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---> Activists Crawl Through Web to Untangle Bush's Fascist Secrecy

11.30.04 (8:41 am) [edit]

To combat the Bush administration's penchant for secrecy, U.S. citizens have been forced to unearth new sources for information they once read in their daily newspapers. But thanks to a few dedicated individuals and not-for-profit groups -- and the Internet -- such material is easier to come by than ever before.

"The Bush administration has taken secrecy to a new level. They have greatly increased the numbers and types of classified documents," says Steven Aftergood, who conducts one of the most widely used "open government" programs -- the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) Project on Government Secrecy http://www.fas.org/sgp/ .

"They have made it far more difficult and time-consuming to obtain documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). And they have imposed 'gag rules' on an ever-widening group of government employees," Aftergood added in an interview.

''Open government'' sites on the World Wide Web provide a wide variety of information.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.commondreams.org/h...

---> Buffoon-boy Bush: Bubble-Headed Kook Inside A Cocoon Inside A Bubble!

11.30.04 (8:33 am) [edit]

[b]An American president may indeed be the Most Powerful Man on the Planet but he is also the most isolated. [/b]

So George W. is coming to town. On Wednesday, the U.S. President's jet is expected to touch down -- if ever so gently and even more briefly -- at the Halifax International Airport, so His Georgeness can helicopter and/or motorcade over to perimeter-secured, protester-free Pier 21. There, he will speak over the heads of a cowed crowd of carefully selected but irrelevant local grandees directly into the TV cameras of the world.

[i]They like me, they really like me. Look, see... [/i]

The point of this now-you-see-him-now-you-d on't visit is not really so Bush can say a three-year belated thank you to Nova Scotians for taking in thousands of displaced air travelers after 9/11. The point is for George Bush not to have to spend any more time in our nation's capital than is absolutely necessary.

[b]More [/b]... http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> Right-Wing "Christians" [sic] Stick With Racist, Segregationist Hate-Filled Laws!

11.30.04 (8:27 am) [edit]

[b]US state with racist history votes to keep 'separate schools for white and coloured children' as part of constitution[/b]

During his inaugural address in 1963, the then Alabama governor, George Wallace, took to the steps of the state capitol and made a promise. Standing on the spot where Jefferson Davis had declared an independent southern confederacy just over 100 years before, he pledged: "In the name of the greatest people that ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny and I say: Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation for ever."

Yesterday it looked as if he might get his wish, after a referendum in the state looked likely to keep segregation-era wording, requiring separate schools for "white and coloured children" in its constitution as well as references to the poll taxes once imposed to disenfranchise blacks.

A narrow margin of 1,850 votes out of 1.38 million, or 0.13%, in a referendum on November 2, meant the state was obliged to hold a recount, which took place yesterday. But with no accusations of electoral fraud or any other irregularities, nobody last night expected the result to change.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> Bigotted Right-Wing Racists Attack Jesse Jackson

11.29.04 (11:37 am) [edit]

The National Legal and Policy Center has submitted a shareholder resolution to Verizon Comunications requesting that the Verizon "Board of Directors to establish a policy precluding future financial support of Jesse Jackson, the Citizenship Education Fund, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, and/or any other nonprofit organization founded, headed or primarily identified with Jesse Jackson."

Among several reasons for the action given by the NLPC are, according to the shareholder resolution:

"The Company's relationship with Jesse Jackson creates controversy and impacts the Company's corporate image, brands and reputation. The news media has critically examined the relationship and will continue to do so as long as the Company is publicly identified with Jackson.

In order to demonstrate a sincere commitment to diversity, rather than supporting Jesse Jackson, the Company should support individuals and organizations that promote genuine civil rights and economic empowerment."

The resolution has been proposed for consideration at Verizon's 2005 annual meeting. - http://www.nationalcenter.org...

---> Mad King George (& his Brain-Dead Minions) Continues to Divide America ...

11.29.04 (11:28 am) [edit]

[b]A Fundamental Change In America [/b]

We'll let the customers do most of the work this week. Following is an e-mail from a reader smack in the middle of "Bush Country":

"[i]I read your column about Bush's four more years. I agree with all of it. I, too, lament the scuttling of the greatest successful experiment in human free spirit. But I think there is another side to it.

Regardless of what Mr. Bush did in office or to get reelected, he did not vote himself in. And irrespective of the rigging that probably did happen in Ohio, Florida and elsewhere, roughly 59 million people voted for him. Alarmingly, many of these voted based on their faith.

That is scary. They said in essence that while there was looting of taxpayer money to repay campaign contributors, an untruly reasoned war killing thousands abroad and allowing millions to starve at home, and robbing millions more of health care, it was consistent with their faith-based value system.

This is the scary part. I saw this growing up in Pakistan. It is worse to see it repeated here in the U.S.

Bush will go in four years and perhaps some other neo-con will take his place. But if the nation has taught itself to think like religious fanatics, that damage will take years to repair[/i]."

I've omitted the e-mailer's name, to save him from the lynch mobs. When I asked permission to use his letter, he added the following:

"[i]My point in all of this is that beyond anything one or more politicians are doing, there is a sea change in the way a majority of Americans think.

There is a reversion to fundamentalist way of thinking, which, among other things, means that morality is defined narrowly (usually something to do with sex -- somebody else's).

In this way of thinking, as long as you prevent abortions and keep gays from getting married, all the other horrors are okay. I think this is a major change in the way the nation thinks, probably on the level of the one that brought about the Civil War. Unfortunately, it seems the Confederates are winning this time[/i]."

The e-mailer obviously is appalled by what's happening to his country, but a lot of people who e-mail me are delighted by it. My conservative critics (may their tribe increase) keep telling me to wake up and smell the coffee, that their kind of me-first thinking is the new American way, and I'd better learn to live with it.

Maybe they're right. Even if they are, I can't bring myself to stoop to their level. I'll continue to believe what I was taught as a youngster: that strength should be used to protect, not to exploit.

A second e-mailer, who said he was from Europe, had an unusual point of view: He is a liberal happy that Bush won reelection. Read on:

"[i]As I am against the American empire, I am happy that George W. Bush won the election, whatever frauds there might have been.

The U.S. seems to be going the same way the U.S.S.R. did. If, hopefully Bush will be followed by someone like Perle or Cheney, it will not take very long.

It is only sad to see all the ones tortured and murdered in Iraq, Palestine and other places, but hopefully the U.S. regime will attack Iran and Syria, so the empire can fall in less then a decade[/i]."

One letter from a guy who grew up in Pakistan, another from a European. I could put them with the several I've received from Germans who compare modern America with Germany in the 1930s.

A final thought this week concerns the millionaires and multimillionaires in Congress. It's hard to get an accurate count on these things -- they really don't want us to know how wealthy they are -- but it appears there are at least 40 senators worth more than a million and more than 120 House members.

Their financial disclosure forms, which don't include primary residences, give such a wide range of options that it's hard to nail down exactly what these people are worth in dollars.

To give you a hint as to how much some of them hedge, Rep. Tom DeLay, the super wheeler-dealer from Texas, claimed earlier this year that he had, at most, $166,000 in assets. If you believe that, you and I must talk bridges: I have a couple of fine ones for sale here in the Bay Area.

DeLay, incidentally, is a Republican, but congressional wealth crosses party lines.

Both major presidential candidates this year, and their running mates, are multimillionaires.

Here in California, if you want to knock on Sen. Dianne Feinstein's front door, you can try the gingerbread house on Presidio Terrace, or you might have to go to the Sierra, to Aspen, or to Hawaii. Like John Kerry, the lady has houses everywhere; I'd guess I missed a few.

Feinstein admits to at least $26 million in assets. Barbara Boxer, our other senator, is a downright pauper according to her financial disclosures, worth only slightly more than $1.1 million.

San Francisco's representative in the House, minority leader Nancy Pelosi, brings up the average a mite; she and her husband admit to holdings worth at least $22.8 million.

Other well-off California legislators include Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican worth more than $112 million, and Rep. Jane Harmon, a Democrat worth (with her husband) at least $160 million.

My favorite rich legislator is Rep. Kathleen Harris, former secretary of state of Florida. Harris, a Republican, has done well for herself. She admits to assets of at least $11 million.

I have nothing against rich people. Very often the very rich dedicate themselves to public service. They can do that. They don't have to pound away day after day to eke out a living.

But I have to wonder if it's healthy for a democracy to be so overrepresented by wealthy people.

If, as my e-mailers suggest, American democracy is going down the tubes, is there a connection between that and the economic gap separating most of us from those who make our laws?

I don't know. What do you think? - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

---> It Doesn't Pay To Cross Herr Fuhrer Bush & His Neo-Fascist Nazis -- Newsworthy ...

11.29.04 (11:13 am) [edit]

[b]Evangelicals to Bush: Payback Time

Christian Conservatives Say They Gave Bush 'Moral Mandate'; Call Him to Act on Their Behalf[/b]

Among some conservative Christians, there is a belief that President Bush received a "moral mandate" to win the recent presidential election — and they are calling on him act on their agenda now.

"I believe Our Lord elected our president and I believe he put him in office and it is my prayer that he will sustain him in office," said one woman at the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Another was asked if she believed that God intervened in the election. "Absolutely," she said.

"Values" voters delivered for the president, and the president must now deliver for them — especially in the courts, said Gary Cass, head of a grassroots political organization affiliated with Coral Ridge, called the Center for Reclaiming America.

"It's about the next 40 years and how the courts are going to affect the world in which my children and grandchildren are going to be raised in," he said.

Cass wants a U.S. Supreme Court that will outlaw abortion and gay marriage. "Do you want to take your children to a National League baseball game for instance and have homosexuals showing affection to one another? I don't want my kids to see that," he said.

[i]Risking God's Wrath [/i]

By one measure, conservative Christians comprised 12 percent of the electorate this year — the same as four years ago. But they see themselves as a crucial piece of the president's political base.

They believe that if their agenda is not implemented quickly — if their concerns are not addressed in a timely fashion — God will be angry.

One leading evangelist recently warned, "God's patience runs out."

Dr. James Kennedy delivers sermons at Coral Ridge which are broadcast to three million homes. He said he knows of no timetable for God's wrath, but wants results fast.

He dismissed the concerns of people who worried about the impact of Christian conservatives on the U.S. government.

Repent," he said with a laugh. "Repent. That's what I'd say."

People who are concerned about the influence of Christianity "have never really surrendered their life to God and submitted themselves to his commandments — and if they did that they wouldn't have so much concern about some court saying again that it's wrong," he said.

Asked about the millions of Americans who are not Christian, or have a different interpretation of Christianity, Kennedy said with another laugh: "I couldn't care less. It's true."

"I think that the idea that the worst sin that somebody can commit is to offend somebody is ridiculous," he said.

Evangelicals say Kennedy may seem intolerant, but there's no greater love than upholding the will of God. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

---> New Poll: Majority of Americans Want Roe V. Wade Upheld

11.29.04 (11:09 am) [edit]

A majority of Americans say President Bush's next choice for an opening on the Supreme Court should be willing to uphold the landmark court decision protecting abortion rights, an Associated Press poll found.

The poll found that 59 percent say Bush should choose a nominee who would uphold the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. About three in 10, 31 percent, said they want a nominee who would overturn the decision, according to the poll conducted for the AP by Ipsos-Public Affairs.

"While I don't have a strong feeling about abortions personally, I wouldn't want the law overturned and return to the days of backdoor abortions," said Colleen Dunn, 40, a Republican and community college teacher who lives outside Philadelphia.

The preference for Supreme Court nominees who would uphold Roe v. Wade could be found among both men and women, most age groups, most income groups and people living in urban, suburban and rural areas. Fewer than half of Republicans, evangelicals and those over 65 said they favored a nominee who would uphold the abortion ruling.

ush has sidestepped questions about whom he would name to an opening, but has indicated he would pick judges like those he picked in his first term — often young and conservative.

While the public is generally divided on the abortion issue, polling consistently has found a clear majority of people who think abortion should be legal in at least some cases.

While there are no current openings on the high court, only one of the nine justices, Clarence Thomas, is under 65 and Chief Justice William Rehnquist, 80, has thyroid cancer.

The AP-Ipsos poll found that six in 10 think justices should face a mandatory retirement age.

The appointment of justices without term limits or a mandatory retirement age historically has helped to insulate the court from politics, said Dennis Hutchinson of the University of Chicago Law School. At the same time, that can have the unintended consequence of letting some justices serve beyond their most effective years.

The poll question mentioned no specific retirement age. Appointment of Supreme Court justices for life is dictated by the Constitution and could be changed only by an amendment.

People over 65 were among those most likely to favor mandatory retirement, according to the poll.

"The justices hold office year after year," said Opal Bristow, an 84-year-old Democrat and retired teacher who lives near San Antonio. "Some of them are old codgers who need to get out of the way and let the younger folks with fresh ideas come in."

Most of those who have taken a position on whether a nominee should uphold or overturn Roe v. Wade say they wanted a nominee to state his or her position on abortion before confirmation. Nearly two-thirds of each group said they would want to know.

The survey found that 61 percent of all respondents said Supreme Court nominees should state their position on abortion before being approved for the job.

"In a perfect world they wouldn't have to talk about it," said Kenneth Cole, 39, a consultant from Columbus, Ohio, and a Republican who leans toward wanting Roe v. Wade overturned. "But whoever President Bush nominates, people will know where they stand. They won't be able to avoid the issue."

Another issue the Supreme Court will have to deal with at some point is homosexual marriage.

By 61 percent to 35 percent, people opposed gay marriage, with young adults between 18 and 29 about evenly split. Recent polls have indicated people are about evenly divided on the question of civil unions, which would provide many of the same legal protections as gay marriage.

[b]The AP-Ipsos poll of 1,000 adults was taken Nov. 19-21 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points[/b]. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

---> Neo-Con Right-Wing Bigotry & Fascism on the Rise ...

11.29.04 (11:05 am) [edit]

[b]Iraq and Damned Statistics [/b]

The Red Crescent has finally been allowed http://www.sierratimes.com/rs... into Fallujah (its earlier exclusion was probably a violation of international law). Its spokesman is saying that less than 200 civilian families appear to still be there. If this estimate is true, it suggests that by the time of the U.S. assault, only about 5,000 persons were left in the city. At least 2,000 were killed, some 1,400 captured, some escaped, and a handful of civilian families remained. If Fallujah was a ghost town before the assault, that would help explain the repeated U.S. military assertion of virtually no civilian casualties (which is still not entirely plausible). But it would also raise a question as to the effectiveness of the assault. Fallujah's population was estimated at between 250,000 and 300,000. If only 5,000 or so were left, then obviously a great many guerrilla fighters, whether full- or part-time, escaped. The few remaining civilian families suffered from lack of food, contrary to earlier assertions of U.S. military spokespersons.

Al-Hayat plays anti-al-Jazeera on Saturday, running an article about how the Fallujans are furious at the "mujahedin" who fought the Americans using their city as a base. One interviewee among the survivors said that if a holy warrior proffered his hand, he'd rip it to pieces with his teeth. The Fallujans complain that the radical Muslim fundamentalists established themselves in the poorest city quarters, paying exorbitant rents, even though residents pleaded with them to fight the Americans outside the city. One said that anyone who made such arguments was tagged by the militants as an American sympathizer and received death threats.

Do I detect sarcasm toward the U.S. military in the column of Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough? They ridicule Centcom for claiming that the Fallujah operation had broken the back of the guerrilla effort and for suggesting that Fallujah was the greatest battle since the fall of Baghdad. They have also drawn up "talking points" for those wishing to defend the operation, which underline how many explosives were in Fallujah; charge that every one of the city's 77 mosques had been used as a weapons storage facility or fortress for attack; and added, "In one sector alone, a Marine unit found 91 caches and 432 IEDs. As a comparison, in October in all of Iraq, the coalition found 130 arms caches and 348 IEDs."

Since there are an estimated 250,000 tons of explosives and munitions missing from the prewar Ba'ath stockpiles, I fear that whatever was found in Fallujah was a drop in the bucket. And a lot of Iraqi cities must be full of such material. And, contrary to the "broken back" imagery, a confidential Marine report suggested that the guerrilla war would grow in intensity and breadth in the buildup to the Jan. 30 elections.

Alas, even Fallujah itself is still a problem. Guerrillas staged a shootout on Friday that killed two Marines (three guerrillas died as well).

Not only were many Iraqis disturbed at the way the Fallujah campaign was conducted, but they were upset about the assault by Iraqi National Guardsmen and U.S. troops on the Abu Hanifa mosque in Baghdad last Friday. Mosque preachers, both Sunni and Shi'ite, universally condemned the raid yesterday in the Friday sermons. Al-Zaman says that Sheikh Adnan Dulaimi, the head of the Sunni Pious Endowments Board, called on the United Nations, the Arab League, and other international organizations to intervene to ensure that no further such attacks on mosques are conducted by the Allawi government or the American and coalition forces. Iraqi Muslims were especially appalled that the attack took place during Friday prayers and resulted in the deaths of two worshippers. The U.S. maintains that the mosque was a center for the guerrilla war.

"The Daily Outrage," at The Nation's Web site, lists some statistics that were not in the New York Times op-ed piece on Friday. For instance, 90 of 540 voter registration stations in Iraq are closed owing to poor security. And here is the coup de grace:

[i][b]"Iraqi Public Opinion
** Only 33 percent of Iraqis think they're better off now than before the war, as a Gallup poll discovered.
** Just 36 percent believe the interim government shares their values.
** 94 percent say Baghdad is more dangerous than it was before the war.
** 66.6 believe the U.S. occupation could start a civil war.
** 80 percent want the U.S. to leave directly after the January elections."[/b][/i]

The [i]London Times [/i]reports http://www.timesonline.co.uk/...,,7374-1376189,00.html that nearly 700 persons die under suspicious circumstances (most of them from bullet wounds) every month in Baghdad. These are not, at least mainly, victims of the guerrilla war. They are mostly victims of crime or revenge. I figure that as 8,400 murders a year in a city of 5 million, or 168 per 100,000 per annum. The highest murder rate in the U.S. for 2003 was 45.8 per 100,000, in Washington, D.C., with Detroit coming in second. That is, Baghdad is nearly four times as dangerous as the most dangerous American cities, more than a year and a half after the fall of Saddam. The U.S. has by its stupid mistakes deprived Baghdad's residents of the basic right to personal security. It is true that Saddam's secret police used to dump bodies at the morgue, of course. But all the polls show that Baghdadis feel themselves substantially worse off in personal security now, and no wonder.

[b]By Juan Cole[/b], http://www.antiwar.com/cole/?...

---> U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Overturn Massachusetts Gay Marriage Law! Hallelujah!

11.29.04 (8:11 am) [edit]

The Supreme Court on Monday sidestepped a dispute over gay marriages, rejecting a challenge to the nation's only law sanctioning such unions.

Justices had been asked by conservative groups to overturn the year-old decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Court legalizing gay marriage. They declined, without comment.

In the past year, at least 3,000 gay Massachusetts couples have wed, although voters may have a chance next year to change the state constitution to permit civil union benefits to same-sex couples, but not the institution of marriage.

Critics of the November 2003 ruling by the highest court in Massachusetts argue that it violated the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of a republican form of government in each state. They lost at the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.

Their attorney, Mathew Staver, said in a Supreme Court filing that the Constitution should "protect the citizens of Massachusetts from their own state supreme court's usurpation of power."

Federal courts, he said, should defend people's right "to live in a republican form of government free from tyranny, whether that comes at the barrel of a gun or by the decree of a court."

Merita Hopkins, a city attorney in Boston, had told justices in court papers that the people who filed the suit have not shown they suffered an injury and could not bring a challenge to the Supreme Court. "Deeply felt interest in the outcome of a case does not constitute an actual injury," she said.

Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly told justices that voters can overrule the Supreme Court by adopting a constitutional amendment.

The lawsuit was filed by the Florida-based Liberty Counsel on behalf of Robert Largess, the vice president of the Catholic Action League, and 11 state lawmakers.

The conservative law group had persuaded the Supreme Court in October to consider another high profile issue, the constitutionality of Ten Commandments displays on government property. The court agreed to look at that church-state issue before Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.

He is working from home while receiving chemotherapy and radiation and will miss court sessions for the next two weeks.

State legislators will decide whether to put the issue before Massachusetts voters in November 2006. Voters in 11 states approved constitutional amendments banning gay marriage in November elections. President Bush has promised to make a federal anti-gay marriage amendment a priority of his second term.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court narrowly ruled that gays and lesbians had a right under the state constitution to wed.

The nation's high court had stayed out of the Massachusetts fight on a previous occasion. Last May, justices refused to intervene and block clerks from issuing the first marriage licenses.

The case is Largess v. Supreme Judicial Court of the State of Massachusetts, 04-420. - http://www.latimes.com/news/n...,1,1522523.story?coll=sns-ap-scotus- headlines

---> U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Overturn Massachusetts Gay Marriage Law! Hallelujah!

11.29.04 (8:09 am) [edit]

---> Godless Hypocrites on the Right!!!

11.29.04 (7:50 am) [edit]

"I don't believe God loves war…everybody hates war."

– Rev. Jerry Falwell, 11/28/04, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1...

[i][b]VERSUS[/b][/i]

"God is Pro-War."

– Falwell commentary, 1/31/04, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/...

Refer to [b]"A Hypocritical, Blithering Idiot -- Morally Speaking"[/b] on http://www.tblog.com/template...

---> Godless Hypocrites on the Right!!!

11.29.04 (7:47 am) [edit]

---> Bush Fakes Death Threats to Divert Attention From His Own Economic Fuck-Ups!!!

11.28.04 (12:18 pm) [edit]

[b]Does anybody (with a brain)[i] really [/i]think that Bush has[i] seriously [/i]been in danger??? [u]Every President receives Death Threats!!![/u] But [i]now[/i] is the time that Karl Rove deems appropriate to play the[i] SYMPATHY CARD[/i] in order to divert attention from Bush's own Economic Fuck-Ups as he screws-over the American People!!![/b]

Articles in the NYT in the last two days demonstrate the inability of the American political culture to respond to its most pressing economic threats: out of control budget and trade deficits and threats to the dollar. Once the international community loses confidence in the dollar, the U.S. and the world economy is at risk.

The first is an article detailing loss of international support for the dollar (“Foreign Interest Appears to Flag As Dollar Falls,” 11.27.04) and the second is an article on Social security “reform” (Vast Borrowing Seen in Altering Social Security,” 11.28.2004) --a plan that needs no reform, as it continues its decades long surplus, and will continue to pay its way through 2042 and could continue indefinitely with minor adjustments. (See links to the Times articles below.)

The current drive to destroy Social Security is a remarkable demonstration of the ability of the right wing to advance its agenda in the face of facts and common sense. The current plan, not unlikely to become law within a year, is so bad that a year before the 2004 election, a special commission appointed by President Bush to promote it, gave up in despair.

Now, with another brazenly stolen election behind us, there may be no political force in this country strong enough to impede the momentum driving such plans. The only hope is that the international community will pull out of the dollar quickly enough to demonstrate to public at large that increasing the debt involved in a Social Security privatization scheme is as untenable as it is reckless and irresponsible. Another possibility is that the stock market could crash at a politically sensitive moment.

Such reflections only go to show how much pain will be required to interrupt the plans of the radical extremists running our government who repeatedly demonstrate that they are impervious even to the most immediate economic threats not to mention to the most fundamental needs of their people.
***

New York Times
Foreign Interest Appears to Flag as Dollar Falls

November 27, 2004
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

Investors and analysts are increasingly worried that the
last big source of support for the American dollar - heavy
buying by foreign central banks - is fading.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/27/business/2 7dollar.html?ex=1102664308&ei=1&e n=1c58f887e4c17fab" title="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/27/business/2 7dollar.html?ex=1102664308&ei=1&e n=1c58f887e4c17fab" target="_blank"http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1...

New York Times
Bush's Social Security Plan Is Said to Require Vast Borrowing

November 28, 2004
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

The plan for personal accounts could require borrowing from
hundreds of billions to
trillions of dollars over 10
years.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/politics/2 8secure.html?ex=1102662806&ei=1&e n=d8a48189756234f5" title="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/politics/2 8secure.html?ex=1102662806&ei=1&e n=d8a48189756234f5" target="_blank"http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1...

***
For those interested in more of Ronald Bleier's views, see DYSBushTOPIA.
http://dysbushtopia.blogspot.com/" title="http://dysbushtopia.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"http://dysbushtopia.blogspot....

Ronald Bleier
Editor, DESIP
The Demographic, Environmental and Security Issues
Project (DESIP)

---> Why 'Weenie' May Start With a Capital DUBYA ...

11.27.04 (3:09 pm) [edit]

The President of The World is not President of The World for Life, at least not yet. But is he a weenie?

What evidence is there of Dubya's weenieness, apart from him chickening out when it came to going up against the filthy Commies in the skies over the Rio Grande during the unpleasantness in Vietnam?

He was afraid to speak to real, live U.S. voters except in situations where everybody had been required to sign a loyalty oath.

He was afraid to speak to the British Parliament.

The thought of being anywhere near Parliament in Ottawa has scared him speechless.

Every American who heckled him during the election campaign got arrested. But in satellite nations like the United Kingdom, not to mention rogue countries like Canada, it's out of his hands. Anybody could holler anything when he's here next week and get off scot free. This makes him very, very anxious.

In Santiago he did wade into a mob of Chilean security goons to rescue his bodyguard, but while this made him look brave, it was provoked by his fear of not having somebody at his side to protect him against evildoers. At times like that, said his press secretary, he can be "a hands-on kind of guy."

According to David Brooks, the neocon columnist, "he's a towel-snapping kind of guy" too. And if there's one thing we know about guys who are towel-snapping guys, it's that the thing they fear most is having mice nibble on their machismo.

In other words, Dubya's a sensitive kind of guy. If he were subjected to the type of verbal barrage that the owner of the Hamilton Tiger Cats wishes his team's fans would stop firing at the Argonauts, think what might happen.

"Do I suck?"

"You don't, sir, believe me," his press secretary would say. "Look how brave you were in Colombia when they had exactly the same number of troops in the street to protect you as you invaded Falluja with. Look how brave you were when you congratulated your friend Vladimir Putin for his election victory in Ukraine. Ukraine is a democracy, you said, so if 110 per cent of the voters cast ballots, the people have truly spoken."

"What if I suck?"

You see? Heckling could plant a seed of doubt.

The last thing Canadians need when we're hanging by a thread so slender that the President of The World isn't completely sure we're on his side, is for him to develop even more doubts about us.

We should bear the bigger picture in mind, too. Since he has doubts about almost everybody else in the world, shouldn't we do something to ease those?

We have to help Dubya get over his weenieness.

The trick will be to entice him into the Commons.

"Won't that vulgar woman be there?" (Comic relief: Did you hear about the George W. Bush doll? You wind it up and Carolyn Parrish steps on it.)

"Oh, no, sir. The Canadians fitted her with a cement bathing suit and took her swimming in the Ottawa River. As a gesture of goodwill."

"Really? Maybe they're not such evil folks after all."

Then, once he's in there, the minute he starts to speak, everybody jumps up and starts yelling at him. His bodyguard draws his gun. Dubya is about to order him to shoot the varmints, when his press secretary says, "Sir, wait! Listen to what they're yelling."

And Dubya listens. And what they're yelling is, "You the man!" Every last one of them, the MPs, the opposition leaders, the Prime Minister. "You the man!"

"They think I'm the man!" He is awed, and shocked, but in the nicest possible way.

"Yes, sir. Isn't that nice?"

"It's real nice." A tear forms in Dubya's eye. "Maybe I don't suck after all."

We'll have made the world a nicer place.

There is one problem.

Parliament does represent a country that is composed of an embarrassingly consequential number of what Dubya regards as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys."

He can't quite tell the difference between the gallant Royal 22nd Regiment that has just returned from making Afghanistan safe for opium growers, and [i]Les Voltigeurs de Les Tirailleurs de la Force de la Frappé de Gaulle[/i] who have stayed snug at home in gay Paree eating snails gratinée.

"They eat snails, too?" he asks. "Geez, even using them to catch fish would make me nauseous."

We've still got a couple of days. Let me work on this. - http://www.thestar.com/NASApp...

---> Bush Cabinet Moves Seen as Stifling Dissent And Ushering In American Fascism

11.23.04 (11:32 am) [edit]

WASHINGTON - President Bush is moving to concentrate power as he begins his second term, placing trusted members of his inner circle in key positions, but some analysts believe he risks stifling healthy debate within his administration.

It is understandable that this president, like any president, wants his decisions to be taken as writ," said William Galston, a government professor at the University of Maryland, who served as a domestic policy adviser to former President Bill Clinton.

"However this president is running the risk of restricting the range of debate within the administration very seriously," Galston said.

Alarm bells rang in Washington's political circles last week when the new CIA director, Porter Goss, sent a memo to agency employees telling them their job was to "support the administration and its policies."

"As agency employees we do not identify with, support or champion opposition to the administration or its policies," Goss said in the memorandum, which came after several top officers resigned.

Even Republicans criticized that choice of words, saying it was crucial for the CIA to retain its objectivity and ability to "speak truth to power." Democrats, noting that Goss until recently was a highly partisan Republican member of the House of Representatives, saw it as part of a disturbing pattern.

Bush moved swiftly after his Nov. 2 election victory to consolidate power. He installed trusted White House counsel Alberto Gonzales as attorney general and nominated national security adviser Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state, while elevating her deputy, Stephen Hadley, to replace her. Loyalists from the inner circle will also take over as White House counsel and at the Education Department.

Some historians believe that with Republicans securely controlling both houses of Congress, Bush will begin his second term with more power and fewer constraints than any president since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

[b]DANGER OF HUBRIS (AND AMERICAN FASCISM)[/b]

David Gergen, who served as White House adviser to four presidents, said the two dangers facing Bush were hubris and group-think, the tendency for everyone in an organization to adopt the prevailing view.

"By closing down dissent and centralizing power in a few hands, he is acting as if he truly believes that he and his teams have a perfect track record, that they know best and that they don't need any infusion of new heavyweights," Gergen wrote last week in The New York Times.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan last week denied that Bush was surrounding himself with "yes" men and women.

"Once a decision is made, the president expects the administration to work together," he said. "But he's always welcomed a wide diversity of views from members of his team."

Gary Schmitt of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, who served in the White House under President Ronald Reagan, dismissed the idea that alternative views would not be heard in inner circles as absurd.

"There's a massive amount of commentary, both inside and outside of government. You can't live in Washington, D.C., and not be exposed to all kinds of views," he said.

But political scientist Dean Spiliotes of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics said history taught that second term presidents often became increasingly impatient with and intolerant of dissenting views.

"Bush seems particularly susceptible to this because of his personal style. He doesn't like people in there playing devil's advocate. The result has been a higher risk of mistakes when you're all staffed with like-minded people," he said.

Bush, however, may not have things all his own way. Republican conservatives have already shown they may be willing to defy him, as they did last weekend by refusing to go along with a bill to reform U.S. intelligence services.

nd there may be enormous institutional resistance from within the 1.8 million strong civil service.

Conservative commentator James Glassman of the American Enterprise Institute said Bush Cabinet officers should copy Goss and enforce loyalty.

"How to do that when bureaucrats have the equivalent of academic tenure? Make their lives miserable, transfer them or re-educate them. But don't leave them in place," he said in a recent commentary. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

---> Bush Cabinet Moves Seen as Stifling Dissent And Ushering In American Fascism

11.23.04 (11:30 am) [edit]

---> Arms Control Activists Hail Bush Setback - Too Little - Too Late! Bush Should be Impeached!

11.23.04 (11:26 am) [edit]

The defeat over the weekend of President Bush's attempts to fund research and possibly development of a new family of nuclear weapons was hailed Monday by arms control advocates as their biggest success in more than a decade.

They were reacting to the approval by the Senate and House of a spending bill that eliminates funding for the nuclear "bunker buster" as well as other "advanced concept" tactical nuclear weapons.

"This is the biggest victory that arms control advocates in Congress have had since 1992, when we were able to place limits on nuclear testing," said Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), one of the leading opponents of the Bush administration's nuclear arms program. "If we are to convince other countries to forgo nuclear weapons, we cannot be preparing to build an entire new generation of nuclear weapons here in the U.S."

The administration had argued that it was important at least to study such weapons at a time of great threat against the United States. But congressional sources said Republicans joined with Democrats in opposing the program because of the example it would set while the U.S. is trying to compel North Korea and Iran to abandon their nuclear arms efforts.

In addition, lawmakers were concerned by the budgetary pressure of the costly Iraq war and the spiraling deficit.

The Bush administration, which is likely to continue making the program a priority in the president's second term, had sought $27.6 million to continue work on the bunker buster or Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, a nuclear weapon that would be aimed at an enemy's underground sanctuary. The goal would be to deny enemies havens for weapons of mass destruction or to hide from U.S. forces.

[b]Rationale for bomb [/b]

"We want, in some hypothetical future confrontation with a hypothetical generic dictator, to make it absolutely clear that he doesn't have an invulnerable sanctuary," Linton Brooks, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said recently.

An agency spokesman acknowledged the congressional action was a setback, but attributed the defeat to legislative procedure.

"We are of course very disappointed that there was not funding for all the administration requests for the NNSA," agency spokesman Bryan Wilkes said. "We think that if the issue had come to a specific floor vote on it we would have prevailed. Instead, it was caught up in the appropriations process."

He said he did not know if the nuclear weapons programs would be included in Bush's fiscal year 2006 budget requests.

The White House had outlined plans to spend more than $500 million on the penetrator project over the next several years, which some analysts said was enough to move the weapon into production.

Bush also had asked for $9 million for further research into the possible development of "advanced concept" low-yield tactical nuclear weapons that could be used on a battlefield.

In addition to eliminating the funding requests, Congress slashed to $7 million from $29.8 million a White House request to build new nuclear warhead facilities, or "pits," and cut $30 million that the administration had planned to use to speed resumption of nuclear testing, if that proved necessary.

Though Brooks argued it was not the intention of the White House to start "some bad new nuclear arms race," critics argued these actions would have precisely that effect.

[b]Russian's observation [/b]

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov had said that pursuit of these programs would be "a case of letting the genie out of the bottle."

According to the Washington-based Center for Defense Information, Russia still has about 3,400 tactical nuclear weapons left from the Soviet era that the U.S. would like eliminated.

A major stumbling block to the administration's plans was a maverick Republican, Rep. David Hobson of Ohio, chairman of the House Appropriations energy subcommittee, who feared the funding would lead to a new arms race.

Unlike other military programs, nuclear weapons are overseen by the Energy Department, which is monitored by Congress' energy committees.

"What worries me about the nuclear penetrator," Hobson told one symposium when the administration proposal was being debated, "is that some idiot might try to use it."

Though Bush can seek money for nuclear weapons research in his budget next year, opponents hope Congress' action will make clear that lawmakers are reluctant to go along.

In addition to the financial and diplomatic arguments, critics questioned the new weapons' likely efficiency. The penetrator would not reach deep enough to knock out bunkers far underground, they argued, and it would release deadly radioactive clouds no matter where it was detonated.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) called the decision "a consequential victory for those of us who believe the United States sends a wrong signal to the rest of the world by reopening the nuclear door and beginning testing and development of a new generation of nuclear weapons." - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

---> Arms Control Activists Hail Bush Setback - Too Little - Too Late! Bush Should be Impeached!

11.23.04 (11:21 am) [edit]

---> Georgey-boy A'W'OL Bush: A National Disgrace ...

11.23.04 (6:53 am) [edit]

[b]How the Ohio election was rigged for Bush[/b]

Following four community public hearings in Ohio about election irregularities and voter suppression – two in the capitol, Columbus, and one each in Cincinnati and Cleveland – a clear pattern and practice of voter disenfranchisement is emerging.

In order to understand the extent of the voter suppression in the inner city of Columbus and Franklin County, overwhelmingly Democratic wards, start with the phrase: “Machines Placed By Close Of Polls” on the last page of the county’s 17-page voting machine allocation report.

This phrase at the end of the spreadsheet may be the key in unraveling a deliberate and unprecedented plan to repress African American and poor central city voters. In statistics, when you see a bizarre definition or measurement, it sends up red flags. Why doesn’t the Franklin County Board of Elections have a number for “Machines Placed By Opening Of Polls”?

It now appears that the Franklin County BOE placed scores of machines too late in the day to alleviate the long lines of voters who gathered to vote before work and at lunchtime.

To better understand what the BOE did on Election Day, consider the following analogy. The near east side of Columbus needs four buses to move the population to the downtown business district. Each bus will move 100 people. At the start of the business day at 6:30am, there are only two buses running and another one with a dead battery. After a few hours, the third bus is put into use. Finally, towards the close of the work day at 6pm, a fourth bus is deployed. The Central Ohio Transit Authority then reports it had four buses operating by the end of the business day. What matters is not how many buses, or voting machines, were operating at the end of the day, but rather how many were there to service the people during the morning and noon rush hours.

Questions remain as to where these machines were placed and who had access to them during the day.

Pacifica reporter Evan Davis reported that a county purchasing official who was on the line with Ward Moving and Storage Company, documented only 2,741 voting machines delivered through the November 2 election day. The county’s own documents reveal that they had 2,866 “Machines Available” on Election Day. This would mean that amid the two to seven hour waits in the inner city of Columbus, at least 125 machines remained unused on Election Day. Ward holds the exclusive three-year contract to deliver voting machines in Franklin County.

If the BOE only had 2,741 placed initially, this would explain the long lines in Columbus and voters leaving the polls during the morning voting rush. According to the Franklin County Board of Elections (BOE), in the city of Columbus, where voters waited in the heavily Democratic wards between 2-7 hours to cast the vast majority of their votes for John Kerry, voter turnout was 52.7%. In the affluent white suburbs of Columbus, with far more voting machines available, the turnout figure was 76.15%.

By contrast, 66.31% of registered voters went to the polls in Cincinnati and turnout was 76.82% in the suburbs. In Cincinnati, where more voting machines were available, the difference between the city and suburbs was only 10.5% compared to 23.45% in the Columbus area. Cincinnati and Columbus have similar demographics.

The Franklin County Board of Elections reported that 68 voting machines were never placed on Election Day. In addition, Franklin County BOE Director Matt Damschroder admitted on Friday, November 19, that 77 machines malfunctioned on Election Day.

Franklin County Commissioner Mary Jo Kilroy criticized Damschroder for calling the elections “well-funded and well-planned and that problems could not have been averted, . . .” according to the Columbus Dispatch.

Damschroder, the former Executive Director of the Franklin County Republican Party, told the Franklin County Commissioners, “From our perspective, this election was a success.”

Despite an increased registration of more than 167,253 new voters, Damschroder admits he ran the election with a “fixed and exhausted” pool of voting machines, the Dispatch reported. Kilroy pointed out that Damschroder and Franklin County election officials told her “We’re fine, we’re fine” and never requested additional money over the initial allocation.

The Washington Post reported “Franklin is the only Ohio county to use Danaher Control’s ELECTronic 1242, an older-style touchscreen voting system.” Franklin County’s voting machine allocation report shows that Damschroder deployed his Danaher (formerly Shooptronics) voting machines, which have been in use since 1992, in a formula that favored Bush over Kerry.

In precinct 55-B on Columbus’ near east side, there were 1,338 registered voters and, according to Franklin County Board of Elections estimates, 956 active voters who had voted in the last two federal elections. Despite voter registration being up 17%, and by the BOE’s own guidelines the polling place requiring ten machines (one per 100 voters), the polling site had only three machines, one less than for the 2000 elections.

The Election Protection Coalition that visited the voting site between 7:30-8:30 a.m. documented a dozen people leaving the polls, six to go to work and six who were either elderly or handicapped. But things were worse in other areas of Columbus.

In precinct 1-B where there were 1,620 registered voters, a 27% increase in voter registration, the precinct had five voting machines in 2000 and only three in 2004. Where did they go? Out to Republican enclaves like Canal Winchester, where two machines were added since 2000, for a total of five to service 1,255 registered voters? Or were they re-routed to Dublin 2-G where 1,656 registered voters apparently needed six machines, twice the number of Columbus’ 1-B?

Nearby in Dublin precinct 3-C, 910 registered voters were allocated four voting machines. No doubt machines were shifted from precincts like Columbus 44-G with 1,620 voters and registration up 25%, which lost one machine from the 2000 elections to 2004.

In Cleveland, where a public hearing was held on Saturday, November 20, there was a different pattern of voting irregularities. These include heavily Democratic wards with abnormally low reported rates of voter turnout, three under 20%. In Precinct 6-C where Kerry beat Bush 45 votes to one, allegedly only 7.1% of the registered voters cast ballots. In precinct 13-D where Kerry received 83.8% of the vote, only 13.05% reportedly voted. In precinct 13-F where Kerry received 97.5%, the turnout was reported to be only 19.6%.

One explanation comes from Irma Olmedo, who provided the Free Press with a written statement of her activities in the heavily Hispanic ward 13, which contained the three low voter turnout precincts.

“Ohio does not have bilingual ballots and this disenfranchises many Latino voters who are not totally fluent in English . . . there were 13 poll workers at the school and none knew Spanish. Some could not even find the names of the people on the list because they couldn’t understand well when people said their names. . . . Some people put their punch card ballots in backwards when they voted and discovered that they couldn’t punch out the holes. They had not read the instructions which were in English, that they had to turn the card around in order to vote,” Olmedo stated.

Olmedo translated at precinct 13-O, where 90% of the votes were for Kerry and only 53 votes were counted. The turnout of 21% was due to the lack of Spanish instructions and the misspelling of names: “I noticed that one named Nieves was misspelled as Nieues and the pollworkers were not able to find his name, these people were told to complete a provisional ballot because their names were not on the list.”

In Cuyahoga County, according to the Secretary of State’s website there are 24,788 provisional ballots, most of them from the city of Cleveland, not its surrounding suburbs. Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell served as Co-Chair of the Bush/Cheney Ohio reelection committee.

There also seems to be an abnormally high vote count for third party candidates who received less than one-half of one percent of the statewide vote total combined. For example, in precinct 4-F, the right-wing Constitutional Law candidate Peroutka received 215 votes to Bush’s 21 and Kerry’s 290. In this precinct, Kerry received 55% of the vote where Gore received 91% of the vote in the year 200. These numbers suggest that Kerry’s votes were inadvertently or intentionally shifted to Peroutka.

In Cincinnati, sworn testimony was taken on vote buying, the lack of machines in African American neighborhoods and the deliberate destruction of new voter registration cards by a private company hired to process the forms.

Exit polls on Election Day from both the polling firm Zogby International and CNN projected John Kerry winning the state of Ohio. University of Pennsylvania Professor Steven Freeman calculated the odds that the exit polls in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania all being wrong are 250,000,000 to one. Pollster John Zogby, President of Zogby International, is quoted as telling the Inter Press Service of Stockholm that “something is definitely wrong.”

Zogby commented that he was concerned about the discrepancy between the exit polls and the official vote tallies stating “We’re talking about the free world here.”

The Alliance for Democracy-Ohio is preparing a lawsuit challenging the outcome of Ohio’s election results due to the massive voting irregularities that have emerged in sworn testimony and affidavits.

--
[b]Bob Fitrakis has a Ph.D in Political Science and a J.D. He is a lawyer working with the Alliance for Democracy-Ohio and the Editor of the Columbus Free Press. Reporting in this article also came from Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D and Joe Knapp (http://copperas.com/fcelectio...). For additional documentation, visit http://freepress.org/departme...[/b] - http://freepress.org/columns/...

---> Dictator: Tommy-boy DeLay (Bush's Fascist Slut) Said: "I am the federal government" ...

11.23.04 (6:53 am) [edit]

David Brooks (conservative columnist) writes ([i]see below[/i]) that Tom DeLay "has been a thoughtful majority leader." Would that thoughtfulness have been on display when he said that "guns have little or nothing to do with juvenile violence"? When he mocked people with foreign-sounding names during a House floor debate? When he called Medicare a "failed program"? When he told a government employee who was trying to get him to stop smoking on government property that "I am the federal government"? When he used the word "overreacting" to describe House colleagues disgusted by images from Abu Ghraib?

Presumably there are limits to Mr. Brooks's and the G.O.P.'s tolerance for Mr. DeLay's brand of thoughtful leadership. I look forward to learning what those might be.

[b]A Scandal Waiting to Happen

By DAVID BROOKS[/b]

Tom DeLay is bleeding and he doesn't even know it.

This week, House Republicans bent their accountability rules to protect their majority leader from what they feel is a partisan Texas prosecutor. But they hated the whole exercise. They sat in a conference room hour after hour wringing their hands. Only a few members were brave enough to stand up and say they shouldn't bend the rule. But afterward, many House Republicans came up to those members and said that secretly they agreed with them.

Somewhere in the psychology of the caucus something shifted. That ineffable thing called political capital began seeping away from DeLay. Someday people will look back and say this could be the moment when his power begins to ebb.

It's shifted because many House Republicans know that DeLay has been playing close to the ethical edge for years. They've noticed the number of scandals - the latest involving lobbying fees for some Indian casinos - that trace back to DeLay cronies. They still remember that delicious feeling of possibility when they arrived in Washington and vowed they would not turn into the corrupt old majority they had come to replace. They know Delay symbolizes their descent from that reformist ideal.

Why didn't more members get up and say something against DeLay?

There are several reasons. The most obvious is self-interest. DeLay and the leadership can take away your hopes of getting a chairmanship or a vote on your bill.

But there's also the fact that most House Republicans like DeLay. It's always important to remember that most of the mythology that surrounds the Hammer is total nonsense. He is not the behind-the-scenes power who controls the House. Speaker Dennis Hastert controls the House and feels free to overrule DeLay.

He is not the vicious strongman who terrorizes members and reduces them to tears to get their vote. Roy Blunt and Eric Cantor are the whips, not DeLay, and they are anything but vicious.

He's not even a terror to his peers. He can be firm, but he and his staff are noted for their graciousness. Connecticut moderate Chris Shays, who has tangled with DeLay more than anyone else, believes that DeLay is actually uncomfortable with personal confrontations. He's much better at offering carrots than wielding sticks.

In fact, DeLay has been a thoughtful majority leader. He rarely keeps the House in session beyond its scheduled hours. That means members, especially those with young families or marginal seats, can spend more time in their districts. That is deeply appreciated.

Finally, House Republicans did not rise up to denounce DeLay because while they know he represents some of the political tendencies they came to Washington to reform, none of them is pure enough to cast the first stone. They've all voted for the big deficits they vowed to combat. They've all watched the walls between the public servants and the private lobbyists get washed away.

If Republicans are going to recover the reformist spirit, they're going to have to do more than lessen the influence of Tom DeLay.

But let's face it, the problem starts there. Tom DeLay is a scandal waiting to happen. He casts himself as the enemy of Washington, but he's really a conventional (if effective) pol who wants to use dollars to entrench power. He represents the greatest danger the Republicans face, bossism. He wants to be the G.O.P.'s Boss Tweed.

Deep in the recesses of their minds, many Republicans know that voters around the country may never hear of Tom DeLay, but if the Republicans become just another self-dealing power clique, there will be hell to pay.

You could begin to hear a slight shift in Republican voices yesterday. Several were looking around and noticing that they have a very good and effective leadership team even without DeLay. Hastert has gone from being obscure to being beloved. Roy Blunt is efficient and smooth. Eric Cantor of Virginia is a rising star.

When people start gossiping about what the world would be like if you were gone - as Republicans are now starting to do with DeLay - you are in the first stages of political decline. It means that members start regarding you with a little less awe, and they start regarding your potential successors with a little more.

He doesn't face an immediate threat. But the next time a scandal licks up against him, DeLay will find his support is not as strong as he thought it would be. He'll turn around and find that his caucus has remembered its core values. - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1...

---> Dictator: Tommy-boy DeLay (Bush's Fascist Slut) Said: "I am the federal government" ...

11.23.04 (6:51 am) [edit]

---> Impeach Bush for War Crimes: Another Round of Misery for the Children of Iraq!

11.23.04 (6:41 am) [edit]

Before the Iraq war, Physicians for Human Rights had warned about the serious public-health and human-rights risks to the already vulnerable Iraqi population, should the war take place.

Its predictions have been recently, and sadly, confirmed by an article in the medical magazine The Lancet. According to the article, there have been in excess of 100,000 civilian deaths since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, including a substantial number of children. Carol Bellamy, UNICEF's executive director, has called the death of 34 children in recent bomb attacks "an unconscionable slaughter of innocents."

This is the third time that Iraqi children have been victims of war in that country's recent history. The two conflicts previous to the present one were the eight-year war with Iran in the 1980s and the Gulf War in 1991, which caused considerable damage to Iraq's infrastructure.

In addition, the country has suffered from over 12 years of comprehensive United Nations' sanctions and from Saddam Hussein's perverse policies to use funds for personal gain rather than to improve the basic-services infrastructure in the country.

Prior to the present conflict, Iraqi children were already highly vulnerable to disease and malnutrition. One in four children under 5 years of age was chronically malnourished, and one in eight children died before their fifth birthday. This was happening in a population with almost half the inhabitants under the age of 18.

A limited post-war nutritional assessment carried out by UNICEF in Baghdad found that acute malnutrition has nearly doubled compared with before the war. That assessment also found that seven out of 10 children suffered from various degrees of diarrhea, which leads to a loss of nutrients and often to death if not properly treated.

Hundreds of thousands of tons of raw sewage are still pumped into the Tigris and Euphrates rivers every day. Because water-cleaning chemicals have been looted or destroyed, the quality of water being pumped into homes is extremely poor and leads to more-frequent illness and malnutrition among children. The collapse of the water and sewage systems is probably the cause of an outbreak of a virulent form of hepatitis that is particularly lethal to pregnant women.

It is estimated that 270,000 children born after the war have had none of their required immunizations and routine immunization services were all but disrupted. In addition, the existing stock of vaccines became useless as a result of the destruction of the vaccines' refrigeration system.

Antibiotics of minimal cost in the international market are in short supply, increasing the population's risk of dying from common infections. Many hospitals go dark at night for lack of lighting fixtures.

As a consequence of all these public-health failures, Iraq has the distinction of being the country that has least progressed in reducing child mortality since 1990.

In the 1990s, the most significant increases in child mortality occurred in southern and central Iraq, where under-5-year-old child mortality rose from 56 to 131 per 1,000 live births. Due to lack of security, many babies are now delivered at home, and many mothers do not receive any prenatal care. There is a maternal mortality rate of over 300 per 100,000 live births, compared with a rate of 49.2 per 100,000 for neighboring Turkey.

In the main cities, every day children are killed or injured when in contact with unexploded ordnance, land mines and other kinds of live ammunition littering the country. In Baghdad alone, there are approximately 800 hazardous sites containing cluster bombs and dumped ammunition. Anti-personnel landmines have caused the deaths of both U.S. and allied soldiers and innocent Iraqi civilians.

The Iraq Education Survey, carried out by the Iraqi government with support from UNICEF, describes how children's educational opportunities have been affected by the war. In the most affected governorates, more than 70 percent of primary-school buildings lack water service. The survey shows that since March 2003, bombing has damaged over 700 primary schools, more than 200 have been burned and over 3,000 have been looted.

After a year and a half of hostilities, the suffering of civilians seems only to increase, affecting all sectors of the population.

Even more poignantly, that over half of the deaths caused by the occupation forces are women and children is a severe indictment against the war.

[b]Dr. César Chelala, an international public-health consultant in New York City, writes extensively on public health and human-rights issues[/b]. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

---> Impeach Bush for War Crimes: Another Round of Misery for the Children of Iraq!

11.23.04 (6:41 am) [edit]

---> Impeach Bush for War Crimes: Another Round of Misery for the Children of Iraq!

11.23.04 (6:41 am) [edit]

---> Impeach Bush for War Crimes: Another Round of Misery for the Children of Iraq!

11.23.04 (6:37 am) [edit]

---> Impeach Bush for War Crimes: Another Round of Misery for the Children of Iraq!

11.23.04 (6:35 am) [edit]

---> Why Pre-Emptive Invasions Encourage Soldiers to Commit War Crimes

11.21.04 (10:21 am) [edit]

[b]The implications of shooting dead a wounded Iraqi in cold blood[/b]

Crime came to the city of Fallujah last week and it was committed under the unforgiving gaze of a television camera, giving it international prominence. When a tense and battle-weary US Marine lifted his assault rifle and fired at a wounded Iraqi, killing him instantly during mopping up operations, he was not only doing a bad thing, he was breaking the law as it is applied to the business of warfare.

The US has not signed up to the International Criminal Court, precisely because it wants to protect its troops from prosecution in peace enforcement operations, but the assault on Fallujah was part of a series of military operations in an internal war and should therefore be subject to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. Under their terms, wounded or incapacitated combatants must be treated humanely and protected from the summary justice of the casual head-shot. The conventions are quite clear on this point. Murder of stricken opponents is not allowed: it is a war crime.

The case is being investigated and no doubt the marine will be punished, but his action symbolizes the hopeless muddle that the post-conflict operations in Iraq have become. It also brings into sharper focus the problems facing the coalition forces on the ground. What kind of war are they fighting and what are its rules? Having been outed on the lack of weapons of mass destruction President George W Bush hides behind the fig-leaf of the interventionist war: it was right to mount a pre-emptive strike against a greater threat, in this case Saddam Hussein. Prime Minister Tony Blair has fallen in line with the policy and sees no reason to change his mind. The intervention in Iraq might be unpopular, the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, has called it “illegal”, but both leaders say that it is a just conflict.

However, if US and British soldiers are engaged in a war – Blair claims that it is now in its second phase – then rules must apply. So far, the US has shown little inclination to pay heed to the Geneva Conventions, witness the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and the impending appointment of Albert Gonzales as attorney-general. This is the lawyer who advised the Bush administration that the Geneva Conventions were irrelevant because the war against terrorism “renders quaint some of its provisions”. Small wonder that US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld nodded in agreement because it gave his soldiers carte blanche to act as they saw fit and not as they should. But even if international law has been abandoned, the murder of Iraqis cannot be condoned. Throughout last week’s fighting in Fallujah, US commanders insisted that it was a joint operation with the Iraqis and that it was being undertaken at the request of Iyad Allawi’s interim government. If that is the case, then the US forces were acting in support of the civil authorities and, by right, should be subject to its laws. Any soldier breaking that code would be handed over to the Iraqi police for criminal investigation.

Of course, that will not happen. Allawi owes his authority to the US and will not rock the boat over one of 1200 Iraqi insurgents killed in Fallujah. There is an election to be held in January and, in his increasingly Panglossian view of life, that cancels all debts in the bloody pacification of the cities in the Sunni Triangle. Once the troublemakers (or freedom fighters) have been neutralized and the opposition has been crushed, democracy and prosperity will return and everyone will live happily ever after. Forget for a moment that the killing of Iraqis only breeds undying enmity and the thirst for revenge.

Meanwhile, apologists for the gun- toting marine argue that he made the right call because, only the previous day, his unit had lost a man to a booby-trapped corpse. Faced by the possibility that the Iraqi was playing possum with a hidden gun, the marine decided to be judge, jury and executioner. He could also call on some powerful legal and political support – as a representative of the nation which has embraced the theory of pre-emptive strikes, he was simply acting on the self-same impulse. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

---> Why Pre-Emptive Invasions Encourage Soldiers to Commit War Crimes

11.21.04 (10:21 am) [edit]

---> Why Pre-Emptive Invasions Encourage Soldiers to Commit War Crimes

11.21.04 (10:20 am) [edit]

---> Why Pre-Emptive Invasions Encourage Soldiers to Commit War Crimes

11.21.04 (10:17 am) [edit]

---> Lawyers to Challenge Election in Ohio

11.21.04 (9:22 am) [edit]

Columbus- A trio of activist lawyers armed with mysteriously wrong exit polls and hundreds of voter horror stories announced plans Friday to contest Ohio's presidential election as soon as the vote is official.

Their challenge could lead to widespread reconsideration of dozens of alleged election irregularities around the state - from reported computerized voting glitches to provisional-ballot mishaps to unusual incidents involving voter rolls, poll workers and machine technicians.

But it is unclear whether the complaint will ever get that far.

Columbus attorney Cliff Arnebeck, a national officer in the Alliance for Democracy, could not predict exactly when members of the coalition will be ready or able to file their request.

And, after they do, the Ohio Supreme Court would have to rule in their favor.

To qualify to reopen consideration of the election, Arnebeck said, the group needs find only 25 aggrieved electors and evidence of irregularities, both of which he and his associates have collected in abundance at hearings around the state, he said.

Another hearing is scheduled in Cleveland today.

Arnebeck said the national boards of the NAACP, Alliance for Democracy and Common Cause are reviewing requests to sign on to the litigation, which is not affiliated with either political party.

Carlo LoParo, a spokesman for the secretary of state's office, said many glitches brought to light on Internet blogs and in the alternative press will be corrected in the state's official canvass of the election.

That process, which turns unofficial election results into official ones, is still under way.

LoParo said the canvass includes precinct-level auditing of results, poll book reviews, provisional-ballot verification and an actual recount of all ballots cast on Election Day. Official results historically have varied from final totals only enough to affect the outcomes of very close local races, nothing of the scale of a national race.

Susan Truitt, co-founder of Citizens' Alliance for Secure Elections and one of the participating lawyers, said Ohioans need to know their vote was properly counted.

"Our intent is to examine this election, and to prevail, so that we will have a democracy in this country," she said. "So that we will not have our voices shut down." - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> Lawyers to Challenge Election in Ohio

11.21.04 (9:17 am) [edit]

---> No Victory in Falluja

11.21.04 (7:49 am) [edit]

After a week of fighting, US military commanders have proclaimed victory in the battle for Falluja. Yet with this military success has come an even larger setback for the United States and the Allawi government in Iraq. No sooner had American forces begun to enter Falluja than the insurgency escalated in other cities across central Iraq, and the predictable political backlash within the Sunni community began. As a result, Sunni participation in the elections is more uncertain than it was before the attack, and US forces face an even more hostile population in this region of Iraq and yet another humanitarian crisis.

The purpose of the Falluja campaign was to pacify the strategic Sunni triangle in time for the elections planned for January. By ridding Falluja of foreign fighters and hard-core Saddamists, the Pentagon believed it could blunt the insurgency by denying it a key staging center. It also believed it could help the Allawi government lure disgruntled Sunnis back into the political process. On the basis of what we've seen so far, the campaign has failed on both counts. By the Pentagon's own admission, a large number of the insurgents, including many key leaders, filtered out of Falluja before the battle began. And as US forces concentrated on Falluja, insurgents increased their attacks in other parts of the country. Indeed, insurgents' gains arguably outstripped their temporary loss of Falluja, as they reoccupied the city center of Ramadi, renewed their attack on previously pacified Samarra and left government authority tottering in the key city of Mosul.

The Allawi government's strategy of bringing more Sunnis into the process has been damaged. The initial response of the Sunni leadership was overwhelmingly negative; the most prominent Sunni party threatened to withdraw from the interim government, and leading Sunni clerics called for an election boycott. Public outcry over the Falluja attack may make it difficult for Sunni groups to cooperate with Allawi in the run-up to the elections or to participate in a government over which he presides.

As for the Sunni people, many may not have supported the jihadists among them, but they are unlikely to blame them for the catastrophe inflicted on their city. Many of those Sunnis the Allawi government and the Bush Administration want to draw back into the political process are the same people whose homes have been leveled and families displaced. When the 200,000 residents who fled return to Falluja, they'll find a city in ruins. Indeed, the viciousness of the US assault--exemplified by the videotaped fatal shooting of a wounded man in a mosque by a US Marine--led the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to denounce the killings of civilians and injured people, saying violators of human rights laws "must be brought to justice." One Red Cross official estimates that there have been 800 civilian deaths. Meanwhile, more insurgents have been created, not just in Falluja but also in towns and cities across Iraq, and indeed all across the Arab world.

Such, of course, is the dilemma of being an occupying power fighting a nationalist guerrilla war that has taken on deep religious significance--which is why the invasion of Iraq was a colossal strategic misjudgment from the beginning. But this Administration has continued to compound that mistake by refusing either to withdraw its forces or to give way to an international trusteeship. Faced with the prospect of defeat, the Administration has done in Falluja what it knows best: Escalate military action with no regard for the consequences--either for Iraqis or for our long-term position in the Arab and the Islamic world.

The Administration has also, predictably, tried to shift the blame for the worsening outlook for elections to the United Nations. American officials have suggested that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was being obstructionist with his letter warning that an assault on Falluja would further alienate the Iraqi people and with his unwillingness to commit more UN electoral workers to Iraq. But the White House has no grounds to complain: Despite the dangerous security situation in Iraq, the UN, according to the New York Times, has "succeeded in training 6,000 election registrars and opening up hundreds of registration places across the country." Indeed, because of the UN's heroic efforts, voter registration reportedly is proceeding ahead of schedule--or was, until the Falluja offensive.

One would have hoped that the mess in Iraq would make the Administration more open to reason and international advice. But the replacement of Secretary of State Colin Powell with Bush's loyal National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, along with the speculation that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is staying on, suggests that the Administration is committed to its hard ideological position on Iraq. Thus, we must conclude that the destruction of Falluja is just the beginning of the next phase of a long and costly tragedy for us and the Iraqi people--and that only an active antiwar opposition that builds the broadest possible coalition, one capable of exerting concerted pressure on Congress and the White House, can bring this tragedy to a close. - http://www.thenation.com/doc....

---> MIT Scientists Back Berkeley Voting Report

11.21.04 (6:04 am) [edit]

[b]Berkeley: President comes up short

Graduate students put statistics to the test and find 'ghost' votes for Bush [/b]

In the nation's first academic study of the Florida 2004 vote, University of California, Berkeley, graduate students and a professor have found intriguing evidence that electronic-voting counties could have mistakenly awarded up to 260,000 votes to President George Bush.

The discrepancy, reported Thursday, is insufficient by itself to sway the outcome of the presidential race in Florida, but the UC Berkeley team called on Florida elections officials for an investigation.

"This is a no-vote-left-behind kind of project, not a change-the-president project," said UC Berkeley sociology professor Michael Hout, who oversaw the research. "We're as interested in the next election as the one just over."

Broadly speaking, the UC Berkeley team found that President Bush received tens of thousands more votes in electronic-voting Democratic counties than past voting patterns would have suggested. No such pattern turned up in counties using optical scanning machines.

The UC Berkeley report has not been peer-reviewed, but a reputable MIT political scientist

succeeded in replicating the analysis Thursday at the request of the Herald and The Associated Press. He said an investigation is warranted.

"There is an interesting pattern here that I hope someone looks into," said MIT Arts and Social Sciences Dean Charles Stewart III, a researcher in the MIT-Caltech Voting Technology Project.

Stewart isn't convinced the problem is electronic voting. It could be absentee voting or some quirk of election administration. But whatever the problem, it didn't show up in counties using optical scanning machines. Rather than offer evidence of fraud or voting problems, the UC Berkeley study infers they exist mathematically.

Frustrated at the low-brow, data-poor nature of allegations of election fraud flooding the Internet, three Berkeley grad students decided to apply the tools of first-year statistics class.

"We decided, well, you might as well test it properly instead of sitting around speculating," said first-year sociology grad student Laura Mangels. She and two colleagues downloaded voting and demographic data, ran them through statistics software and in the first night had results that produced a collective "Wow" among the students, she said.

They shopped their results to faculty and finally to Hout, a well-known skeptic who chairs the university's graduate Sociology and Demography group.

"Seven professors later, nobody's been able to poke a hole in our model," Mangels said. "Our results still hold up."

Hout agreed. "Something went awry with the voting in Florida."

They found nothing out of the ordinary in Ohio. But in Florida they discovered a small, unexplained boost in Bush support in three heavily Democratic counties, compared to how those counties voted in 1996 and 2000.

The counties -- Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade -- were at the eye of Florida's 2000 election storm. All traded out their reviled punchcards for touch-screen voting machines sold by either Omaha-based Election Systems & Software or Oakland-based Sequoia Voting Systems.

The Kerry-Edwards campaign and allies concentrated most of their Florida effort in those three counties.

In Broward County alone, the students found, President Bush appeared to have received 72,000 more votes than would be forecast based on Broward's past voting patterns.

The UC Berkeley study estimates that all 15 electronic voting counties in Florida produced at least 130,733 and as many as 260,000 "ghost votes" for President Bush -- votes that either weren't cast by voters or were registered for a candidate other than the one intended by the voter.

Hout said the odds that those people simply chose to re-elect the president are "less than one in a thousand." The students tested and retested their data to see what other factor might explain the results -- income levels, the Latino population, changes in voter turnout. According to their report, the data show with 99 percent certainty that a county's use of electronic voting is associated with a disproportionate increase in votes for President Bush.

In early voting in Broward County, poll monitors reported that poll workers displayed zero tapes, printed out when touch-screen machines are booted up, dated as much as 10 days before early voting opened. That leaves room for doubt on whether votes could have been recorded beforehand.

In Palm Beach County, several voters on Sequoia machines reported their ballots were pre-selected for President Bush before they began voting.

MIT's Stewart wants more detailed analysis in the three counties.

It could be something about the machines per se, it could be about the administration of the election, he said. But for a graduate student at Berkeley, I think there's a journal article in here.

It's hardly what Mangels expected from her first year in sociology.

I always hoped to use the techniques I learned for real-world problems, she said, but I didn't expect it to happen this early on. - http://www.trivalleyherald.co...,1413,86~10669~2545298,00 .html

---> MIT Scientists Back Berkeley Voting Report

11.21.04 (6:03 am) [edit]

---> Herr Fuhrer Bush Gives More Relief to Poor, Struggling Millionaires

11.21.04 (5:57 am) [edit]

[b]More relief for struggling millionaires[/b]

If you thought the current Bush tax rate rewarded the wealthy, wait until you get a load of his administration's latest plan.

Liberal policy wonks -- and even some who aren't so liberal --did a double take when they read the new tax plan floated by the Bush administration in the Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com... on Thursday. Was the White House really suggesting eliminating incentives for employers to offer their employees health insurance plans? Was it really proposing to shift the country's tax burden even further onto states like that didn't vote for Bush, like New York and Massachusetts?

It was.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.salon.com/news/fea...

(If you are not a Salon subscriber, you can get a [i]Free Day [/i]Pass!)

---> Herr Fuhrer Bush Gives More Relief to Poor, Struggling Millionaires

11.21.04 (5:56 am) [edit]

---> World Eschews Rice

11.21.04 (5:49 am) [edit]

Condoleezza Rice may be the apple of U.S. President George W. Bush's eye, but in Europe her nomination as Secretary of State is being met with disappointment and dismay.

The long-anticipated resignations of the respected state secretary, Colin Powell, and his tough, able deputy, Richard Armitage, leave U.S. foreign policy in the hands of bellicose VP Dick Cheney and his neocon Pentagon allies. The new National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley, is a bland functionary well known for being under Cheney's thumb.

Powell, an honourable soldier and gentleman, was humiliated, ignored, and cynically used to sell the Iraq war. He made a fool of himself before the world with his UN presentation about Iraq's supposed arsenal of death.

[b]More [/b]... http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> World Eschews Rice

11.21.04 (5:48 am) [edit]

---> Eyewitness to US Forces Raiding a Mosque

11.20.04 (1:41 pm) [edit]

An eyewitness commentary to IPS through a U.S. raid on a Baghdad mosque Friday gives a vivid picture of what a "successful raid" can be like.

U.S. soldiers raided the Abu Hanifa mosque in Baghdad during Friday prayers, killing at least four and wounding up to 20 worshippers.

At 12:30 p.m. local time, just after Imam Sheikh Muayid al-Adhami concluded his talk, about 50 U.S. soldiers with 20 Iraqi National Guardsmen (ING) entered the mosque, a witness reported.

"Everyone was there for Friday prayers, when five Humvees and several trucks carrying INGs entered," Abu Talat told IPS on the phone from within the mosque while the raid was in progress. "Everyone starting yelling 'Allahu Akbar' (God is the greatest) because they were frightened. Then the soldiers started shooting the people praying!"

Talat said he was among a crowd of worshippers being held back at gunpoint by U.S. soldiers. Loud chanting of "Allahu Akbar" could be heard in the background during his call. Women and children were sobbing, he said.

"They have just shot and killed at least four of the people praying," he said in a panicked voice. "At least 10 other people are wounded now. We are on our bellies and in a very bad situation."

Talat gave his account over short phone calls. He said he was witnessing a horrific scene.

"We were here praying and now there are 50 here with their guns on us," he said. "They are holding our heads to the ground, and everyone is in chaos. This is the worst situation possible. They cannot see me talking to you. They are roughing up a blind man now." He evidently could talk no further then.

The soldiers later released women and children along with men who were related to them. Abu Talat was released because a boy told him to pretend to be his father.

Other witnesses gave similar accounts outside the mosque. "People were praying and the Americans invaded the mosque," Abdulla Ra'ad Aziz from the al-Adhamiya district of Baghdad told IPS. He had been released along with his wife and children. "Why are they killing people for praying?" He said that after the forces entered "they went to the back doors and we heard so many bullets of the guns – it was a gun bigger than a Kalashnikov. There were wounded and dead, I saw them myself."

Some of the people who had been at prayer were ordered by soldiers to carry the dead and wounded out of the mosque, he said.

"One Iraqi National Guardsmen held his gun on people and yelled, 'I will kill you if you don't shut up,'" said Rana Aziz, a mother who had been trapped in the mosque.. "So they made everyone lie down, then people got quiet, and they took the women and children out."

She said someone asked the soldiers if they would be made hostages. A soldier used foul language and asked everyone to shut up, she said. Suddenly, she laughed amid her tears. "The Americans have learnt how to say shut up in Arabic, 'Inchev.'"

Soldiers denied Iraqi Red Crescent ambulances and medical teams access to the mosque. As doctors negotiated with U.S. soldiers outside, more gunfire was heard from inside.

About 30 men were led out with hoods over their heads and their hands tied behind them. Soldiers loaded them into a military vehicle and took them away around 3:15 p.m.

A doctor with the Iraqi Red Crescent confirmed four dead and nine wounded worshippers. Pieces of brain were splattered on one of the walls inside the mosque while large blood stains covered carpets at several places.

A U.S. military spokesperson in Baghdad did not respond to requests for information on the raid. - http://www.antiwar.com/jamail...

---> Notes on the Immoral, Hypocritical Bush/Cheney-GOP Traitors!!!

11.20.04 (7:00 am) [edit]

[b]Absolute power corrupts: GOP rewrites congressional rules to aid Bush agenda[/b]

WASHINGTON -- With expanded majorities in both houses of Congress, Republican leaders are tightening the circle of power and sending warning signals to moderates and Democrats who might threaten the ambitious legislative agenda of the White House.

Combined with President Bush's recent efforts to consolidate more executive-branch power in the hands of key loyalists, the GOP actions set the stage for an efficient legislative operation to process Bush administration objectives through Congress and then on to the White House for Bush's signature, analysts say.

"There is this kind of effort to convert the key policy-making institutions of government into one assembly line for the president's agenda," said Paul Light, a professor at New York University who specializes in government transitions. "That's very unusual -- it's almost like running a large conglomerate when you have the [president as] CEO and the House and Senate as almost the manufacturing division."

Senate Republicans voted this week to give their majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, more authority in naming members of legislative committees, a power that helps Frist impose party discipline by allowing him to pass over veteran senators for some posts.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> Bush is a War Criminal Responsible for Crimes Against Humanity

11.20.04 (6:08 am) [edit]

[b]Bush is a War Criminal responsible for the sickening Crimes Against Humanity committed in Our Names. This is outrageous! We should be demanding his impeachment NOW![/b]

I'm feeling sick- literally. I can't get the video Al-Jazeera played out of my head: http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...%2Fap%2F20041116%2Fap_on_ re_mi_ea%2Ffallujah_priso ner_shot

The mosque strewn with bodies of Iraqis- not still with prayer or meditation, but prostrate with death- Some seemingly bloated... an old man with a younger one leaning upon him... legs, feet, hands, blood everywhere... The dusty sun filtering in through the windows... the stillness of the horrid place. Then the stillness is broken- in walk some marines, guns pointed at the bodies... the mosque resonates with harsh American voices arguing over a body- was he dead, was he alive? I watched, tense, wondering what they would do- I expected the usual Marines treatment- that a heavy, booted foot would kick the man perhaps to see if he groaned. But it didn't work that way- the crack of gunfire suddenly explodes in the mosque as the Marine fires at the seemingly dead man and then come the words, "He's dead now."

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> Bush is a War Criminal Responsible for Crimes Against Humanity

11.20.04 (6:01 am) [edit]

---> Bush is a War Criminal Responsible for Crimes Against Humanity

11.20.04 (5:57 am) [edit]

---> Bush is a War Criminal Responsible for Crimes Against Humanity

11.20.04 (5:56 am) [edit]

---> Not Rice's but Cheney's Triumph

11.20.04 (5:49 am) [edit]

Bush's nomination of Condoleezza Rice to be Secretary of State is a triumph not for Rice but for Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Dick Cheney.

Rice had made no secret of her desire to take Rumsfeld's job over at the Pentagon.

But Rumsfeld remains at the Pentagon, as does Wolfowitz. The neocon hawks are still on their perch, even after all their droppings have made such a mess.

Wolfowitz, one of the biggest proponents of the Iraq War, assured everyone that we'd be greeted as liberators over there.

Rumsfeld lowballed the number of troops every step of the way and was responsible, largely, for Abu Ghraib.

It's amazing that Bush would keep him on. This is a reward for arrogance and lawlessness.

But behind Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz lurks the dominant figure of Dick Cheney, who handpicked those two guys at the start and stood by them from one scandal to the next.

Seymour Hersh writes that after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, Cheney phoned Rumsfeld "with a simple message: No resignations."

Cheney was four-square behind the approach of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz; in fact, it was his approach all along.

In the epilogue of Bob Woodward's book "Plan of Attack," he describes a scene at Cheney's home. It was just four days after the fall of Baghdad, and the Vice President and his wife, Lynne, were in a mood to celebrate. Cheney invited his deputy Scooter Libby over for dinner, as well as Wolfowitz and Kenneth Adelman, another leading neocon.

The group bantered and boasted.

Then, writes Woodward, "someone mentioned Powell, and there were chuckles all around." Cheney got out the knife. "He sure likes to be popular, Cheney said," according to Woodward, and the Vice President added that Powell was always a problem when it came to supporting Bush's war plans.

"They turned to Rumsfeld, the missing brother," Woodward continues. "Both Cheneys told some affectionate stories going back to the late 1960s when they had hooked up with Rumsfeld."

In this supper of swagger, it's clear that Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld are Cheney's boys, and Powell his adversary.

Seen in such a light, the changes Bush has announced in his cabinet take on an unmistakable meaning: This is Cheney's government.

Powell would have stayed on as Secretary of State for a while, but Cheney wouldn't have it.

Rice would have been Secretary of Defense, but Cheney wouldn't have it.

George Bush's second term is looking more and more like Dick Cheney's second term.

And that is a profoundly scary development.

-- [i]Matthew Rothschild[/i], http://www.progressive.org/we...

---> Bush's Betrayal of the U.S.A.: Inflation, Higher Interest Rates Due To Bush Deficit

11.20.04 (5:47 am) [edit]

Alan Greenspan came to the home of the euro on Friday and suggested that the relentless decline of the dollar might well continue, offering little relief to those here who worry that the United States is seeking to gain a competitive advantage for its industries from a weaker currency.

In a speech to a banking congress here, Mr. Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, said that ballooning foreign borrowing on the part of the United States poses a future risk to the dollar's value.

He said that foreign investors, who help finance the large American trade and budget deficits by buying Treasury securities and other dollar-denominated assets, would eventually resist lending more money to the United States, causing the dollar to fall further.

Mr. Greenspan's comments came two days after the Treasury secretary, John W. Snow, appeared to rule out intervening in currency markets to help Europe and Japan - both heavily dependent on exports to sustain economic growth - stem the decline of the dollar. Mr. Snow, speaking in London, prodded European leaders to tackle their home-grown economic problems.

Taken together, the two speeches appear to be sending an unmistakable message that Washington, on the heels of President Bush's election to a second term, is prepared to tolerate a weaker dollar for the foreseeable future.

A falling dollar makes it more expensive for Americans to travel abroad and risks reviving inflation and sending interest rates higher in the United States. But for American manufacturers, who have been shedding jobs for years, it provides a powerful shot of adrenaline by making their exports cost less abroad and adding to pressure on foreign industries to raise the price of imported goods in the United States.

Given the uncertainties surrounding the global economy, Mr. Greenspan likened predicting the dollar's path to "forecasting the outcome of a coin toss."

While Mr. Greenspan, as he often does, relied on carefully chosen phrases open to various interpretations, the message seemed clear here to European bankers, who laughed nervously at the metaphor: The dollar, which has fallen to record lows against the euro this week - giving fits to European politicians and business executives - is likely to fall even further.

To analysts, the speech had a laissez-faire tone, leaving events in the hands of the market and giving speculators free rein to bet against the American currency without worrying that officials would get together to slap them down.

On Friday, in New York, the stock market reacted by falling sharply. At the close of trading, the Dow industrial average was down more than 115 points, to 10,456,91, a decline of more than 1 percent.

Currency traders drove the dollar to its lowest level in four and a half years against the Japanese yen, and near its record low against the euro. Treasury notes fell the most in two weeks.

The hints from Washington policy makers that they have no intention of supporting the dollar could add to the strains between the United States and Europe, which is increasingly worried that the rise of the euro is choking off its tenuous recovery. In France and Germany, growth in the third quarter dropped to 0.1 percent, as exports dried up.

European leaders are already raising distress flags. Germany's minister for economics, Wolfgang Clement, urged Asia, Europe and the United States to take coordinated action to stop the slide. The president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet - who is Mr. Greenspan's counterpart here - has called the shifts in exchange rates "brutal."

Mr. Trichet, who traveled a few blocks from the headquarters of the European Central Bank to appear on the same panel as Mr. Greenspan, pointedly declined to repeat that characterization.

Both central bankers later flew to Berlin for a meeting of the G-20, which includes the Group of 8 industrialized countries, as well as emerging economies. The downward path of the dollar is likely to be high on the agenda, but there is little hope for a concerted response.

[b]More[/b] ... http://nytimes.com/2004/11/20...

---> Bush's Betrayal of the U.S.A.: Inflation, Higher Interest Rates Due To Bush Deficit

11.20.04 (5:47 am) [edit]

---> Our Moral Values

11.20.04 (5:39 am) [edit]

We are the 55 million progressives who came together in this election, voted for Kerry and rejected the Bush agenda.

We came together because of our moral values: [i]care and responsibility, fairness and equality, freedom and courage, fulfillment in life, opportunity and community, cooperation and trust, honesty and openness[/i]. We united behind political principles: equality, equity (if you work for a living, you should earn a living) and government for the people--all the people.

These are traditional American values and principles, what we are proudest of in this country. The Democrats' failure was a failure to put forth our moral vision, celebrate our values and principles, and shout them out loud.

We must immediately convince our leaders to unite behind these values, express our common moral vision and hold the line against the Bush agenda because it is immoral! Bush will call them obstructionists. They must frame themselves as heading in the right direction, going forward not backward, defending the greatest of American ideals and moral principles, working against a radical right agenda that would lead our country to disaster and speaking for more than 55 million highly moral, patriotic Americans.

If we communicate our values clearly, most people will recognize them as their own, personally more authentic and more deeply American than those put forth by conservatives. At the very least they will see progressives as having deeply held, traditional American principles. This would be a huge step forward from the present state, in which conservatives are seen as having a monopoly on "values" and progressives are framed as the party of "if it feels good, do it," with no higher principles.

Moral values at the national level are idealized family values projected onto the nation. Progressive values are the values of a responsible nurturant family, where parents (if there are two) are equally responsible. Their job is to nurture their children and raise them to be nurturers of others. Nurturance has two aspects: empathy and responsibility--both for yourself and your children. From this, all progressive values follow, both in the family and in politics.

If you empathize with your children, you will want them to have strong protection, fair and equal treatment and fulfillment in life. Fulfillment requires freedom, freedom requires opportunity and opportunity requires prosperity. Since your family lives in, and requires, a community, community building and community service are required. Community requires cooperation, which requires trust, which requires honesty and open communication. Those are the progressive values--in politics as well as family life.

Take protection. In addition to physical protection, there is environmental protection, worker protection and consumer protection, as well as all the "safety nets"--Social Security, Medicare and so on. Equality means full political and social equality, without regard to wealth, race, religion or gender. Openness requires open government and a free, inquiring press. Progressive political ideals are nurturant moral ideals.

On the other hand, the strict-father family model assumes that evil and danger will always lurk in the world, that life is difficult, that there will always be winners and losers and that children are born bad--they want to do what feels good, not what's right--and have to be made good. A strict father is needed to protect and support the family and to teach his kids right from wrong. That can be done in only one way: punishment painful enough that, to avoid it, children will learn the internal discipline necessary to be moral. That discipline can also make them prosperous if they seek their self-interest and no one interferes. Mommy isn't strong enough to protect the family and is too soft-hearted to discipline the children. That's why fathers are necessary.

Apply this, via metaphor, to the nation: We need a strong President who knows right from wrong to defend the nation. Social programs are immoral because they give people things they haven't earned and so make them undisciplined--both dependent and less able to function morally. The prosperous people are the good people. Those who are not prosperous deserve their poverty. Taxes take away the rightful rewards of the prosperous. Wrongdoers should be punished severely. Government should get out of the way of disciplined (hence good) people seeking their self-interest. The President is to be obeyed; since he knows right from wrong, his authority is legitimate and not to be questioned. In foreign policy, he is also the absolute moral authority and so needs no advice from lesser countries.

The so-called "moral issues" are affronts to strict-father morality. Strict-father marriage cannot be gay; it must be between a man and a woman. For a wife to seek an abortion on her own or a daughter to need one is an affront to strict-father control over the behavior of the women in his family. They are not the main moral issues in themselves; rather they are symbolic of the entire strict-father identity as applied to all spheres of life. That's why they are so powerful for conservatives.

Swing voters have both models--in different parts of their lives--and are unsure about which to apply to politics in a particular election. The job of a candidate is to activate his model in the swing voters. Conservatives know this: By talking to their base, they are activating their base model in swing voters. When liberals move to the right, they are shooting themselves in both feet: They alienate their base and they activate the other side's models in the swing voters, thus helping the other side.

Democrats in Congress need to understand this. They must hold their ground, be positive and be aware that moving to the right is a double disaster. It will only help the radical right's agenda, break with values that unify us and make it harder to awaken our values in swing voters.

The only way to trump their moral values is with our own more traditional and more patriotic moral values. Proclaim them and live them, and we will find that there are many more than 55 million of us.

[b]George Lakoff, author of Moral Politics and the bestselling Don't Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate, is professor of linguistics at UC Berkeley and senior fellow at the Rockridge Institute[/b]. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

---> Our Moral Values

11.20.04 (5:38 am) [edit]

---> When is an Immoral, Lying Traitor Not an Immoral, Lying Traitor?

11.20.04 (5:37 am) [edit]

[b]Short Answer:[/b] Never. Bush is an immoral, lying traitor, who has successfully fooled mean-spirited, ideological neo-con baboons, greedy Not-"Christian" hypocrites, brain-dead followers, and the dumbest-of-the-dumb. And, an asshole like the corrupt A'W'OL Mad King George doesn't change his putrid rapacious stripes.

We are the 55 million progressives who came together in this election, voted for Kerry and rejected the Bush agenda.

We came together because of our moral values: [i]care and responsibility, fairness and equality, freedom and courage, fulfillment in life, opportunity and community, cooperation and trust, honesty and openness[/i]. We united behind political principles: equality, equity (if you work for a living, you should earn a living) and government for the people--all the people.

These are traditional American values and principles, what we are proudest of in this country. The Democrats' failure was a failure to put forth our moral vision, celebrate our values and principles, and shout them out loud.

We must immediately convince our leaders to unite behind these values, express our common moral vision and hold the line against the Bush agenda because it is immoral! Bush will call them obstructionists. They must frame themselves as heading in the right direction, going forward not backward, defending the greatest of American ideals and moral principles, working against a radical right agenda that would lead our country to disaster and speaking for more than 55 million highly moral, patriotic Americans.

If we communicate our values clearly, most people will recognize them as their own, personally more authentic and more deeply American than those put forth by conservatives. At the very least they will see progressives as having deeply held, traditional American principles. This would be a huge step forward from the present state, in which conservatives are seen as having a monopoly on "values" and progressives are framed as the party of "if it feels good, do it," with no higher principles.

Moral values at the national level are idealized family values projected onto the nation. Progressive values are the values of a responsible nurturant family, where parents (if there are two) are equally responsible. Their job is to nurture their children and raise them to be nurturers of others. Nurturance has two aspects: empathy and responsibility--both for yourself and your children. From this, all progressive values follow, both in the family and in politics.

If you empathize with your children, you will want them to have strong protection, fair and equal treatment and fulfillment in life. Fulfillment requires freedom, freedom requires opportunity and opportunity requires prosperity. Since your family lives in, and requires, a community, community building and community service are required. Community requires cooperation, which requires trust, which requires honesty and open communication. Those are the progressive values--in politics as well as family life.

Take protection. In addition to physical protection, there is environmental protection, worker protection and consumer protection, as well as all the "safety nets"--Social Security, Medicare and so on. Equality means full political and social equality, without regard to wealth, race, religion or gender. Openness requires open government and a free, inquiring press. Progressive political ideals are nurturant moral ideals.

On the other hand, the strict-father family model assumes that evil and danger will always lurk in the world, that life is difficult, that there will always be winners and losers and that children are born bad--they want to do what feels good, not what's right--and have to be made good. A strict father is needed to protect and support the family and to teach his kids right from wrong. That can be done in only one way: punishment painful enough that, to avoid it, children will learn the internal discipline necessary to be moral. That discipline can also make them prosperous if they seek their self-interest and no one interferes. Mommy isn't strong enough to protect the family and is too soft-hearted to discipline the children. That's why fathers are necessary.

Apply this, via metaphor, to the nation: We need a strong President who knows right from wrong to defend the nation. Social programs are immoral because they give people things they haven't earned and so make them undisciplined--both dependent and less able to function morally. The prosperous people are the good people. Those who are not prosperous deserve their poverty. Taxes take away the rightful rewards of the prosperous. Wrongdoers should be punished severely. Government should get out of the way of disciplined (hence good) people seeking their self-interest. The President is to be obeyed; since he knows right from wrong, his authority is legitimate and not to be questioned. In foreign policy, he is also the absolute moral authority and so needs no advice from lesser countries.

The so-called "moral issues" are affronts to strict-father morality. Strict-father marriage cannot be gay; it must be between a man and a woman. For a wife to seek an abortion on her own or a daughter to need one is an affront to strict-father control over the behavior of the women in his family. They are not the main moral issues in themselves; rather they are symbolic of the entire strict-father identity as applied to all spheres of life. That's why they are so powerful for conservatives.

Swing voters have both models--in different parts of their lives--and are unsure about which to apply to politics in a particular election. The job of a candidate is to activate his model in the swing voters. Conservatives know this: By talking to their base, they are activating their base model in swing voters. When liberals move to the right, they are shooting themselves in both feet: They alienate their base and they activate the other side's models in the swing voters, thus helping the other side.

Democrats in Congress need to understand this. They must hold their ground, be positive and be aware that moving to the right is a double disaster. It will only help the radical right's agenda, break with values that unify us and make it harder to awaken our values in swing voters.

The only way to trump their moral values is with our own more traditional and more patriotic moral values. Proclaim them and live them, and we will find that there are many more than 55 million of us.

[b]George Lakoff, author of Moral Politics and the bestselling Don't Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate, is professor of linguistics at UC Berkeley and senior fellow at the Rockridge Institute[/b]. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

---> Stand up For Moral Value of Economic Justice

11.20.04 (5:33 am) [edit]

Democrats are complaining bitterly that about 80 percent of Americans who cited "moral values" as their most important issue in exit polls voted for President Bush.

How can anyone concerned about moral values, they wonder, endorse a leader who misled this country into war, arranged for billionaires to pay less in taxes and gave the United States and hopes for democracy a bad name around the globe?

How can anyone concerned about moral values vote for a man whose first term saw such dramatic increases in poverty and inequality?

Good questions all.

But this easy amazement obscures a deeper problem: If the Democratic Party platform and candidate for president embodied moral values more faithfully than the Republicans, why didn't a large percentage of people voting Democratic cite moral values as their highest concern?

Democrats believe that their program of universal health care, good jobs and international cooperation for peace reflects the highest moral standards - yet they don't talk about policy in these terms. Democrats appeal to interests, but, having lost the language of values, they have allowed Republicans to hijack the moral conversation.

Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, Harry S. Truman's Fair Deal and Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty all presented agendas of economic populism in terms of explicit moral calls to end poverty, extend worker rights and shape market outcomes to serve economic justice.

One of the great moral leaders, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., led his movement to demand economic justice as well as civil rights. He died in Memphis lending his support to a strike of garbage collectors. Yet we rarely hear Democratic leaders today talking passionately about economic justice, perhaps fearing such language will be dismissed and ridiculed as "class struggle."

But class struggle exists, and the working class is losing. Over the past 30 years, as the Republican agenda of unrestricted corporate power has come increasingly to dominate this country, workers' living standards have declined in well-documented ways - lower pay, longer hours, less health care, ruined pensions, more insecurity. At the same time, and toward the same end, Republicans have banished all questions of economic justice from public conversation. They insist that economic outcomes are best left to the market - that the market is the best arbiter of winners and losers.

When issues of economic justice disappear from moral consideration, what's left of "values" is personal behavior alone. The religious right has played its role in the class wars of the last 30 years by giving the corporate agenda what passes for moral cover while reinforcing its extreme individualism. The values debate, defined by the right, has aided the rise of corporate power and the decline of labor's strength.

Reviving workers' living standards requires direct challenges to out-of-control corporate greed and unrestricted market power. To be effective, these challenges must involve a resurrection of the language of economic justice and mutual responsibility for our human community and natural environment. All progressive policy reforms and limits to corporate power flow from these essential values.

Democrats make a mistake to couch their programs solely in terms of the immediate interests of voters without placing those interests in their moral context. People rightly wish to advocate moral values and can be willing to sacrifice some material comfort for them. Polls have repeatedly shown that most Americans say they are willing to pay somewhat higher taxes if they can be sure the money will be put to social good. When Democrats speak only of "interests," they play into the corporate ethos of stark individualism, reinforce the agenda of the right and cede the moral high ground to the Republican agenda.

To revive the prospects for working people, who make up the great majority of this country, we need to address interests and ethics together. We must challenge the claim that the scope of moral judgment is personal behavior alone and hold the corporate elite and Republican and Democratic parties to standards of social responsibility and economic justice.

[b]Michael Zweig teaches economics and directs the Center for Study of Working Class Life at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. His most recent book is What's Class Got to Do With It?[/b] - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

---> Stand up For Moral Value of Economic Justice

11.20.04 (5:31 am) [edit]

---> Stand up For Moral Value of Economic Justice

11.20.04 (5:31 am) [edit]

---> Stand up For Moral Value of Economic Justice

11.20.04 (5:29 am) [edit]

---> Pride Goeth Before ...

11.19.04 (4:52 pm) [edit]

The Bible says, "Pride goeth before a fall and a haughty spirit before destruction". (Prov. 16:18)

[b]The Power of One[/b]

Give the man his due: George W. Bush is emerging as one of the boldest, most audacious presidents in modern history.

Whether he is also wise is a question that will preoccupy us for another four years, but the reshuffling of his team in recent days makes clear that he intends to stretch the powers of his office to their limits. Woodrow Wilson once wrote that "the president is at liberty, both in law and conscience, to be as big a man as he can.'' President Bush comes Texas-sized.

By sending members of his White House staff to run three of the most important departments in the government - with perhaps more such appointments in the offing - Mr. Bush is centralizing power in the White House in ways not seen since Richard Nixon. Nixon had his troika of Bob Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and Henry Kissinger to run the government. Mr. Bush seems destined to run the government with his own troika: Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Condoleezza Rice.

Moreover, he believes he has a mandate for a revolutionary agenda. Conservative presidents, as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. has argued, tend to be consolidators - men like Dwight Eisenhower, Nixon and even Ronald Reagan, who largely accepted the expansions in government made by their liberal predecessors. Mr. Bush is the first conservative whose policies would gradually unwind major commitments like Social Security and progressive taxes. It is increasingly clear that Mr. Bush embraces the view of Winston Churchill: that great leaders should set great goals. The president apparently intends no less than to overhaul government, achieve long-term Republican hegemony over American politics and ensure long-term American hegemony over the world.

In restructuring his team for the second term, Mr. Bush is also acting well within his rights. As long as he doesn't name his horse as proconsul, a president is traditionally accorded the right to choose anybody he wants in his cabinet, including members of his White House staff. Heading into his second term, Nixon named one member of his staff, Mr. Kissinger, as secretary of state and appointed five members of his staff to sub-cabinet posts; Reagan nominated two members of his staff, James Baker and Edward Meese, to key cabinet spots; and Bill Clinton also promoted a member of his staff, Alexis Herman, to the cabinet. Former members of the White House staff who have been good administrators have generally served well in departments. The ability to speak with their leader's voice has always enhanced their authority.

Presidents of the past would also sympathize with Mr. Bush's desire to quell rebellious voices at the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. For more than half a century, White Houses have resounded with complaints about the striped pants set at Foggy Bottom and renegades at Langley. Foreign service officers are especially out of step with the incumbent president: a rising star in foreign service confided a week ago that on a scale of 0-to-10, colleagues in the service would give a 9.5 grade to Colin Powell and a grade of 2 to the Bush administration. Bringing the foreign service on board will be one of the toughest challenges facing Secretary Rice.

The fact that Mr. Bush is acting within his rights does not mean, however, that he is also right. Critics mostly worry that the reshuffling of the national security team signals an even harder, more militaristic line toward the world. That is probably true, but one cannot discount noises from within that the president wants to turn more toward diplomacy. Every White House remembers, after all, how L.B.J. warned his staff after a landslide election in 1964 that they only had a year to get things done domestically. If you were Karl Rove working with the president, wouldn't you want a couple of years of relative peace on the foreign side so that you could concentrate on the domestic agenda now? (Yeah, let's fix Iraq, but for goodness sake, don't bomb Iran or North Korea ... at least not yet.) So, the jury is still out on where security policy is heading.

The more immediate danger is that Mr. Bush and his troika are falling into a trap facing other re-elected presidents: hubris. When presidents win their first elections, they and their teams think they are king of the hill; when they win re-election, they too often think they are masters of the universe. As Richard Neustadt pointed out, even the best of modern presidents, Franklin Roosevelt, fell into the trap when he was first re-elected in 1936. He immediately started overreaching, as he tried to pack the Supreme Court in 1937 and tried to purge Southern Democrats in 1938. F.D.R. nearly did himself in during his second term.

In Mr. Bush's case, his administration has already shown ominous signs of "group-think'' in its handling of Iraq and the nation's finances. By closing down dissent and centralizing power in a few hands, he is acting as if he truly believes that he and his team have a perfect track record, that they know best, and that they don't need any infusion of new heavyweights. He has every right to take this course, but as he knows from his Bible,[i] pride goeth before.[/i] ...

[b]David Gergen is professor of public service at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and editor at large of U.S. News & World Report. He served as a White House adviser to four presidents[/b]. - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1...

---> Pride Goeth Before ...

11.19.04 (3:25 pm) [edit]

---> Dear World, Sorry About Bush ... No, seriously. Very, very, very sorry ...

11.19.04 (9:11 am) [edit]

[b]How sorry?

Well, let America show you ... in pictures ...[/b]

It's a movement. It's a phenomenon. It's a Web site. Or maybe it's far more than that. No one can really be sure.

No matter what it is, it's called http://sorryeverybody.com sorryeverybody.com and it expresses, better than any outpouring so far, a sentiment that's omnipresent and palpable and still going strong, and every single Democrat and every single Kerry supporter and every single liberal of any stripe whatsoever probably felt it like a white-hot stab in the heart the minute Kerry's concession speech hit the airwaves and it undoubtedly went something like this:

Dear world: We are so very, very sorry. For Bush. For our bitterly divided and confused nation. For what's to come. Please know that tens of millions of us did not vote for him. Please do not hate us. Not all of us, anyway. OK, maybe Utah. Do you know where Utah is? Never mind.

See, not only is half of America still deeply dejected about the onslaught of Dubya Dubya II, but much of that half wants the world to know just how crestfallen we are, and just how awful we feel for inflicting Bush and his middle-finger foreign policy on them like a virus, a toxin, a nasty STD, yet again

Click here to read the rest... http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/art...

---> Ah, The "Morality" of It: Iraq War Topping $5.8 Billion A Month ...

11.19.04 (8:58 am) [edit]

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is spending more than $5.8 billion a month on the war in Iraq, http://www.military.com/Conte... according to the military's top generals.

That is nearly a 50 percent increase above the $4 billion-a-month benchmark the Pentagon has used to estimate the cost of the war so far.

The Army http://www.military.com/Commu...,14700,ARMY,00.html alone is spending $4.7 million a month while the Air Force http://www.military.com/Commu...,14700,AIRFRC,00.html is spending $800 million a month transporting soldiers and flying combat missions. The Marine Corps http://www.military.com/Commu...,14700,MARINE,00.html is spending $300 million a month, the four service chiefs told the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday.

Since 2003, the Pentagon has received some $160 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in supplemental funding -- that is, in addition to its annual budget. It will be requesting another multibillion-dollar supplement early next year to cover the continuing cost of the war. - http://www.military.com/NewsC...,13319,FL_cost_111804,00.html?ESRC=eb.nl

---> Revulsion

11.19.04 (8:23 am) [edit]

On the one hand, the summary execution of a wounded and disarmed man in a mosque by an American Marine. On the other, that of a pacifist hostage, who had devoted her entire life to humanitarian aid, by an Iraqi Islamist. Terror purveyors, like the Sunni cleric interviewed by our special envoy to Baghdad, justify the second murder by the first, bestowing Allah's benediction on the most abominable crimes and calling for more to be committed.

Margaret Hassan's murder, however, like that of any other hostage, cannot be justified in any way whatsoever, except by the calculation of those who want to exacerbate terror masquerading as resistance to the occupation in Iraq. It does not ensue from the Islamic-terrorists' complete contempt for the values of humanity, however, that one may fight them by violating the laws of war, or by obscuring the terrible suffering inflicted on Iraqi civilians, suffering far more significant than that the journalists accompanying American forces allow us to see. Like the Abu Ghraib tortures, the summary execution in Fallujah is not a "blunder", but a crime which must not be hidden, much less exonerated.

It's not only a moral, but also a strategic question. In the face of an insurrection, the main battle is that of ideas, and the population's political adhesion makes the difference between victory and defeat. Islamist barbarism arouses only revulsion among most Muslims. That revulsion must not be undermined by a moral relativism conjured by crimes committed by the very people who have the formidable task of confronting that barbarism. - http://www.truthout.org/docs_...

[b]This violence is a consequence of the insanity that Bush has brought down upon us ...[/b]

---> Immoral Bush's Immoral "Perception Management" Plan ... It's Downright Immoral!

11.19.04 (7:24 am) [edit]

[b]George W. Bush has been criticized for disdaining fact in favor of faith in his own instincts. But he is savvy about the dangers that information can present to his authority over the government and the American people[/b].

That is why the first priority of his second term has been the elimination of the few government sources of information that could challenge the images he wants to project to the public. Bush doesn’t want the State Department or the Central Intelligence Agency portraying his Iraq and other foreign policies as abject failures or reckless adventures.

So, by attacking these remaining pockets of analytical resistance, Bush is moving to ensure that his administration can keep much of the U.S. population seeing a near-empty cup as almost entirely full, a concept known in the intelligence world as “perception management.”

On a personal level, Bush appears to have found in his electoral victory a validation of his public-relations strategy of casting his foreign policy as a black-and-white war between good and evil. In this tough-talking approach, Bush has been helped immeasurably by the powerful conservative news media, ranging from AM talk radio to Fox News, from right-wing newspaper columnists to Internet bloggers.

Indeed, it is impossible to understand why Americans have grown so detached from reality without appreciating the combined impact of this conservative media – built over the past quarter century – and Bush’s personal insistence on loyalty over almost all other values. These two factors have made the United States a kind of ultimate test for the Orwellian intelligence theories of “perception management.”

[b]Controlling Opinions[/b]

“Perception management” – also known as “public diplomacy” – is a propaganda strategy for controlling how a target population views political events. Refined by intelligence services as they tried to manipulate foreign populations, the practice eventually seeped into domestic U.S. politics as a way to manipulate post-Vietnam-War-era public opinion.

In the early 1980s, the Reagan-Bush administration saw the “Vietnam Syndrome” – a reluctance to commit military forces abroad – as a strategic threat to robust Cold War policies. So the administration launched an extraordinary effort to influence how the American people perceived overseas events, essentially by exaggerating threats from abroad and demonizing selected foreign leaders.

Psychological warfare experts from the CIA and Army Special Forces played key roles in implementing the strategy, which was carried out from offices in President Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council and a “public diplomacy” bureaucracy set up at the State Department.

The strategy, which included bullying the U.S. news media into line over issues such as the conflicts in Central America, proved remarkably successful. [For more on this history, see Robert Parry’s [i]Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq [/i] http://www.secrecyandprivileg... or Parry’s [i]Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press and ‘Project Truth[/i].’ http://gallery.bcentral.com/G... ]

These lessons were not lost on Dick Cheney and other Republicans who had lived through both the difficult post-Vietnam years and the Reagan-Bush era of the 1980s. With the second Bush administration, these experienced Republicans recognized that controlling the flow of government information – and the public’s perception of overseas reality – would again be vital in implementing their vision of a new American Empire for the 21st Century.

During the buildup to the Iraq War, Cheney even went to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, to bang heads with intelligence analysts who doubted White House claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Many of these mid-level bureaucrats acquiesced to Cheney’s demands, but others resisted. After the Iraq invasion failed to find WMD, some of these suppressed CIA doubts began surfacing and causing Bush embarrassment, especially during Campaign 2004.

[b]Four More Years[/b]

Now, however, with a fresh lease on four more years, Bush is inflicting payback on the CIA, especially its analytical division and its intelligence-gathering network, and on the State Department, whose analysts also questioned Bush’s Middle East policies.

Acting through new CIA Director Porter Goss, the Bush administration read the riot act to Langley’s intelligence professionals that they must get behind Bush’s policies or get out. The demands have led to an exodus of senior CIA officials, including deputy CIA chief John E. McLaughlin and deputy director of operations Stephen R. Kappes.

Bush then replaced Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was pliable but at least known for protecting the department’s bureaucracy. Powell’s successor is the famously compliant national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s ultimate “yes” woman who is so cozy with her boss that she once slipped up at a dinner party and referred to Bush as “my husb…” before catching herself and replacing that with “President Bush.”

The end result will almost surely be that Bush will hear even fewer contradictions to his judgments, while Congress and the news media will be cut off from internal government sources of information that could be used to question Bush’s decisions.

The powerful conservative news media played an important role, too, in setting the stage for these ongoing purges. Conservative columnists, including Robert Novak and David Brooks, pushed the dubious claim that the CIA’s only rightful role is to serve the president. They accused the CIA of disloyalty in trying to sabotage Bush.

“Now that he’s been returned to office, President Bush is going to have to differentiate between his opponents and his enemies,” wrote Brooks in the New York Times. “His opponents are found in the Democratic Party. His enemies are in certain offices of the Central Intelligence Agency.”

To Brooks, the justification for Bush going after the CIA was the release of information that made Bush look bad.

“At the height of the campaign, CIA officials, who are supposed to serve the president and stay out of politics and policy, served up leak after leak to discredit the president’s Iraq policy,” Brooks wrote. “In mid-September, somebody leaked a CIA report predicting a gloomy or apocalyptic future for the region. Later that month, a senior CIA official, Paul Pillar, reportedly made comments saying he had long felt the decision to go to war would heighten anti-American animosity in the Arab world.” [NYT, Nov. 13, 2004]

[b]Bush as Victim[/b]

In other words, conservative commentators were afraid that plainly accurate analyses by CIA officials represented a threat to Bush’s power and justified his exacting retribution against these out-of-step analysts. It seems that no matter how much power Bush and the Republicans amass, their media apologists always make them out to be the victims.

It’s also a misunderstanding of history to claim that the CIA exists to “serve the president.” While it may be true that the “operations directorate” was created as a secret paramilitary arm for the U.S. executive, the CIA’s analytical division was established to provide unvarnished information to both the president and other parts of the U.S. government, including Congress.

Even at the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s, the CIA’s analytical division took pride in telling presidents what they didn’t want to hear – such as debunking Eisenhower’s “bomber gap” or Kennedy’s “missile gap” or Johnson’s faith in the air war against North Vietnam.

Though never perfectly applied, the ethos of objective analysis continued through the mid-1970s. Then, CIA analysis began to come under sustained attack from conservatives and neoconservatives who insisted that the Soviet Union was a rapidly expanding military menace with its eye on world conquest. The CIA analytical division held a more nuanced view of the Soviet threat, viewing Moscow as a declining superpower struggling to keep pace with the West while coping with fissures inside its own empire.

This CIA analysis was the backdrop for the “détente strategy” followed by President Richard Nixon and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who sought to negotiate arms control agreements with the Soviet Union.

[b]Reagan’s Emergence[/b]

Nixon’s ouster over the Watergate scandal and Ronald Reagan’s entrance on the national stage in 1976, however, altered the political dynamic. Scared by Reagan’s successes in the Republican primaries, President Gerald Ford ordered the word “détente” dropped from the White House lexicon and let then-CIA Director George H.W. Bush open up the CIA’s analytical division to an unprecedented challenge from right-wing intellectuals, known as “Team B.”

The “Team B” assessment, involving a young academic named Paul Wolfowitz, accused the CIA analytical division of systematically underestimating the growing Soviet threat. In late 1976, accommodating this conservative wing of the Republican Party, Bush adopted a more alarmist CIA estimate of Soviet power.

When Reagan became president in 1981, with Bush as his vice president, the assault on the CIA’s analytical division resumed in earnest. Analysts who balked at the new administration’s ideological vision of the Soviet Union as a 10-foot-tall behemoth were shunted aside or forced out of the CIA.

The CIA’s once proud Soviet division took the brunt of the attacks. The surviving analysts began ignoring the mounting evidence of a rapid Soviet decline, so as not to contradict the Reagan-Bush justification for an expanded U.S. military and for bloody interventions in Third World conflicts from Nicaragua to Afghanistan.

[b]‘Perception Management’[/b]

Having fitted the CIA with these ideological blinders, the Reagan-Bush administration next turned to whipping the American people into line. There, the magic words were “perception management,” as propagandists developed “themes” to frighten American citizens about threats from leftist-ruled Nicaragua or from peasant rebellions in El Salvador and Guatemala.

Rather than internal civil wars against corrupt oligarchies, these conflicts were pitched as “beachheads” for a Soviet assault on the southern border of the United States.

In reality, Moscow couldn’t even keep control along its own borders. But the Reagan-Bush intimidation of the U.S. intelligence system proved so effective that CIA analysts wouldn’t dare let themselves see the signs of the Soviet crackup.

Ironically, when the Soviet Empire collapsed in the late 1980s, the CIA took the blame for “missing” one of the most important political events of the Twentieth Century. Ironically, too, Reagan, who was most responsible for building up the Soviet straw man, got the most credit when it fell down. [For details on this intelligence failure, see Parry’s [i]Secrecy & Privilege[/i] http://www.secrecyandprivileg... .]

Since then, I have talked with CIA veterans who acknowledge that they overstated the Soviet threat despite valid intelligence from their own agents inside the Soviet bloc who were describing the internal problems. But this U.S. intelligence failure was not just one of misjudgments; it was one of ideological pressure that distorted the reality that then became the basis for U.S. government policies and was sold to the American people as how they should perceive the world.

That pattern is now recurring. Intelligence is being manipulated to justify policy, rather than letting objective analysis inform policy. Bush makes his decisions based on his “gut” instincts and then the evidence is compiled to justify his decisions.

The next step will be the continued management of the perceptions of the American people. As U.S. intelligence agencies sing along to Bush’s tune, the propaganda will be amplified through the vast conservative media echo chamber. The mainstream press can be counted on to join the chorus.

Reality was on the ballot on Nov. 2. It seems to have lost.

------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- -----

[b]Robert Parry, who broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek, has written a new book[i], Secrecy & Privilege[/i]: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq. It can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com.[/b] - http://www.consortiumnews.com...

---> Immoral Bush's Immoral "Perception Management" Plan ... It's Downright Immoral!

11.19.04 (7:24 am) [edit]

---> Immoral Bush's Immoral "Perception Management" Plan ... It's Downright Immoral!

11.19.04 (7:22 am) [edit]

---> Immoral Bush's Immoral "Perception Management" Plan ... It's Downright Immoral!

11.19.04 (7:22 am) [edit]

---> Immoral Bush's Immoral "Perception Management" Plan ... It's Downright Immoral!

11.19.04 (7:21 am) [edit]

---> Bush's Neo-Nazis: House Repugs Think They've Got Mandate To Eradicate Ethics Standards

11.19.04 (7:13 am) [edit]

[b]Regressive Ethics in the House[/b]

Having picked up a handful of seats in this month's election, House Republicans seem to think they have a mandate to eradicate Congressional ethics standards.

On Tuesday, House Republicans unanimously elected Tom DeLay to serve another term as House majority leader, despite his unsavory record when it comes to abiding by accepted Congressional standards of conduct. He received two separate bipartisan rebukes from the normally timid ethics committee this fall.

Just in case Mr. DeLay gets into more trouble, G.O.P. lawmakers have followed up by repealing their wise party rule that barred indicted members from holding leadership positions. Only a handful of Republicans had the moral compass to object.

The Republican conference's worry about Mr. DeLay's relationship with the forces of justice stems from the same events that nailed down his current popularity. He muscled an egregiously partisan redistricting plan into Texas, and that helped Republican candidates pick up five Congressional seats there.

It is far from certain that Mr. DeLay will be charged with a crime in connection with the redistricting. During that effort, he strong-armed federal authorities into joining a search for Democratic state legislators who had left Texas to keep the plan from coming to a vote. But Mr. DeLay is plainly worried. Three of his aides were recently indicted on charges that they illegally laundered campaign money to help Texas Republicans, and prosecutors are said to be scrutinizing his own actions.

The Republicans also seem bent on reining in the ethics committee for having had the temerity to rebuke Mr. DeLay for some of his more outrageous conduct. The party's Rules Committee chairman, David Dreier, recently sent a letter to House members signaling that he plans to make it even harder than it already is for members to file an ethics complaint, and for outside groups to be heard in the process. Rumors also abound that come January, when the next Congress is seated, all five Republican members of the ethics committee, including its current chairman, Representative Joel Hefley, may be replaced.

The Republicans originally adopted the rule requiring indicted G.O.P. leaders to step down from their posts during the 1990's. At the time, the party was trying to demonstrate that it had firmer ethical standards than the Democrats, who then held the majority in the House.

Now it will be left up to party insiders on the Republican Steering Committee to recommend on a case-by-case basis whether a party leader should step aside after a state or federal felony indictment. The old era is clearly over, as are any doubts that the Republican House leadership has lost interest in the high moral ground now that it has further consolidated its power. - http://nytimes.com/2004/11/19...

---> Bush's Neo-Nazis: House Repugs Think They've Got Mandate To Eradicate Ethics Standards

11.19.04 (7:12 am) [edit]

---> Bush's Neo-Nazis: House Repugs Think They've Got Mandate To Eradicate Ethics Standards

11.19.04 (7:11 am) [edit]

---> Neo-Fascist Bush: Rules Made in Secret Let Texas Oil Men Rape National Parks

11.19.04 (7:05 am) [edit]

[b]New Documents Reveal Bush Administration Allowed Drilling Under National Park Service Areas

Rules Made in Secret Would Affect More Than a Dozen Park Service Areas

WASHINGTON -- November 17 [/b]-- The Sierra Club today released documents showing that the Bush administration gave special treatment to Texas-based Davis Brothers Oil Producers, Inc., when it reversed a longstanding policy in order to allow oil and gas drilling underneath certain national parks, preserves and refuges regardless of potential environmental impacts. More than a dozen National Park Service areas could be impacted by the rule, including Big Thicket National Preserve and Padre Island National Seashore in Texas, New River Gorge in West Virginia, and Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida.

Documents obtained by Sierra Club through the Freedom of Information Act show that the Bush administration changed the rule specifically at the request of Ross Davis, who runs Davis Brothers Oil Producers. Moreover, the administration made its decision in secret and bypassed the regular rulemaking process, which allows for public input and a high degree of transparency.

“These documents show that the Bush administration bent over backwards to help its friends in the oil and gas industry even when the facts showed that its policy would harm national parks," said Brandt Mannchen of the Sierra Club’s Lone Star Chapter, who has been tracking drilling problems around Big Thicket National Preserve in Texas. "This administration seems to think there are two sets of rules, one for oil and gas companies and one for everyone else."

In an effort to right the wrong, the Sierra Club today took legal action to overturn this new rule, asserting that the Bush administration broke the law by cutting the public out of a back-door process of adopting a new rule. The group filed a complaint in federal district court arguing that the Bush administration adopted the new rule in blatant disregard of its obligations to protect America’s National Parks.

In November 2003, the NPS issued a new policy that allows private companies unrestricted access to oil and gas underneath NPS units so long as they drill for it at an angle from outside park boundaries using "directional drilling." This new rule ties the National Park Service’s hands, forcing them to turn a blind eye to the destruction that may occur around the Park Service areas as a result of the drilling. Prior to the new rule, the National Park Service required oil and gas companies to prove that proposed drilling would not harm the National Park Service unit.

“The Bush administration broke the law. Now they must reinstate the Park Service’s authority to require full environmental review and approval of oil and gas companies’ drilling operations adjacent to park boundaries,” said Pat Gallagher, Sierra Club legal director.

Private oil and gas development is generally prohibited within the National Park system. However, more than a dozen specific areas are unique in that the Park Service only owns the surface rights, while private entities hold title to the subsurface minerals.

Areas that are affected by the new rule include:

Gulf Islands National Seashore – Alabama

Big Cypress National Preserve – Florida

Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve -- Kansas

Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area -- Kentucky

Jean Lafitte National Historic Park and Preserve -- Louisiana

Aztec Ruins National Monument -- New Mexico

Cuyahoga Valley National Park -- Ohio

Obed Wild and Scenic River -- Tennessee

Big Thicket National Preserve -- Texas

Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument -- Texas

Lake Meredith National Recreation Area -- Texas

Padre Island National Seashore -- Texas

Gauley River National Recreation Area -- West Virginia

New River Gorge National River -- West Virginia.

[b]For a copy of documents pertaining to the case, please contact Annie Strickler at (202) 675-2384 or Eric Antebi at (415) 977-5747.[/b] - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

[b]CONTACT:[/b] Sierra Club, http://www.sierraclub.org/
Annie E. Strickler 202-675-2384

---> Neo-Fascist Bush: Rules Made in Secret Let Texas Oil Men Rape National Parks

11.19.04 (7:05 am) [edit]

---> Neo-Fascist Bush: Rules Made in Secret Let Texas Oil Men Rape National Parks

11.19.04 (7:05 am) [edit]

---> Neo-Fascist Bush: Rules Made in Secret Let Texas Oil Men Rape National Parks

11.19.04 (7:02 am) [edit]

---> Neo-Fascist Bush: Rules Made in Secret Let Texas Oil Men Rape National Parks

11.19.04 (7:00 am) [edit]

---> CIA 'Purge'? What is This, the USSR?

11.19.04 (6:56 am) [edit]

Whilst the punditry wanders weak and weary in the deep fogs of the "moral values debate," what say we pay some attention to what is going on, eh?

According to Newsday, "The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden ..."

Bad Nooz. In the first place, the concept of "purge" has not hitherto played much part in our history, and now is no time to start. Considerable pains have been taken to protect the civil service from partisan pressure.

"Disloyalty to Bush," or any president, is not the same as disloyalty to the country. In fact, in the intelligence biz, opposing the White House is sometimes the highest form of loyalty to country.

I would not have been troubled to learn there was to be a "purge" at the CIA of those responsible for giving bad information to the administration about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Even a "purge" of those who caved in under pressure from the White House to confirm the dubious WMD theory might be useful. (George Tenet is already gone.) But this is not a purge of incompetent officers or of those who have caved under political pressure — this is a political purge of those "disloyal to George W. Bush."

That's what I was most afraid of in the next four years: the complete closing of the circle, the old Bush emphasis on loyalty as the first and most important asset, above brains, judgment or expertise. Bush has been making this mistake for years, and it is clear it will now get worse. The clash of ideas is not welcome in his office. He wants everything solved in a one-page memo. This effectively limits him from being exposed to anything but obsequious third-rate thinking.

One of Bush's personal weaknesses is his tendency to go with his "gut" when both facts and logic are against him.

It is more alarming to find that those around him are so familiar with the phenomenon that they have now invented a sort of justifying philosophy for it. According to Ron Suskind's much-noted New York Times Magazine article, some White House staffers now refer slightingly to "reality-based" decision-making, as though it were quite inferior to delusional thinking. This bodes poorly.

One does not have to be an expert on the CIA to see the problem here. Punishing those who were right is not smart.

Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA's bin Laden unit, who wrote "Imperial Hubris" as Anonymous, has now resigned. The book is about the Bush team's failure to pursue bin Laden and about the diversion of intelligence and military manpower from the war on Al Qaeda to the war in Iraq. The thesis is dirt common, not a state secret.

Another leak involved a report that concluded the likely outcomes in Iraq are all fairly grim and the worst-case is civil war. Since I wrote the very same thing all by my little self before this war even started, without a shred of input from the CIA, this strikes me as a "leak" of the self-evident.

It's no secret there is a sort of culture war at the CIA — see "Charlie Wilson's War," among others. The tug-of-styles is between gung-ho risk-taking agents prepared to jump into any harebrained scheme and the more cautious higher-ups, often Ivy Leaguers, who worry about dull stuff like breaking international law and starting World War III. Naturally, we like the gung-ho sort ("Huah!"), but it's not a bad idea to keep some grown-ups in charge. Otherwise, you wind up with stuff like the plot to make Castro's beard fall out or Ollie North taking a cake to Iran.

We consistently see this administration trying to solve real policy problems by knocking out dissent, as though dissent itself were the problem. The Bushies always remind me of Cousin Claude, a major political thinker.

Claude says: "Hell, yiss, I believe in the right to dissent. H'it's in the Constitution! What I can't stand is all this criticism. Criticize, criticize, criticize. Why don't they leave poor Dubya alone and let him fight his war in peace? - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

---> CIA 'Purge'? What is This, the USSR?

11.19.04 (6:52 am) [edit]

---> MORALITY? CIA 'Purge'? What is This, the USSR?

11.19.04 (6:52 am) [edit]

---> CIA 'Purge'? What is This, the USSR?

11.19.04 (6:47 am) [edit]

---> The Ignorance, Moral Perversion, Fanaticism & Bigotry of Bush's Toady Supporters

11.18.04 (5:01 pm) [edit]

"[i]Muslims had always protected the Jews in history; they were given protection by the Ottoman whilst being butchered in Catholic Spain with the blessing of the Pope. Pogroms, ritual slaughter of Jews in Easter and Gas chambers were the creation of Christian Europe not the tolerant Islamic world[/i]."

After the re-election of George Bush the Canadian office was flooded with asylum appeals from thousands of US soldiers attempting to avoid the war in Iraq. The trend has been snowballing ever since Private Jeremy Hinzman and Brandon Hughey [ 2 ] the army back in January 2004, and they are claiming refugee status in Canada. The election results left many Americans in a state of shock and embarrassed. The nation elected a man who “cannot think properly” in the words of Nelson Mandela [ 3 ]; apparently he also talks to God; who has put him in charge and set him on a divine mission to ‘liberate’ Iraq: sounds like the traits of a religious fanatic!

This is indeed very embarrassing and more so, when one considers that the US has been busy employing the pejorative term (religious fanatic) against the Islamic world. Europe also reacted with disappointment but had to concede to the reality that the highly commercialized US-elections are determined by the weight of money not the quantity of votes or the quality of ideas. Until the influence of corporate-money and elections are decoupled, real democracy will remain illusionary.

Many of the analysts concluded that Bush’s victory was contributed by the strategy of the Republicans focusing largely on the existing conservative states rather than the swing states. States encompass the Bible belt where many of the bible-thumpers like Bush also talks to God that even surpasses the claims of the ‘infallible’ Pope! One of these bible-thumpers said on TV, that this war is a crusade and Bush was going to show the Iraqis Christianity, i.e. ‘love’ of Christ and Bush certainly did that with cluster bombs as Eid gifts for the children of Fallujah and other similar goodies.

General William Boykin who thought anyone opposing the US army was a Satan expressed similar religious fanaticism. Now Lt. Colonel Brandl, marine battalion commander also regards the people of Fallujah as Satan [ 4 ]. Hence, ‘Satan’ was fought by cutting off basic food and water supplies, demolishing hospitals, killing medics, forbidding independent media coverage, massacring hundreds of civilians through indiscriminate bombings and now preventing basic aid from getting into town. To date no independent media have shown pictures of even handful of dead Iraqis that can be identified as freedom fighters in combat perhaps clutching to their weapons.

So, it seems ‘Satan’ was fought using satanic ways. According to the Bible (Matt 7:16) did not Jesus (PBUH) say, “By their fruits you shall recognize them”? Of course, that also implies that the observers has integrity and mentally stable to judge fairly the quality of the fruits.

Barbra Stock who operates her own website, a devout Catholic and a fanatical rightwing Republican that is typical of those who voted for Bush. She wrote an article [ 1 ] largely directed to me, as usual, only the handful of rightwing websites [ 5 ] published it as that seems to be her only outlet! The websites refused to publish my previous response [ 6 ] to her, not interested in the opposing and an elaborated view. These types of organizations lectures about ‘freedom’ in reality they fear such notions, prefer to keep the Americans in the dark. Her writings may amuse many however a brief examination of the arguments presented will give us a glimpse into the typical mindset that has helped to re-elect George Bush; answer in part those American folks who have emailed me, confused and shock as to how Bush won.

[b]The Rebuttal [/b]

The title [ 1 ] of her article is comical, as a simple count of the dead bodies would easily reveal who has lost and spilt most of the blood. Any impartial observer would regard the implication of the title with its content as: idiotic! As it infers the US as the innocent victim whilst the Iraqis the aggressor. The casualty figures of the dead Iraqis, most of them women and children resulted from the US bombings has been estimated by the independent and UK based organization of the Lancet Medical Journal [ 7 ] to be around 100,000, published by the Guardian Newspaper in London, whilst the figures released by the Pentagon is around 1200 dead US soldiers. But for the typical obese Americans like Barbara she is not even satisfied with that kind of advantage. A gluttonous nation consuming disproportionate amount of the world’s resources will always want more wealth and more blood.

She gets desperate and in order to prove her case she inflates the US casualty figures by adding to it the victims of Saddam Hussein! Why? Saddam ruled Iraq by the western-secular-socialist ideology of the Bath party; killed and persecuted the Islamic movements yet for some reason Barbra seems to think Saddam was driven by Islam and his killings are the blood on Muslims hands! This already gives us a glimpse of her basic ‘knowledge’ of the facts never mind analysis and there is more to come! So sit tight enjoy the rest of the show.

First of all the victims of Saddam were exaggerated as part of the war propaganda. Saddam’s mass graves of millions have so far turned out to be around 5,000 [ 8 ] and most of them may well be the victims of the war with Iran. Even the gassing of the Kurds in Halabja in 1988 is disputed by the CIA [ 9 ] as the Iranians were largely blamed for the gasses; the residents in Halabja were caught in the crossfire.

Secondly, those crimes were committed in the 1980s not post 9/11 or post 1991, where was Barbra or the US at that time? Yes, in bed with Saddam. She is denial over the complicity of the US with Saddam in these crimes as his chief supplier. I even showed her a picture of Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein shaking hands back in 1982 but it did not register in her brain cells.

In any case, how is that Muslims have the blood in their hands are they author of: two world wars, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, Nazi Gas Chambers, Fascism of Benito Mussolini, barbaric Spanish Inquisitions blessed by the Pope, medieval crusades, the genocide of 500,000 Philippines in the Spanish-American war, burning of Vietnamese villages using Napalm, slavery of Africans, Conquistadores massacre of the Aztecs and Incas, the extermination of the Aboriginals in Australia, so on and on, a very long list. If she examined her history she would have realized the US was born through the genocide of 70 million peaceful Native Americans.

Now, the obvious ‘error’ in her article which she must have missed in her latest frenzied outburst. She says I am the author of the article “The Satanic Christians of the USA” [ 7 ] which is not the case. The author is in fact a Christian by the name of Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey. As a fair-minded person I will give her the benefit of the doubt that she has made a genuine error. However, when you take the other outbursts it illustrates the point that her emotional rage has led her to miss this simple fact. Now let us examine some of the points she raises.

a) Beheadings or Incineration?

Barbra seems to exhibit a twisted ‘moral’ outrage at the beheadings done in ‘retaliation’ but she has no regrets with the high-tech methods employed by the US soldiers in F16s or the low-tech methods in Abu-Ghraib in the first place! She states in her article:

“But is Islam a 'peaceful' religion? Certainly the vast majority of Muslims would have a problem with actually beheading another human being or slitting a toddler's throat but there are many Muslims who find nothing wrong with this behavior. They read their Quran and agree that it is all justified.”

Without any supporting evidences she claims as if Muslims advocate wanton killing like the serial killers in the US or the US soldiers seen in video clips shooting unarmed civilians for fun or like the dropping of nuclear and chemical bombs on civilians! Tonight we see further clips and reports of ‘brave’ US soldiers shooting injured Iraqis in Fallujah’s homes and Mosques, blatant violation of international laws – but that won’t rattle Barb’s conscience.

Iraqi resistance did not get up suddenly decided to use such methods as beheading; this was a ‘response’ to the US atrocities. Why is the burning [ 8 ] the Iraqis to death using Napalm bombs and Phosphorus bombs any more civilized than beheadings? Of course the reason is one is done by the US soldiers the other by the Iraqis! That is the essence of her ‘analysis’ and ‘logic’. There is no context to these events, just pick and chose. Hardly analytical! No wonder her writings are confined to the local US-based rabid rightwing press.

If you were attacked by a burning Phosphorus or Napalm bombs you would be begging Musab Al-Zarqawi to behead you to relive the pain. Even the father of Nick Berg courageously made this point that at least his son was not tortured to death like the Iraqis suffered in the horror chambers of Abu-Ghraib and Camp-X-Ray!

I am mystified as to where the slitting of toddler’s throats was advocated and by whom. No elaboration or hard facts are provided. Once, laughably she cited ‘news’ from the extreme anti-Islamic Hindu Unity organization, which is like asking the Nazis for a reference about the Jews. Acquisition of objective reports is alien to Barbra.

b) Evil Islam

She then proceeds like those brainwashed bible-thumpers and makes hate-filled slur against Islam rather than forming scholarly criticism based on research. She rants by citing certain verses without any reference to Islamic jurists or exegesis or scholars as to what they mean and its context and she goes on to write:

“Indeed, if one reads the Quran, just about everything from slavery to pedophilia to rape is justified. The only thing that matters is who is doing what to whom. If it is a Muslim beheading an infidel then it has Allah’s blessing and thus is perfectly legal and is encouraged.”

In the Quran rape, pedophilia and slavery (as understood in the Western sense) is not mentioned anywhere and not surprisingly she is again short on genuine references supported by the works of Islamic scholars.

Islam categorically prohibits sex even through consent (adultery or fornication) outside marriage then surely by greater reasoning you cannot force someone to have sex through rape! It is double the aggression. Rapist are punished severely under the Islamic penal codes, unlike the West, rapists are not rewarded with a cozy cell and then released after a sort period of time in the name of being liberal. This is because Islam places a much higher value on the honor of a woman, reflected in the severe punishment given to rapists.

As for pedophilia, marriage in Islam takes place only after puberty. Of course the age-old and hate-filled reference to Prophet Muhammad’s (SAW) marriage to Aisha (RA) is there. This was line with Judeo-Christian tradition of marriage after puberty and the age of Aisha is disputed. In fact, in Jewish laws Rabbis are permitted to marry girls before the age of puberty and have non-penetrative sex but not in Islam. Some people may be shocked but unlike Islam there is not a concerted campaign against Judaism. Bible claims Prophet Lot committed incest, Prophet David committed adultery but yet no Muslims ever claimed that Christianity advocates incest or adultery even though the Muslims have the stronger grounds to make such smears!

If one cares to do a Google search on this subject of pedophilia the reality of this issue will be displayed in front of her eyes. Where are those vast numbers of pedophiliac sites hosted and by whom? Who indulges in it? Barbra should investigate NAMBLA, a US-based organization advocating such things and worse. Bestiality is another fad that has huge following in the US and other Western liberated countries, again a Google search will expose this. In any case, if Islam is so evil then why is Barbra so worried? It will surely be rejected by the masses in this era of information.

c) Violence and Forced Conversion

She rants on about my views on violence and it seems ‘only’ Barbra has trouble understanding that I advocate the right of the victim seeking retribution or acting in self-defense. In contrast her ‘logic’ is retaliation is a crime but not the unprovoked attack in the first place as she selectively highlights incidents like Madrid and Bali as if nothing else happened prior or after or in between those events. As for 9/11 she thinks Adam and Eve were born on that day! She states:

“What he wishes to do is be a cheerleader for the killing, the slaughter, the executions and beheadings because he doesn't have to do any of it. No one will come and ask him to send his son out to be a suicide bomber or ask him to prove his loyalty by executing a three-year-old Jewish toddler. Yamin posts his hate-filled words on an Islamic blog and Islamic web sites and he is regarded as insightful and brilliant by the followers of Islam that read them.”

My position is far better than those hypocrites who say, “turn your other cheeks”, “love your enemy” then commit genocide against peaceful nations. History is littered with such examples. If she ever read her own history, she would have realized that by her criteria her forefathers would be classified as terrorist and violent, when they fought against British imperialism to gain independence. They fought just like the Iraqis not in uniform as they were at a disadvantage against the well-equipped and trained British army!

The reference to the ‘execution’ of a Jewish toddler is a mystery without any reference but like a hypocrite she ignores the much larger number of Palestinian toddlers being killed and executed in Sabra-Shatila, Qana, Dar Yassin, Beirut and it continues toady. In her mind they are probably not human beings so she never refers to obtain the actual statistics of the number of Palestinians killed even though this is readily available on the Internet. But those are swept under the carpet for Barbra’s world of twisted-morality. If you read some of her materials you might think it is the Palestinians came from Eastern Europe to Palestine in the 1920s, after building the Gas chambers and then occupied West Bank and Gaza!

Furthermore, Muslims had always protected the Jews in history; they were given protection by the Ottoman whilst being butchered in Catholic Spain with the blessing of the Pope. Pogroms, ritual slaughter of Jews in Easter and Gas chambers were the creation of Christian Europe not the tolerant Islamic world.

If my articles were hate-filled, lacking in substance than surely it would be ignored, so why is she so obsessed? A Google search will show my articles are published in Muslim, non-Muslim, Islamic and secular websites. My most recent article about the US elections [ 10 ] was in fact supported by a lot of non-Muslims vast number of them Americans. She then alleges somehow that I have said that the world should be converted by force, she says:

“His logic is this: If the world would just accept Islam, his’ boys’ wouldn’t have to kill everyone.”

No one has ever said to me the above was my ‘logic’ and I have failed to see when I had deployed such ‘logic’. Forced conversion, witch burning, inquisition was practiced by the Catholic Church and there is no instance of this in Islamic history.

d) Saddam Hussein and other made-in-US dictators

It was the CIA agent Geoffrey Kemp that said, “Saddam was a son of a bitch but he was our son of a bitch”. Barbra rants about the crimes of Saddam Hussein and his sons forgetting the US complicity and the US forces are repeating the crimes in Iraq. The Islamic movements have always opposed Saddam long before Saddam became inconvenient to the US.

Raving in this manner she only makes a bigger fool of herself. The US has always entertained brutal dictators like Pol Pot, Pinochet and at present the government of Uzbekistan, a close US ally. The government boils prisoners to death for expressing their Islamic opinions and has been condemned by international human rights organizations. However, Barbra sees no contradiction or a tiny element of hypocrisy! For sure when the US wants to invade Uzbekistan in the future Barbra will spring into action and cite all these things as it gets churned out by Fox-TV.

e) Barbra Exposes Her Fascist Nature

In the previous article [ 6 ] she exposed her racist nature, which is natural given her rightwing xenophobic fascist way of thinking, she goes on to say:

“However, discussed at great length is the fact that some Muslim men had underwear put on their heads. Yamin insists that the Geneva Convention was ignored but the Geneva Convention apparently does not apply to the terrorists.”

A lot more happened in Abu-Ghraib, Umm Qasr and other US-run prisons. Seymour Hirsh saw the video clips of young teen and pre-teen boys screeching whilst being sodomised by US soldiers. Yes, the real Pedophiles not the imaginary ones claimed by Barbra. Daughters abused in front of their parents and relatives yet this nation rants about women’s rights. What did the US senator say after seeing the pictures and videos, “it was like descending into hell but unfortunately it was our creation” There are accounts of necrophilia and many disappearing in that horror chamber. Like a Fascist she just believes Fox-TV ‘news’ propaganda not even other US-based sources let alone the actual Iraqi victims from Iraq.

Later she points out that the offending soldiers of Abu-Ghraib have been given sentences as if that amounts to justice. If the soldiers have committed crimes in Iraq they should be subjected to the Iraqi laws tried by the Iraqi judges and victims. That is real justice, and this is what US would have demanded had the situation been reversed.

She talks about ‘terrorists’, well Barbra; someone does not become a terrorist just because the US says so! It has to be proven. Independent organizations like Red Cross have said vast majority were innocents picked up from checkpoints not from combat. Like the so-called ‘terrorists’ that has been released by the US from Camp-X-Ray. What right does an illegal invader like the US has the right to call anyone a terrorist?

But this exposes her Fascist and hate-fill nature. She advocates non-application of Geneva Convention but no alternatives are provided. This means she is saying that the US can do what ever it likes with those prisoners. That’s what the depraved US soldiers did, giving them a taste of US culture of freedom. No wonder the US refuses to sign up to the International Court of Justice unlike the rest of the civilized world. And the world demonstrated against the US not in her favor.

[b]Conclusion[/b]

Barbra reminds me of those obese American kids clutching to their burgers fries and shakes whilst demanding that the starving African or Hispanic children reduce intake and calling them greedy! So, let’s remind Barbra that it is the US that is in Iraq not the reverse! Iraq never attacked the US or the UK. There were no WMDs and despite capturing Saddam, the US is still there and intends to be there until installing a favorable US dictator under the charade of free election colonizes the country.

The problem for the Americans is very clear; the above exposition of a mindset that is typical of a Bush-fundamentalist shows that the US is gripped with ignorance, moral-perversion, religious fanaticism and bigotry. The US is a superpower it must have people of integrity and caliber. But they are nowhere to be seen unless they sleep with the decadent US corporates put their interest before the interest of its masses. Genocide, carnage and colonization will continue in the name of democracy! The propaganda factory will continue to produce more and more of these ignorant rightwing zealots like Barbra and humanity is at peril. - http://usa.mediamonitors.net/...

[b]Notes:[/b]

[ 1 ]. http://www.chronwatch.com/con... .asp?aid=11116

[ 2 ]. http://english.aljazeera.net/...
82045E8A-05AD-42FF-929A-A 58740173248.htm

[ 3 ]. http://news.independent.co.uk...
story.jsp?story=374183

[ 4 ]. http://www.cdlr.net/English/c...
php?s=113618062ba8cf7370b 2ee4d
52809009&threadid=884

[ 5 ] http://www.chronwatch.com , http://www.michnews.com/artma...

[ 6 ]. http://www.cdlr.net/English/c...
.php?s=&threadid=765

[ 7 ]. http://www.cdlr.net/English/c...
.php?s=&threadid=863

[ 8 ]. http://www.cdlr.net/English/c...
php?s=&threadid=798

[ 7 ]. http://www.cdlr.net/English/c...

[ 8 ]. http://world.mediamonitors.ne...

[ 9 ]. http://www.cdlr.net/English/c...
php?s=07a856221cf6973af2e 9caf8
bed80f09&threadid=19

[ 10 ]. http://www.cdlr.net/English/c...
php?s=c01adb1c083c72f8e32 4e80
ea52d7a6f&threadid=871

---> The Ignorance, Moral Perversion, Fanaticism & Bigotry of Bush's Toady Supporters

11.18.04 (4:59 pm) [edit]

---> The Ignorance, Moral Perversion, Fanaticism & Bigotry of Bush's Toady Supporters

11.18.04 (4:56 pm) [edit]

---> Why Right-Wing Neo-Cons Are Hypocritical Crooks in the "Values" Arena!!!

11.18.04 (2:29 pm) [edit]

Does the opening of the Clinton Library in Little Rock make you nostalgic for grunge music and a time when life was like a box of chocolates? Waiting for your "Rachel" haircut to come back in style? Still convinced "the truth is out there"? You're in luck. Unpack your flannel, crack open a Crystal Pepsi and settle back to remember the good old days. Here is a look at life in the 1990s, compared to how things are today.

[b]POVERTY:[/b] During the Clinton years, poverty fell by 25.2 percent. Poverty climbed steadily under President Bush, however. According to the most recent data from the Census Bureau, the number of Americans living in poverty has "risen ten percent since 2000." That means "nearly 36 million Americans – one in eight – now live in poverty and tens of millions are considered working poor."

[b]WAGES:[/b] Wage growth has fallen dramatically over the past four years. In 2000, median weekly wages grew by 4.9 percent. This fell to a mere 2.0 percent in 2003, meaning that adjusted for inflation, "wages fell slightly in real terms in 2003 for the first time since 1996." For those who have found work, the recovery is of questionable value in an "upside down" economy where profits have soared yet families' benefits are nullified by the rapidly rising costs of housing, education, and medical care – all of which jumped at double digit rates.

[b]UNEMPLOYMENT:[/b] There are more people unable to find work than four years ago. In 2000, the unemployment rate was 4 percent. During his terms, President Clinton created 22.7 million jobs. Putting that in historical perspective, that's "the most created under any single president since the 1920s, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics." Under President Bush, 490,000 jobs disappeared, making him the first president since Herbert Hoover to have fewer available jobs at the end of his term than at the beginning.

[b]DEFICITS:[/b] Under President Clinton, the U.S. government had "its first budget surpluses since 1969, and its largest surpluses on record." Not only was there a total budget surplus of $176 billion, the Clinton Treasury "actually paid off $362.5 billion of debt held by the public." President Bush reversed this trend, racking up a record $422 billion deficit. Instead of paying down the debt, the Bush Treasury has needed three debt ceiling increases over the past four years and is calling this week for a fourth. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, there's no end in sight; if President Bush succeeds in passing his 2005 budget – with the extension of his tax cuts – there will be $6.2 trillion in additional debt between now and 2014, nearly doubling our current debt ($7.38 trillion) for a total of $14.5 trillion.

[b]ABORTION:[/b] According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, during the Clinton years, the abortion rate fell by about 27 percent. A new independent study by an ethics professor at Fuller Theological Seminary finds that today, "contrary to popular assumption, abortion has risen in the U.S. during George W. Bush's presidency."

---> Why Right-Wing Neo-Cons Are Hypocritical Crooks in the "Values" Arena!!!

11.18.04 (2:23 pm) [edit]

---> Hearings on Ohio Voting Put 2004 Election in Doubt ... Right-Wing Media Ignores!

11.18.04 (1:30 pm) [edit]

[b]Highly-charged, jam-packed hearings held here in Columbus have cast serious doubt on the true outcome of the presidential election[/b].

On Saturday, November 13, and Monday, November 15, the Ohio Election Protection Coalition’s public hearings in Columbus solicited extensive sworn first-person testimony from 32 of Ohio voters, precinct judges, poll workers, legal observers, party challengers. An additional 66 people provided written affidavits of election irregularities. The unavoidable conclusion is that this year's election in Ohio was deeply flawed, that thousands of Ohioans were denied their right to vote, and that the ultimate vote count is very much in doubt.

Most importantly, the testimony has revealed a widespread and concerted effort on the part of Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell to deny primarily African-American and young voters the right to cast their ballots within a reasonable time. By depriving precincts of adequate numbers of functioning voting machines, Blackwell created waits of three to eleven hours, driving tens of thousands of likely Democratic voters away from the polls and very likely affecting the outcome of the Ohio vote count, which in turn decided the national election.

On November 17, Blackwell wrote an op-ed piece for Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times, stating: “Every eligible voter who wanted to vote had the opportunity to vote. There was no widespread fraud, and there was no disenfranchisement. A half-million more Ohioans voted than ever before with fewer errors than four years ago, a sure sign on success by any measure,” Blackwell wrote. Moon's extreme right wing Unification Church has long-standing ties to the Bush Family and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Additional testimony also called into question the validity of the actual vote counts. There are thus serious doubts that the final official tally in Ohio, due December 1 to Blackwell’s office, will have any validity. Blackwell will certify the vote count on December 3.

While Blackwell supervised the Ohio vote he also served as co-chair of the Ohio Bush-Cheney re-election campaign, a clear conflict of interest that casts further doubt on how the Ohio election and vote counts have been conducted.

At the Columbus hearings, witness after witness under oath gave testimony to an election riddled with discrimination and disarray. Among them:

Werner Lange, a pastor from Youngstown, Ohio, who said in part:

“In precincts 1 A and 5 G, voting as Hillman Elementary School, which is a predominantly African American community, there were woefully insufficient number of voting machines in three precincts. I was told that the standard was to have one voting machine per 100 registered voters. Precinct A had 750 registered voters. Precinct G had 690. There should have been 14 voting machines at this site. There were only 6, three per precinct, less than 50 percent of the standard. This caused an enormous bottleneck among voters who had to wait a very, very long time to vote, many of them giving up in frustration and leaving. . . . I estimate, by the way, that an estimated loss of over 8,000 votes from the African American community in the City of Youngstown alone, with its 84 precincts, were lost due to insufficient voting machines, and that would translate to some 7,000 votes lost for John Kerry for President in Youngstown alone. . . .”

“Just yesterday I went to the Trumbull Board of Elections in northeast Ohio, I wanted to review their precinct logs so I could continue my investigation. This was denied. I was told by the Board of Elections official that I could not see them until after the official vote was given.”

Marion Brown, Columbus:

“I am here on behalf of a friend. My friend came to my home very upset while she was away standing four hours in the voting, her husband passed away. The funeral was on yesterday, November 13th, at 2:00. Perhaps had she not stood so long in the line, she may have been able to save her husband.”

Victoria Parks:

“In Pickaway County, oh, my goodness, in Pickaway County, I entered there, I was shown a table, 53 poll books were plunked down in front of my. I noticed there were no signature on file in any of the poll books, in any of the poll books, and furthermore, a minute later the director of the Board of Elections of Pickaway County came into the room and snatched the books away from me and said you cannot look at these books. I said are you aware that what you are doing is against the law? She said I have been on the phone with the Secretary of State and he has instructed me to take these books away and you cannot see them. I paraphrase very slightly here. She took them away. I was persona non grata. I did not want to risk arrest, and I left. . . . There were no signatures, and furthermore, the writing in the book seemed to have been written in the same hand, because that is a requirement.”

Boyd Mitchell, Columbus:

“What I saw was voter intimidation in the form of city employees that were sent in to stop illegal parking. Now, in Driving Park Rec Center there are less than 50 legal parking spots, and there were literally hundreds and hundreds of voters there, and I estimated at least 70 percent of the people were illegally parked in the grass around the perimeter of the Driving Park Rec Center, and two city employees drove up in a city truck and said that they had been sent there to stop illegal parking, and they went so far as to harass at least a couple of voters that I saw, and when they were talking to us, they were kind. But when they didn't realize we were overhearing them talking to voters, they were trying to keep people from parking where they were parking. They went so far as to set up some cones, trying to block people from getting into a grassy area...”

“I calculated that I maybe saw about 20 percent of the people that left Driving Park D and C, I personally saw and talked to about 20 percent of them as they left the poll between 12:30 and 8 p.m. And I saw 15 people who left because the line was too long. The lines inside were anywhere from 2 1/2 to 5 hours. Most everybody said 4 hours, and I saw at least 15 people who did not vote, and I heard a gentleman who was earlier making some mathematical calculations, well, if this is going on across town, and, you know, in a precinct where it was going so heavily for Kerry, and me only seeing 20 percent of the people coming out, I saw 15. We could just do the math and extrapolate that out into a huge number of people who might have voted had they had a chance.”

Joe Popich (entered into the record copies of the Perry County Board of Election poll book):

“There are a bunch of irregularities in this log book, but the most blatant irregularity would be the fact that there are 360 signatures in this book. There are 33 people who voted absentee ballot at this precinct, for a total of 393 votes that should be attributed to that precinct. However, the Board of Elections is attributing 96 more votes to that precinct than what this log book reflects.”

Derek Winsor, Columbus:

“Out of the six total voting machines that were at 14 C, three of them showed some type of malfunction that at one point or another during the three our so hours that we were waiting, and between my wife and me, we had asked poll workers individually if they could explain what was going on and what kind of reassurances they could give us that, for one machine in particular that the votes had already been posted on, that machine would be counted, and the response was just, oh, they will be counted. And how can you be sure of that? What storage mechanism do they use to ensure that the votes are stored, and, again, the response was just, well, they just are. And that was a bit of a concern here.”

Carol Shelton, presiding judge, precinct 25 B at the Linden Branch of the Columbus Metropolitan Library:

“The precinct is 95 to 99 percent black. . . . There were 1,500 persons on the precinct rolls. We received three machines. In my own precinct in Clintonville, 19E, we always received three machines for 700 to 730 voters. Voter turnout in my own precinct has reached as high as 70 percent while I worked there. I interviewed many voters in 25 B and asked how many machines they had had in the past. Everyone who had a recollection said five or six. I called to get more machines and ended up being connected with Matt Damschroder, the Director of the Board of Elections. After a real hassle -- and someone here has it on videotape, he sent me a fourth machine which did not dent the length of the line. Fewer than 700 voted, although the turnout at the beginning of the day would cause anyone to predict a turnout of over 80 percent. This was a clear case of voter suppression by making voting an impossibility for anyone who had to go to work or anyone who was stuck at home caring for children or the elderly while another family member voted.”

Allesondra Hernandez, Toledo:

“What I witnessed when I had gotten there about 9 A.M. was a young African American woman who had come out nearly in tears. She was a new voter, very first registered, very excited to vote, and she had said that she had been bounced around to three different polling places, and this one had just turned her down again. People were there to help her out, and I was concerned. I started asking around to everyone else, and they had informed me earlier that day that she was not the only one, but there were at least three others who had been bounced around. Also earlier that day the polls had opened an hour late, did not open until about 7:30 A.M. The polling machines were locked in the principal's office. Hundreds of people were turned away, were forced to leave the line because they needed to be at school, they needed to be at work, or they needed to take their children to school. The people there who were assisting did the best they could to take down numbers and take down names, but I am assuming that a majority of those people could not come back because of work and/or because of school, because they had shown up to vote, and that was the time that they could vote, and that is why they were there. Also along the same lines, they ran out of pencils for those ballots.”

Erin Deignan, Columbus:

“I was an official poll worker judge in precinct Columbus 25 F, at the East Linden School. We had between 1100 and 1200 people on the voter registry there. We had three voting machines. We did the math. I am sure lots of other people did too. With the five-minute limit, 13 hours the polls were open, three machines, that is 468 voters, that is less than half of the people we had on the registry. We stayed open three hours past 7:30 and got about 550 people through, but we had one Board of Elections worker come in the morning. We asked if he could bring more machines. He is said more machines had been delivered, but they didn't have any more. We had another Board of Elections official come later in the day, and he said that in Upper Arlington he had seen 12 machines.”

Matthew Segal, Gambier:

“In this past election, Kenyon College students and the residents of Gambier, Ohio, had to endure some of the most extenuating voting circumstances in the entire country. As many of you may already know, because they had it on national media attention, Kenyon students and the residents of Gambier had to stand in line up to 10 to 12 hours in the rain, through a hot gym, and crowded narrow lines, making it extremely uncomfortable. As a result of this, voters were disenfranchised, having class to attend to, sports commitments, and midterms for the next day, which they had to study for. Obviously, it is a disgrace that kids who are being perpetually told the importance of voting, could not vote because they had other commitments and had to be put up with a 12-hour line.”
Blackwell characterized Ohio’s Election Day as “tremendously successful” in the Washington Times. Several people at Saturday’s hearing said they’d like to hear Mr. Blackwell testify under oath, preferably under a criminal indictment.

[b]Bob Fitrakis, Ph.D, J.D., a legal advisor for the Election Protection Coalition, convened and moderated the public hearings. Harvey Wasserman is Senior Editor of the Columbus Free Press and freepress.org. Audio from the hearings can be found at: www.theneighborhoodnetwork.org . [/b] - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

---> Hearings on Ohio Voting Put 2004 Election in Doubt ... Right-Wing Media Ignores!

11.18.04 (1:30 pm) [edit]

---> Bush Regime: Sickening Incompetence

11.18.04 (8:11 am) [edit]

The Bush administration's cronyism and incompetence will cost millions of Americans dearly this flu season. More than 1,000 pages of documents obtained by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) reveal, in striking detail, "that despite being aware of major problems at the [Chiron] vaccine manufacturing facility as early as June 2003, http://democrats.reform.house... [the Food and Drug Administration] missed repeated opportunities to correct them." (The Chiron facility was located in Liverpool, England, but Chiron is a California company whose operations are regulated by the FDA.) Sixteen months later, British regulators shuttered the facility because of contamination problems and the United States was left with a massive flu vaccine shortage. The incident draws focus to bipartisan concerns about the impact of the Bush administration's personal and financial ties to the drug industry. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) said, "The kind of mismanagement we've seen this year by the Food and Drug Administration demands tough scrutiny. One of my concerns is that the FDA has a relationship with drug companies that is too cozy. That's exactly the opposite of what it should be. The health and safety of the public must the FDA's first and only concern."

[b]FDA VISITED PLANT IN JUNE 2003, FOUND HIGH LEVELS OF CONTAMINATION:[/b] In June 2003, the FDA inspected the plant and "found high levels of overall bacterial contamination." FDA inspectors, in some instances, "found records of bacteria concentrations that were more than a thousand times higher than inspected." The inspectors also "identified poor sanitary practices that could contaminate sterile parts of the production process." Significantly, the FDA found the company was not doing enough to correct the problems.

[b]TOP OFFICIALS REJECT INSPECTORS' RECOMMENDATION FOR MANDATORY ACTION:[/b] The FDA team that visited the facility recommended official enforcement action against the facility. That means issuing a warning letter to Chiron outlining the problems that must be fixed. If Chiron failed to fix the problems, the FDA could have initiated legal action against the company. Instead, FDA officials overruled the recommendation of inspectors and instead submitted a request for voluntary action by Chiron.

[b]FDA DELIVERS REPORT TO CHIRON NINE MONTHS LATE:[/b] Even when it recommends voluntary action, the FDA is "supposed to send the manufacturer the full inspection report to help the manufacturer understand what corrective actions are needed." The report wasn't sent to Chiron until a year later – June 2004 – nine months after it was supposed to have been sent. The biggest problem: by that time "manufacture of the 2004 vaccine supply was already well underway." Chiron requested a meeting with the FDA after the 2003 inspection, but the agency never granted the request.

[b]FOR 16 MONTHS FDA DOESN'T INSPECT THE PLANT:[/b] For 16 months, the FDA failed to send inspectors to the plant to see if Chiron had fixed the problem. FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford "defended the decision not to send inspectors into the plant." Crawford claimed that occasional conference calls with the company were "a form of 're-inspection.'" (For more on the Chiron debacle, check out this column http://www.americanprogress.o... .)

[b]CRAWFORD FALSELY CLAIMS THAT 2003 PROBLEMS WERE UNRELATED:[/b] At an Oct. 21 press conference, Lester Crawford claimed, "what happened in 2003 has no relevancy for 2004." That isn't true. When the FDA's own inspectors finally visited the facility last month – after it was shut down – they reported that at least three sources of contamination were "not corrected from [the] previous inspection of 2003."

[b]CRAWFORD SAID HE WOULD DO VIRTUALLY EVERYTHING THE SAME:[/b] The FDA's negligence has put the health of tens of millions of Americans at risk. But appearing before the House Reform Committee Crawford testified, "except for the late delivery of its full report, the FDA has done nothing wrong – and would do nothing differently if given the chance." Sound familiar? - http://www.americanprogressac...