Friday, May 06, 2005
Synopsis: Blair continues, but lessened vote means he won’t complete his term, fierce fighting in Afghanistan, North Korea prepares for a nuke test (or pretends to be prepping). And,
Air America Grows. Clutching my Air America coffee cup, I’m happy to note:
Chicago’s Newsweb Radio Group today said it will launch a new local radio station for “progressive talk” at 850 on the AM band.
WCPT, Chicago’s Progressive Talk, will begin broadcasting Thursday at 8 a.m. with programming that will include talk shows, news on the hour and traffic and weather reports. Among the personalities with shows to air on the station are Jerry Springer, Al Franken, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Ed Schultz. WCPT will also air a show called Morning Sedition. http://chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=16371
#3 al-Qaeda arrested. This reminds me of the world of boxing- really- when a champion is matched up with an unknown who is declared a “#1 challenger”. Al Liby was not posted by the FBI as being on the “most wanted” list. Now, he’s the #3, a major victory, etc. “Grade inflation”, was what one terrorist analyst termed it.
Pakistani security forces have arrested the al-Qa'eda mastermind who "planned assassination attempts" against Pervez Musharraf, the president.
Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, information minister, said Abu Faraj Farj al Liby had been arrested but gave no further details. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/05/04/upakistan.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/05/04/ixportaltop.html
Al-Qaeda Morale low? Another ‘development’ to boost U.S. morale? A note found by the U.S. military purports to be an al-Qaeda fella sharing his concern w/ leader Zarqawi.
The clashes in the west, and continuing car bombings and ambushes in central Iraq, came as the U.S. military released a letter it said showed morale was low among followers of Zarqawi, despite an onslaught of deadly attacks by insurgents this month.
"The situation has changed dramatically, and that is not acceptable to God," declared the letter, which the military said was addressed to Zarqawi, a Jordanian. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/03/AR2005050301616_pf.html
Meanwhile, riots at the University
Masar Sarhan, a popular student leader at Baghdad University, threw a party on campus this week to celebrate the Shiite Muslim leaders of Iraq's new government. Religious songs blared and students read poetry congratulating the Shiites for taking power.
Four hours later, three gunmen followed 24-year-old Sarhan and shot him to death blocks from his home in the capital.
The campus, already simmering with sectarian tension, exploded with violent demonstrations that continued on Wednesday. Enraged Shiite students stormed the cafeteria, overturning tables and breaking windows. They accused Sunni students and professors of supporting Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, which they blamed for Sarhan's death. Police fired shots in the air to stop the riots. The dean fled the campus and classes were canceled indefinitely.
"It wasn't a demonstration - it was a riot," said Lina Majed, 22, a Russian studies student who was in the cafeteria during the violence. "I won't come back to college until everything settles down. This is scary."
Sarhan's murder was a disaster for Baghdad University officials who'd been trying to quell sectarian problems among students since the January elections. Shiites and Kurds dominate Iraq's first elected government. Sunni Arabs mostly boycotted the vote or stayed away out of fear of attack from Iraq's Sunni insurgency. http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/11563939.htm
And, looking for some of the missing $…
The U.S. government has opened a criminal inquiry into suspected embezzlement by officials who failed to account for almost $100 million they disbursed for Iraqi reconstruction projects, federal investigators said Wednesday.
Auditors have been unable to fully document how the money was allocated to Iraqi workers by a small group of officials working from a U.S. outpost in Hillah, according to an audit report released Wednesday by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-fraud5may05,0,6994435,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Paging Clarence Darrow…
Six years after Kansas ignited a national debate over the teaching of evolution, the state is poised to push through new science standards this summer requiring that Darwin's theory be challenged in the classroom.
In the first of three daylong hearings being referred to here as a direct descendant of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee, a parade of Ph.D.'s testified Thursday about the flaws they saw in mainstream science's explanation of the origins of life. It was one part biology lesson, one part political theater, and the biggest stage yet for the emerging movement known as intelligent design, which posits that life's complexity cannot be explained without a supernatural creator. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/06/education/06evolution.html?pagewanted=print
Americana Low-lite: GM / Ford reach ‘junk’ status How far they’ve fallen…
General Motors and Ford Motor lost their investment grade ratings Thursday, pushing two of corporate America's biggest borrowers into the ranks of junk bonds and rattling the financial markets with the message that the collective fortunes of the remaining two domestically owned automakers have sunk to their lowest points yet.
The downgrading by Standard & Poor's, the credit agency, reflects the inability of G.M. and Ford to make enough cars that people will buy without $5,000 rebates and other sales incentives, as well as worries that the two automakers may not emerge anytime soon from their troubles, starting with eroding earnings and sliding sales. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/06/automobiles/06auto.html
Many investors knew it was coming, but they did not expect that two of the nation's biggest issuers of bonds would be reduced to junk status so soon.
As a result, Standard & Poor's announcement at midday yesterday that it was cutting its credit ratings for both General Motors and the Ford Motor Company set off a selling spree in the corporate bond market. The rating cut to below investment grade begins a process of adjustment that could ripple through, and roil, the fixed-income markets for weeks. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/06/automobiles/06bond.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Lautenberg-Kerry bill follow-up: Embracing the Principles. While awaiting possible action on their bill, the Senate vote to stop further use of phony videos passing off as news.
Congressional negotiators have agreed to bar government agencies for one year from issuing video news releases that do not clearly identify themselves as the source, Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd said on Tuesday.
Senate and House negotiators agreed to include the measure in an emergency spending bill banning the use of taxpayer dollars for producing the releases, which often resemble news segments, unless they include a written or audible notice.
“It is simply not right for administration departments and agencies to try to snooker the American people, producing propaganda and passing it off as legitimate news,” the West Virginia lawmaker said in a statement. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=8378804
Stop that Dissent: Feds warn AFL-CIO not to oppose Social Security change
The Bush administration has warned the nation's biggest labor federation that union-run pension funds may be breaking the law in opposing President Bush's Social Security proposals.
In a letter on Tuesday to the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the Department of Labor said it was "very concerned" that pension plans might be spending workers' money to "advocate a particular result in the current Social Security debate."
The Labor Department also warned the federation that pension plans could be violating their fiduciary responsibilities by suggesting that they might take their investment business away from Wall Street firms that support Mr. Bush's plans.http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/05/politics/05social.html?pagewanted=print
-R
Air America Grows. Clutching my Air America coffee cup, I’m happy to note:
Chicago’s Newsweb Radio Group today said it will launch a new local radio station for “progressive talk” at 850 on the AM band.
WCPT, Chicago’s Progressive Talk, will begin broadcasting Thursday at 8 a.m. with programming that will include talk shows, news on the hour and traffic and weather reports. Among the personalities with shows to air on the station are Jerry Springer, Al Franken, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Ed Schultz. WCPT will also air a show called Morning Sedition. http://chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=16371
#3 al-Qaeda arrested. This reminds me of the world of boxing- really- when a champion is matched up with an unknown who is declared a “#1 challenger”. Al Liby was not posted by the FBI as being on the “most wanted” list. Now, he’s the #3, a major victory, etc. “Grade inflation”, was what one terrorist analyst termed it.
Pakistani security forces have arrested the al-Qa'eda mastermind who "planned assassination attempts" against Pervez Musharraf, the president.
Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, information minister, said Abu Faraj Farj al Liby had been arrested but gave no further details. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/05/04/upakistan.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/05/04/ixportaltop.html
Al-Qaeda Morale low? Another ‘development’ to boost U.S. morale? A note found by the U.S. military purports to be an al-Qaeda fella sharing his concern w/ leader Zarqawi.
The clashes in the west, and continuing car bombings and ambushes in central Iraq, came as the U.S. military released a letter it said showed morale was low among followers of Zarqawi, despite an onslaught of deadly attacks by insurgents this month.
"The situation has changed dramatically, and that is not acceptable to God," declared the letter, which the military said was addressed to Zarqawi, a Jordanian. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/03/AR2005050301616_pf.html
Meanwhile, riots at the University
Masar Sarhan, a popular student leader at Baghdad University, threw a party on campus this week to celebrate the Shiite Muslim leaders of Iraq's new government. Religious songs blared and students read poetry congratulating the Shiites for taking power.
Four hours later, three gunmen followed 24-year-old Sarhan and shot him to death blocks from his home in the capital.
The campus, already simmering with sectarian tension, exploded with violent demonstrations that continued on Wednesday. Enraged Shiite students stormed the cafeteria, overturning tables and breaking windows. They accused Sunni students and professors of supporting Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, which they blamed for Sarhan's death. Police fired shots in the air to stop the riots. The dean fled the campus and classes were canceled indefinitely.
"It wasn't a demonstration - it was a riot," said Lina Majed, 22, a Russian studies student who was in the cafeteria during the violence. "I won't come back to college until everything settles down. This is scary."
Sarhan's murder was a disaster for Baghdad University officials who'd been trying to quell sectarian problems among students since the January elections. Shiites and Kurds dominate Iraq's first elected government. Sunni Arabs mostly boycotted the vote or stayed away out of fear of attack from Iraq's Sunni insurgency. http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/11563939.htm
And, looking for some of the missing $…
The U.S. government has opened a criminal inquiry into suspected embezzlement by officials who failed to account for almost $100 million they disbursed for Iraqi reconstruction projects, federal investigators said Wednesday.
Auditors have been unable to fully document how the money was allocated to Iraqi workers by a small group of officials working from a U.S. outpost in Hillah, according to an audit report released Wednesday by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-fraud5may05,0,6994435,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Paging Clarence Darrow…
Six years after Kansas ignited a national debate over the teaching of evolution, the state is poised to push through new science standards this summer requiring that Darwin's theory be challenged in the classroom.
In the first of three daylong hearings being referred to here as a direct descendant of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee, a parade of Ph.D.'s testified Thursday about the flaws they saw in mainstream science's explanation of the origins of life. It was one part biology lesson, one part political theater, and the biggest stage yet for the emerging movement known as intelligent design, which posits that life's complexity cannot be explained without a supernatural creator. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/06/education/06evolution.html?pagewanted=print
Americana Low-lite: GM / Ford reach ‘junk’ status How far they’ve fallen…
General Motors and Ford Motor lost their investment grade ratings Thursday, pushing two of corporate America's biggest borrowers into the ranks of junk bonds and rattling the financial markets with the message that the collective fortunes of the remaining two domestically owned automakers have sunk to their lowest points yet.
The downgrading by Standard & Poor's, the credit agency, reflects the inability of G.M. and Ford to make enough cars that people will buy without $5,000 rebates and other sales incentives, as well as worries that the two automakers may not emerge anytime soon from their troubles, starting with eroding earnings and sliding sales. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/06/automobiles/06auto.html
Many investors knew it was coming, but they did not expect that two of the nation's biggest issuers of bonds would be reduced to junk status so soon.
As a result, Standard & Poor's announcement at midday yesterday that it was cutting its credit ratings for both General Motors and the Ford Motor Company set off a selling spree in the corporate bond market. The rating cut to below investment grade begins a process of adjustment that could ripple through, and roil, the fixed-income markets for weeks. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/06/automobiles/06bond.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Lautenberg-Kerry bill follow-up: Embracing the Principles. While awaiting possible action on their bill, the Senate vote to stop further use of phony videos passing off as news.
Congressional negotiators have agreed to bar government agencies for one year from issuing video news releases that do not clearly identify themselves as the source, Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd said on Tuesday.
Senate and House negotiators agreed to include the measure in an emergency spending bill banning the use of taxpayer dollars for producing the releases, which often resemble news segments, unless they include a written or audible notice.
“It is simply not right for administration departments and agencies to try to snooker the American people, producing propaganda and passing it off as legitimate news,” the West Virginia lawmaker said in a statement. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=8378804
Stop that Dissent: Feds warn AFL-CIO not to oppose Social Security change
The Bush administration has warned the nation's biggest labor federation that union-run pension funds may be breaking the law in opposing President Bush's Social Security proposals.
In a letter on Tuesday to the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the Department of Labor said it was "very concerned" that pension plans might be spending workers' money to "advocate a particular result in the current Social Security debate."
The Labor Department also warned the federation that pension plans could be violating their fiduciary responsibilities by suggesting that they might take their investment business away from Wall Street firms that support Mr. Bush's plans.http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/05/politics/05social.html?pagewanted=print
-R
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
For old timers: Kent State [and Jackson State] anniversary
What’s Happening, Iraq: Massive bombings.
And, a Knight Ridder dispatch re reporters being intimidated, beaten. "Tell me to cover anything except the police," said one journalist after recruits taunted him with death threats.
A photographer for a Baghdad newspaper says Iraqi police beat and detained him for snapping pictures of long lines at gas stations. A reporter for another local paper received an invitation from Iraqi police to cover their graduation ceremony and ended up receiving death threats from the recruits. A local TV reporter says she's lost count of how many times Iraqi authorities have confiscated her cameras and smashed her tapes.
All these cases are under investigation by the Iraqi Association to Defend Journalists, a union that formed amid a chilling new trend of alleged arrests, beatings and intimidation of Iraqi reporters at the hands of Iraqi security forces. Reporters Without Borders, an international watchdog group for press freedom, tracked the arrests of five Iraqi journalists within a two-week period and issued a statement on April 26 asking authorities "to be more discerning and restrained and not carry out hasty and arbitrary arrests." http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/11545887.htm
Times: Confirmed Tierney is a Rightie hack. The often maddening, but (sometimes) worthy of respect William Safire has been replaced by an ordinary partisan. Witness:
For the mainly Democratic audience - this was a crowd of Washington journalists and luminaries from Hollywood and Manhattan - it was an evening of cognitive dissonance. How to reconcile this charming image on stage with the Bush they love to bash?
Mrs. Bush's performance, and her husband's reaction, wasn't a shock to the reporters who cover the White House. For years they have tried to convince their friends outside Washington that Mr. Bush is actually not a close-minded dolt, and Mrs. Bush is no Stepford Wife or Church Lady. Yes, they're Texans who go to church and preach family values, but they're not yahoos or religious zealots.
The coverage of Mrs. Bush's comic debut may change some minds, but for devout Bush-bashers, it's much easier to stay the course. If you live in a blue-state stronghold, a coastal city where you can go 24 hours without meeting any Republicans, it's consoling to think of the red staters as an alien bunch of strait-laced Bible thumpers.
Otherwise, how do you explain why they're Republican? Or answer the question Democrats asked in astonishment when they saw Mr. Bush's vote totals: Who are these people?
The favorite Democratic explanation is that the red staters are hicks who have been blinded by righteousness, as Thomas Frank argues in "What's the Matter With Kansas?" He laments that middle-class Kansans are so bamboozled by moral issues like abortion and school prayer that they vote for Republicans even though the Republican tax-cutting policies are against their self-interest.
But middle-class Americans don't simply cast ballots for Republicans. They also vote with their feet, which is why blue states and old Democratic cities are losing population to red states and Republican exurbs. People are moving there precisely because of economic reasons - more jobs, affordable houses and the lower taxes offered by Republican politicians. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/03/opinion/03tierney.html?hp
The Soft-hearted: They’re tired of opposing. Richard Cohen of the WaPost is one.
It just so happens that I think George Bush is doing something interesting with Social Security. The program does need to be fixed or recalibrated or something, and he has had the guts to take it on. Moreover, I kind of like the idea of personal investment accounts if funding them does not weaken the overall program or add to the nation's incredible debt. After all, there is something to be said for expanding the number of American worker-capitalists and having a nest egg an heir could inherit, or one that would not be eliminated by death. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/02/AR2005050201261.html
Yes, Richard, and Bush wants to “save” Social Security, not fulfill the Heritage/Cato dream of converting/abolishing it. Yes, Richard, we can raise the cap AND add private accounts in a happy compromise without compromising the viability of the SS program. And, Bush’s idea to maintain expected payments to the poor, but cut benefits 15 – 40% for everyone else is because he cares about the poor, not because they want to make it a welfare program that people will not support. And, of course, they were victimized by bad intelligence and had been concerned about the Iraqi people’s yearning for democracy so they invaded. ETC!
Army Recruiting: Bending the Rules Deserves traction
Interviews with more than two dozen recruiters in 10 states hint at the extent of their concern, if not the exact scope of the transgressions. Several spoke of concealing mental-health histories and police records. They described falsified documents, wallet-size cheat sheets slipped to applicants before the military's aptitude test and commanding officers who look the other way. And they voiced doubts about the quality of some troops destined for the front lines…
Yesterday, the issue drew national attention as CBS News reported that a high-school student outside Denver recorded two recruiters as they advised him how to cheat. The student, David McSwane, said one recruiter had told him how to create a diploma from a nonexistent school, while the other had helped him buy a product to cleanse traces of marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms from his body. The Army said the recruiters had been suspended while it investigated. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/03/national/03recruit.html .
DeLay update: Trouble at home for The Hammer
A new poll of voters in Tom DeLay’s district shows faltering support for the flailing House Majority Leader. A poll conducted by SurveyUSA for a local television station showed 51% disapprove of the way DeLay is handling his job as a congressman. What’s more 39% said he should resign his leadership post, while another 36% said he should resign from Congress altogether (that’s a combined 75% of DeLay’s constituents who believe he should resign from something). In response to the poll, DeLay spokesperson Shannon Flaherty said, “The people of his district know that Congressman DeLay is guided by principles, not by polls.” Keep telling yourself that, Shannon.
What I see is the people who have always been opposed to him, democrats and those that have been opposed to him, they are still opposed to him and they are more vocal," said Eric Thode, with the Fort Bend County Republican Party.
Thode said DeLay still has strong support from republicans in his district, but believes the Local 2 poll did not represent enough Republicans.
Democrats said the Local 2 poll showed DeLay is vulnerable at the ballot box.http://www.click2houston.com/politics/4441145/detail.html
Moonie Counterattack: The Right organ keeps trying
House Republicans called Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi a hypocrite yesterday for not demanding investigations into new ethics questions that have arisen about the travel of her fellow Democrats.
"She demanded an investigation into [Majority Leader] Tom DeLay, but hasn't said a word about these Democrats who have done the same thing," said Rep. Patrick T. McHenry, North Carolina Republican…
In an ABC interview Sunday, Mrs. Pelosi dismissed questions about travel by Democrats, telling interviewer George Stephanopoulos: "Do not fall into a Republican trap of equating technicalities on reporting, timing of reporting with not upholding an ethical standard of the House."
Republicans see a double standard. http://insider.washingtontimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20050504-122024-4420r
Plame Update: Hendrik Hertzberg. Well, more his thoughts than an update, as he notes that journalists, not Robert Novak, are threatened with jail.
Normally, the reporter is being told to testify about his or her knowledge of a crime; this time, the reporter’s conversation—the source’s half of it, anyway—is itself the crime, if a crime there was. Normally, in recent years, the threats to the Washington press corps’s ability to do its job have come from the Bush Administration, which is notoriously secretive, manipulative, and vindictive to journalists who fail to bend the knee. This time, though, the threat is coming from an investigation, a perfectly legitimate one, that targets the Administration, or persons within it, precisely for misusing the press—in this case, by ruining the career of a C.I.A. operative. Then, there is the role of Robert Novak. It was Novak who outed the agent, but it is not Novak who is in trouble. Was he subpoenaed? If not, why not? If he was, and he refused to name his source, why isn’t he in the same jail-bound boat as they are? If he did name names, why the relentless pursuit of Cooper and Miller? No one knows—except Novak and the prosecutors.
Cooper and Miller are not targets of the investigation. But they may yet be forced to a choice between breaking their promise and going to jail; and it is a near-certainty that, as a matter of personal and professional honor, they would choose the latter. There is, then, a strong possibility that (a) a serious abuse of power, possibly a crime, will have been committed by one or more White House officials, and (b), in consequence, two journalists will have been imprisoned. That would be a strange kind of justice, and a singularly grim parody of accountability. http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/050509ta_talk_hertzberg
Fake News Update: An attempt: The Lautenberg (NJ) – Kerry bill to deal with the use of public funds to create fake news segments, the Truth in Broadcasting Act.
The legislation would require that “prepackaged news stories” produced by the Administration contain a disclosure of the source of the material. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has ruled that the Administration’s use of “prepackaged news stories” was illegal “covert propaganda” because the government’s role was not disclosed to viewers. On March 11th 2005, the Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Justice issued memos to all executive branch agencies ordering them to ignore the GAO ruling and gave the green light to further use of fake news stories that hide the government’s role in their production.
The Lautenberg-Kerry Truth in Broadcasting Act would follow the legal ruling of the GAO and establish permanent federal law that prepackaged news stories by the government must disclose the government’s role with a disclaimer. http://lautenberg.senate.gov/~lautenberg/press/2003/01/2005428B52.html
Bolton: Shouldn’t forget, though not currently at issue: "I'm with the Bush-Cheney team and I'm here to stop the count." -John Bolton, Florida, 2000
Bush Poll: CNN/USA Today/Gallup: Bush’s positions remain wildly unpopular. Maybe Laura’s scripted jokes will help.
Approval rating — Bush’s approval rating remains at 48%, which is exactly where it was a month ago. The percentage of poll respondents who disapprove is up to 49%, up slightly from the first week in April.
The issues — Americans disapprove of Bush’s handling of just about everything, including foreign affairs (45-49), the economy (43-53), Iraq (42-55), Social Security (35-58), and energy policy (34-52).
And: 53% of Americans feel that Republicans are trying to abuse their majority power while 47% feel Democrats are trying to abuse the filibuster procedure.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/polls/tables/live/2005-05-02-poll-results.htm
Arnold: Letter-to-the Editor, LA Times:
I think it is time that California closes it border with Austria. Those Austrians come here and take jobs away from others, get California driver's licenses and drive fuel-inefficient cars, harass our women and then want to tell the rest of us how to run the state … and all those things.
Jeff Robbins, Los Angeles http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/letters/la-le-immig3may03,0,3478297.story?coll=la-news-comment-letters
Lighter/Brighter Side: For those who find this digest-blog too dark / depressing:
(1) Republican Values: Gossip / Trouble
According to the Wilkes Barre Times-Leader, Rep. Don Sherwood (R-PA) had a "domestic incident" recently made public concerning a 29-year-old woman "who told operators that Sherwood 'choked her for no apparent reason' while giving her a backrub."
The woman also said that she and Sherwood, "who is married, have had an ongoing relationship since 1999, when the two met at a Young Republicans meeting."
Republicans are circling the wagons around U.S. Rep. Don Sherwood, R-Tunkhannock, in the wake of an incident involving a 29-year-old woman in his Washington, D.C., apartment last September.
“The only thing you have in life is your reputation,” said Marge Matisko, an activist with the Luzerne County Republican Party. “Don Sherwood has always been very well-respected, and he always valued that. This has hurt him personally and professionally, and that’s a shame.”
No one was charged in what police termed a domestic incident.
Despite an absence of charges, Sherwood may have suffered severe political damage, one pundit says. http://www.timesleader.com/mld/timesleader/11549677.htm
(2) Starbucks; No fan, but must acknowledge that Howard Schultz, their “Global Strategist”, is participating in “Cover the Uninsured Week”…along with Orrin Hatch, others.
Cover the Uninsured Week 2005 Launched April 27
View our webcast to see Senators Orrin Hatch and Ron Wyden, Starbucks Chief Global Strategist Howard Schultz and Americans facing life without health coverage discuss why we must work together to get America covered. Available in Windows and Real Player formats http://covertheuninsuredweek.org/
3) Media: Colbert exits to own show. Plus-minus- Potential plus, though leads to rare appearances on Daily Show.
Stephen Colbert, who plays a phony correspondent on the fake-news program "The Daily Show," is getting a real promotion.
Comedy Central said yesterday that it was giving Mr. Colbert his own show: a half-hour that is expected to follow "The Daily Show" on weeknights and will lampoon those cable-news shows that are dominated by the personality and sensibility of a single host. Think, he said, of Bill O'Reilly and Chris Matthews and Sean Hannity.
… when asked if he planned to be a guest on the program, Mr. Stewart snapped, "I don't stoop to start-ups." A moment later, suspecting that he had been too harsh toward his mentee, Mr. Stewart softened, saying he would consider an appearance "if the show gets its footing."
When told of Mr. Stewart's resistance, Mr. Colbert said his boss should consider himself unwelcome.
"His shadow is dark enough," Mr. Colbert said. "I don't want to ask the source of darkness for help. I'm not interested in that same liberal claptrap. That meow, meow, meow, ironic detachment." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/arts/television/04come.html
(4) Rock Star Accountability: Dave Matthews Not exactly Exxon-Mobil
The Dave Matthews Band has agreed to pay $200,000 and keep a log of when and where its buses empty their septic tanks to settle a lawsuit filed after one of its buses dumped 800 pounds of human waste through the grates of a bridge onto a sightseeing boat carrying 100 passengers on the Chicago River last summer, The Associated Press reported.
The settlement, announced by the Illinois attorney general's office last week, followed a guilty plea last month by the driver, Stefan Wohl, to charges of reckless conduct and discharging contaminants to cause water pollution. He has since been fired by the band, said its spokesman, John Vlautin, who added, "Although the band members were not on the bus when the incident took place, we have always said that if it was our bus we would take responsibility for what happened." The band had already donated $50,000 to Friends of the Chicago River and $50,000 to the Chicago Park District. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/arts/04arts.html?pagewanted=all
-R
What’s Happening, Iraq: Massive bombings.
And, a Knight Ridder dispatch re reporters being intimidated, beaten. "Tell me to cover anything except the police," said one journalist after recruits taunted him with death threats.
A photographer for a Baghdad newspaper says Iraqi police beat and detained him for snapping pictures of long lines at gas stations. A reporter for another local paper received an invitation from Iraqi police to cover their graduation ceremony and ended up receiving death threats from the recruits. A local TV reporter says she's lost count of how many times Iraqi authorities have confiscated her cameras and smashed her tapes.
All these cases are under investigation by the Iraqi Association to Defend Journalists, a union that formed amid a chilling new trend of alleged arrests, beatings and intimidation of Iraqi reporters at the hands of Iraqi security forces. Reporters Without Borders, an international watchdog group for press freedom, tracked the arrests of five Iraqi journalists within a two-week period and issued a statement on April 26 asking authorities "to be more discerning and restrained and not carry out hasty and arbitrary arrests." http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/11545887.htm
Times: Confirmed Tierney is a Rightie hack. The often maddening, but (sometimes) worthy of respect William Safire has been replaced by an ordinary partisan. Witness:
For the mainly Democratic audience - this was a crowd of Washington journalists and luminaries from Hollywood and Manhattan - it was an evening of cognitive dissonance. How to reconcile this charming image on stage with the Bush they love to bash?
Mrs. Bush's performance, and her husband's reaction, wasn't a shock to the reporters who cover the White House. For years they have tried to convince their friends outside Washington that Mr. Bush is actually not a close-minded dolt, and Mrs. Bush is no Stepford Wife or Church Lady. Yes, they're Texans who go to church and preach family values, but they're not yahoos or religious zealots.
The coverage of Mrs. Bush's comic debut may change some minds, but for devout Bush-bashers, it's much easier to stay the course. If you live in a blue-state stronghold, a coastal city where you can go 24 hours without meeting any Republicans, it's consoling to think of the red staters as an alien bunch of strait-laced Bible thumpers.
Otherwise, how do you explain why they're Republican? Or answer the question Democrats asked in astonishment when they saw Mr. Bush's vote totals: Who are these people?
The favorite Democratic explanation is that the red staters are hicks who have been blinded by righteousness, as Thomas Frank argues in "What's the Matter With Kansas?" He laments that middle-class Kansans are so bamboozled by moral issues like abortion and school prayer that they vote for Republicans even though the Republican tax-cutting policies are against their self-interest.
But middle-class Americans don't simply cast ballots for Republicans. They also vote with their feet, which is why blue states and old Democratic cities are losing population to red states and Republican exurbs. People are moving there precisely because of economic reasons - more jobs, affordable houses and the lower taxes offered by Republican politicians. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/03/opinion/03tierney.html?hp
The Soft-hearted: They’re tired of opposing. Richard Cohen of the WaPost is one.
It just so happens that I think George Bush is doing something interesting with Social Security. The program does need to be fixed or recalibrated or something, and he has had the guts to take it on. Moreover, I kind of like the idea of personal investment accounts if funding them does not weaken the overall program or add to the nation's incredible debt. After all, there is something to be said for expanding the number of American worker-capitalists and having a nest egg an heir could inherit, or one that would not be eliminated by death. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/02/AR2005050201261.html
Yes, Richard, and Bush wants to “save” Social Security, not fulfill the Heritage/Cato dream of converting/abolishing it. Yes, Richard, we can raise the cap AND add private accounts in a happy compromise without compromising the viability of the SS program. And, Bush’s idea to maintain expected payments to the poor, but cut benefits 15 – 40% for everyone else is because he cares about the poor, not because they want to make it a welfare program that people will not support. And, of course, they were victimized by bad intelligence and had been concerned about the Iraqi people’s yearning for democracy so they invaded. ETC!
Army Recruiting: Bending the Rules Deserves traction
Interviews with more than two dozen recruiters in 10 states hint at the extent of their concern, if not the exact scope of the transgressions. Several spoke of concealing mental-health histories and police records. They described falsified documents, wallet-size cheat sheets slipped to applicants before the military's aptitude test and commanding officers who look the other way. And they voiced doubts about the quality of some troops destined for the front lines…
Yesterday, the issue drew national attention as CBS News reported that a high-school student outside Denver recorded two recruiters as they advised him how to cheat. The student, David McSwane, said one recruiter had told him how to create a diploma from a nonexistent school, while the other had helped him buy a product to cleanse traces of marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms from his body. The Army said the recruiters had been suspended while it investigated. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/03/national/03recruit.html .
DeLay update: Trouble at home for The Hammer
A new poll of voters in Tom DeLay’s district shows faltering support for the flailing House Majority Leader. A poll conducted by SurveyUSA for a local television station showed 51% disapprove of the way DeLay is handling his job as a congressman. What’s more 39% said he should resign his leadership post, while another 36% said he should resign from Congress altogether (that’s a combined 75% of DeLay’s constituents who believe he should resign from something). In response to the poll, DeLay spokesperson Shannon Flaherty said, “The people of his district know that Congressman DeLay is guided by principles, not by polls.” Keep telling yourself that, Shannon.
What I see is the people who have always been opposed to him, democrats and those that have been opposed to him, they are still opposed to him and they are more vocal," said Eric Thode, with the Fort Bend County Republican Party.
Thode said DeLay still has strong support from republicans in his district, but believes the Local 2 poll did not represent enough Republicans.
Democrats said the Local 2 poll showed DeLay is vulnerable at the ballot box.http://www.click2houston.com/politics/4441145/detail.html
Moonie Counterattack: The Right organ keeps trying
House Republicans called Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi a hypocrite yesterday for not demanding investigations into new ethics questions that have arisen about the travel of her fellow Democrats.
"She demanded an investigation into [Majority Leader] Tom DeLay, but hasn't said a word about these Democrats who have done the same thing," said Rep. Patrick T. McHenry, North Carolina Republican…
In an ABC interview Sunday, Mrs. Pelosi dismissed questions about travel by Democrats, telling interviewer George Stephanopoulos: "Do not fall into a Republican trap of equating technicalities on reporting, timing of reporting with not upholding an ethical standard of the House."
Republicans see a double standard. http://insider.washingtontimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20050504-122024-4420r
Plame Update: Hendrik Hertzberg. Well, more his thoughts than an update, as he notes that journalists, not Robert Novak, are threatened with jail.
Normally, the reporter is being told to testify about his or her knowledge of a crime; this time, the reporter’s conversation—the source’s half of it, anyway—is itself the crime, if a crime there was. Normally, in recent years, the threats to the Washington press corps’s ability to do its job have come from the Bush Administration, which is notoriously secretive, manipulative, and vindictive to journalists who fail to bend the knee. This time, though, the threat is coming from an investigation, a perfectly legitimate one, that targets the Administration, or persons within it, precisely for misusing the press—in this case, by ruining the career of a C.I.A. operative. Then, there is the role of Robert Novak. It was Novak who outed the agent, but it is not Novak who is in trouble. Was he subpoenaed? If not, why not? If he was, and he refused to name his source, why isn’t he in the same jail-bound boat as they are? If he did name names, why the relentless pursuit of Cooper and Miller? No one knows—except Novak and the prosecutors.
Cooper and Miller are not targets of the investigation. But they may yet be forced to a choice between breaking their promise and going to jail; and it is a near-certainty that, as a matter of personal and professional honor, they would choose the latter. There is, then, a strong possibility that (a) a serious abuse of power, possibly a crime, will have been committed by one or more White House officials, and (b), in consequence, two journalists will have been imprisoned. That would be a strange kind of justice, and a singularly grim parody of accountability. http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/050509ta_talk_hertzberg
Fake News Update: An attempt: The Lautenberg (NJ) – Kerry bill to deal with the use of public funds to create fake news segments, the Truth in Broadcasting Act.
The legislation would require that “prepackaged news stories” produced by the Administration contain a disclosure of the source of the material. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has ruled that the Administration’s use of “prepackaged news stories” was illegal “covert propaganda” because the government’s role was not disclosed to viewers. On March 11th 2005, the Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Justice issued memos to all executive branch agencies ordering them to ignore the GAO ruling and gave the green light to further use of fake news stories that hide the government’s role in their production.
The Lautenberg-Kerry Truth in Broadcasting Act would follow the legal ruling of the GAO and establish permanent federal law that prepackaged news stories by the government must disclose the government’s role with a disclaimer. http://lautenberg.senate.gov/~lautenberg/press/2003/01/2005428B52.html
Bolton: Shouldn’t forget, though not currently at issue: "I'm with the Bush-Cheney team and I'm here to stop the count." -John Bolton, Florida, 2000
Bush Poll: CNN/USA Today/Gallup: Bush’s positions remain wildly unpopular. Maybe Laura’s scripted jokes will help.
Approval rating — Bush’s approval rating remains at 48%, which is exactly where it was a month ago. The percentage of poll respondents who disapprove is up to 49%, up slightly from the first week in April.
The issues — Americans disapprove of Bush’s handling of just about everything, including foreign affairs (45-49), the economy (43-53), Iraq (42-55), Social Security (35-58), and energy policy (34-52).
And: 53% of Americans feel that Republicans are trying to abuse their majority power while 47% feel Democrats are trying to abuse the filibuster procedure.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/polls/tables/live/2005-05-02-poll-results.htm
Arnold: Letter-to-the Editor, LA Times:
I think it is time that California closes it border with Austria. Those Austrians come here and take jobs away from others, get California driver's licenses and drive fuel-inefficient cars, harass our women and then want to tell the rest of us how to run the state … and all those things.
Jeff Robbins, Los Angeles http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/letters/la-le-immig3may03,0,3478297.story?coll=la-news-comment-letters
Lighter/Brighter Side: For those who find this digest-blog too dark / depressing:
(1) Republican Values: Gossip / Trouble
According to the Wilkes Barre Times-Leader, Rep. Don Sherwood (R-PA) had a "domestic incident" recently made public concerning a 29-year-old woman "who told operators that Sherwood 'choked her for no apparent reason' while giving her a backrub."
The woman also said that she and Sherwood, "who is married, have had an ongoing relationship since 1999, when the two met at a Young Republicans meeting."
Republicans are circling the wagons around U.S. Rep. Don Sherwood, R-Tunkhannock, in the wake of an incident involving a 29-year-old woman in his Washington, D.C., apartment last September.
“The only thing you have in life is your reputation,” said Marge Matisko, an activist with the Luzerne County Republican Party. “Don Sherwood has always been very well-respected, and he always valued that. This has hurt him personally and professionally, and that’s a shame.”
No one was charged in what police termed a domestic incident.
Despite an absence of charges, Sherwood may have suffered severe political damage, one pundit says. http://www.timesleader.com/mld/timesleader/11549677.htm
(2) Starbucks; No fan, but must acknowledge that Howard Schultz, their “Global Strategist”, is participating in “Cover the Uninsured Week”…along with Orrin Hatch, others.
Cover the Uninsured Week 2005 Launched April 27
View our webcast to see Senators Orrin Hatch and Ron Wyden, Starbucks Chief Global Strategist Howard Schultz and Americans facing life without health coverage discuss why we must work together to get America covered. Available in Windows and Real Player formats http://covertheuninsuredweek.org/
3) Media: Colbert exits to own show. Plus-minus- Potential plus, though leads to rare appearances on Daily Show.
Stephen Colbert, who plays a phony correspondent on the fake-news program "The Daily Show," is getting a real promotion.
Comedy Central said yesterday that it was giving Mr. Colbert his own show: a half-hour that is expected to follow "The Daily Show" on weeknights and will lampoon those cable-news shows that are dominated by the personality and sensibility of a single host. Think, he said, of Bill O'Reilly and Chris Matthews and Sean Hannity.
… when asked if he planned to be a guest on the program, Mr. Stewart snapped, "I don't stoop to start-ups." A moment later, suspecting that he had been too harsh toward his mentee, Mr. Stewart softened, saying he would consider an appearance "if the show gets its footing."
When told of Mr. Stewart's resistance, Mr. Colbert said his boss should consider himself unwelcome.
"His shadow is dark enough," Mr. Colbert said. "I don't want to ask the source of darkness for help. I'm not interested in that same liberal claptrap. That meow, meow, meow, ironic detachment." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/arts/television/04come.html
(4) Rock Star Accountability: Dave Matthews Not exactly Exxon-Mobil
The Dave Matthews Band has agreed to pay $200,000 and keep a log of when and where its buses empty their septic tanks to settle a lawsuit filed after one of its buses dumped 800 pounds of human waste through the grates of a bridge onto a sightseeing boat carrying 100 passengers on the Chicago River last summer, The Associated Press reported.
The settlement, announced by the Illinois attorney general's office last week, followed a guilty plea last month by the driver, Stefan Wohl, to charges of reckless conduct and discharging contaminants to cause water pollution. He has since been fired by the band, said its spokesman, John Vlautin, who added, "Although the band members were not on the bus when the incident took place, we have always said that if it was our bus we would take responsibility for what happened." The band had already donated $50,000 to Friends of the Chicago River and $50,000 to the Chicago Park District. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/arts/04arts.html?pagewanted=all
-R
Monday, May 02, 2005
Nuclear Option: Late May?
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist says he's "running out of options" in a fight with Democrats over President Bush's judicial nominees.
In an interview with USA TODAY, the Tennessee Republican said he believes a showdown over Bush's federal appellate court nominees is "almost inevitable." He said he'll push for a vote on the judicial candidates before Memorial Day because the "extreme partisanship" in the Senate justifies the move.
"There are times in history where you have to change either the rules or the precedent based on external behavior," he said Friday. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-05-01-frist-interview_x.htm
What’s Happening, Iraq: Armor for Vehicles Amidst the bombings, it remains outrageous that armor won’t be in place until the end of the year. The NY Times editorizes:
More than two years after the invasion of Iraq, American soldiers are still needlessly dying or suffering grievous injuries because of the Pentagon's inexcusable slowness in protecting their Humvees and trucks with adequate armor. It's a problem that the troops in the field have been vocally complaining about for a long time, and one that briefly made headlines when a National Guard soldier confronted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Kuwait last December. Yet, despite accelerated efforts since that time, it is far from solved. Perhaps the Pentagon needs to divert some money and effort from those exotic weapons systems for the future that defense contractors prefer, and save the lives and limbs of the troops it sends into battle today.
Times readers reacted with understandable shock and anger last week when they learned some of the details of these preventable deaths in a searing investigation by Michael Moss, who interviewed members of a recently returned Marine Corps company. The Army is having even bigger problems than the Marines in getting its much larger number of Humvees and trucks adequately armored. And lengthy delays in providing both services with enough body armor have cost additional lives. Public outrage would doubtless be even greater if the Pentagon offered more candid information to relatives about those who died as a direct result of these shortages, instead of merely reporting them killed in action. Those details are painful, but might serve as a quicker, sharper spur to corrective action.
The roots of this problem lie in the Bush administration's stubborn self-delusion about the reception American troops were likely to face in Iraq. Then it took the Pentagon many months to acknowledge that it was facing a determined long-term insurgency, not just a clutch of desperate holdouts from Saddam Hussein's inner circle. By the time reality started sinking in during the early months of 2004, the insurgents were on a fast learning curve that Washington has been trying to catch up with ever since. Insurgents' tactics keep growing more sophisticated and their firepower more intense. As a result, American units in the field have discovered that even their armored Humvees must now be refitted with stronger armor to protect against the increasingly lethal improvised explosive devices that have become this war's signature weapon.
A crash program now under way should deliver enough of these reinforced Humvees to equip all Marine Corps units in Iraq by the end of this year. For some marines, that won't be soon enough. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/opinion/01sun2.html
Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty Conference: Iran and North Korea on the agenda, as NK launches a short-range missile and lamely insults Bush after his more biting comments. Europeans complain after recent U.S. tough talk, as per the comment by one ‘senior diplomat’- “The last thing we want is an inflammatory speech from either side.”
Just 48 hours before representatives of 189 nations meet at the United Nations to review the flaws in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Iran threatened Saturday to resume producing nuclear fuel, and North Korea dismissed President Bush as a "philistine whom we can never deal with."
The conference that begins Monday was meant to offer hope of closing huge loopholes in the treaty, which the United States says Iran and North Korea have exploited to pursue nuclear weapons. Instead, the session appears deadlocked even before it begins, according to senior American officials and diplomats preparing for it in New York. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/opinion/02krugman.html?hp
Protesters protested:
In a merger of the nuclear disarmament and antiwar movements, several thousand protesters, including a group of survivors of the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, marched through Midtown yesterday and rallied in Central Park to call for the end of nuclear proliferation and the withdrawal of United States troops from Iraq. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/nyregion/02protest.html
Social Security Update: It remains unpopular, but the spin by the media has been favorable to Bush. NPR repeatedly refers to ‘Bush’s latest effort to save Social Security’.
Edmund Andrews / Eduardo Porter noted in their Times piece that the idea is to kill off Social Security’s universality, to make it ‘welfare’, which, we know, people don’t care for."
This would represent a major change in the philosophy of Social Security," said Jason Furman, an economist at New York University and a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal research group. "If you combine progressive indexing with private accounts, you could threaten to unravel the entire Social Security system."
In attempting to fix Social Security's long-term problems without raising taxes, President Bush has chosen to recast the 70-year-old retirement program as one that would keep the lowest-income workers out of poverty but become increasingly irrelevant to the middle class and the affluent.
Under Mr. Bush's approach of "progressive indexation," a typical low-income worker who earns about $16,000 a year today would be entitled to retirement benefits equal to about 49 percent of his or her wages, the same amount promised today.
But those earning an average income, about $36,500 in today's dollars, would see big changes. Instead of replacing 36 percent of that person's working pay, as promised under today's system, benefits would cover only 26 percent of that person's pay by 2075. And people who earn $90,000 a year in today's dollars, who would continue to pay as much as ever in taxes, would receive benefits equal to only 12 percent of their pay. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/politics/01social.html
New op ed writer John Tierney shows his colors, and misleads in the process- e.g. Bush didn't promise to improve benefits for the poor, he promised to keep them exactly the same as they are under current law while reducing them for everyone else.
Democrats have good reason to be aghast at President Bush's new proposal for Social Security. Someone has finally called their bluff.
They tried yesterday to portray him as just another cruel, rich Republican for suggesting any cuts in future benefits, but that's not what the prime-time audience saw on Thursday night. By proposing to shore up the system while protecting low-income workers, Mr. Bush raised a supremely awkward question for Democrats: which party really cares about the poor?…
Democrats like to portray Mr. Bush as King George or Marie Antoinette. But on Thursday night, when he promised to improve benefits for the poor while limiting them for everyone else, he sounded more like Robin Hood, especially when he rhapsodized about poor people getting a chance to build up assets that they could pass along to their children. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/30/opinion/30tierney.html?hp
WaPost editorial targets the Democrats
FOR THE past three months Democrats have declined to engage in a debate over Social Security. President Bush proposed a way of giving workers the option, but not the obligation, of saving some of their Social Security money in personal accounts. While he was crisscrossing the country in an attempt to prepare voters for unsettling change, Democrats offered no proposals of their own, saying that Mr. Bush should first come forward with a plan to plug Social Security's long-term deficit. In his news conference on Thursday, Mr. Bush took a first step toward offering such a plan. It is time for Democrats to reciprocate. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/30/AR2005043000734.html
Paul Krugman reinforces the Andrews/Porter write-up:
Beyond that, it's a good bet that benefits for the poor would eventually be cut, too.
It's an adage that programs for the poor always turn into poor programs. That is, once a program is defined as welfare, it becomes a target for budget cuts.
You can see this happening right now to Medicaid, the nation's most important means-tested program. Last week Congress agreed on a budget that cuts funds for Medicaid (and food stamps), even while extending tax cuts on dividends and capital gains. States are cutting back, denying health insurance to hundreds of thousands of people with low incomes. Missouri is poised to eliminate Medicaid completely by 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/opinion/02krugman.html?hp
Ethical Investing: Ethical, but not that righteous
In designing the index, the fund's founder and chief executive, Amy Domini, included what she thought were the better half of companies in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index, plus 150 smaller names.
"I personally may prefer slow food to fast food. I personally prefer the ambiance of organic over nonorganic," Ms. Domini said. "But I don't have a mandate from the public to avoid fast food." Ms. Domini said that McDonald's had responded to calls to switch to napkins made of recycled paper, use soy-based ink and avoid antibiotics in beef.
"When I look at McDonald's versus the fast-food industry, I see them on a path toward human dignity and environmental sustainability," Ms. Domini said. "I can live with myself for investing in McDonald's." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/business/yourmoney/01hawk.html
Frank Rich on South Park, ‘libertarian’ television show and the conservatives flexing muscles
One powerful senator, Ted Stevens of Alaska, has proposed that cable and satellite be policed by the federal government along with broadcast television - a death knell for even the Sirius incarnation of Howard Stern, not to mention much of Comedy Central. A powerful House committee chairman, James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, topped that by calling for offenders to be pursued through a "criminal process." Last week President Bush signed a Family Entertainment and Copyright Act that allows "family-friendly" companies to sell filter technology that cleans up DVD's of Hollywood movies without permission or input from the films' own authors and copyright holders. That sounds innocuous enough until you learn that even "Schindler's List" isn't immune from the right's rigid P.C. code. As the owner of CleanFlicks, the American Fork, Utah, company that goes further and sells pre-sanitized DVD's, once explained to The New York Times: "Every teenager in America should see that film. But I don't think my daughters should see naked old men running around in circles." And so Big Brother can intervene to protect our kids from all that geriatric Holocaust porn. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/opinion/01rich.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
PBS: More Shifting to the Right The transformation continues.
The Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is aggressively pressing public television to correct what he and other conservatives consider liberal bias, prompting some public broadcasting leaders - including the chief executive of PBS - to object that his actions pose a threat to editorial independence.
Without the knowledge of his board, the chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, contracted last year with an outside consultant to keep track of the guests' political leanings on one program, "Now With Bill Moyers."
In late March, on the recommendation of administration officials, Mr. Tomlinson hired the director of the White House Office of Global Communications as a senior staff member, corporation officials said. While she was still on the White House staff, she helped draft guidelines governing the work of two ombudsmen whom the corporation recently appointed to review the content of public radio and television broadcasts. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/arts/television/02public.html?ei=5094&en=1085de148e09623c&hp=&ex=1115092800&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&position=
Laura ‘humanizes” Junior: That’s the headline for many. The White House joke writer gave her some goodies, she makes fun of her husband’s boring nature and that is predicted to help Bush. And, it led some media folk to wonder whether she’s interested in running for office. Really. That Left media strikes again.
At the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner last night at the Hilton Washington, Laura Bush made the evening her own with an extended riff on her husband, his family and life at the ranch that drew a standing ovation.
"I'm proud of George," she told the ballroom. "He's learned a lot about ranching since that first year he tried to milk a horse." Pause. "It was a male horse." Pandemonium ensued in a room filled with tough acts to follow. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/politics/02letter.html
Kerry Watch: I’m not really watching…Kerry does want to run.
With Republicans scrounging around for an able successor to President Bush in the 2008 election, Washington's focus is fast turning to an escalating battle on the Democratic side between front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and 2004 nominee Sen. John Kerry . Whispers learns that Kerry is not just testing the waters: He's running . "His family wants him to run again," says one pal. Proof he's in: Kerry has added names to his E-mail list of 3 million, kept johnkerry.com alive and kicking, raised boatloads of cash for friendly Democrats, and moved to seize control of hot-button issues like kids' healthcare, the environment, and support for military families. The Kerry clan is also pushing the Clinton electability issue. "Donors and organized labor love Bill Clinton, " says one Kerry friend. "But they're telling everyone they're terrified that she'd get stomped."
Friends of Hillary, meanwhile, are touting her front-runner status and joining in the chorus of Democrats who think Kerry should crawl under a rock and go away. "He had his chance," mutters a Clinton ally. "It's over." http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politics/whispers/articles/050509/9whisplead.htm
-R
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist says he's "running out of options" in a fight with Democrats over President Bush's judicial nominees.
In an interview with USA TODAY, the Tennessee Republican said he believes a showdown over Bush's federal appellate court nominees is "almost inevitable." He said he'll push for a vote on the judicial candidates before Memorial Day because the "extreme partisanship" in the Senate justifies the move.
"There are times in history where you have to change either the rules or the precedent based on external behavior," he said Friday. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-05-01-frist-interview_x.htm
What’s Happening, Iraq: Armor for Vehicles Amidst the bombings, it remains outrageous that armor won’t be in place until the end of the year. The NY Times editorizes:
More than two years after the invasion of Iraq, American soldiers are still needlessly dying or suffering grievous injuries because of the Pentagon's inexcusable slowness in protecting their Humvees and trucks with adequate armor. It's a problem that the troops in the field have been vocally complaining about for a long time, and one that briefly made headlines when a National Guard soldier confronted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Kuwait last December. Yet, despite accelerated efforts since that time, it is far from solved. Perhaps the Pentagon needs to divert some money and effort from those exotic weapons systems for the future that defense contractors prefer, and save the lives and limbs of the troops it sends into battle today.
Times readers reacted with understandable shock and anger last week when they learned some of the details of these preventable deaths in a searing investigation by Michael Moss, who interviewed members of a recently returned Marine Corps company. The Army is having even bigger problems than the Marines in getting its much larger number of Humvees and trucks adequately armored. And lengthy delays in providing both services with enough body armor have cost additional lives. Public outrage would doubtless be even greater if the Pentagon offered more candid information to relatives about those who died as a direct result of these shortages, instead of merely reporting them killed in action. Those details are painful, but might serve as a quicker, sharper spur to corrective action.
The roots of this problem lie in the Bush administration's stubborn self-delusion about the reception American troops were likely to face in Iraq. Then it took the Pentagon many months to acknowledge that it was facing a determined long-term insurgency, not just a clutch of desperate holdouts from Saddam Hussein's inner circle. By the time reality started sinking in during the early months of 2004, the insurgents were on a fast learning curve that Washington has been trying to catch up with ever since. Insurgents' tactics keep growing more sophisticated and their firepower more intense. As a result, American units in the field have discovered that even their armored Humvees must now be refitted with stronger armor to protect against the increasingly lethal improvised explosive devices that have become this war's signature weapon.
A crash program now under way should deliver enough of these reinforced Humvees to equip all Marine Corps units in Iraq by the end of this year. For some marines, that won't be soon enough. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/opinion/01sun2.html
Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty Conference: Iran and North Korea on the agenda, as NK launches a short-range missile and lamely insults Bush after his more biting comments. Europeans complain after recent U.S. tough talk, as per the comment by one ‘senior diplomat’- “The last thing we want is an inflammatory speech from either side.”
Just 48 hours before representatives of 189 nations meet at the United Nations to review the flaws in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Iran threatened Saturday to resume producing nuclear fuel, and North Korea dismissed President Bush as a "philistine whom we can never deal with."
The conference that begins Monday was meant to offer hope of closing huge loopholes in the treaty, which the United States says Iran and North Korea have exploited to pursue nuclear weapons. Instead, the session appears deadlocked even before it begins, according to senior American officials and diplomats preparing for it in New York. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/opinion/02krugman.html?hp
Protesters protested:
In a merger of the nuclear disarmament and antiwar movements, several thousand protesters, including a group of survivors of the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, marched through Midtown yesterday and rallied in Central Park to call for the end of nuclear proliferation and the withdrawal of United States troops from Iraq. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/nyregion/02protest.html
Social Security Update: It remains unpopular, but the spin by the media has been favorable to Bush. NPR repeatedly refers to ‘Bush’s latest effort to save Social Security’.
Edmund Andrews / Eduardo Porter noted in their Times piece that the idea is to kill off Social Security’s universality, to make it ‘welfare’, which, we know, people don’t care for."
This would represent a major change in the philosophy of Social Security," said Jason Furman, an economist at New York University and a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal research group. "If you combine progressive indexing with private accounts, you could threaten to unravel the entire Social Security system."
In attempting to fix Social Security's long-term problems without raising taxes, President Bush has chosen to recast the 70-year-old retirement program as one that would keep the lowest-income workers out of poverty but become increasingly irrelevant to the middle class and the affluent.
Under Mr. Bush's approach of "progressive indexation," a typical low-income worker who earns about $16,000 a year today would be entitled to retirement benefits equal to about 49 percent of his or her wages, the same amount promised today.
But those earning an average income, about $36,500 in today's dollars, would see big changes. Instead of replacing 36 percent of that person's working pay, as promised under today's system, benefits would cover only 26 percent of that person's pay by 2075. And people who earn $90,000 a year in today's dollars, who would continue to pay as much as ever in taxes, would receive benefits equal to only 12 percent of their pay. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/politics/01social.html
New op ed writer John Tierney shows his colors, and misleads in the process- e.g. Bush didn't promise to improve benefits for the poor, he promised to keep them exactly the same as they are under current law while reducing them for everyone else.
Democrats have good reason to be aghast at President Bush's new proposal for Social Security. Someone has finally called their bluff.
They tried yesterday to portray him as just another cruel, rich Republican for suggesting any cuts in future benefits, but that's not what the prime-time audience saw on Thursday night. By proposing to shore up the system while protecting low-income workers, Mr. Bush raised a supremely awkward question for Democrats: which party really cares about the poor?…
Democrats like to portray Mr. Bush as King George or Marie Antoinette. But on Thursday night, when he promised to improve benefits for the poor while limiting them for everyone else, he sounded more like Robin Hood, especially when he rhapsodized about poor people getting a chance to build up assets that they could pass along to their children. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/30/opinion/30tierney.html?hp
WaPost editorial targets the Democrats
FOR THE past three months Democrats have declined to engage in a debate over Social Security. President Bush proposed a way of giving workers the option, but not the obligation, of saving some of their Social Security money in personal accounts. While he was crisscrossing the country in an attempt to prepare voters for unsettling change, Democrats offered no proposals of their own, saying that Mr. Bush should first come forward with a plan to plug Social Security's long-term deficit. In his news conference on Thursday, Mr. Bush took a first step toward offering such a plan. It is time for Democrats to reciprocate. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/30/AR2005043000734.html
Paul Krugman reinforces the Andrews/Porter write-up:
Beyond that, it's a good bet that benefits for the poor would eventually be cut, too.
It's an adage that programs for the poor always turn into poor programs. That is, once a program is defined as welfare, it becomes a target for budget cuts.
You can see this happening right now to Medicaid, the nation's most important means-tested program. Last week Congress agreed on a budget that cuts funds for Medicaid (and food stamps), even while extending tax cuts on dividends and capital gains. States are cutting back, denying health insurance to hundreds of thousands of people with low incomes. Missouri is poised to eliminate Medicaid completely by 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/opinion/02krugman.html?hp
Ethical Investing: Ethical, but not that righteous
In designing the index, the fund's founder and chief executive, Amy Domini, included what she thought were the better half of companies in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index, plus 150 smaller names.
"I personally may prefer slow food to fast food. I personally prefer the ambiance of organic over nonorganic," Ms. Domini said. "But I don't have a mandate from the public to avoid fast food." Ms. Domini said that McDonald's had responded to calls to switch to napkins made of recycled paper, use soy-based ink and avoid antibiotics in beef.
"When I look at McDonald's versus the fast-food industry, I see them on a path toward human dignity and environmental sustainability," Ms. Domini said. "I can live with myself for investing in McDonald's." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/business/yourmoney/01hawk.html
Frank Rich on South Park, ‘libertarian’ television show and the conservatives flexing muscles
One powerful senator, Ted Stevens of Alaska, has proposed that cable and satellite be policed by the federal government along with broadcast television - a death knell for even the Sirius incarnation of Howard Stern, not to mention much of Comedy Central. A powerful House committee chairman, James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, topped that by calling for offenders to be pursued through a "criminal process." Last week President Bush signed a Family Entertainment and Copyright Act that allows "family-friendly" companies to sell filter technology that cleans up DVD's of Hollywood movies without permission or input from the films' own authors and copyright holders. That sounds innocuous enough until you learn that even "Schindler's List" isn't immune from the right's rigid P.C. code. As the owner of CleanFlicks, the American Fork, Utah, company that goes further and sells pre-sanitized DVD's, once explained to The New York Times: "Every teenager in America should see that film. But I don't think my daughters should see naked old men running around in circles." And so Big Brother can intervene to protect our kids from all that geriatric Holocaust porn. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/opinion/01rich.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
PBS: More Shifting to the Right The transformation continues.
The Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is aggressively pressing public television to correct what he and other conservatives consider liberal bias, prompting some public broadcasting leaders - including the chief executive of PBS - to object that his actions pose a threat to editorial independence.
Without the knowledge of his board, the chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, contracted last year with an outside consultant to keep track of the guests' political leanings on one program, "Now With Bill Moyers."
In late March, on the recommendation of administration officials, Mr. Tomlinson hired the director of the White House Office of Global Communications as a senior staff member, corporation officials said. While she was still on the White House staff, she helped draft guidelines governing the work of two ombudsmen whom the corporation recently appointed to review the content of public radio and television broadcasts. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/arts/television/02public.html?ei=5094&en=1085de148e09623c&hp=&ex=1115092800&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&position=
Laura ‘humanizes” Junior: That’s the headline for many. The White House joke writer gave her some goodies, she makes fun of her husband’s boring nature and that is predicted to help Bush. And, it led some media folk to wonder whether she’s interested in running for office. Really. That Left media strikes again.
At the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner last night at the Hilton Washington, Laura Bush made the evening her own with an extended riff on her husband, his family and life at the ranch that drew a standing ovation.
"I'm proud of George," she told the ballroom. "He's learned a lot about ranching since that first year he tried to milk a horse." Pause. "It was a male horse." Pandemonium ensued in a room filled with tough acts to follow. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/politics/02letter.html
Kerry Watch: I’m not really watching…Kerry does want to run.
With Republicans scrounging around for an able successor to President Bush in the 2008 election, Washington's focus is fast turning to an escalating battle on the Democratic side between front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and 2004 nominee Sen. John Kerry . Whispers learns that Kerry is not just testing the waters: He's running . "His family wants him to run again," says one pal. Proof he's in: Kerry has added names to his E-mail list of 3 million, kept johnkerry.com alive and kicking, raised boatloads of cash for friendly Democrats, and moved to seize control of hot-button issues like kids' healthcare, the environment, and support for military families. The Kerry clan is also pushing the Clinton electability issue. "Donors and organized labor love Bill Clinton, " says one Kerry friend. "But they're telling everyone they're terrified that she'd get stomped."
Friends of Hillary, meanwhile, are touting her front-runner status and joining in the chorus of Democrats who think Kerry should crawl under a rock and go away. "He had his chance," mutters a Clinton ally. "It's over." http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politics/whispers/articles/050509/9whisplead.htm
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