http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,12645853-23109,00.html
So, what’s happening? The New Republic’s Lawrence Kaplan addresses the fuzzy realities.
Simply put, U.S. officials in Baghdad have in the past tended not to tell the whole truth. It is of course in their interest to convey good news. They've performed their job so well, however, that no one believes them anymore. The public's exposure to this has mostly been confined to shifting reports about the numbers of Iraqi forces and other upbeat but hollow assessments put out by U.S. officials.
Embassy and military officials in Iraq have told me and others, with a straight face, that the airport road is the safest road in Iraq, that Iyad Allawi will win the election by a landslide, that U.S. forces have killed more insurgents than the same officials have said even exist, and other tales too numerous to list. Dedication to the mission, career advancement, an impulse to spin — whatever the motive, the public face of the U.S. mission in Iraq has been so disconnected from reality for so long that were its assessments eventually to jibe with the whole truth, it would have no more persuasive power than the boy who cried wolf. For if the Baghdad press corps has a bias, it is a bias against bullshit. http://www.tnr.com/user/nregi.mhtml?i=w050321&s=kaplan032405 (subscription required)
Iraqi Casualties: The Columbia Journalism Review looks at the disputed Lancet figure of 100,000.
The scientists, from Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, and Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, reported a so-called 95 percent confidence interval. They said that they were 95 percent sure the number of deaths lay between 8,000 and 194,000.
Eight thousand and 194,000? What’s a reporter to make of such a broad range? The lower end of that range overlaps well with previous, nonscientific estimates, but the middle and upper range seem outrageous. True, had the researchers surveyed more houses in more neighborhoods, the interval would have been narrower. But each day spent traveling within Iraq for the study presented grave dangers to the American and Iraqi researchers.
Reporters’ unease about the wide range may have been a primary reason many didn’t cover the study. One columnist, Fred Kaplan of Slate, called the estimate “meaningless” and labeled the range “a dart board.”
But he was wrong. I called about ten biostatisticians and mortality experts. Not one of them took issue with the study’s methods or its conclusions. If anything, the scientists told me, the authors had been cautious in their estimates. With a quick call to a statistician, reporters would have found that the probability forms a bell curve — the likelihood is very small that the number of deaths fell at either extreme of the range. It was very likely to fall near the middle. http://www.cjr.org/issues/2005/2/voices-guterman.asp
The Pseudo-Draft The context being the Army missing recruiting goals, reflecting the loss of interest in the poor-paying, high risk employ. Word of mouth, undoubtedly. So, the Army does what it can.
The U.S. Army is ordering more people to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan involuntarily from a seldom-used personnel pool as part of a mobilization that began last summer.
They are part of the Army's Individual Ready Reserve, made up of soldiers who have completed their volunteer active-duty service commitment but remain eligible to be called back into uniform for years after returning to civilian life. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=7989189
SOBs: Bob Herbert on the Republican politics of distraction and exploitation.
Republicans will tell you they were ratified in the last presidential election. We may be locked in a long and costly war, and federal deficits may be spiraling toward the moon, but the era of shared sacrifices is over. This is the era of entrenched exploitation. All sacrifices will be made by working people and the poor, and the vast bulk of the benefits will accrue to the rich.
F.D.R. would have stared slack-jawed at this madness. Even his grand Social Security edifice is under assault by the vandals of the G.O.P.
While the press and the public are distracted by one sensational news story after another - Terri Schiavo, Michael Jackson, steroids in baseball, etc. - the president and his party have continued their extraordinary campaign to undermine the programs that were designed to fend off destitution and provide a reasonable foundation of economic security for those not blessed with great wealth.
Conservatives insist the cuts are necessary to get the roaring federal budget deficit under control. But they have trouble keeping a straight face when they tell that story. Laden with tax cuts, the president's proposal will result in an increase, not a decrease, in the deficit. Shared sacrifice is anathema to the big-money crowd.
The House has passed a budget that is similar to the president's, except it contains even deeper cuts in programs that affect the poor. In the Senate, a handful of Republicans balked at the cuts proposed for Medicaid. Casting their votes with the Democrats, they were able to eliminate the cuts from the Senate budget proposal. The Senate also added $5.4 billion in education funding for 2006.
All the budgets contain more than $100 billion in tax cuts over the next five years, which makes a mockery of the G.O.P.'s budget-balancing rhetoric. When Congress returns from its Easter recess, the Republican leadership will try to reconcile the differences in the various proposals. Whatever happens will be bad news for ordinary Americans. Big cuts are coming. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/25/opinion/herbert25.1.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
-R
Labor News: All Wal-Mart… The Friday Al Franken show plans to address the UFCW campaign in hour #2 (1 – 2PM). You can reach it at www.airamericaradio.com or, in Greater Boston, 1200AM (Framingham) or 1430AM (Everett).
United Food and Commercial Workers have launched a campaign to get ABC's "Good Morning America" to dump Wal-Mart as a sponsor of the show's "Only in America" segment, on the grounds that, well, Wal-Mart specializes in selling underpriced Chinese crap to the people who used to work in factories until their jobs got sent overseas. The union says:
With this sponsorship, ABC News provides Wal-Mart both a format and visual framing to perpetuate a long-term myth—that Wal-Mart possesses a unique American patriotism manifested in practices that promote American values, respect workers, and privilege American-made products. http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/abcnews
Schiavo: The Courts have spoken, Jeb Bush looks to score points, the exploitation and lies continue, a few hysterics try to bring water to the incipient martyr who is being “starved” by her murderous husband and his accomplices, the Courts.
I’m not the only one to remain curious as to where the Democrats have been. This is another issue that they could have seized on. ‘Shame on you’ could easily be heaped on DeLay, Bush, Frist. The Democrats even have 70 - 80% on their side, yet remain passive.
David Sirota, of the CAP (Center for American Progress), cited in the WaPost:
Democratic strategist David Sirota said the Schiavo case creates three impressions. "Firstly, Republicans are zealots," he said. "Secondly, where the hell are the Democrats? And thirdly, well, at least the zealots believe in something strongly. And that's the problem for Democrats right now on this issue, and a whole host of others. The party seems unwilling to stand up for anything controversial."
"The calculus by Democrats is that they don't want to offend anyone," Sirota said. "But in trying not to offend anyone, they lose support from everyone. What many Democrats haven't yet learned from Republicans is that it is better to be loved by some, and hated by others, than try to be liked by everyone. Because when you do that, you are liked by no one." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59502-2005Mar23.html
Pat Buchanan, On “Hardball” with Chris Mathews: Precious
BUCHANAN: What George Bush ought to do right now is send federal marshals in and pick up Terri Schiavo and put that breathing tube back into her--excuse me, the food and hydration tube back into her, as this is taken up to the United States Supreme Court. He took an oath, Chris, to defend the Constitution of the United States. He has got an obligation, as well as these judges do, to defend that Constitution. And that means to protect this woman‘s life.
MATTHEWS: What happened to the 10th Amendment?
BUCHANAN: Look, the 10th Amendment has been dead as a door nail, Chris.
MATTHEWS: Well, it‘s our Constitution http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7286474/
Social Security: Can’t assume it’s over. Josh Marshall said it well
I must say, I hope the supporters of Social Security aren't resting on their collective laurels just because the president's jihad against the program got off to such an abysmal start.
Today, in newspapers and on websites across the country, headlines used words like 'broke', 'bankrupt' and 'bust' to describe what happens to Social Security when it starts running a deficit at some time in the middle of this century. Only weeks ago, President Bush was being forced to back off such misleading and deceptive language. And many Republicans were openly criticizing him for it. Now these are the words of choice in supposedly straight news reportage.
Supporters of Social Security really don't have the luxury of letting one lie or distortion go unchallenged or unanswered. www.talkingpointsmemo.com
What’s Happening, Iraq: The media provide a steady stream of reports that convey improvement, both as to quality of life and security for Iraqis. Today’s NY Times notes the “unusually quiet” Baghdad and hundreds of power workers holding a demonstration, chanting “no to terror".
Hard to know what’s real. Case in point: Media reports told of a raid, “U.S.-Backed Iraqis Raid Camp and Report Killing 80 Insurgents.” (NY Times). Yet, a wire service report, posted principally by foreign sources, provides contrast.
Up to 40 fighters were seen today at a Iraq lakeside training camp attacked by US and Iraqi forces a day before and said they had never left, an AFP correspondent who visited the site said.
The correspondent, who went with other journalists to the camp at Lake Tharthar, 200km north of Baghdad, said he saw 30 to 40 fighters there.
The remains of three burnt vehicles were seen on a dusty road leading to the camp in the village of Ain al-Hilwa. A few mud huts were partly destroyed and a few big craters gouged the ground.
One of the fighters, who called himself Mohammed Amer and claimed to belong to the Secret Islamic Army, said they had never left the base.
He also said only 11 of his comrades were killed in airstrikes on the site.
Iraqi commanders said 85 suspected insurgents were killed in an assault by Iraqi troops and US aircraft on the camp yesterday.
No one was captured and others had fled by boat, he said. http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,12645853-23109,00.html
So, what’s happening? The New Republic’s Lawrence Kaplan addresses the fuzzy realities.
Simply put, U.S. officials in Baghdad have in the past tended not to tell the whole truth. It is of course in their interest to convey good news. They've performed their job so well, however, that no one believes them anymore. The public's exposure to this has mostly been confined to shifting reports about the numbers of Iraqi forces and other upbeat but hollow assessments put out by U.S. officials.
Embassy and military officials in Iraq have told me and others, with a straight face, that the airport road is the safest road in Iraq, that Iyad Allawi will win the election by a landslide, that U.S. forces have killed more insurgents than the same officials have said even exist, and other tales too numerous to list. Dedication to the mission, career advancement, an impulse to spin — whatever the motive, the public face of the U.S. mission in Iraq has been so disconnected from reality for so long that were its assessments eventually to jibe with the whole truth, it would have no more persuasive power than the boy who cried wolf. For if the Baghdad press corps has a bias, it is a bias against bullshit. http://www.tnr.com/user/nregi.mhtml?i=w050321&s=kaplan032405 (subscription required)
Iraqi Casualties: The Columbia Journalism Review looks at the disputed Lancet figure of 100,000.
The scientists, from Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, and Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, reported a so-called 95 percent confidence interval. They said that they were 95 percent sure the number of deaths lay between 8,000 and 194,000.
Eight thousand and 194,000? What’s a reporter to make of such a broad range? The lower end of that range overlaps well with previous, nonscientific estimates, but the middle and upper range seem outrageous. True, had the researchers surveyed more houses in more neighborhoods, the interval would have been narrower. But each day spent traveling within Iraq for the study presented grave dangers to the American and Iraqi researchers.
Reporters’ unease about the wide range may have been a primary reason many didn’t cover the study. One columnist, Fred Kaplan of Slate, called the estimate “meaningless” and labeled the range “a dart board.”
But he was wrong. I called about ten biostatisticians and mortality experts. Not one of them took issue with the study’s methods or its conclusions. If anything, the scientists told me, the authors had been cautious in their estimates. With a quick call to a statistician, reporters would have found that the probability forms a bell curve — the likelihood is very small that the number of deaths fell at either extreme of the range. It was very likely to fall near the middle. http://www.cjr.org/issues/2005/2/voices-guterman.asp
The Pseudo-Draft The context being the Army missing recruiting goals, reflecting the loss of interest in the poor-paying, high risk employ. Word of mouth, undoubtedly. So, the Army does what it can.
The U.S. Army is ordering more people to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan involuntarily from a seldom-used personnel pool as part of a mobilization that began last summer.
They are part of the Army's Individual Ready Reserve, made up of soldiers who have completed their volunteer active-duty service commitment but remain eligible to be called back into uniform for years after returning to civilian life. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=7989189
SOBs: Bob Herbert on the Republican politics of distraction and exploitation.
Republicans will tell you they were ratified in the last presidential election. We may be locked in a long and costly war, and federal deficits may be spiraling toward the moon, but the era of shared sacrifices is over. This is the era of entrenched exploitation. All sacrifices will be made by working people and the poor, and the vast bulk of the benefits will accrue to the rich.
F.D.R. would have stared slack-jawed at this madness. Even his grand Social Security edifice is under assault by the vandals of the G.O.P.
While the press and the public are distracted by one sensational news story after another - Terri Schiavo, Michael Jackson, steroids in baseball, etc. - the president and his party have continued their extraordinary campaign to undermine the programs that were designed to fend off destitution and provide a reasonable foundation of economic security for those not blessed with great wealth.
Conservatives insist the cuts are necessary to get the roaring federal budget deficit under control. But they have trouble keeping a straight face when they tell that story. Laden with tax cuts, the president's proposal will result in an increase, not a decrease, in the deficit. Shared sacrifice is anathema to the big-money crowd.
The House has passed a budget that is similar to the president's, except it contains even deeper cuts in programs that affect the poor. In the Senate, a handful of Republicans balked at the cuts proposed for Medicaid. Casting their votes with the Democrats, they were able to eliminate the cuts from the Senate budget proposal. The Senate also added $5.4 billion in education funding for 2006.
All the budgets contain more than $100 billion in tax cuts over the next five years, which makes a mockery of the G.O.P.'s budget-balancing rhetoric. When Congress returns from its Easter recess, the Republican leadership will try to reconcile the differences in the various proposals. Whatever happens will be bad news for ordinary Americans. Big cuts are coming. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/25/opinion/herbert25.1.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
-R
