AlterNet
Right-Wing Media Gets Desperate
By Danny Goldberg, HuffingtonPost.com
Posted on September 30, 2005, Printed on September 30, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/26178/
Recently, Air America Radio came under attack from the same cast of right-wing media characters who have attacked the network for ideological reasons from day one.
A recent piece in the New York Post by John Mainelli states that, "Air America is in ... bad financial shape." On Sept. 20, Bill O'Reilly on Fox News which, like the New York Post is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation said that Air America "could be on its last legs."
This is untrue. Air America is in strong financial shape. Last week we started broadcasting from our new multi-million dollar studios.
Several weeks earlier the Board of Directors of Air America's parent company accelerated re-payment of a loan from the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club of $875,000 two years in advance of a previously agreed upon repayment plan. In the last several months, Air America has expanded its executive team to augment our efforts on the internet and in affiliate relations.
The pretext for the latest smears is an initiative I launched last week called Air America Associates, in which I asked our listeners to support our programming financially and at various levels offer bumper stickers, tote bags, etc. as a way of thanking them. (We received thousands of responses, far beyond what we projected for the first few days).
Many of our listeners also listen to NPR stations and Pacifica and are used to supporting radio programming they like. I got the idea from the Nation Magazine's program, "The Nation Associates," which helps them fund investigative journalism. Like Air America Radio, The Nation is a for-profit company.
But the conservative propagandists have tried to make it seem like there is something unseemly because Air America Radio is both commercial-and a radio network, as O'Reilly said last night, "I have never seen a commercial enterprise ask their listeners for money-ever." This is also false. The modern model of the broadcasting business involves numerous revenue streams. If anything, Air America has been late in fully building such an infrastructure which the "Associates" is a part of.
For example, Rush Limbaugh's website offers his fans the "Limbaugh Letter" for $34.95 a year and a totally separate service called Rush 24/7 which includes access to archived programs at the cost of $49.95 a year. The Limbaugh site also features the "EIB Store" which sells such items as $19.95 polo shirt which amusingly says, "My Mullah went to G'itmo and all I got was this lousy T-shirt."
The Sean Hannity Web-site features a "subscription" to something called, "The Hannity Insider" for $5.95 a month.
But no one tops the self proclaimed non-spinner Bill O'Reilly. Bill O'Reilly.com offers a "premium membership" for either $4.95 a month or $49.95 a year. He also offers a "Gift certificate" for $14.95. Products for sale on the Web site include:
* Radio Factor diner coffee mug available in white or navy blue for $14.95
* O'Reilly Factor keychain for $7.95 "while supplies last."
* Three different "No Spin" tote bags at $14.95 apiece
* Ten different hats at a cost of $16.95 each
* The "no spin" jacket for $79.95
* The " Unisex Black Fleece" embroidered with "The Spin Stops Here" for $39.95
* Several bumper stickers including one that reads "Boycott France" for $2.50
* License plate frame for $18.95
* Three different "No Spin" tote bags at $14.95 each
* An O'Reilly Factor Gear Bag at $64.95
* "Mens Garment Bag" for $64.95 (sorry ladies!)
* A "Spin Stops Here" organizer briefcase
* A "Spin Stops Here" pen and pad bundle for $19.95
* Two different designs of "Spin Stops Here" doormats for $49.95 and
* Two different "Rain Stops Here" umbrellas at $24.95("Show everyone who protects you from the rain")
Mainelli's article also repeated another falsehood about Air America saying "More recently the 70 station left network has been suffering lower ratings." His corporate cousin O'Reilly wishfully stated on August 17 said "Air America-nobody is listening to it," On Aug 3rd O'Reilly claimed that "Air America cannot support itself because of low ratings," and on July 26 O'Reilly said "The Air America radio network continues to fail with catastrophic ratings here in New York City. "
In fact, the ratings for the Bill O'Reilly radio show in New York were worse than those on Air America that he described as "catastrophic" In the key 25 to 54 year demographic which talk radio offers to advertisers, the Spring, 2005 Arbitron ratings showed that Monday to Friday from 2 to 4 PM when O'Reilly is on WOR-AM and which at Air America's 1190 WLIB-AM contains the last hour of "The Al Franken Show" and the first hour of "The Randi Rhodes Show," that O'Reilly had a .3 share and Air America a .4 share. O'Reilly had a cumulative audience of 75,400 and Air America had a cumulative audience of 89,300.
Inevitably ratings go up and down and vary from time slot to time slot and from market to market. Right wing bloggers have had fun cherry picking isolated pieces of ratings reports to distort the enormous enthusiasm Air America's growing audience has demonstrated. At the vast majority of our affiliates Air America ratings are up. On a nation-wide basis the most recent Arbitron ratings Spring 2005 book showed that our affiliates reach over three million people per week each of whom listens for an average of several hours a week. This is more than triple the amount of people who were listening when measured one year earlier in the Spring, 2004 book.
I do not intend to write something every time something like this happens. In the almost six months during which I have been CEO of Air America Radio, I have refrained, for the most part, from responding to the litany of attacks, lies, half-truths and smears from various members of the right-wing media. In general, it seems to me that paying too much attention to these people only encourages them and that we, at Air America, need to get used to the fact that the spirited progressive opinions of our on-air talent and of our audience will attract the kind of mean-spirited smears that are endemic to contemporary political conversation.
After having a near monopoly on talk radio for so many years, some conservative media types are literally freaked out at confronting robust, persistent and passionate opposition. On Sept. 26, O'Reilly desperately claimed that "Air America's basic flaw is that "Americans do not want to hear that their country sucks 24 hours a day." Of course the talent and management of Air America have a love of our country which is what animates all passionate debate on political issues form the left, right and center.
It is an obsession with stifling debate --even at the cost of using lies and distortions, which is un-American.
Danny Goldberg is the CEO of Air America Radio.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/26178/
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Friday, September 30, 2005
Incompetent and Corrupt
Administration Nominee to Relief Agency Draws Criticism
By Ken Silverstein
Times Staff Writer
5:36 PM PDT, September 30, 2005
WASHINGTON — Less than a month after the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency stepped down amid accusations of cronyism and incompetence, the Bush administration is being assailed for nominating another political ally to head a key agency for responding to foreign disasters.
One leading international relief group publicly is opposing the appointment of Ellen Sauerbrey to the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, and others have expressed private concerns over her lack of experience in emergency response work.
Sauerbrey, a former member of the Republican National Committee who was Bush's Maryland state campaign chairwoman in 2000, is serving as the U.S. representative to the U.N. commission on the status of women.
If confirmed by the Senate, which has not set a date for a hearing, Sauerbrey would head an agency with a $700 million annual budget that has responsibility for coordinating the U.S. government's response to refugee crises during natural disasters and wars.
The bureau coordinates with private and international organizations, such as the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, to help set up refugee camps for victims of war and natural disasters and to ensure that they receive sufficient food and other aid. It has helped confront refugee crises around the globe, including in war-torn regions such as Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as in Southeast Asia following the tsunami earlier this year.
While appointing political allies to government jobs is a time-honored tradition in Washington, the refugee bureau is a complex agency with a broad portfolio. Past administrations, both Republican and Democratic, have generally turned to someone with technical expertise to head it.
Sauerbrey was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates in 1978 and has been a conservative political activist for decades, but she has no direct experience mobilizing responses to humanitarian emergencies.
"This is a job that deals with one of the great moral issues of our time," said Joel R. Charny of Washington-based Refugees International, which is opposing Sauerbrey's nomination. "This is not a position where you drop in a political hack."
He and critics from other relief organizations -- who declined to be identified because they work closely with or receive funding from the bureau -- have pointed to the controversy over former FEMA director Michael D. Brown, who resigned Sept. 12 after his lack of disaster experience became an issue in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. His agency's disorganized response to a major catastrophe widely was disparaged.
Sauerbrey's nomination came Aug. 31, two days after Katrina struck the Gulf Coast.
"I don't want to say this is Michael Brown redux," Charny said, "but what qualifications does she have to deal with the core issue of refugees? The answer is none."
Erin Healy, a White House spokeswoman, defended Sauerbrey's qualifications.
"An important focus of the position is not only dealing with the aftermath of conflict and displacement of persons, but the prevention of refugee situations," she said. "Ambassador Sauerbrey understands the importance of stability and democracy, and how they prevent the displacement of persons."
Healy said that Sauerbrey has addressed issues related to refugees in her current U.N. position, because a majority of refugees worldwide are women and children, and that she has gained relevant diplomatic experience and contacts there as well.
"She will be able to build bridges and coalitions to achieve success," Healy said.
Sauerbrey did not respond to requests for comment.
A former schoolteacher and county census director, Sauerbrey, 68, served in the Maryland House of Delegates from 1978 to 1994 and unsuccessfully ran for governor in 1994 and 1998. She then became a talk-show host and TV commentator. In 2000, the Bush campaign tapped her to lead the GOP's presidential effort in Maryland.
After the election, Bush named Sauerbrey to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. In 2003, the president appointed her to her current position.
While even critics say she has done a good job as an advocate for women's rights to education and economic opportunities, Sauerbrey has generated controversy with her opposition to abortion.
Earlier this year, she pressed other countries to include language in a U.N. declaration that specifically would have excluded abortion as a component of equal rights for women.
The move drew widespread opposition, and the language was dropped.
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
By Ken Silverstein
Times Staff Writer
5:36 PM PDT, September 30, 2005
WASHINGTON — Less than a month after the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency stepped down amid accusations of cronyism and incompetence, the Bush administration is being assailed for nominating another political ally to head a key agency for responding to foreign disasters.
One leading international relief group publicly is opposing the appointment of Ellen Sauerbrey to the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, and others have expressed private concerns over her lack of experience in emergency response work.
Sauerbrey, a former member of the Republican National Committee who was Bush's Maryland state campaign chairwoman in 2000, is serving as the U.S. representative to the U.N. commission on the status of women.
If confirmed by the Senate, which has not set a date for a hearing, Sauerbrey would head an agency with a $700 million annual budget that has responsibility for coordinating the U.S. government's response to refugee crises during natural disasters and wars.
The bureau coordinates with private and international organizations, such as the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, to help set up refugee camps for victims of war and natural disasters and to ensure that they receive sufficient food and other aid. It has helped confront refugee crises around the globe, including in war-torn regions such as Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as in Southeast Asia following the tsunami earlier this year.
While appointing political allies to government jobs is a time-honored tradition in Washington, the refugee bureau is a complex agency with a broad portfolio. Past administrations, both Republican and Democratic, have generally turned to someone with technical expertise to head it.
Sauerbrey was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates in 1978 and has been a conservative political activist for decades, but she has no direct experience mobilizing responses to humanitarian emergencies.
"This is a job that deals with one of the great moral issues of our time," said Joel R. Charny of Washington-based Refugees International, which is opposing Sauerbrey's nomination. "This is not a position where you drop in a political hack."
He and critics from other relief organizations -- who declined to be identified because they work closely with or receive funding from the bureau -- have pointed to the controversy over former FEMA director Michael D. Brown, who resigned Sept. 12 after his lack of disaster experience became an issue in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. His agency's disorganized response to a major catastrophe widely was disparaged.
Sauerbrey's nomination came Aug. 31, two days after Katrina struck the Gulf Coast.
"I don't want to say this is Michael Brown redux," Charny said, "but what qualifications does she have to deal with the core issue of refugees? The answer is none."
Erin Healy, a White House spokeswoman, defended Sauerbrey's qualifications.
"An important focus of the position is not only dealing with the aftermath of conflict and displacement of persons, but the prevention of refugee situations," she said. "Ambassador Sauerbrey understands the importance of stability and democracy, and how they prevent the displacement of persons."
Healy said that Sauerbrey has addressed issues related to refugees in her current U.N. position, because a majority of refugees worldwide are women and children, and that she has gained relevant diplomatic experience and contacts there as well.
"She will be able to build bridges and coalitions to achieve success," Healy said.
Sauerbrey did not respond to requests for comment.
A former schoolteacher and county census director, Sauerbrey, 68, served in the Maryland House of Delegates from 1978 to 1994 and unsuccessfully ran for governor in 1994 and 1998. She then became a talk-show host and TV commentator. In 2000, the Bush campaign tapped her to lead the GOP's presidential effort in Maryland.
After the election, Bush named Sauerbrey to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. In 2003, the president appointed her to her current position.
While even critics say she has done a good job as an advocate for women's rights to education and economic opportunities, Sauerbrey has generated controversy with her opposition to abortion.
Earlier this year, she pressed other countries to include language in a U.N. declaration that specifically would have excluded abortion as a component of equal rights for women.
The move drew widespread opposition, and the language was dropped.
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
DeLay's serious legal problem
September 30, 2005
The defense for Tom DeLay's TRMPAC (Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee) relies heavily on the notion of "coincidence." Without it, everyone involved is in for a very rough trial.
DeLay set up his Texas operation, but couldn't use corporate contributions at the state level. It was in this context that DeLay's TRMPAC sent $190,000 to the RNC's State Elections Committee. Exactly two weeks later, the RNC's State Elections Committee sent exactly $190,000 to TRMPAC's favorite candidates back in Texas.
Obvious money laundering? It was, to hear DeLay & Co. tell it, just a coincidence. Unfortunately for TRMPAC, some are straying from the party line.
Prosecutors are expected to seize upon the testimony of one defense witness in the civil case, Charlie Spies, a former attorney for the Republican National Committee.
In one exchange during that trial, Spies was asked to add up a series of contributions that were made to TRMPAC and a series of contributions that the Republican National Committee made to legislative candidates in Texas. Both lists added up to $190,000.
"That was pure coincidence?" asked the lawyer for the Democrats, Cris Feldman.
"I don't think I'd use the word 'coincidence,' " Spies replied.
Spies, who could not be reached, acknowledged during his testimony that the donations from the Republican National Committee to the legislative candidates were unusually large. He said that happened when "people we care about" made the request — and DeLay, he testified, would qualify. (emphasis added)
And as if that weren't bad enough, DeLay can't seem to keep basic facts straight when it comes to the grand jury proceedings that led to his indictment.
read more »
The day after U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay's grand jury indictment, his lawyer and the jury foreman on Thursday appeared to contradict the Texas politician's assertions that he was not given a chance to speak before the jury.
The foreman, William M. Gibson Jr., a retired state insurance investigator, said the Travis County grand jury waited until Wednesday, the final day of its term, to indict him because it was hoping he would accept jurors' invitation to testify.
DeLay said in interviews that the grand jury never asked him to testify.
In a Wednesday night appearance on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, he said Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle never talked to him or asked him to testify.
"Never asking me to testify, never doing anything for two years," DeLay said in the interview. "And then, on the last day of his fourth or sixth grand jury, he indicts me. Why? Because his goal was to make me step down as majority leader."
On Thursday, DeLay said in another broadcast interview that he was under the impression that he wasn't going to be indicted because he hadn't been called to testify before the grand jury.
"I have not testified before the grand jury to present my side of the case, and they indicted me," said DeLay, according to the Associated Press.
This is just sad. DeLay was running all over town this week, using this as proof that Earle was running an improper investigation. And it was all a lie — even according to his own lawyer. One can't help but wonder what else he's been lying about.
And speaking of the grand jury, jury foreman William Gibson, a former sheriff's deputy who has publicly praised Tom DeLay, isn't fond of the criticism that Republicans have made against him and his colleagues.
The grand jury foreman also takes great exception to accusations that he and 11 other grand jury members followed the lead of Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle instead of following the evidence.
"It was not a rubber stamp deal. It was not an overnight deal. If we needed extra information, it was provided to us," Gibson said. […]
Gibson thinks there is enough evidence to convict Delay. "We would not have handed down an indictment. We would have no-billed the man, if we didn't feel there was sufficient evidence," said Gibson.
DeLay better have an awfully good legal team. With all the high-profile Republicans under criminal investigation (DeLay, Frist, Rove, Libby, Cunningham, Safavian), is there a concern that DC might run out of conservative criminal defense attorneys?
The defense for Tom DeLay's TRMPAC (Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee) relies heavily on the notion of "coincidence." Without it, everyone involved is in for a very rough trial.
DeLay set up his Texas operation, but couldn't use corporate contributions at the state level. It was in this context that DeLay's TRMPAC sent $190,000 to the RNC's State Elections Committee. Exactly two weeks later, the RNC's State Elections Committee sent exactly $190,000 to TRMPAC's favorite candidates back in Texas.
Obvious money laundering? It was, to hear DeLay & Co. tell it, just a coincidence. Unfortunately for TRMPAC, some are straying from the party line.
Prosecutors are expected to seize upon the testimony of one defense witness in the civil case, Charlie Spies, a former attorney for the Republican National Committee.
In one exchange during that trial, Spies was asked to add up a series of contributions that were made to TRMPAC and a series of contributions that the Republican National Committee made to legislative candidates in Texas. Both lists added up to $190,000.
"That was pure coincidence?" asked the lawyer for the Democrats, Cris Feldman.
"I don't think I'd use the word 'coincidence,' " Spies replied.
Spies, who could not be reached, acknowledged during his testimony that the donations from the Republican National Committee to the legislative candidates were unusually large. He said that happened when "people we care about" made the request — and DeLay, he testified, would qualify. (emphasis added)
And as if that weren't bad enough, DeLay can't seem to keep basic facts straight when it comes to the grand jury proceedings that led to his indictment.
read more »
The day after U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay's grand jury indictment, his lawyer and the jury foreman on Thursday appeared to contradict the Texas politician's assertions that he was not given a chance to speak before the jury.
The foreman, William M. Gibson Jr., a retired state insurance investigator, said the Travis County grand jury waited until Wednesday, the final day of its term, to indict him because it was hoping he would accept jurors' invitation to testify.
DeLay said in interviews that the grand jury never asked him to testify.
In a Wednesday night appearance on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, he said Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle never talked to him or asked him to testify.
"Never asking me to testify, never doing anything for two years," DeLay said in the interview. "And then, on the last day of his fourth or sixth grand jury, he indicts me. Why? Because his goal was to make me step down as majority leader."
On Thursday, DeLay said in another broadcast interview that he was under the impression that he wasn't going to be indicted because he hadn't been called to testify before the grand jury.
"I have not testified before the grand jury to present my side of the case, and they indicted me," said DeLay, according to the Associated Press.
This is just sad. DeLay was running all over town this week, using this as proof that Earle was running an improper investigation. And it was all a lie — even according to his own lawyer. One can't help but wonder what else he's been lying about.
And speaking of the grand jury, jury foreman William Gibson, a former sheriff's deputy who has publicly praised Tom DeLay, isn't fond of the criticism that Republicans have made against him and his colleagues.
The grand jury foreman also takes great exception to accusations that he and 11 other grand jury members followed the lead of Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle instead of following the evidence.
"It was not a rubber stamp deal. It was not an overnight deal. If we needed extra information, it was provided to us," Gibson said. […]
Gibson thinks there is enough evidence to convict Delay. "We would not have handed down an indictment. We would have no-billed the man, if we didn't feel there was sufficient evidence," said Gibson.
DeLay better have an awfully good legal team. With all the high-profile Republicans under criminal investigation (DeLay, Frist, Rove, Libby, Cunningham, Safavian), is there a concern that DC might run out of conservative criminal defense attorneys?
September 30, 2005
The Way It Is
By
PAUL KRUGMAN
Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, is under investigation by the
Securities and Exchange Commission. He sold all his stock in HCA, which his
father
helped found, just days before the stock plunged. Two years ago, Mr. Frist
claimed that he did not even know if he owned HCA stock.
According to a new U.S. government index, the effect of greenhouse gases is
up 20 percent since 1990.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a 33-year-old Wall Street insider with little experience
in regulation but close ties to drug firms, was made a deputy commissioner
at the F.D.A. in July. (This story, picked up by Time magazine, was
originally reported by Alicia Mundy of The Seattle Times.)
The Arctic ice cap is shrinking at an alarming rate.
Two of the three senior positions at the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration are vacant. The third is held by Jonathan Snare, a former
lobbyist.
Texans for Public Justice, a watchdog group, reports that he worked on
efforts to keep ephedra, a dietary supplement that was banned by the F.D.A.,
legal.
According to France's finance minister, Alan Greenspan told him that the
United States had "lost control" of its budget deficit.
David Safavian is a former associate of Jack Abramoff, the recently indicted
lobbyist. Mr. Safavian oversaw U.S. government procurement policy at the
White
House Office of Management and Budget until his recent arrest.
When Senator James Inhofe, who has called scientific research on global
warming "a gigantic hoax," called a hearing to attack that research, his
star witness
was Michael Crichton, the novelist.
Mr. Safavian is charged with misrepresenting his connections with
lobbyists - specifically, Mr. Abramoff - while working at the General
Services Administration.
A key event was a lavish golfing trip to Scotland in 2002, mostly paid for
by a charity Mr. Abramoff controlled. Among those who went on the trip was
Representative
Bob Ney of Ohio.
It's not possible to attribute any one weather event to global warming. But
climate models show that global warming will lead to increased hurricane
intensity,
and some research indicates that this is already occurring.
Tyco paid $2 million, most going to firms controlled by Mr. Abramoff, as
part of its successful effort to preserve tax advantages it got from
shifting its
legal home to Bermuda. Timothy Flanigan, a general counsel at Tyco, has been
nominated for the second-ranking Justice Department post.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is awash in soldiers and
police. Nonetheless, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has hired
Blackwater
USA, a private security firm with strong political connections, to provide
armed guards.
Mr. Abramoff was indicted last month on charges of fraud relating to his
purchase of SunCruz, a casino boat operation. Mr. Ney inserted comments in
the
Congressional Record attacking SunCruz's original owner, Konstantinos "Gus"
Boulis, placing pressure on him to sell to Mr. Abramoff and his partner,
Adam
Kidan, and praised Mr. Kidan's character.
James Schmitz, who resigned as the Pentagon's inspector general amid
questions about his performance, has been hired as Blackwater's chief
operating officer.
Last week three men were arrested in connection with the gangland-style
murder of Mr. Boulis. SunCruz, after it was controlled by Mr. Kidan and Mr.
Abramoff,
paid a company controlled by one of the men arrested, Anthony "Big Tony"
Moscatiello, and his daughter $145,000 for catering and other work. In court
documents,
questions are raised about whether food and drink were ever provided.
SunCruz paid $95,000 to a company in which one of the other men arrested,
Anthony
"Little Tony" Ferrari, is a principal.
Iraq's oil production remains below prewar levels. The Los Angeles Times
reports that mistakes by U.S. officials and a Halliburton subsidiary, which
was
given large no-bid reconstruction contracts, may have permanently damaged
Iraq's oilfields.
Tom DeLay, who stepped down as House majority leader after his indictment,
once called Mr. Abramoff "one of my closest and dearest friends." Mr.
Abramoff
funneled funds from clients to conservative institutions and causes. The
Washington Post reported that associates of Mr. DeLay claim that he severed
the
relationship after Mr. Boulis's murder.
Public health experts warn that the U.S. would be dangerously unprepared for
an avian flu pandemic.
Possted by Miriam V.
As Walter Cronkite used to say, That's the way it is.
Hammer Slammer Ding-Dong
Merry Christmas! There is a G-D! And other reactions to the Tom DeLay criminal indictment
by Laura Rozen
September 30th, 2005 10:43 AM
Recently indicted House majority leader Tom DeLay isn't slated to go on trial in Texas until October 21, and who knows what a jury will decide. No matter. DeLay's being charged on one count of criminal conspiracy to violate state fundraising laws—along with lots of other recent troubles for the GOP—has lifted Democrats, and Republican critics of the Bush administration, out of the political depression that has befallen them since the 2004 presidential elections. "The Delay indictment leads me to believe that the goddess justice may still be alive," e-mails one veteran Hill staffer, a Democrat.
Here's a roundup of reactions:
"MEGA CHEERS to the fall of Tom Delay. I will never, EVER, get a buzz like the one I got when I read the news of his indictment," blogged Daily Kos contributor Bill in Portland, Maine. "I tasted colors. I heard flavors. I saw sounds. I floated. And I don't remember this part, but there's a $500 fine on my dining room table for "...riding a burro naked down Forest Avenue while yelling `Take that, beeotch!' It's weird because normally I don't say anything during my commute."
"The Bug Man Gets Indicted," screams the blog headline by Democratic Leadership Council strategist Ed Kilgore:
The really big picture is that all sort of chickens are now coming home to roost for the GOP. You can hear them clucking all over Washington: in the White House, where the FBI investigation of Jack Abramoff is now penetrating the previously impermeable heart of Bush Era politics and policy; in the conservative commentariat, which is now torn between defending the Republican establishment and accusing it of betraying its principles; and in Congress, where DeLay's troubles are creating a power vaccum among GOPers for whom power has been the only unifying principle.
More and more, the Bush Era is beginning to resemble the Harding Era, without the humanizing features of sex and liquor.
"Has Bush Lost Congress?" asked Washington Post White House briefing blogger Dan Froomkin. "His second-term agenda is in shambles. His spending plan for Hurricane Katrina has torn his party apart. Support for his increasingly unpopular war is eroding. His political capital is spent. And now he's lost his Hammer."
"The Republicans are crumbling," the top House Democrat Nancy Pelosi at a news conference Thursday. "They are corrupt. They act in a corrupt way. They have a culture of corruption here. It is about cronyism. It is about favoritism to their friends in contracting, cronyism in hiring, it is about incompetence. "And that," Pelosi said, "is from here to the White House."
"The DeLay court date set," New Republic writer Michael Crowley blogged Thursday. "Can't imagine there'll be much press coverage. . . "
Marshall Wittmann, a former Christian Coalition strategist and John McCain advisor now a fellow at the Democratic Leadership Council, blogged under his handle Bull Moose writes of "the Gathering Storm":
Although he is not predicting it, the Moose suggests that the Democrats could possibly win back control over the House of Representatives and maybe even the Senate in the 2006 elections. Each day, as yesterday revealed, the Congressional Republicans more and more resemble the House Democrats of a decade ago—an entrenched crony establishment out of touch with the country and even their own principles. The popularity numbers of the Congressional GOP are in the tank. Democrats have a significant lead in most generic Congressional match-ups with the Republicans."
"There's no way God likes me this much," gushed liberal blogger Atrios.
..
by Laura Rozen
September 30th, 2005 10:43 AM
Recently indicted House majority leader Tom DeLay isn't slated to go on trial in Texas until October 21, and who knows what a jury will decide. No matter. DeLay's being charged on one count of criminal conspiracy to violate state fundraising laws—along with lots of other recent troubles for the GOP—has lifted Democrats, and Republican critics of the Bush administration, out of the political depression that has befallen them since the 2004 presidential elections. "The Delay indictment leads me to believe that the goddess justice may still be alive," e-mails one veteran Hill staffer, a Democrat.
Here's a roundup of reactions:
"MEGA CHEERS to the fall of Tom Delay. I will never, EVER, get a buzz like the one I got when I read the news of his indictment," blogged Daily Kos contributor Bill in Portland, Maine. "I tasted colors. I heard flavors. I saw sounds. I floated. And I don't remember this part, but there's a $500 fine on my dining room table for "...riding a burro naked down Forest Avenue while yelling `Take that, beeotch!' It's weird because normally I don't say anything during my commute."
"The Bug Man Gets Indicted," screams the blog headline by Democratic Leadership Council strategist Ed Kilgore:
The really big picture is that all sort of chickens are now coming home to roost for the GOP. You can hear them clucking all over Washington: in the White House, where the FBI investigation of Jack Abramoff is now penetrating the previously impermeable heart of Bush Era politics and policy; in the conservative commentariat, which is now torn between defending the Republican establishment and accusing it of betraying its principles; and in Congress, where DeLay's troubles are creating a power vaccum among GOPers for whom power has been the only unifying principle.
More and more, the Bush Era is beginning to resemble the Harding Era, without the humanizing features of sex and liquor.
"Has Bush Lost Congress?" asked Washington Post White House briefing blogger Dan Froomkin. "His second-term agenda is in shambles. His spending plan for Hurricane Katrina has torn his party apart. Support for his increasingly unpopular war is eroding. His political capital is spent. And now he's lost his Hammer."
"The Republicans are crumbling," the top House Democrat Nancy Pelosi at a news conference Thursday. "They are corrupt. They act in a corrupt way. They have a culture of corruption here. It is about cronyism. It is about favoritism to their friends in contracting, cronyism in hiring, it is about incompetence. "And that," Pelosi said, "is from here to the White House."
"The DeLay court date set," New Republic writer Michael Crowley blogged Thursday. "Can't imagine there'll be much press coverage. . . "
Marshall Wittmann, a former Christian Coalition strategist and John McCain advisor now a fellow at the Democratic Leadership Council, blogged under his handle Bull Moose writes of "the Gathering Storm":
Although he is not predicting it, the Moose suggests that the Democrats could possibly win back control over the House of Representatives and maybe even the Senate in the 2006 elections. Each day, as yesterday revealed, the Congressional Republicans more and more resemble the House Democrats of a decade ago—an entrenched crony establishment out of touch with the country and even their own principles. The popularity numbers of the Congressional GOP are in the tank. Democrats have a significant lead in most generic Congressional match-ups with the Republicans."
"There's no way God likes me this much," gushed liberal blogger Atrios.
..
Republicans block flu shots
Pandemic fears escalate
Gerard Aziakou in New York
01oct05
THE United Nations yesterday announced plans to ratchet up its battle plan for an expected human bird flu pandemic that could kill up to 150 million people, naming a special co-ordinator to lead a global strategy to contain it.
UN chief Kofi Annan appointed David Nabarro, a Briton who is one of the leading World Health Organisation's public health experts, as senior UN co-ordinator for avian and human influenza.
"We expect the next (human) influenza pandemic to come at any time. It is likely to be caused by a mutant of the virus that is currently causing bird flu in Asia," Mr Nabarro told reporters. "The avian flu epidemic has to be controlled if we are to prevent a human influenza pandemic."
His statement and the UN's announcement coincided with the US Senate passing legislation to add $US4 billion ($5.3 billion) to the US fight against deadly bird flu by stocking up on anti-viral drugs and increasing global surveillance of the disease.
The provision, which was attached to an unrelated fiscal 2006 spending Bill for the military, faces an uncertain future in the House of Representatives.
The Senate vote came as international organisations urged the US and other nations to be more wary of a bird flu outbreak.
Senator Ted Stevens – an Alaskan Republican shepherding the defence spending Bill through the Senate – said he would try to block the bird flu provision. His next opportunity will be when Senate and House negotiators meet to work out a compromise on the defence spending Bill. That meeting has not been set.
Bird flu among flocks in Asia has been growing for several years and outbreaks have been spotted in parts of Russia. So far, 65 people in Asia who are thought to have had close contact with infected birds have died since 2003.
Scientists fear a mutation of its H5N1 virus could make it transmissible among humans, sparking a worldwide epidemic that could kill millions of people.
"It's the midnight hour. We have to get moving on it now, not next year, not after some study group in the White House bangs this thing around for another three months," said Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat.
Senator Harkin – with the backing of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat – wants the Government to spend nearly $US3.1 billion to stockpile enough doses for half the US population. He said there were only two million doses on hand now, enough for 1 per cent of the population.
Two anti-viral drugs have been shown to ease bird-flu symptoms and possibly prevent it. Switzerland's Roche Holding AG makes Tamiflu, known generically as oseltamivir, and GlaxoSmithKline makes Relenza, or zanamivir.
It is unclear how quickly pharmaceutical firms could fill a US order for about 150 million doses.
Under the Senate plan, other funds would be used to increase global surveillance of the disease, increase spending on a vaccine and help states and cities prepare for a large outbreak.
Senator Stevens argued that bird flu "has not yet become a threat to human beings", adding: "We ought to wait for the scientists to tell us what needs to be done."
A UN official said a worldwide drive would be launched to combat a pandemic that could kill half of those infected.
Reuters
Gerard Aziakou in New York
01oct05
THE United Nations yesterday announced plans to ratchet up its battle plan for an expected human bird flu pandemic that could kill up to 150 million people, naming a special co-ordinator to lead a global strategy to contain it.
UN chief Kofi Annan appointed David Nabarro, a Briton who is one of the leading World Health Organisation's public health experts, as senior UN co-ordinator for avian and human influenza.
"We expect the next (human) influenza pandemic to come at any time. It is likely to be caused by a mutant of the virus that is currently causing bird flu in Asia," Mr Nabarro told reporters. "The avian flu epidemic has to be controlled if we are to prevent a human influenza pandemic."
His statement and the UN's announcement coincided with the US Senate passing legislation to add $US4 billion ($5.3 billion) to the US fight against deadly bird flu by stocking up on anti-viral drugs and increasing global surveillance of the disease.
The provision, which was attached to an unrelated fiscal 2006 spending Bill for the military, faces an uncertain future in the House of Representatives.
The Senate vote came as international organisations urged the US and other nations to be more wary of a bird flu outbreak.
Senator Ted Stevens – an Alaskan Republican shepherding the defence spending Bill through the Senate – said he would try to block the bird flu provision. His next opportunity will be when Senate and House negotiators meet to work out a compromise on the defence spending Bill. That meeting has not been set.
Bird flu among flocks in Asia has been growing for several years and outbreaks have been spotted in parts of Russia. So far, 65 people in Asia who are thought to have had close contact with infected birds have died since 2003.
Scientists fear a mutation of its H5N1 virus could make it transmissible among humans, sparking a worldwide epidemic that could kill millions of people.
"It's the midnight hour. We have to get moving on it now, not next year, not after some study group in the White House bangs this thing around for another three months," said Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat.
Senator Harkin – with the backing of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat – wants the Government to spend nearly $US3.1 billion to stockpile enough doses for half the US population. He said there were only two million doses on hand now, enough for 1 per cent of the population.
Two anti-viral drugs have been shown to ease bird-flu symptoms and possibly prevent it. Switzerland's Roche Holding AG makes Tamiflu, known generically as oseltamivir, and GlaxoSmithKline makes Relenza, or zanamivir.
It is unclear how quickly pharmaceutical firms could fill a US order for about 150 million doses.
Under the Senate plan, other funds would be used to increase global surveillance of the disease, increase spending on a vaccine and help states and cities prepare for a large outbreak.
Senator Stevens argued that bird flu "has not yet become a threat to human beings", adding: "We ought to wait for the scientists to tell us what needs to be done."
A UN official said a worldwide drive would be launched to combat a pandemic that could kill half of those infected.
Reuters
Republicans Tell America What They Think Is "Necessary" and "Unnecessary
Despite thousands in Louisiana having lost their homes, jobs, and life's posessions, the Wall Street Journal reports today that HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt said that extending health care benefits to hurricane victims is "unnecessary." The public is expected to accept this rationale as an explanation for why, as CBS News reports, the White House is "blocking a bipartisan $9 billion health care package for hundreds of thousands of evacuees" from the hurricanes.
Shocked at the Bush administration's indifference? Don't be - over the last few weeks, the Republican Party has made clear what its priorities really are
in these very terms. Just take a look at what we now know the GOP thinks is "necessary" and "unnecessary" in the wake of the worst natural disaster in American history:
"NECESSARY" FOR THE GOP AFTER KATRINA - NEW TAX CUTS FOR THE WEALTHY: The Financial Times reports that the White House is still saying that President Bush's "tax cuts still need to be made permanent" even with skyrocketing costs for Gulf Coast reconstruction and the Iraq War. Similarly, the Associated Press reports that "Hurricane Katrina means long-planned Republican tax cuts will be delayed but not abandoned." Then-House Majrority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) said, "We found that there's plenty of time to do everything that we want to do."
"UNNECESSARY" FOR THE GOP AFTER KATRINA - STOPPING $336 BILLION IN NEW TAX CUTS FOR MILLIONAIRES: In his first nationally-televised interview after Hurricane Katrina - with Americans literally still drowning, starving and fighting for their lives in New Orleans - President Bush reiterated to ABC's Diane Sawyer that he would refuse to rescind his previous tax cuts. Over the next five years, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans - those who make an average of $1 million a year - are slated to receive $336 billion in new Bush tax cuts.
"NECESSARY" FOR THE GOP AFTER KATRINA - CUTTING PROGRAMS THAT SERVE MILITARY FAMILIES: The Navy Times reports that congressional Republicans are pushing a post-Katrina proposal that would force troops to "accept reduced health care benefits for their families" and closures of elementary and secondary schools that serve children of soldiers.
"UNNECESSARY" FOR THE GOP AFTER KATRINA - STOPPING $200 BILLION IN NEW TAX CUTS FOR MILLIONAIRES: The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that even after Hurricane Katrina, the GOP is poised to permit two new tax provisions to pass that would cost roughly $200 billion. These provisions primarily benefit the wealthy. As CBPP notes, "The highly respected Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center reports that households with incomes of more than $1 million a year — the richest 0.2 percent of the U.S. population — already are receiving tax cuts averaging $103,000 this year, before these two new tax cuts take effect. The Tax Policy Center finds that the two tax-cut measures in question will give these millionaires nearly another $20,000 a year in tax cuts, when the measures are phased in fully."
"NECESSARY" FOR THE GOP AFTER KATRINA - INCREASING AUDITS OF THE WORKING POOR: The Washington Post reports that congressional Republicans are pushing a post-Katrina proposal to increase audits of those working poor who receive the Earned Income Tax Credit. EITC tax fraud is estimated to account for just just 3 percent of the billions in missing tax revenue each year.
"UNNECESSARY" FOR THE GOP AFTER KATRINA - CRACKING DOWN ON WEALTHY AND CORPORATE TAX CHEATS: Even as they push to increase audits of the poor, the Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum notes the GOP "doesn't seem to think that increasing the IRS budget to go after that other $250 billion is worth thinking about." That's right - none of the Republicans' proposals include any discussion of recovering revenue for Gulf Coast reconstruction by cracking down on corporate and wealthy tax cheats.
"NECESSARY" FOR THE GOP AFTER KATRINA - SKEWING TAX RELIEF FOR VICTIMS TO THE WEALTHY: The Associated Press reported that when Congress recently passed a package of tax breaks for hurricane victims, many provisions "would do more for wealthier taxpayers." For instance, the Washington Post reported that "national gambling companies would be granted access to millions of dollars in tax breaks" under President Bush's proposal.
"UNNECESSARY" FOR THE GOP AFTER KATRINA - INDEPENDENT COMMISSION TO FIND OUT WHAT WENT WRONG: AP reported two weeks ago that Senate Republicans scuttled Democratic efforts "to establish an independent, bipartisan panel patterned after the 9/11 Commission to investigate what went wrong with federal, state and local governments' response to Hurricane Katrina."
"NECESSSARY" FOR THE GOP AFTER KATRINA - MORE OIL INDUSTRY TAX BREAKS: The Hill Newspaper reports that congressional Republicans are planning to use the Gulf Coast disaster as an excuse to push another energy bill, chock full of tax breaks and regulatory waivers for the oil industry.
"UNNECESSARY" FOR THE GOP AFTER KATRINA - CRACKING DOWN ON OIL INDUSTRY PROFITEERING: So far, congressional Republicans and the White House have rejected Democratic calls to institute a windfall profits tax on the oil industry profiteers who are using Katrina to bilk consumers. Polls show the public strongly supports a windfall profits tax.
"NECESSARY" FOR THE GOP AFTER KATRINA - LOWERING WORKERS' WAGES: Immediately after Hurricane Katrina, President Bush signed an executive order suspending the Davis-Bacon law in the Gulf Coast. The law forces federal contractors to pay their workers the prevailing wages in a given area. Now, contractors, who are once again receiving no-bid contracts from the Bush administration, can take billions in taxpayer cash while lowering workers' wages.
"UNNECESSARY" FOR THE GOP AFTER KATRINA - TAKING FEMA DIRECTOR OFF THE FEDERAL PAYROLL: CNN this week reported that FEMA official Mike Brown, who supposedly left the government after his mishandling of the Katrina aftermath, is still "being paid as a consultant to help FEMA assess what went wrong in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina."
What more can you really say? The GOP has made clear where it stands on most of the major issues facing this country. It is up to us to simply let Americans know how far out of the mainstream these right-wing zealots have gone. That shouldn't be too hard - as you can see here, the story really tells itself.
Shocked at the Bush administration's indifference? Don't be - over the last few weeks, the Republican Party has made clear what its priorities really are
in these very terms. Just take a look at what we now know the GOP thinks is "necessary" and "unnecessary" in the wake of the worst natural disaster in American history:
"NECESSARY" FOR THE GOP AFTER KATRINA - NEW TAX CUTS FOR THE WEALTHY: The Financial Times reports that the White House is still saying that President Bush's "tax cuts still need to be made permanent" even with skyrocketing costs for Gulf Coast reconstruction and the Iraq War. Similarly, the Associated Press reports that "Hurricane Katrina means long-planned Republican tax cuts will be delayed but not abandoned." Then-House Majrority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) said, "We found that there's plenty of time to do everything that we want to do."
"UNNECESSARY" FOR THE GOP AFTER KATRINA - STOPPING $336 BILLION IN NEW TAX CUTS FOR MILLIONAIRES: In his first nationally-televised interview after Hurricane Katrina - with Americans literally still drowning, starving and fighting for their lives in New Orleans - President Bush reiterated to ABC's Diane Sawyer that he would refuse to rescind his previous tax cuts. Over the next five years, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans - those who make an average of $1 million a year - are slated to receive $336 billion in new Bush tax cuts.
"NECESSARY" FOR THE GOP AFTER KATRINA - CUTTING PROGRAMS THAT SERVE MILITARY FAMILIES: The Navy Times reports that congressional Republicans are pushing a post-Katrina proposal that would force troops to "accept reduced health care benefits for their families" and closures of elementary and secondary schools that serve children of soldiers.
"UNNECESSARY" FOR THE GOP AFTER KATRINA - STOPPING $200 BILLION IN NEW TAX CUTS FOR MILLIONAIRES: The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that even after Hurricane Katrina, the GOP is poised to permit two new tax provisions to pass that would cost roughly $200 billion. These provisions primarily benefit the wealthy. As CBPP notes, "The highly respected Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center reports that households with incomes of more than $1 million a year — the richest 0.2 percent of the U.S. population — already are receiving tax cuts averaging $103,000 this year, before these two new tax cuts take effect. The Tax Policy Center finds that the two tax-cut measures in question will give these millionaires nearly another $20,000 a year in tax cuts, when the measures are phased in fully."
"NECESSARY" FOR THE GOP AFTER KATRINA - INCREASING AUDITS OF THE WORKING POOR: The Washington Post reports that congressional Republicans are pushing a post-Katrina proposal to increase audits of those working poor who receive the Earned Income Tax Credit. EITC tax fraud is estimated to account for just just 3 percent of the billions in missing tax revenue each year.
"UNNECESSARY" FOR THE GOP AFTER KATRINA - CRACKING DOWN ON WEALTHY AND CORPORATE TAX CHEATS: Even as they push to increase audits of the poor, the Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum notes the GOP "doesn't seem to think that increasing the IRS budget to go after that other $250 billion is worth thinking about." That's right - none of the Republicans' proposals include any discussion of recovering revenue for Gulf Coast reconstruction by cracking down on corporate and wealthy tax cheats.
"NECESSARY" FOR THE GOP AFTER KATRINA - SKEWING TAX RELIEF FOR VICTIMS TO THE WEALTHY: The Associated Press reported that when Congress recently passed a package of tax breaks for hurricane victims, many provisions "would do more for wealthier taxpayers." For instance, the Washington Post reported that "national gambling companies would be granted access to millions of dollars in tax breaks" under President Bush's proposal.
"UNNECESSARY" FOR THE GOP AFTER KATRINA - INDEPENDENT COMMISSION TO FIND OUT WHAT WENT WRONG: AP reported two weeks ago that Senate Republicans scuttled Democratic efforts "to establish an independent, bipartisan panel patterned after the 9/11 Commission to investigate what went wrong with federal, state and local governments' response to Hurricane Katrina."
"NECESSSARY" FOR THE GOP AFTER KATRINA - MORE OIL INDUSTRY TAX BREAKS: The Hill Newspaper reports that congressional Republicans are planning to use the Gulf Coast disaster as an excuse to push another energy bill, chock full of tax breaks and regulatory waivers for the oil industry.
"UNNECESSARY" FOR THE GOP AFTER KATRINA - CRACKING DOWN ON OIL INDUSTRY PROFITEERING: So far, congressional Republicans and the White House have rejected Democratic calls to institute a windfall profits tax on the oil industry profiteers who are using Katrina to bilk consumers. Polls show the public strongly supports a windfall profits tax.
"NECESSARY" FOR THE GOP AFTER KATRINA - LOWERING WORKERS' WAGES: Immediately after Hurricane Katrina, President Bush signed an executive order suspending the Davis-Bacon law in the Gulf Coast. The law forces federal contractors to pay their workers the prevailing wages in a given area. Now, contractors, who are once again receiving no-bid contracts from the Bush administration, can take billions in taxpayer cash while lowering workers' wages.
"UNNECESSARY" FOR THE GOP AFTER KATRINA - TAKING FEMA DIRECTOR OFF THE FEDERAL PAYROLL: CNN this week reported that FEMA official Mike Brown, who supposedly left the government after his mishandling of the Katrina aftermath, is still "being paid as a consultant to help FEMA assess what went wrong in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina."
What more can you really say? The GOP has made clear where it stands on most of the major issues facing this country. It is up to us to simply let Americans know how far out of the mainstream these right-wing zealots have gone. That shouldn't be too hard - as you can see here, the story really tells itself.
New York Times Reporter Miller to Testify in CIA Leak Probe
Sept. 30 (Bloomberg) -- New York Times reporter Judith Miller was freed from jail after 85 days yesterday and agreed to testify in a CIA leak investigation after her confidential source, Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide, released her from a secrecy agreement, her newspaper said.
Miller, 57, said in a written statement that she will testify today before a grand jury ``because my source has now voluntarily and personally released me from my promise of confidentiality regarding our conversations.''
Her statement didn't reveal the name of her source. The Times reported on its Web site last night that people officially briefed on the case identified him as Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff.
Miller's agreement to testify suggests that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is winding up his investigation into whether someone in President George W. Bush's administration revealed the name of Central Intelligence Agency operative Valerie Plame to reporters in July 2003. The probe also has ensnared Karl Rove, Bush's deputy chief of staff and longtime political adviser. He was named by a Time magazine reporter as a confidential source, though not as one who disclosed Plame's identity.
Fitzgerald said in court papers in June that the probe is mostly complete except for an interview of Miller and Time's Matthew Cooper. Cooper testified in July, and the grand jury's term ends in October.
In addition to the probe into who revealed Plame's name, Fitzgerald is investigating whether administration officials made false statements during the course of the investigation.
`Honored Principle'
Miller said that she ``went to jail to preserve the time- honored principle that a journalist must respect a promise not to reveal the identity of a confidential source.''
``It's good to be free,'' she said in her statement.
Miller's lawyers reached agreement with Fitzgerald ``regarding the nature and scope of my testimony, which satisfies my obligation as a reporter to keep faith with my sources,'' she said.
New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller said that initially Miller ``had only a generic waiver'' of her vow not to reveal her source, ``and she believed she had ample reason to doubt it had been freely given. In recent days, several important things have changed that convinced Judy that she was released from her obligation.''
The newspaper said on its Web site that Miller's lawyers had ``intense negotiations'' with Libby's lawyer, Joseph Tate, that were ``sometimes strained.''
Negotiations
Miller and Libby talked by phone this month and Libby released her from the confidentiality promise regarding their 2003 conversation, the paper said. Libby asserted he gave his waiver more than a year ago, the Times said.
Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of the newspaper, said in a statement last night that, ``We are very pleased that she has finally received a direct and uncoerced waiver, both by phone and in writing, releasing her from any claim of confidentiality and enabling her to testify.''
White House spokesman Ken Lesaius declined to comment, citing the continuing investigation.
Genesis
The case was sparked by a July 14, 2003, syndicated newspaper column by Robert Novak which revealed Plame's name and CIA association. He cited ``two senior administration officials'' as saying Plame was responsible for sending her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, on a mission to Niger to look into claims Iraq was trying to obtain uranium yellowcake for nuclear weapons.
Plame also was named in a Time.com report written by Cooper and published July 17, 2003.
A week before, Wilson wrote an opinion article published in the New York Times criticizing the administration's decision to go to war with Iraq and saying some of the intelligence used to justify the March 2003 invasion had been ``twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.'' He has accused the Bush administration of leaking his wife's name to intimidate him and other critics.
It is a federal crime to knowingly reveal the identity of a covert agent, and the CIA asked for an investigation. After the Justice Department formally opened a probe, Bush said he ordered his staff to cooperate with investigators and vowed to fire anyone who committed a crime by leaking the agent's name.
According to the Washington Post, Libby in 2004 offered waivers of confidentiality to four reporters: Cooper, of Time, Tim Russert of NBC, and Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler of the Post. All four have either testified or given depositions.
After appearing before the grand jury, Cooper wrote in Time that while he learned from Rove that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, the Bush adviser never mentioned her name. Novak has not said whether he has testified or been questioned under oath.
Miller continued to refuse to testify and was jailed. Though she never wrote about Plame, according to the New York Times she met with Libby July 8, 2003, and talked with him by telephone later that week.
Thursday, September 29, 2005
After the Love Is Gone - New York Times
The New York Times
September 29, 2005
After the Love Is Gone
By NORA EPHRON
I broke up with Bill a long time ago. It's always hard to remember love -
years pass and you say to yourself, was I really in love or was I just
kidding
myself? Was I really in love or was I just pretending he was the man of my
dreams? Was I really in love or was I just desperate? But when it came to
Bill,
I'm pretty sure it was the real deal. I loved the guy.
As for Bill, I have to be honest: he did not love me. In fact, I never even
crossed his mind. Not once. But in the beginning that didn't stop me. I
loved
him, I believed in him, and I didn't even think he was a liar. Of course, I
knew he'd lied about his thing with Gennifer, but at the time I believed
that
lies of that sort didn't count. How stupid was that?
Anyway, I fell out of love with Bill early in the game - over gays in the
military. That was in 1993, after he was inaugurated, and at that moment my
heart
turned to stone. People use that expression and mean it metaphorically, but
if your heart can turn to stone and not have it be metaphorical, that's how
stony my heart was where Bill was concerned. I'd had faith in him. I'd been
positive he'd never back down. How could he? But then he did, he backed down
just like that. He turned out to be just like the others. So that was it.
Goodbye, big guy. I'm out of here. Don't even think about calling. And by
the
way, if your phone rings and your wife answers and the caller hangs up,
don't think it's me because it's not.
By the time Bill got involved with Monica, you'd have thought I was past
being hurt by him. You'd have thought I'd have shrugged and said, I told you
so,
you can't trust the guy as far as you can spit. But much to my surprise,
Bill broke my heart all over again. I couldn't believe how betrayed I felt.
He'd
had it all, he'd had everything, and he'd thrown it away, and here's the
thing: it wasn't his to throw away. It was ours. We'd given it to him, and h
e'd
squandered it.
Years passed. I'd sit around with friends at dinner talking about How We Got
Here and Whose Fault Was It? Was it Nader's fault? Or Gore's? Or Scalia's?
Even Monica got onto the list, because after all, she delivered the pizza,
and that pizza was truly the beginning of the end. Most of my friends had a
hard time narrowing it down to a choice, but not me: only one person was at
fault, and it was Bill. I drew a straight line from that pizza to the war.
The way I saw it, if Bill had behaved, Al would have been elected, and
thousands and thousands of people would be alive today who are instead dead.
I bring all this up because I bumped into Bill the other day. I was watching
the Sunday news programs, and there he was. I have to say, he looked good.
And he was succinct, none of that wordy blah-blah thing that used to drive
me nuts. He'd invited a whole bunch of people to a conference in New York
and
they'd spent the week talking about global warming, and poverty, and all
sorts of obscure places he knows a huge amount about.
When Bill described the conference, it was riveting. I could see how much he
cared; and of course, I could see how smart he was. It was so refreshing. It
was practically moving. To my amazement, I could even see why I'd loved the
guy in the first place. It made me sadder than I can say. It's much easier
to get over someone if you can delude yourself into thinking you never
really cared that much.
Then, later in the week, I was reading about Bill's conference, and I came
upon something that made me think, for just a moment, that Bill might even
want
me back. "I've reached an age now where it doesn't matter whatever happens
to me," he said. "I just don't want anyone to die before their time any
more."
It almost really got to me. But then I came to my senses. And instead I just
wanted to pick up the phone and call him and say, if you genuinely believe
that, you hypocrite, why don't you stand up and take a position against this
war?
But I'm not calling. I haven't called in years and I'm not starting now.
Posted by Miriam V.
Nora Ephron is a writer and director.
White Lawmaker Likens Black Colleagues To KKK
By MATT GOURAS, Associated Press Writer
Wed Sep 28,12:25 AM ET
A white Tennessee lawmaker lamenting his exclusion from the state's Black Legislative Caucus claimed Tuesday the group was less accommodating that even the Ku Klux Klan.
"My understanding is that the KKK doesn't even ban members by race," said Rep. Stacey Campfield, adding that the KKK "has less racist bylaws" than the black lawmakers' group.
The freshman Republican from Knoxville was rebuffed earlier this year when he asked for the Black Caucus' bylaws and inquired about joining. There are 18 black state lawmakers in Tennessee.
Caucus chairman Rep. Johnny Shaw, a Democrat, dismissed Campfield's request and called him a "strange guy" who was simply interested in stirring up trouble.
"He is using this as a joke. This is an insult coming from him," said caucus member Rep. Larry Miller, also a Democrat. "Why he chose to focus on the Black Caucus, I have no idea other than he is crazy and a racist."
The 37-year-old Campfield defended himself Saturday in a message on his Web journal, or blog, under the heading "I too dream."
The long excerpts from the Rev. Martin Luther King's famous 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech infuriated some readers. It prompted Campfield to ban reader comments after some of the angry postings included death threats.
Experts on race and hate groups said Campfield hit a nerve when he used King's words to take on a black institution. It's the same tactic white separatists often use, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
"Very typically these days we see white supremacists, hate groups, trying to use the words of King and other civil rights leaders to try to advance their agendas," Potok said.
Wed Sep 28,12:25 AM ET
A white Tennessee lawmaker lamenting his exclusion from the state's Black Legislative Caucus claimed Tuesday the group was less accommodating that even the Ku Klux Klan.
"My understanding is that the KKK doesn't even ban members by race," said Rep. Stacey Campfield, adding that the KKK "has less racist bylaws" than the black lawmakers' group.
The freshman Republican from Knoxville was rebuffed earlier this year when he asked for the Black Caucus' bylaws and inquired about joining. There are 18 black state lawmakers in Tennessee.
Caucus chairman Rep. Johnny Shaw, a Democrat, dismissed Campfield's request and called him a "strange guy" who was simply interested in stirring up trouble.
"He is using this as a joke. This is an insult coming from him," said caucus member Rep. Larry Miller, also a Democrat. "Why he chose to focus on the Black Caucus, I have no idea other than he is crazy and a racist."
The 37-year-old Campfield defended himself Saturday in a message on his Web journal, or blog, under the heading "I too dream."
The long excerpts from the Rev. Martin Luther King's famous 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech infuriated some readers. It prompted Campfield to ban reader comments after some of the angry postings included death threats.
Experts on race and hate groups said Campfield hit a nerve when he used King's words to take on a black institution. It's the same tactic white separatists often use, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
"Very typically these days we see white supremacists, hate groups, trying to use the words of King and other civil rights leaders to try to advance their agendas," Potok said.
Nightmare for African Women: Birthing Injury and Little Help
September 28, 2005
Nightmare for African Women: Birthing Injury and Little Help
By SHARON LaFRANIERE
KATSINA, Nigeria - Dr. Kees Waaldijk began surgery shortly before 10 a.m. one recent Saturday in a cement-walled operating room in this city near Nigeria's northern border. More than five hours later, orderlies carried the last of four girls to the recovery ward. In the near-90 degree heat, Dr. Waaldijk's light blue surgical garb had turned dark with sweat.
"We are finished for the day," he barked.
It was the last thing the dozen girls who squatted in the open-air corridor outside wanted to hear. Leaping up, tracking wet footprints and soaked skirts across the floor, they besieged the towering, white-haired surgeon, holding out orange case files, their names scrawled on them in black marker.
"Big eyes, with a question mark: 'When is it my turn?' " he said later in his office, filled with medical books, suture-filled suitcases and damp socks and T-shirts hung on chairs to dry. He held up his hands. "The eyes are following you everywhere you go. I tell them it is one man, two hands and many women."
What brings the girls to Dr. Waaldijk - and him to Nigeria - is the obstetric nightmare of fistulas, unknown in the West for nearly a century. Mostly teenagers who tried to deliver their first child at home, the girls failed at labor. Their babies were lodged in their narrow birth canals, and the resulting pressure cut off blood to vital tissues and ripped holes in their bowels or urethras, or both.
Now their babies were dead. And the would-be mothers, their insides wrecked, were utterly incontinent. Many had become outcasts in their own communities - rejected by their husbands, shunned by neighbors, too ashamed even to step out of their huts.
Until this decade, outside nations that might be able to help effectively ignored the problem. The last global study, in which the World Health Organization estimated that more than two million women were living with obstetric fistulas, was conducted 16 years ago.
Nor has a recent spate of international attention set off an outpouring of aid. Two years of global fundraising by the United Nations Population Fund, an agency devoted in part to improving women's health, has netted only $11 million for the problem.
The number of new cases is far outpacing repairs - not just here, but in other sub-Saharan nations like Kenya, Malawi and Uganda. Despite recent strides, said Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, the Population Fund's executive director, "at the current rate of action it will take decades to end fistula."
Few doubt that the problem is most concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa, where poverty and rudimentary health care combine with traditions of home birth and early pregnancy to make women especially vulnerable. In Nigeria alone, perhaps 400,000 to 800,000 women suffer untreated fistulas, says the United Nations.
Dr. Waaldijk , a 6-foot-4, 64-year-old Dutchman who rides a circuit nine months each year from his home in the Netherlands to Babbar Ruga Hospital here and others in rural Nigeria, says he has operated on 15,000 fistulas in 22 years here, repairing nearly all of them.
Obstetric fistulas are easily prevented by Caesarean sections. But in sub-Saharan Africa - excluding the region's richest nation, South Africa - the average doctor serves 6,666 patients and villages are often linked by little more than dirt paths. Many rural women labor fruitlessly for days before being taken, sometimes in a cow-pulled cart, to a road leading to a hospital.
Dr. Waaldijk remembers one patient well. She managed to push out only her baby's head before collapsing from exhaustion in her hut, he said. Her brother carried her, balanced on a donkey, to a road, where a bus driver demanded 10 times the usual fare to take her to a hospital. She half-stood, half-sat for the trip, her dead baby's head between her legs, her urethra ripped open.
"This is what is happening," the doctor said. "Nobody will believe it." The fistulas point to the broader plight of millions of African women: poverty; early marriage; maternal deaths; a lack of rights, independence and education; a generally low standing. One in 18 Nigerian women dies during childbirth, compared with one in 2,400 in Europe, the Population Fund says. A larger share of African women die in childbirth than anywhere else in the world.
Were it widely available, the United Nations agency states, a $300 operation could repair most fistulas. But Mozambique, with 17 million people, has just three surgeons who consistently perform those operations. Niger, population 11 million, has but six, the organization reported in 2002.
Nigeria, Africa's most populous country with 137 million people, has eight fistula repair centers, and Dr. Waaldijk, a Health Ministry employee, said he had trained 300 doctors in fistula surgery. Once trained, though, many leave for better paid jobs in wealthier nations.
Nearly 600 women showed up, some arriving in busloads, when international and Nigerian officials staged a 14-day treatment campaign at Babbar Ruga and three other hospitals in February. Three hospitals ran out of beds. The youngest patient was 12.
The oldest, more than 70, had been incontinent for a half-century.
"The health care system is not coping with it," Dr. Waaldijk said. "You go to a hospital and they have no working facilities. You say, 'You need this, this, this and this.' You go back. No water! No water in the whole hospital! You go back again, no lights!
"So where do you start?"
Dr. Waaldijk started here at Babbar Ruga Hospital 22 years ago, after a misspent youth followed by a lucrative surgical practice in Europe mixed with public health stints. Only when he came to this dusty town of open sewers and fickle electricity did he find his life's calling, he said.
With help from government and private donors, he slowly built Babbar Ruga into one of Africa's two biggest fistula centers, a small city of yellow concrete wards and hostels that typically houses 200 patients.
Those recovering from his surgery walk awkwardly about the grounds, catheters emptying between their legs into plastic buckets in girlish colors of pink and purple. Relatives camp by the dozens under the trees amid cooking pots, straw mats and tea kettles.
Dr. Waaldijk still hauls sutures, needles and anesthetics in big black suitcases from Holland to be certain of a reliable supply. He operates partly by the sun, wheeling his surgery table across the room to catch the best light, and personally logs his results on a laptop protected by a backup generator.
More than a third of his patients are 15 or younger; another 30 percent are between 15 and 20. His records indicate that most were married at 11 or 12, before menstruation. Nearly all bring with them tales of hardship, suffering and rejection.
Safiya, 23, was in the post-op ward after living for a year in the hut of a traditional healer who tried to cure her by stuffing potions into her vagina. Daso, 23, said she had leaked urine and feces for five years. Her husband divorced her.
Rumasau, 16, unluckily began labor on a Saturday, when her local hospital had no physician for her. She had to wait until the following Tuesday for an emergency Caesarean section - not an uncommon delay here, Dr. Waaldijk said.
For the few who get help, fistula surgery is life-changing. Zainabu Ado, 19, said she had leaked urine and feces for a year before coming to Babbar Ruga.
"People ran from me, even members of my own family," she said during an interview in Sululu, a tiny village hidden on a barely passable dirt road across the border in Niger. "My husband abandoned me. Nobody talked to me. Nobody visited me. For that whole year I stayed indoors."
At an impromptu gathering this month, Ms. Ado arrived resplendent with beaded jewelry, and her neighbors made room for her on straw mats in the sand.
Problems linger, she said. Her husband never bothered to divorce her, leaving her unable to remarry. She suffers a slight limp from lingering nerve damage. But compared with a fistula, such troubles are nits. "I am completely healed," she said, flashing a smile.
Her village is too small to appear on any map. Yet she is neither Sululu's first nor last fistula patient. She heard of Babbar Ruga Hospital from a neighbor who had undergone fistula surgery there. Ms. Ado, in turn, told Gide Gero.
Four feet 10 and nut-brown, Gide arrived at the hospital in September and spread her mat in the corridor outside the operating room. Her eyes were lively, her smile gap-toothed. She looked perhaps 12, but said she was 16.
Isolation and the traditions of her Fulani tribe governed her upbringing. She never went to school. Once she reached puberty, each suitor was allowed to specify that a decorative design be carved in her face as a sign of his interest.
She said she had fallen in love with one, but her grandfather had insisted that she marry her much older cousin, whom she did not meet till her wedding day. At 13, her grandparents decided, it was high time that she settle down. "Two reasons," her grandmother said in an interview. "She had started menstruating. And she had developed breasts."
Early this July, she started labor on a bed of bound sticks covered with a straw mat. For two days she struggled. Finally it took five hours for two cows to pull her family's wooden cart to the nearest hospital, 10 miles away.
There Gide labored for two more days before managing to expel a dead baby boy. When she discovered the next day that she could not control her urine, she said, she was dumbfounded. As a solution, she learned to wait as long as eight hours before allowing herself a sip of water.
Her fistula, it turned out, was a small one. Twenty minutes after she climbed atop Dr. Waaldijk's operating table, she was stretched out in the first bed in the recovery room, her grandmother by her side.
"She will be fine," Dr. Waaldijk predicted. Fine, that is, unless her next labor begins in the same village, far from medical treatment, as is all too likely. In which case, he said, her affliction will simply repeat itself.
"To be a woman in Africa," Dr. Waaldijk said as he stitched her last sutures, "is truly a terrible thing."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Bill Bennett: "[Y]ou could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down"
Addressing a caller's suggestion that the "lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30 years" would be enough to preserve Social Security's solvency, radio host and former Reagan administration Secretary of Education Bill Bennett dismissed such "far-reaching, extensive extrapolations" by declaring that if "you wanted to reduce crime ... if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down." Bennett conceded that aborting all African-American babies "would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do," then added again, "but the crime rate would go down."
Bennett's remark was apparently inspired by the claim that legalized abortion has reduced crime rates, which was posited in the book Freakonomics (William Morrow, May 2005) by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. But Levitt and Dubner argued that aborted fetuses would have been more likely to grow up poor and in single-parent or teenage-parent households and therefore more likely to commit crimes; they did not put forth Bennett's race-based argument.
From the September 28 broadcast of Salem Radio Network's Bill Bennett's Morning in America:
CALLER: I noticed the national media, you know, they talk a lot about the loss of revenue, or the inability of the government to fund Social Security, and I was curious, and I've read articles in recent months here, that the abortions that have happened since Roe v. Wade, the lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30-something years, could fund Social Security as we know it today. And the media just doesn't -- never touches this at all.
BENNETT: Assuming they're all productive citizens?
CALLER: Assuming that they are. Even if only a portion of them were, it would be an enormous amount of revenue.
BENNETT: Maybe, maybe, but we don't know what the costs would be, too. I think as -- abortion disproportionately occur among single women? No.
CALLER: I don't know the exact statistics, but quite a bit are, yeah.
BENNETT: All right, well, I mean, I just don't know. I would not argue for the pro-life position based on this, because you don't know. I mean, it cuts both -- you know, one of the arguments in this book Freakonomics that they make is that the declining crime rate, you know, they deal with this hypothesis, that one of the reasons crime is down is that abortion is up. Well --
CALLER: Well, I don't think that statistic is accurate.
BENNETT: Well, I don't think it is either, I don't think it is either, because first of all, there is just too much that you don't know. But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.
Bill Bennett's Morning in America airs on approximately 115 radio stations with an estimated weekly audience of 1.25 million listeners.
Bennett's remark was apparently inspired by the claim that legalized abortion has reduced crime rates, which was posited in the book Freakonomics (William Morrow, May 2005) by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. But Levitt and Dubner argued that aborted fetuses would have been more likely to grow up poor and in single-parent or teenage-parent households and therefore more likely to commit crimes; they did not put forth Bennett's race-based argument.
From the September 28 broadcast of Salem Radio Network's Bill Bennett's Morning in America:
CALLER: I noticed the national media, you know, they talk a lot about the loss of revenue, or the inability of the government to fund Social Security, and I was curious, and I've read articles in recent months here, that the abortions that have happened since Roe v. Wade, the lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30-something years, could fund Social Security as we know it today. And the media just doesn't -- never touches this at all.
BENNETT: Assuming they're all productive citizens?
CALLER: Assuming that they are. Even if only a portion of them were, it would be an enormous amount of revenue.
BENNETT: Maybe, maybe, but we don't know what the costs would be, too. I think as -- abortion disproportionately occur among single women? No.
CALLER: I don't know the exact statistics, but quite a bit are, yeah.
BENNETT: All right, well, I mean, I just don't know. I would not argue for the pro-life position based on this, because you don't know. I mean, it cuts both -- you know, one of the arguments in this book Freakonomics that they make is that the declining crime rate, you know, they deal with this hypothesis, that one of the reasons crime is down is that abortion is up. Well --
CALLER: Well, I don't think that statistic is accurate.
BENNETT: Well, I don't think it is either, I don't think it is either, because first of all, there is just too much that you don't know. But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.
Bill Bennett's Morning in America airs on approximately 115 radio stations with an estimated weekly audience of 1.25 million listeners.
The Hammer falls
It isn't just Tom DeLay. The vast corrupt money machine that funded the Republican Revolution is exploding before our eyes.
By Michael Scherer
Sept. 29, 2005 | At its height, the first great political machine of the 21st century worked like this: In Congress, Texas Rep. Tom DeLay controlled the votes like a modern-day Boss Tweed. He called himself "the Hammer." His domain included a vast network of former aides and foot soldiers he installed in key positions at law firms and trade groups, a network that came to be called the "K Street Project." He gathered tithes in the form of campaign cash, hard and soft, and spread it out among the loyal. He legislated for favored donors. He punished those who disobeyed, and bought off those who could be paid.
Conservative activists, who had grown up in the heady days of Reagan's America, patrolled the badlands of American politics for new opportunities. None did it better than Jack Abramoff, a former president of the College Republicans, who had a taste for expensive suits. Abramoff opened a restaurant, Signatures, where the powerful came to be seen and, in many cases, treated to free meals from a menu that included $74 steaks. He pulled in tens of millions of dollars from Indian tribes and the Northern Marianas Islands to help fund other operations -- skyboxes at the MCI Center where DeLay could hold his fundraisers and all-expense trips to Scotland where DeLay and friends could play golf.
Others were drawn into the web as well. Abramoff kicked down money to his old college buddy Grover Norquist, an anti-tax crusader whose role was to keep the right-wing ideologues in line. He hired Ralph Reed, a former advisor to the Christian Coalition, who helped keep the religious right on good terms with the Republican leadership. He hired Michael Scanlon, a former aide to DeLay, as his assistant. He leaned on former lobbying colleagues, like David Safavian, who was working in the Bush administration and could do favors for his clients. Susan Ralston, Abramoff's former gatekeeper and executive assistant, went to work for Karl Rove in the White House.
For a while, the whole operation seemed unstoppable. DeLay, Abramoff, Norquist, Reed and Rove vanquished their Democratic opponents, winning election after election. The loyalty that ensued allowed for a historic cohesion in Congress. Tax breaks passed like clockwork, as did subsidies for favored industries and cuts to long-standing Democratic initiatives. The Democratic Party, which had ruled Capitol Hill for half a century, imploded in confusion.
But the machine may now be coming to an end. The prosecutors have arrived, and they are handing out indictments at a blistering rate. "It's a house of cards," says Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "Jack Abramoff has been the ace of spades, but Tom DeLay has been linked arm in arm with him." Now the house is on the brink of collapse, he added. "Everything that surrounded the K Street Project and what flowed from it ... all of that is under intense pressure."
On Wednesday, DeLay was indicted with two aides by a Texas grand jury, accused of flouting campaign finance laws by illegally sending corporate funds to GOP candidates in the state. Two months ago, Abramoff was arrested and charged with fraud in connection with a casino deal in Florida. On Tuesday, two employees of a company owned by Abramoff were charged with murdering the casino's former owner. Last week, the feds arrested David Safavian, who has been working in the White House, on charges of lying to investigators about a trip to Scotland with DeLay and Abramoff. Scanlon, the former DeLay aide who worked with Abramoff, is said to be cooperating with investigators, who are likely to file even more charges.
For those who have followed the machine from its inception, these developments are striking. "It represents the beginning of the end of an era," said Vic Fazio, a Democratic lobbyist at the law firm Akin, Gump and a former California congressman. "A powerful group of people who had consolidated their power in the mid- to late 1990s is now vulnerable to legal attack."
Even some conservatives have begun to distance themselves. "The Tom DeLay machine that he built, there were corruptive elements to it," said Stephen Moore, a longtime conservative activist who sat at the head table at a recent dinner celebrating DeLay's career. Moore, who founded the Free Enterprise Fund, still describes himself as a "Tom DeLay fan," who considers the congressman a "conservative hero." But he has misgivings as well. "All of these guys getting rich off this process rubs some conservatives the wrong way," Moore said. "It's going to be difficult for Tom to recover from this no matter what happens."
Though DeLay may not recover, his machine has not yet collapsed entirely. Late Wednesday, House Speaker Dennis Hastert appointed Rep. Roy Blunt, the Republican whip from Missouri and a disciple of DeLay, as the new majority leader. Republicans, meanwhile, began working to portray the torrent of indictments as politically motivated charges against one individual. "Tom DeLay is a tremendous public servant," said Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, in a statement. "It is our sincere hope that justice will remain blind to politics." DeLay also lashed out, as is his fashion, saying he was a victim of "one of the most baseless indictments in American history."
Perhaps the best news for Republicans is the relative disorganization of the Democratic Party, which remains weakened after the 2004 elections and lacking a unified message. Democratic politicians, like Rep. William Jefferson, of Louisiana, and Rep. Maxine Waters, of California, also face their own ethical scandals. As one congressional Republican, Arizona's Rep. Jeff Flake, boasted in the Wall Street Journal Wednesday, "endemic Democratic ineptitude makes Republicans more attractive when graded on a curve."
But even if the collapse of Abramoff and the weakening of DeLay does not end the Republican reign, it will at least expose its workings. For years now, Republicans across Washington have been scratching each other's backs as they march in lockstep with a unified message. With each release of a subpoenaed e-mail, and every new indictment, more information about the workings of the machine -- and the money that was its lifeblood -- comes to light.
In recent weeks, for instance, Timothy Flanigan, a former attorney in the Bush White House, has been answering questions from Congress about his relationship to Abramoff. Flanigan, who has been nominated as deputy attorney general, went to work for the Bermuda-based corporation Tyco after he left the White House. Once there, he hired Abramoff as a lobbyist to reach out to Karl Rove on a tax issue. According to a report in the Washington Post, Abramoff boasted to Flanigan that "he had contact with Mr. Karl Rove" and that Rove could help fight a legislative proposal that would penalize U.S. companies that had moved offshore. Flanigan oversaw a $2 million payment to Abramoff for a related letter-writing campaign that never materialized. Flanigan says the money was diverted into other "entities controlled by Mr. Abramoff."
The charges surrounding DeLay also concern the misuse of money. The former majority leader is charged with raising $190,000 in 2002 from several major corporations, including Sears Roebuck, the Williams Companies and Bacardi USA. The indictment alleges that DeLay conspired to funnel that money through the Republican National Committee into seven Texas state campaign accounts, where he was helping Republican candidates as part of his effort to redraw Texas voting districts. If the charge is proven, DeLay and his associates would have violated a Texas campaign finance law that prohibits corporate donations to local races.
The ability of DeLay and Abramoff to collect and distribute enormous sums of money was always a key to their success. They used the money to buy friends and crush enemies. They used the money to fund the Republican revolution. As Abramoff told the New York Times in March, "Eventually, money wins in politics."
Those words form a perfect epitaph for a political machine gone awry.
By Michael Scherer
Sept. 29, 2005 | At its height, the first great political machine of the 21st century worked like this: In Congress, Texas Rep. Tom DeLay controlled the votes like a modern-day Boss Tweed. He called himself "the Hammer." His domain included a vast network of former aides and foot soldiers he installed in key positions at law firms and trade groups, a network that came to be called the "K Street Project." He gathered tithes in the form of campaign cash, hard and soft, and spread it out among the loyal. He legislated for favored donors. He punished those who disobeyed, and bought off those who could be paid.
Conservative activists, who had grown up in the heady days of Reagan's America, patrolled the badlands of American politics for new opportunities. None did it better than Jack Abramoff, a former president of the College Republicans, who had a taste for expensive suits. Abramoff opened a restaurant, Signatures, where the powerful came to be seen and, in many cases, treated to free meals from a menu that included $74 steaks. He pulled in tens of millions of dollars from Indian tribes and the Northern Marianas Islands to help fund other operations -- skyboxes at the MCI Center where DeLay could hold his fundraisers and all-expense trips to Scotland where DeLay and friends could play golf.
Others were drawn into the web as well. Abramoff kicked down money to his old college buddy Grover Norquist, an anti-tax crusader whose role was to keep the right-wing ideologues in line. He hired Ralph Reed, a former advisor to the Christian Coalition, who helped keep the religious right on good terms with the Republican leadership. He hired Michael Scanlon, a former aide to DeLay, as his assistant. He leaned on former lobbying colleagues, like David Safavian, who was working in the Bush administration and could do favors for his clients. Susan Ralston, Abramoff's former gatekeeper and executive assistant, went to work for Karl Rove in the White House.
For a while, the whole operation seemed unstoppable. DeLay, Abramoff, Norquist, Reed and Rove vanquished their Democratic opponents, winning election after election. The loyalty that ensued allowed for a historic cohesion in Congress. Tax breaks passed like clockwork, as did subsidies for favored industries and cuts to long-standing Democratic initiatives. The Democratic Party, which had ruled Capitol Hill for half a century, imploded in confusion.
But the machine may now be coming to an end. The prosecutors have arrived, and they are handing out indictments at a blistering rate. "It's a house of cards," says Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "Jack Abramoff has been the ace of spades, but Tom DeLay has been linked arm in arm with him." Now the house is on the brink of collapse, he added. "Everything that surrounded the K Street Project and what flowed from it ... all of that is under intense pressure."
On Wednesday, DeLay was indicted with two aides by a Texas grand jury, accused of flouting campaign finance laws by illegally sending corporate funds to GOP candidates in the state. Two months ago, Abramoff was arrested and charged with fraud in connection with a casino deal in Florida. On Tuesday, two employees of a company owned by Abramoff were charged with murdering the casino's former owner. Last week, the feds arrested David Safavian, who has been working in the White House, on charges of lying to investigators about a trip to Scotland with DeLay and Abramoff. Scanlon, the former DeLay aide who worked with Abramoff, is said to be cooperating with investigators, who are likely to file even more charges.
For those who have followed the machine from its inception, these developments are striking. "It represents the beginning of the end of an era," said Vic Fazio, a Democratic lobbyist at the law firm Akin, Gump and a former California congressman. "A powerful group of people who had consolidated their power in the mid- to late 1990s is now vulnerable to legal attack."
Even some conservatives have begun to distance themselves. "The Tom DeLay machine that he built, there were corruptive elements to it," said Stephen Moore, a longtime conservative activist who sat at the head table at a recent dinner celebrating DeLay's career. Moore, who founded the Free Enterprise Fund, still describes himself as a "Tom DeLay fan," who considers the congressman a "conservative hero." But he has misgivings as well. "All of these guys getting rich off this process rubs some conservatives the wrong way," Moore said. "It's going to be difficult for Tom to recover from this no matter what happens."
Though DeLay may not recover, his machine has not yet collapsed entirely. Late Wednesday, House Speaker Dennis Hastert appointed Rep. Roy Blunt, the Republican whip from Missouri and a disciple of DeLay, as the new majority leader. Republicans, meanwhile, began working to portray the torrent of indictments as politically motivated charges against one individual. "Tom DeLay is a tremendous public servant," said Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, in a statement. "It is our sincere hope that justice will remain blind to politics." DeLay also lashed out, as is his fashion, saying he was a victim of "one of the most baseless indictments in American history."
Perhaps the best news for Republicans is the relative disorganization of the Democratic Party, which remains weakened after the 2004 elections and lacking a unified message. Democratic politicians, like Rep. William Jefferson, of Louisiana, and Rep. Maxine Waters, of California, also face their own ethical scandals. As one congressional Republican, Arizona's Rep. Jeff Flake, boasted in the Wall Street Journal Wednesday, "endemic Democratic ineptitude makes Republicans more attractive when graded on a curve."
But even if the collapse of Abramoff and the weakening of DeLay does not end the Republican reign, it will at least expose its workings. For years now, Republicans across Washington have been scratching each other's backs as they march in lockstep with a unified message. With each release of a subpoenaed e-mail, and every new indictment, more information about the workings of the machine -- and the money that was its lifeblood -- comes to light.
In recent weeks, for instance, Timothy Flanigan, a former attorney in the Bush White House, has been answering questions from Congress about his relationship to Abramoff. Flanigan, who has been nominated as deputy attorney general, went to work for the Bermuda-based corporation Tyco after he left the White House. Once there, he hired Abramoff as a lobbyist to reach out to Karl Rove on a tax issue. According to a report in the Washington Post, Abramoff boasted to Flanigan that "he had contact with Mr. Karl Rove" and that Rove could help fight a legislative proposal that would penalize U.S. companies that had moved offshore. Flanigan oversaw a $2 million payment to Abramoff for a related letter-writing campaign that never materialized. Flanigan says the money was diverted into other "entities controlled by Mr. Abramoff."
The charges surrounding DeLay also concern the misuse of money. The former majority leader is charged with raising $190,000 in 2002 from several major corporations, including Sears Roebuck, the Williams Companies and Bacardi USA. The indictment alleges that DeLay conspired to funnel that money through the Republican National Committee into seven Texas state campaign accounts, where he was helping Republican candidates as part of his effort to redraw Texas voting districts. If the charge is proven, DeLay and his associates would have violated a Texas campaign finance law that prohibits corporate donations to local races.
The ability of DeLay and Abramoff to collect and distribute enormous sums of money was always a key to their success. They used the money to buy friends and crush enemies. They used the money to fund the Republican revolution. As Abramoff told the New York Times in March, "Eventually, money wins in politics."
Those words form a perfect epitaph for a political machine gone awry.
Constance Baker Motley, Civil Rights Trailblazer, Dies at 84
September 29, 2005
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Constance Baker Motley, a civil rights lawyer who fought nearly every important civil rights case for two decades and then became the first black woman to serve as a federal judge, died yesterday at NYU Downtown Hospital in Manhattan. She was 84.
The cause was congestive heart failure, said Isolde Motley, her daughter-in-law.
Judge Motley was the first black woman to serve in the New York State Senate, as well as the first woman to be Manhattan borough president, a position that guaranteed her a voice in running the entire city under an earlier system of local government called the Board of Estimate.
Judge Motley was at the center of the firestorm that raged through the South in the two decades after World War II, as blacks and their white allies pressed to end the segregation that had gripped the region since Reconstruction. She visited the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in jail, sang freedom songs in churches that had been bombed, and spent a night under armed guard with Medgar Evers, the civil rights leader who was later murdered.
But her métier was in the quieter, painstaking preparation and presentation of lawsuits that paved the way to fuller societal participation by blacks. She dressed elegantly, spoke in a low, lilting voice and, in case after case, earned a reputation as the chief courtroom tactician of the civil rights movement.
Gov. George C. Wallace of Alabama and other staunch segregationists yielded, kicking and screaming, to the verdicts of courts ruling against racial segregation. These huge victories were led by the N.A.A.C.P.'s Legal Defense and Education Fund, led by Thurgood Marshall, for which Judge Motley, Jack Greenberg, Robert Carter and a handful of other underpaid, overworked lawyers labored.
In particular, she directed the legal campaign that resulted in the admission of James H. Meredith to the University of Mississippi in 1962. She argued 10 cases before the United States Supreme Court and won nine of them.
Judge Motley won cases that ended segregation in Memphis restaurants and at whites-only lunch counters in Birmingham, Ala. She fought for King's right to march in Albany, Ga. She played an important role in representing blacks seeking admission to the Universities of Florida, Georgia Alabama and Mississippi and Clemson College in South Carolina.
She helped write briefs in the landmark school desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and in later elementary-school integration cases.
Judge Motley was a tall, gracious and stately woman whose oft-stated goal was as simple as it was sometimes elusive: dignity for all people. Her personal approach was also dignified. When a reporter wrote that she had demanded some action by the court, she soon corrected him:
"What do you mean 'I demanded the court'? You don't demand, you pray for relief or move for some action."
Charlayne Hunter-Gault, whose admission to the University of Georgia was engineered by Mrs. Motley's legal finesse, described her courtroom cunning.
"Mrs. Motley's style could be deceptive, often challenging a witness to get away with one lie after another without challenging them," she wrote in her book "In My Place," published in 1992. "It was as if she would lull them into an affirmation of their own arrogance, causing them to relax as she appeared to wander aimlessly off into and around left field, until she suddenly threw a curveball with so much skill and power it would knock them off their chair."
As a black woman practicing law in the South, she endured gawking and more than a few physical threats. A local paper in Jackson, Miss., derided her as "the Motley woman."
In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed her as a judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York at the urging of Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York, a Democrat, and with the support of Senator Jacob K. Javits, a Republican. The opposition of Southern senators like James O. Eastland, a Mississippi Democrat, was beaten back, and her appointment was confirmed. She became chief judge of the district in 1982 and senior judge in 1986.
Constance Baker was born on Sept. 14, 1921, in New Haven, the ninth of 12 children. Her parents came from the tiny Caribbean island Nevis at the beginning of the 20th century.
Her father worked as a chef for various Yale University student organizations, including Skull and Bones. She attended local schools in what was then an overwhelmingly white community.
One of her first experiences with discrimination came at 15, when she was turned away from a public beach because she was black.
She read books dealing with black history and became president of the local N.A.A.C.P. youth council. She decided that she wanted to be a lawyer, but her family lacked money to send their many children to college. After high school, she struggled to earn a living as a domestic worker.
When she was 18, she made a speech at local African-American social center that was heard by Clarence W. Blakeslee, a white businessman and philanthropist who sponsored the center. He was impressed and offered to finance her education.
She decided to attend Fisk University, a black college in Nashville, partly because she had never been to the South. In Nashville, she encountered a rigidly segregated society, and brought her parents a poignant souvenir: a sign that read "Colored Only."
After a year and a half at Fisk, she transferred to New York University. After graduation in 1943, she entered Columbia Law School, where she began to work as a volunteer at the N.A.A.C.P.'s Legal Defense and Education Fund, an affiliate of the National Organization for the Advancement of Colored People that Mr. Marshall and his mentor, Charles Houston, had created in 1939.
After she graduated in 1946, she began to work full time for the civil rights group at a salary of $50 a week. She worked first on housing cases, fighting to break the restrictive covenants that barred blacks from white neighborhoods.
Also in 1946, she married Joel Wilson Motley Jr., a New York real estate broker. He survives her, as does their son, Joel III, who lives in Scarborough, N.Y.; three grandchildren; her brother Edmund Baker of Florida; and her sisters Edna Carnegie, Eunice Royster and Marian Green, all of New Haven.
Mr. Marshall had no qualms about sending her into the tensest racial terrain, precisely because she was a woman. She said she believed that was why she was assigned to the Meredith case in 1961.
"Thurgood says that the only people who are safe in the South are the women - white and Negro," she said in an interview with Pictorial Living, the magazine of The New York Journal-American, in 1965. "I don't know how he's got that figured. But, so far, I've never been subjected to any violence."
Mr. Meredith's admission to the University of Mississippi in September 1962 was a major victory for the civil rights movement. Mrs. Motley worked on the case for 18 months before Mr. Meredith's name was even seen in the papers.
She made 22 trips to Mississippi as the case dragged on. Judge Motley once called the day Mr. Meredith accepted his diploma in 1963 the most thrilling in her life.
She said her greatest professional satisfaction came with the reinstatement of 1,100 black children in Birmingham who had been expelled for taking part in street demonstrations in the spring of 1963.
In February 1964, Mrs. Motley's high-level civil rights profile drew her into politics. A Democratic State Senate candidate from the Upper West Side was ruled off the ballot because of an election-law technicality. She accepted the nomination on the condition that it would not interfere with her N.A.A.C.P. work and handily defeated a Republican to become the first black woman elected to the State Senate. She was re-elected that November.
She remained in the job until February 1965, when she was chosen by unanimous vote of the City Council to fill a one-year vacancy as Manhattan borough president. In citywide elections nine months later, she was re-elected to a full four-year term with the endorsement of the Democratic, Republican and Liberal Parties.
As borough president, she drew up a seven-point program for the revitalization of Harlem and East Harlem, securing $700,000 to plan for those and other underprivileged areas of the city.
After becoming a federal judge in 1966, Judge Motley ruled in many cases, but her decisions often reflected her past. She decided on behalf of welfare recipients, low-income Medicaid patients and a prisoner who claimed to have been unconstitutionally punished by 372 days of solitary confinement, whom she awarded damages.
She continued to try cases after she took senior status. Her hope as a judge was that she would change the world for the better, she said.
"The work I'm doing now will affect people's lives intimately," she said in an interview with The New York Times in 1977, "it may even change them."
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
How To Run For Office
From dKosopedia, the free political encyclopedia.
Information on running for office: state, county, local, what have you...
Table of contents
1 Candidate
2 The Campaign
3 Strategy
4 Campaign Plan
5 Tips & Ideas
6 Local Elections
7 Federal Elections
8 State Specific Elections
Candidate
Running for office is something everyone can do; yet unexplored by many. The breakdown of Candidate requirements is usually Age and nationality. The Constitution, Article I specifically sets precedence for federal elections as follows:
President: Natural-born U.S. citizen, age 35 or older, and you must have lived in the country for at least 14 years.
Senate: Must be at least 30, have at least nine years of U.S. citizenship and be an inhabitant of the state they represent at the time of the election.
Congress: No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the age of twenty five years, and been seven years a citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that state in which he shall be chosen.
The Campaign
The Basic elements of a campaign are:
* Candidate: Person running for Office/Position.
* Treasurer: Manager of Campaign finances and responsible for FEC reporting.
* Campaign Manager: Overall management of campaign, candidate and activities.
* Campaign Plan: Your "Plan of Attack" that defines your message, your campaign and your goals.
It isn't uncommon to have a core campaign manager and a committee of people who help manage activities and ideas.
Netroots: Using the internet networking and community building to build an online presence of campaign supporters. No geographical importance necessary.
Grassroots: A focus on person to person networking focused on efforts based around individuals and participation of constituents in campaign. Usually geographically local to candidate or election. During large elections it isn’t uncommon for supporters & volunteers of grassroots organizations to be bussed around to the areas in need of support.
“Roots” based campaigning is truly gathering of the community spirit and support to help your efforts.
Strategy
Key elements to any campaign are to develop a strategy that connects you with the voters on what is important to you and your bid for office. Many times candidates focus entirely on the issues as they think others view them and are such labeled as "flip floppers" or "opportunists".
Campaign Plan
Writing a plan is one of the most important parts of a successful campaign. "Unless it is in your plan, it doesn't exist". Campaign plans are a living document, but do be concerned with a solid document that is the foundation of your campaign.
The core elements of a Campaign plan are:
* Budget
* Fundraising
* Message Development
* Research
* Targeting
* Paid Media
* Earned Media
* Scheduling
* Direct contact with public
* Volunteer Organization
* Visibility
* GOTV
* Structure & Responsibilities
* Timeline
Don't over-stretch yourself or your plan. Be sure to focus on your audience, focus on your message and be consistent.
Speeches:
Let's face it, you are putting yourself into the limelight as a candidate and will undoubtedly need to make speeches. Often times this can create a sense of anxiety or fear for many but with a little help, practice and experiences you can give speeches that will win people over.
A good speech and way to speak you message will contain the following elements:
Characters & Conflict - Describe characters, the conflict(s) they must deal with and triumph as related to your message.
Obstacle - Show how the characters approached whatever obstacle they were facing in an effort to overcome it.
Resolution - Tell your listeners how it turns out.
Ending - Tie the resolution back to the main point, idea of objective of your message.
Remember these elements as "CORE".
This concept translates well from Business to Pleasure and all the way through politics and stump speeches. You get your message across by being sincere, telling the story,the WHOLE story and how everything turns out. You give your speeches with the idea you represent something that has a relationship to those you speak to. Win people over with some sincerity and relevance to the office you are running for by telling stories and speeches with these CORE elements.
Other Speech Tips:
* Relate personal stories to your message.
* Learn to flow with the listeners. Be creative, funny and witty within constraints of being yourself.
* Be yourself!
Fundraising
The hardest thing for any candidate to do is to ask for money. Don't let this scare you away from running for office. In all honesty there are a lot of people who are more than willing to contribute, even money they don't have, to your campaign if they believe in the message that you are sending.
Campaign fundraising limits:
contriblimits.jpg
Tips & Ideas
While there are as many methods and strategies for running as there are candidates, here are some external sources that can help.
Wellstone Action (http://wellstone.org), and Camp Wellstone. Named after the late Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN).
The Center for American Progress (http://www.americanprogress.org)
Move On (http://www.moveon.org/front/); their book 50 Ways to Love Your Country is a must anyways, whether you're running for office or not.
Progressive Majority (http://progressivemajority.org/)
The Creative America Project (http://creativeamerica.us) is about inspiring and training artists and creative professionals to assume leadership positions in civic life, including running for local office.
How to Win a Local Election (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0871317664/104-3199721-5596700?v=glance), a book by Lawrence Grey. A step-by-step guide, with checklists, calendars, and plenty of good information.
Local Elections
Local Elections can be anything from municipal, school board, county and state elections. These are considered the grass roots campaigns that set precedence for the groundwork of the Democratic platform.
Registration for local elections varies greatly upon your district, municipality and state laws.
Federal Elections
Federal elections are held on even number years during the first thursday of november.
How do I register as a candidate?
If you are running for the U.S. House, Senate or the Presidency, you must register with the FEC once you (or persons acting on your behalf) receive contributions or make expenditures in excess of $5,000. Within 15 days of reaching that $5,000 threshold, you must file a Statement of Candidacy FEC Form 2 (http://www.fec.gov/pdf/forms/fecfrm2.pdf) authorizing a principal campaign committee to raise and spend funds on your behalf. Within 10 days of that filing, your principal campaign committee must submit a Statement of Organization FEC Form 1 (http://www.fec.gov/pdf/forms/fecfrm1.pdf). Your campaign will thereafter report its receipts and disbursements on a regular basis. Campaigns should download the Campaign Guide for Congressional Candidates (http://www.fec.gov/pdf/candgui.pdf) for more information on the laws that apply to them.
FEC (http://www.fec.gov) : Federel Election Commission - Campaign finance laws.
State Specific Elections
These guides are geared towards state issues and specific election laws. These will be moved to the individual state pages unless there is something that sets precedence across the board.
California Offices
Illinois Offices
Pennsylvania: Running for Office
South Carolina Offices
Florida Offices
Retrieved from "http://www.dkosopedia.com/index.php/How_To_Run_For_Office"
This page was last modified 10:30, 31 Aug 2005. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
Information on running for office: state, county, local, what have you...
Table of contents
1 Candidate
2 The Campaign
3 Strategy
4 Campaign Plan
5 Tips & Ideas
6 Local Elections
7 Federal Elections
8 State Specific Elections
Candidate
Running for office is something everyone can do; yet unexplored by many. The breakdown of Candidate requirements is usually Age and nationality. The Constitution, Article I specifically sets precedence for federal elections as follows:
President: Natural-born U.S. citizen, age 35 or older, and you must have lived in the country for at least 14 years.
Senate: Must be at least 30, have at least nine years of U.S. citizenship and be an inhabitant of the state they represent at the time of the election.
Congress: No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the age of twenty five years, and been seven years a citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that state in which he shall be chosen.
The Campaign
The Basic elements of a campaign are:
* Candidate: Person running for Office/Position.
* Treasurer: Manager of Campaign finances and responsible for FEC reporting.
* Campaign Manager: Overall management of campaign, candidate and activities.
* Campaign Plan: Your "Plan of Attack" that defines your message, your campaign and your goals.
It isn't uncommon to have a core campaign manager and a committee of people who help manage activities and ideas.
Netroots: Using the internet networking and community building to build an online presence of campaign supporters. No geographical importance necessary.
Grassroots: A focus on person to person networking focused on efforts based around individuals and participation of constituents in campaign. Usually geographically local to candidate or election. During large elections it isn’t uncommon for supporters & volunteers of grassroots organizations to be bussed around to the areas in need of support.
“Roots” based campaigning is truly gathering of the community spirit and support to help your efforts.
Strategy
Key elements to any campaign are to develop a strategy that connects you with the voters on what is important to you and your bid for office. Many times candidates focus entirely on the issues as they think others view them and are such labeled as "flip floppers" or "opportunists".
Campaign Plan
Writing a plan is one of the most important parts of a successful campaign. "Unless it is in your plan, it doesn't exist". Campaign plans are a living document, but do be concerned with a solid document that is the foundation of your campaign.
The core elements of a Campaign plan are:
* Budget
* Fundraising
* Message Development
* Research
* Targeting
* Paid Media
* Earned Media
* Scheduling
* Direct contact with public
* Volunteer Organization
* Visibility
* GOTV
* Structure & Responsibilities
* Timeline
Don't over-stretch yourself or your plan. Be sure to focus on your audience, focus on your message and be consistent.
Speeches:
Let's face it, you are putting yourself into the limelight as a candidate and will undoubtedly need to make speeches. Often times this can create a sense of anxiety or fear for many but with a little help, practice and experiences you can give speeches that will win people over.
A good speech and way to speak you message will contain the following elements:
Characters & Conflict - Describe characters, the conflict(s) they must deal with and triumph as related to your message.
Obstacle - Show how the characters approached whatever obstacle they were facing in an effort to overcome it.
Resolution - Tell your listeners how it turns out.
Ending - Tie the resolution back to the main point, idea of objective of your message.
Remember these elements as "CORE".
This concept translates well from Business to Pleasure and all the way through politics and stump speeches. You get your message across by being sincere, telling the story,the WHOLE story and how everything turns out. You give your speeches with the idea you represent something that has a relationship to those you speak to. Win people over with some sincerity and relevance to the office you are running for by telling stories and speeches with these CORE elements.
Other Speech Tips:
* Relate personal stories to your message.
* Learn to flow with the listeners. Be creative, funny and witty within constraints of being yourself.
* Be yourself!
Fundraising
The hardest thing for any candidate to do is to ask for money. Don't let this scare you away from running for office. In all honesty there are a lot of people who are more than willing to contribute, even money they don't have, to your campaign if they believe in the message that you are sending.
Campaign fundraising limits:
contriblimits.jpg
Tips & Ideas
While there are as many methods and strategies for running as there are candidates, here are some external sources that can help.
Wellstone Action (http://wellstone.org), and Camp Wellstone. Named after the late Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN).
The Center for American Progress (http://www.americanprogress.org)
Move On (http://www.moveon.org/front/); their book 50 Ways to Love Your Country is a must anyways, whether you're running for office or not.
Progressive Majority (http://progressivemajority.org/)
The Creative America Project (http://creativeamerica.us) is about inspiring and training artists and creative professionals to assume leadership positions in civic life, including running for local office.
How to Win a Local Election (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0871317664/104-3199721-5596700?v=glance), a book by Lawrence Grey. A step-by-step guide, with checklists, calendars, and plenty of good information.
Local Elections
Local Elections can be anything from municipal, school board, county and state elections. These are considered the grass roots campaigns that set precedence for the groundwork of the Democratic platform.
Registration for local elections varies greatly upon your district, municipality and state laws.
Federal Elections
Federal elections are held on even number years during the first thursday of november.
How do I register as a candidate?
If you are running for the U.S. House, Senate or the Presidency, you must register with the FEC once you (or persons acting on your behalf) receive contributions or make expenditures in excess of $5,000. Within 15 days of reaching that $5,000 threshold, you must file a Statement of Candidacy FEC Form 2 (http://www.fec.gov/pdf/forms/fecfrm2.pdf) authorizing a principal campaign committee to raise and spend funds on your behalf. Within 10 days of that filing, your principal campaign committee must submit a Statement of Organization FEC Form 1 (http://www.fec.gov/pdf/forms/fecfrm1.pdf). Your campaign will thereafter report its receipts and disbursements on a regular basis. Campaigns should download the Campaign Guide for Congressional Candidates (http://www.fec.gov/pdf/candgui.pdf) for more information on the laws that apply to them.
FEC (http://www.fec.gov) : Federel Election Commission - Campaign finance laws.
State Specific Elections
These guides are geared towards state issues and specific election laws. These will be moved to the individual state pages unless there is something that sets precedence across the board.
California Offices
Illinois Offices
Pennsylvania: Running for Office
South Carolina Offices
Florida Offices
Retrieved from "http://www.dkosopedia.com/index.php/How_To_Run_For_Office"
This page was last modified 10:30, 31 Aug 2005. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
Iraqis blast Lynndie England sentence
Iraqis have expressed fury over the three-year jail sentence handed down to Lynndie England, the US soldier notorious for holding a naked inmate by a leash in Abu Ghraib prison.
They said Wednesday's sentence would have been harsher had she been convicted of abusing Americans and added that it exposed US hypocrisy.
"America should be ashamed of this sentence. This is the best evidence that Americans have double standards," said Akram Abdel Amir, a retired bus driver in Baghdad.
"There are Iraqis in jail without any charge, just based on suspicion. But when it comes to Americans, the matter is totally different."
England, 22, was sentenced on Tuesday by a US military court after being convicted of abuse, including being photographed pointing to the genitals of a naked Iraqi prisoner.
Chicken factory worker
The former West Virginia chicken factory worker, who had faced a maximum sentence of nine years, was given a dishonourable discharge from the military.
She is the last of a group of US soldiers to be convicted of abuse at Abu Ghraib, which included her former boyfriend and father of her child, Charles Graner, who is serving 10 years.
"If the abuse was committed against Americans I am sure the sentence would be much harsher. The sentence is nothing compared to what she has done," said labourer Muntasser Abdel Moneim, 30.
The prosecution asked the jury for a sentence of four to six years. England was found guilty on six counts on Monday.
Global outrage
The prisoner abuse scandal provoked global outrage and deepened Iraqi resentment against US troops in the country.
In pre-sentencing testimony, England said she was sorry for her actions but remained an American patriot.
But she is remembered as the US soldier who held an Iraqi inmate by a leash like an animal.
The images of a smiling England abusing naked inmates were especially humiliating in Iraq, a male-dominated society.
"The whole thing is theatre. The Americans want to pretend they defend human rights and are a civilised nation," said Munir Abdel Sahib, a university lecturer.
"I believe that England would not have committed these crimes without orders from above."
Ringleader
In court testimony, England blamed her involvement on Graner, the abuse ringleader, who was convicted of abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
Graner has since married another former Abu Ghraib guard, Megan Ambuhl, who was charged but received no jail time and stayed in the military.
"There is no justice in this sentence because the pictures were very shameful. She has to get more years in jail and she has to be imprisoned in Iraq," said Najaat al-Azawi, 55, a retired engineer.
Grocery store owner Hussein Ali said the fact that England faced trial was positive but stressed justice was not served.
"It means the Americans can get away with everything in Iraq. Three years is not enough for what she has done."
US forces are holding about 11,800 prisoners at several detention centres in Iraq, including 4000 at Abu Ghraib.
Iraqi families, human rights groups and some Iraqi government ministers, including the justice minister, say too many Iraqis are being wrongfully detained for too long without due process.
Agencies
By
You can find this article at:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/9DF7068A-04EF-4882-98D0-391F05FB0D0B.htm
They said Wednesday's sentence would have been harsher had she been convicted of abusing Americans and added that it exposed US hypocrisy.
"America should be ashamed of this sentence. This is the best evidence that Americans have double standards," said Akram Abdel Amir, a retired bus driver in Baghdad.
"There are Iraqis in jail without any charge, just based on suspicion. But when it comes to Americans, the matter is totally different."
England, 22, was sentenced on Tuesday by a US military court after being convicted of abuse, including being photographed pointing to the genitals of a naked Iraqi prisoner.
Chicken factory worker
The former West Virginia chicken factory worker, who had faced a maximum sentence of nine years, was given a dishonourable discharge from the military.
She is the last of a group of US soldiers to be convicted of abuse at Abu Ghraib, which included her former boyfriend and father of her child, Charles Graner, who is serving 10 years.
"If the abuse was committed against Americans I am sure the sentence would be much harsher. The sentence is nothing compared to what she has done," said labourer Muntasser Abdel Moneim, 30.
The prosecution asked the jury for a sentence of four to six years. England was found guilty on six counts on Monday.
Global outrage
The prisoner abuse scandal provoked global outrage and deepened Iraqi resentment against US troops in the country.
In pre-sentencing testimony, England said she was sorry for her actions but remained an American patriot.
But she is remembered as the US soldier who held an Iraqi inmate by a leash like an animal.
The images of a smiling England abusing naked inmates were especially humiliating in Iraq, a male-dominated society.
"The whole thing is theatre. The Americans want to pretend they defend human rights and are a civilised nation," said Munir Abdel Sahib, a university lecturer.
"I believe that England would not have committed these crimes without orders from above."
Ringleader
In court testimony, England blamed her involvement on Graner, the abuse ringleader, who was convicted of abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
Graner has since married another former Abu Ghraib guard, Megan Ambuhl, who was charged but received no jail time and stayed in the military.
"There is no justice in this sentence because the pictures were very shameful. She has to get more years in jail and she has to be imprisoned in Iraq," said Najaat al-Azawi, 55, a retired engineer.
Grocery store owner Hussein Ali said the fact that England faced trial was positive but stressed justice was not served.
"It means the Americans can get away with everything in Iraq. Three years is not enough for what she has done."
US forces are holding about 11,800 prisoners at several detention centres in Iraq, including 4000 at Abu Ghraib.
Iraqi families, human rights groups and some Iraqi government ministers, including the justice minister, say too many Iraqis are being wrongfully detained for too long without due process.
Agencies
By
You can find this article at:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/9DF7068A-04EF-4882-98D0-391F05FB0D0B.htm
GOP Ignores Lessons of Democrats' Past Mistakes
washingtonpost.com
By Terry M. Neal
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 28, 2005; 6:27 PM
In response to the criminal charges he now faces, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) has offered up the time-honored defense of Washington politicians: My enemies are out to get me.
In a Capitol Hill news conference, DeLay lashed out, calling the Texas prosecutor who brought the felony charge against him an "unabashed partisan zealot" and a "fanatic." DeLay's supporters echoed the theme. House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.) -- the man who will fill in for DeLay -- said: "Unfortunately, Tom DeLay's effectiveness as Majority Leader is the best explanation for what happened in Texas today."
It didn't take long for DeLay's supporters to get the talking points. In a statement e-mailed to reporters hours after news of the indictment broke, the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, leader of the Traditional Values Coalition, said DeLay was "a Christian man" and accused prosecutor Ronnie Earle of exacting "political retribution."
Yet, The Washington Post's Jeffrey Smith reported last year that "Earle, an elected Democrat who oversees the state's Public Integrity Unit, previously prosecuted four elected Republicans and 12 Democrats for corruption or election law violations."
And the Associated Press reported last December that Earle had prosecuted some of the biggest Democratic names in the state, including, "former Texas House Speaker Gib Lewis, former Texas Attorney General Jim Mattox, former State Treasurer Warren Harding and former Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Yarbrough."
Buried under a sea of political scandal in the late 1980s and early 1990s, congressional Democrats often evoked the same defense. And it didn't work .
"Common Cause has made itself the handmaiden of a partisan political initiative," Democratic House Speaker Jim Wright (Tex.) complained in a May 18, 1988, press release --the day the nonpartisan watchdog group filed an ethics complaint against him in the House.
Wright resigned the next year in disgrace. Republicans exploited Wright's troubles and a series of other Democratic foibles to put an end to the Democrats' four-decade reign in Washington in 1994.
The reason was simple: It is entirely possible both that your enemies are out to get you and that you did exactly what you are being accused of doing. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive.
Ask Bill Clinton.
DeLay is innocent until proven guilty. Yet whatever his intentions, the timing of Earle's indictment couldn't have been worse for the Republican Party. Going into next year's midterm elections, the second most powerful person in the House is under indictment, and the most powerful person in the Senate, Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tenn.), is being investigated by both the Securities and Exchange Commission and federal prosecutors. In addition, a special prosecutor is investigating whether top White House officials may have leaked the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame to reporters.
On top of that, the White House's top procurement officer, David Safavian, was arrested last week on charges of lying and obstructing a criminal investigation into Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff's dealings with the federal government. And Abramoff, once one of Washington's top lobbyists, is being investigated for his lobbying activities on behalf of Indian tribes and his role in paying for overseas trips for DeLay. DeLay has said he didn't know Abramoff paid the expenses.
But with the voting public so inured to political scandal in Washington, all of those things together might not mean much for the party were it not already in deep water with the voters over the war in Iraq, its response to Hurricane Katrina and the summer's spike in gas prices. Bush's approval rating in some polls hovers around 40 percent, and Congress's is even lower.
Amy Walter, who analyzes House races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said, "If people were confident about the direction of the country, happy with performance of the White House and Congress, it's not as big of an issue. But when you put it in this in the current political environment, Democrats don't have to work very hard" to damage Republicans.
Walter's comments raise the question about whether Democrats will make ethics and scandal front-burner issues next year. Walter makes another salient point when she points out that approval ratings for Democrats aren't much higher right now than they are for Republicans.
Can Democrats coalesce around scandal and ethics as a unifying theme, after largely failing to do so with Iraq, Katrina, tax cuts and other major issues? Difficult to say.
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) fired a shot yesterday, saying in a statement: "The criminal indictment of Majority Leader Tom DeLay is the latest example that Republicans in Congress are plagued by a culture of corruption at the expense of the American people."
But when I called a top Democratic congressional staffer to discuss the broader political implications, the person was skittish and wanted go "on background."
Contrast the Democrats' tepid approach to that of the Republicans of the late 1980s and early 1990s. You could hardly turn on C-Span back then without seeing a pudgy, white-haired back-bencher from Georgia by the name of Newt Gingrich inveighing against the rampant corruption and arrogance of the Democratic party.
True enough, there are Democrats in Congress today with their own ethics problems , complicating efforts to tag the GOP as the party of low standards. But the same was true of the Republicans when they were in the minority party, and that didn't stop them from pressing their case against the Democrats. The bottom line is leaders are always held to a higher standard than back-benchers.
For a long time, Democrats acted like no one was listening or cared. Then came November 1994.
Will Republicans repeat that mistake?
© 2005 Washingtonpost.
By Terry M. Neal
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 28, 2005; 6:27 PM
In response to the criminal charges he now faces, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) has offered up the time-honored defense of Washington politicians: My enemies are out to get me.
In a Capitol Hill news conference, DeLay lashed out, calling the Texas prosecutor who brought the felony charge against him an "unabashed partisan zealot" and a "fanatic." DeLay's supporters echoed the theme. House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.) -- the man who will fill in for DeLay -- said: "Unfortunately, Tom DeLay's effectiveness as Majority Leader is the best explanation for what happened in Texas today."
It didn't take long for DeLay's supporters to get the talking points. In a statement e-mailed to reporters hours after news of the indictment broke, the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, leader of the Traditional Values Coalition, said DeLay was "a Christian man" and accused prosecutor Ronnie Earle of exacting "political retribution."
Yet, The Washington Post's Jeffrey Smith reported last year that "Earle, an elected Democrat who oversees the state's Public Integrity Unit, previously prosecuted four elected Republicans and 12 Democrats for corruption or election law violations."
And the Associated Press reported last December that Earle had prosecuted some of the biggest Democratic names in the state, including, "former Texas House Speaker Gib Lewis, former Texas Attorney General Jim Mattox, former State Treasurer Warren Harding and former Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Yarbrough."
Buried under a sea of political scandal in the late 1980s and early 1990s, congressional Democrats often evoked the same defense. And it didn't work .
"Common Cause has made itself the handmaiden of a partisan political initiative," Democratic House Speaker Jim Wright (Tex.) complained in a May 18, 1988, press release --the day the nonpartisan watchdog group filed an ethics complaint against him in the House.
Wright resigned the next year in disgrace. Republicans exploited Wright's troubles and a series of other Democratic foibles to put an end to the Democrats' four-decade reign in Washington in 1994.
The reason was simple: It is entirely possible both that your enemies are out to get you and that you did exactly what you are being accused of doing. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive.
Ask Bill Clinton.
DeLay is innocent until proven guilty. Yet whatever his intentions, the timing of Earle's indictment couldn't have been worse for the Republican Party. Going into next year's midterm elections, the second most powerful person in the House is under indictment, and the most powerful person in the Senate, Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tenn.), is being investigated by both the Securities and Exchange Commission and federal prosecutors. In addition, a special prosecutor is investigating whether top White House officials may have leaked the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame to reporters.
On top of that, the White House's top procurement officer, David Safavian, was arrested last week on charges of lying and obstructing a criminal investigation into Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff's dealings with the federal government. And Abramoff, once one of Washington's top lobbyists, is being investigated for his lobbying activities on behalf of Indian tribes and his role in paying for overseas trips for DeLay. DeLay has said he didn't know Abramoff paid the expenses.
But with the voting public so inured to political scandal in Washington, all of those things together might not mean much for the party were it not already in deep water with the voters over the war in Iraq, its response to Hurricane Katrina and the summer's spike in gas prices. Bush's approval rating in some polls hovers around 40 percent, and Congress's is even lower.
Amy Walter, who analyzes House races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said, "If people were confident about the direction of the country, happy with performance of the White House and Congress, it's not as big of an issue. But when you put it in this in the current political environment, Democrats don't have to work very hard" to damage Republicans.
Walter's comments raise the question about whether Democrats will make ethics and scandal front-burner issues next year. Walter makes another salient point when she points out that approval ratings for Democrats aren't much higher right now than they are for Republicans.
Can Democrats coalesce around scandal and ethics as a unifying theme, after largely failing to do so with Iraq, Katrina, tax cuts and other major issues? Difficult to say.
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) fired a shot yesterday, saying in a statement: "The criminal indictment of Majority Leader Tom DeLay is the latest example that Republicans in Congress are plagued by a culture of corruption at the expense of the American people."
But when I called a top Democratic congressional staffer to discuss the broader political implications, the person was skittish and wanted go "on background."
Contrast the Democrats' tepid approach to that of the Republicans of the late 1980s and early 1990s. You could hardly turn on C-Span back then without seeing a pudgy, white-haired back-bencher from Georgia by the name of Newt Gingrich inveighing against the rampant corruption and arrogance of the Democratic party.
True enough, there are Democrats in Congress today with their own ethics problems , complicating efforts to tag the GOP as the party of low standards. But the same was true of the Republicans when they were in the minority party, and that didn't stop them from pressing their case against the Democrats. The bottom line is leaders are always held to a higher standard than back-benchers.
For a long time, Democrats acted like no one was listening or cared. Then came November 1994.
Will Republicans repeat that mistake?
© 2005 Washingtonpost.
Indictment of Republican Tom DeLay a serious blow for Bush agenda
BETH GORHAM
WASHINGTON (CP) - In a serious blow for President George W. Bush, powerful Republican Tom DeLay was forced to step down Wednesday as House majority leader to face a conspiracy charge in a Texas campaign finance scheme.
Bush, who relied on DeLay's tough style to push policy, is already having a tough time dealing with a party beleaguered by the weak response to hurricane Katrina and divided over how to pay for a massive rebuilding project.
Now DeLay's indictment after years of pushing ethical boundaries provides an opportunity for Democrats to pound Republicans on corruption issues in the run-up to next year's congressional elections.
DeLay, know as "the Hammer" on Capitol Hill, came out swinging and proclaimed his innocence after word broke that a Texas grand jury charged him and two associates with violating a law banning corporate contributions to state candidates.
The charge came after a long investigation by Democratic district attorney Ronald Earle that DeLay has always portrayed as a political witch hunt.
"I have done nothing wrong," said DeLay, calling Earle a "rogue prosecutor" and a "partisan fanatic."
"I am innocent," he said. "This is one of the weakest, most baseless indictments in American history. It's a sham."
Said Earle: "My job is to prosecute felonies. I'm doing my job."
Republicans expressed support for DeLay as they selected Roy Blunt from Missouri, the current party whip in the House, to fill in temporarily.
The White House also stuck by DeLay, calling him "a good ally, a leader who we have worked closely with to get things done for the American people."
"I think the president's view is that we need to let the legal process work," said press secretary Scott McClellan.
DeLay, who will keep his seat representing Houston suburbs, vowed he'll be back, saying Democrats won't be able to disrupt the party's agenda.
But some analysts don't see it that way, especially since Republicans have other high-profile ethical concerns.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is facing questions about the timing of a stock sale in a family-owned business.
Karl Rove, White House chief of staff, has been embroiled in controversy over the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame.
And a top federal procurement officer appointed by Bush was arrested this month on charges that he made false statements and obstructed a federal investigation into a golfing junket arranged by lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
DeLay, 58, has long been at the centre of controversy. He was admonished three times last year by the House ethics committee for his conduct on three separate issues.
Now a Senate panel is pursuing his ties to Abramoff and questions about who paid the bills for DeLay's expensive overseas travel.
"The Republicans can't focus right now," said Charles Cushman, a politics professor at George Washington University.
"You've got this swirling set of accusations about greed, corruption and graft. This is going to follow them right up to the 2008 election. It's going to hurt a lot."
Democrat Nancy Pelosi, House minority leader, was quick off the mark Wednesday.
"The criminal indictment . . . is the latest example that Republicans in Congress are plagued by a culture of corruption at the expense of the American people," she said in a statement.
The indictment accuses DeLay of accepting $155,000 US from companies and funnelling it through the Republican National Committee back to Texas state candidates, violating laws outlawing corporate donations.
It's a state felony punishable by up to two years in jail and a fine of up to $10,000.
The charge came three weeks after a state political action committee DeLay created, Texans for a Republican Majority, was also indicted on accepting corporate contributions for use in 2002 state legislative races.
John Colyandro, former executive director of the Texas committee, and Jim Ellis, who heads DeLay's national political committee, were also charged.
After Republicans gained control of the Texas legislature, DeLay created a federal redistricting plan that resulted in an increase of the Republican majority in the U.S. Congress.
© The Canadian Press, 2005
DeLay of Game
Dear President Bush-
Just a quick note to check in and let you know that I'm thinking about you today. All of your pals seem to be taking hits lately. Rove, Frist, Brownie and now Tom DeLay?
Well like they say on the Gulf Coast... when it rains it pours. With today's indictment of DeLay, the consumer confidence in the GOP brand would seem to be in full on free fall. I know you are also getting a lot of heat due to the war in Iraq and the Hurricane Katrina fiasco. And it just sucks on both counts. I mean, one was the vengeful act of an inscrutable higher power ... and the other was a hurricane. I'm sure you are as befuddled by the vociferousness of your detractors as you are by the words "vociferous" and "detractors". But I guess when you've got complete control of every branch of the government, you're going to have people who want to take you down. I would say it's almost Shakespearian, but I know that would really throw you. So buck up, little cowboy. I realize some of your big ideas like the privatization of Social Security are probably feeling less likely these days, but don't let it get you down. Remember, even your daddy didn’t get a second term. And they can’t take that away from you, right? Okay, they kinda did to Nixon, but try not to focus on that. Just work on appointing a couple of good Supreme Court justices and then take it easy. Hey, maybe you could take a little vacation.
Yours very truly,
-Dan Pasternack
Just a quick note to check in and let you know that I'm thinking about you today. All of your pals seem to be taking hits lately. Rove, Frist, Brownie and now Tom DeLay?
Well like they say on the Gulf Coast... when it rains it pours. With today's indictment of DeLay, the consumer confidence in the GOP brand would seem to be in full on free fall. I know you are also getting a lot of heat due to the war in Iraq and the Hurricane Katrina fiasco. And it just sucks on both counts. I mean, one was the vengeful act of an inscrutable higher power ... and the other was a hurricane. I'm sure you are as befuddled by the vociferousness of your detractors as you are by the words "vociferous" and "detractors". But I guess when you've got complete control of every branch of the government, you're going to have people who want to take you down. I would say it's almost Shakespearian, but I know that would really throw you. So buck up, little cowboy. I realize some of your big ideas like the privatization of Social Security are probably feeling less likely these days, but don't let it get you down. Remember, even your daddy didn’t get a second term. And they can’t take that away from you, right? Okay, they kinda did to Nixon, but try not to focus on that. Just work on appointing a couple of good Supreme Court justices and then take it easy. Hey, maybe you could take a little vacation.
Yours very truly,
-Dan Pasternack
No.2 Republican in U.S. House indicted
By Hilary Hylton
AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - The second-ranking Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, Majority Leader Tom DeLay, was indicted on Wednesday on a felony campaign-finance charge and temporarily stepped down from his post.
The powerful Republican, nicknamed "The Hammer" for his reputation as a tough party enforcer, could face up to two years in prison if convicted on the charge handed up by the Travis County grand jury in the Texas state capital, Austin.
DeLay was indicted on a single conspiracy charge tied to illegal fund-raising activities by Texans for a Republican Majority, or TRMPAC, a political action committee he created, the Travis County District Attorney's office said.
The indictment accuses DeLay and two alleged co-conspirators, John Colyandro and Jim Ellis, of engaging in a scheme to launder $190,000 in corporate donations through the Republican National Committee for distribution to Republican candidates for the Texas Legislature.
Texas law generally prohibits corporate money from being used for campaign activities.
Delay denied any wrongdoing.
House Republican rules require DeLay to give up his leadership position because of the indictment, although he can remain in Congress. Republicans had scrapped the indictment rule during the course of the DeLay probe, but then reversed the move this year following a public outcry.
DeLay, the second-ranking Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, said in a statement: "I have notified the speaker that I will temporarily step aside from my position as majority leader pursuant to rules of the House Republican Conference and the actions of the Travis County District Attorney today."
ETHICAL QUESTIONS
The indictment is the latest in a recent spate of ethical questions involving high ranking Republicans or Bush administration officials. Last week, it was disclosed that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was under federal investigation for a stock sale.
Also, the top White House procurement official resigned days before his arrest last week on lying and obstruction charges in a probe of a 2002 golf trip he took, while serving in another administration post, with a Republican lobbyist.
Republicans in the House were expected later in the day to meet and select a successor to DeLay, who was first elected as majority leader in November 2002.
Among the possible contenders were: House Republican Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri, Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier of California and Education and Workforce Committee Chairman John Boehner of Ohio.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan called DeLay "a good ally, a leader who we have worked closely with to get things done for the American people.,"
"I think that the president's view is that we need to let the legal process work," he said.
Delay, who has represented a Houston-area district since winning election to the House in 1984, dismissed the charges as having "no basis in the facts or the law."
DeLay has said he was not involved in TRMPAC's day-to-day activities.
WITCH HUNT
He has frequently accused Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, who has led the TRMPAC investigation, of conducting a political witch hunt and did so again on Wednesday.
"This indictment is nothing more than prosecutorial retribution by a partisan Democrat," he said.
DeLay's indictment was the latest in a growing line of charges related to TRMPAC.
On September 8, TRMPAC and lobby group Texas Association of Business were indicted on charges of illegally funnelling corporate donations into 2002 elections for Texas Legislature.
Last year, Colyandro, Ellis and Warren Robold, all DeLay associates, were indicted in the case and are awaiting trial. They were charged with accepting a total of $600,000 in illegal corporate contributions.
TRMPAC's money and expertise helped Republicans win control of the Texas Legislature for the first time since the post-Civil War Reconstruction era.
At DeLay's urging, the Legislature then conducted a controversial remapping of congressional districts that resulted in more Republicans from Texas being elected to the U.S. House.
George Bush in Hell
by David Michael Green
You would not want to be George W. Bush right now.
Not that you ever would anyhow, but especially not now. Indeed, there are indications that not even George W. Bush wants to be George W. Bush right now.
That second term in office, the one that just a year or two ago seemed so precious that he was willing to launch a war just to obtain it, now feels like a life sentence. Plans for four years spending political capital now look a lot more like endless months of capital punishment.
The Bush Administration has nowhere to go but down, and that is precisely where it is headed. Poll data show that even members of his solid-to-the-point-of-twelve-step-eligibility base are now deserting him as his job approval ratings plunge like so much Enron stock, lately crashing southward through the forty percent threshold. With almost his entire second term still in front of him, Bush is poised to set new records for presidential unpopularity. That scraping noise you hear? It's the sound of sheepish voters creeping out to the garage late at night, furtively removing "Bush-Cheney 2004" bumperstickers from the back of their SUVs when no one is looking.
Meanwhile, as the scales fall from the eyes of the hoi polloi, even the one constituency which could plausibly make the claim that Bush has been good for America (read: their wallets), is speaking the unspeakable as well. Robert Novak, of all people, wrote a column last week chronicling his experience watching rich Republicans at an Aspen retreat bash the idiocy of Bush administration policies on Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, stem-cell research and more. Perhaps these folks realized when they saw Trent Lott's house go under that Mother Nature doesn't care whether you're rich and well-connected any more than does al Qaeda. You may be on Karl Rove's Rolodex, but now Bush is taking you down and your yacht too, not just forgotten kids from the ghetto who enlisted in the Army as the only alternative to a life of poverty.
Even conservative columnists like David Brooks (though not Novak) are writing articles nowadays accurately describing the changed mood of the American public. Where those powerful currents are heading is unclear, but given the radical right experiment of the present as their point of departure, there would seem to be only two choices. We can either go completely off the deep-end and finally constitute the Fascist Republic of Cheney, or we can turn to the left, toward some semblance of rational policymaking. The latter seems far more likely, especially as America increasingly regains its senses after a long bout of temporary insanity. These are bad bits of news for poor George, but worse yet is that they are only the first signs of the coming apocalypse. The real fun stuff is just around the corner. I'll confess to more than a little schadenfreude as I contemplate the ugly situation staring Republicans officeholders in the face right now. They are tethered to a sinking ship, and have only two lousy options to choose from as November 2006 approaches. One is to stay the course and drown. The other is to start renouncing Bush and his policies, appear to voters as the complete hypocrites and political whores many will prove to be, and then still drown anyhow. Nobody could be more deserving of such a fate, with the possible exception of Democrats like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry who have been even more hypocritical yet in facilitating many of the president's disastrous policies.
Watching these GOP opportunists jump ship will certainly be fun, but the greatest fun awaits the president himself. Bush has now lost everything that once sustained him. That includes 9/11, now safely in the rearview mirror for most Americans. That includes his wartime rally-around-the-flag free pass, as he has failed to capture America's real enemy, while lying about bogus ones to justify an invasion pinning our defense forces down in an endless quagmire. That includes, post-Katrina, the ridiculous frame of Bush as competent leader, and the former reality of the press as frightened presidential waterboys.
And that's the good news for W. The bad news is all the chickens coming home to roost. The economy is anemic and fragile, and yet Bush has played the one card in his deck ostensibly (but never really) intended to remedy the country's economic woes. (Remember during the 2000 campaign when times were flush and tax cuts were the prescription? Remember in 2001 when the economy was in a recession and tax cuts were still the prescription?). In any case, Bush's one-note economic symphony has succeeded in producing precisely the cacophony of disaster that progressive commentators have predicted all along: massive deficits, little or no economic boost, a hemorrhaging of jobs overseas, and a vastly more polarized America of rich, poor and a disappearing middle class.
Another angry chicken, of course, is coming home in the form of devastating storms and a grossly incompetent administration to deal with them. Bush is not entirely responsible for Hurricanes Katrina or Rita, of course, but he is partially responsible for them by his willful ignorance of the global warming issue. And he is more than a little responsible for the carnage and damage done, because of his budget-slashing on preventative structural projects, because of his deployment of needed-at-home Guard forces to Iraq, because of his staffing of the government with completely incompetent crony hacks, and because of his and their astonishingly lame performance in responding to a known crisis. Where I come from, a president who remains on vacation during possibly the worst natural disaster to hit this country, praises his FEMA chief for doing a "heckuva job" when the guy doesn't know what any American with a TV set has known for 24 hours about New Orleans, and then later fires him for poor performance, is a president who should be impeached for those reasons alone.
The other demons awaiting George W. Bush just around the bend are multiple and grim. One of these days (right?), Patrick Fitzgerald is actually going to move on the Treasongate story, and signs suggest that multiple heads will roll within the White House. The political damage will be even worse than the legal, though, as Bush's clean and patriotic image will be smashed beyond repair, as no one will believe that he himself didn't know all along who committed treason by outing an American spy, and as he will likely lose the key magicians who have kept him afloat for five years and more. Oh well. W's loss will be Leavenworth's gain.
And there is more. The Jack Abramoff investigation has now been tied to the White House. There are also presumably an infinite number of other scandals waiting to explode (can you say 'Halliburton'?) should the Democrats capture either branch of Congress next year, not least of which being those concerning the Downing Street Memo revelations. Gas prices are off the charts and home heating bills are supposed to soar this winter. Jobs are disappearing, along with pensions and healthcare coverage, inflation is likely to rise, and voters are surly already.
But, of course, the biggest cross for Bush to bear is the one he built for himself, and thus the most richly deserved. In Iraq, simply put, there are no good options. None for America, that is, but even fewer for George W. Bush.
What can he do?
He can't win. America (or, more accurately, America's oligarchy) is clearly losing the war as it is. It is a fantasy to imagine that, at this late date, more troops could pacify the resistance. But even if that were so the political consequences to Bush, especially given his promise of no draft on his watch, would be devastating and rapid. American public opinion has already turned decisively against the war. Imagine if there were a draft and all the bumper-sticker patriots across the land had to actually make a sacrifice for their president's transparent lies. All hell would break loose, and the Republican Party would be dead for a generation.
He can't lose. The major downside to wrapping yourself in the flag, landing on aircraft carriers, labeling yourself a "war president", and being marketed in an election campaign as the reliable national security choice is that you had better deliver. Egged on by the likes of Cheney, Wolfowitz and Perle, Bush no doubt thought Iraq would be a fine little walk in the park from which he would benefit politically for the rest of his presidency. (Nor, assuming this president possesses anything resembling a conscience, need he have concerned himself with resulting deaths, since he told Pat Robertson "we're not going to have any casualties", and he may have even believed it.) Unfortunately for all concerned - most especially the Iraqis and American soldiers - Bush's presidency would be one very real casualty indeed should he decide to pick up his marbles and leave the arena, and so he will not, no matter the carnage or the futility. Doing so would be effectively admitting that there was no legitimate reason for the war in the first place. Everyone now knows that, of course, but were Bush ever to even hint at it, he would be committing instant political suicide. He can't draw. One option is to find some - any - kind of stability, declare victory and go home, saying we got Saddam, we brought democracy, yada, yada, yada. But how many Americans are now going to be fooled by calling an Iraq ruled by militants of one stripe or another a victory, after all the hooey about fighting for democracy in the Middle East? How many think replacing Saddam with a brutal dictator of another name is worth the price of 2,000 American troops and two or three hundred billion dollars? How many will be convinced that Iraqi women having fewer rights than they did under Saddam Hussein, of all regimes, represents a win for the home team? How many will still be unschooled enough to look at a Iranian-dominated theocracy in Iraq and call that a triumph? Moreover, even these total disasters presume a stability of some sort which may be little short of fantasy at this point. When the Saudi foreign minister goes public with his concerns that Iraq is careening toward civil war, you know you're in deep, and no amount inanities sanctimoniously uttered by Scotty McClellan can keep the truth at bay.
He can't get help. Now there's a good one. Maybe the French have finally seen the light and realized what a mistake they made by not bringing something to the party in 2003, eh? No doubt there's a long queue of countries behind them wanting to commit forces to the farces that are decomposing in the Cradle of Civilization. Luckily for George Bush you can still thumb your nose at the rest of the world and have them come to your rescue afterwards. Just think of what a pickle he would be in if that weren't the case...
He can't divert attention. Time was, a government in trouble at home could throw a little war in some hell-hole abroad and divert public attention away from their domestic or other foreign failures. Kinda like Reagan in Grenada, or the Argentinians in the Malvinas, or Thatcher in the Falklands. Yet, while the American public has managed to massively and repeatedly disappoint still sane observers in recent years, it doesn't appear to be in any mood for more of Mr. Bush's Fun With Foreign Policy antics. Not that the country any longer has the available military force to pull it off anyhow, but it hardly seems that an invasion of Iran right now would have much effect diverting attention from Iraq, even if it could somehow successfully be done, another fantasy in its own right.
In short, George W. Bush is toast, as is the whole regressive conservative movement of which he is but the most egregious exemplar. Not even another 9/11 would be likely to help him, as the security president who fails to provide security is the nothing (but simply failed) president. The demise of the right is now likely be true even if Democrats continue hurtling down their current path toward breaking all world records for political cowardice by a major party. Indeed, the worst of the Democrats may now also be in trouble amongst the base - as well they should be - for their cozy associations with the right, enabling its destructive march to the sea these last years.
It is thus too bad, as we emerge from the nightmare of the last quarter-century, that so many of us lefties are atheists, agnostics or otherwise debauched secular humanists. Not only have we had to suffer the reign of Bad King George here on Earth, we can't even have the satisfaction of knowing that he'll be spending the rest of eternity rotting in Hell.
The good news, though, is that he's already there, and the flames are only beginning to warm him up. Perhaps that is why Time describes the dry heaves of a young staffer who had to breach the fantasy bubble and tell this "cold and snappish" president the unhappy truth about an issue, or the National Enquirer's report that Bush, who according to a family member is "falling apart", is back to drinking.
Thus does a new possible ending to the Bush administration suddenly emerge as a real possibility. Previously, I had assumed that our long national nightmare would be over in one of three ways, either with Bush somehow managing to finish his term, with him being impeached, convicted and run out of Washington, or with him being impeached, convicted and then refusing to leave, precipitating a constitutional crisis and even, possibly, a civil war. Now I see a fourth very real possibility.
It was all fun and games when everybody loved him. When the guy who had failed at everything in life except having the right last name all of a sudden was showing those elitist snobs who was tops after all. When the man with a Texas size inferiority complex got to be adored by millions as if he were some kind of religious icon.
But what if that all changes? What if Diminutive George, just like LBJ before him, can't leave the completely scripted bubble his staff manufactures, just as such set-pieces become increasingly difficult to sustain? What if the Peevish President can't escape - even by going to Crawford or Camp David - the mothers of dead children, the baby-killer taunts, the stinging-because-they're-so-accurate chickenhawk accusations, the calls for his own daughters to go to Iraq, the possibility that everyone was right about him all along when they dismissed him as the family clown? What if all of a sudden, it sucks being president? Why bother, then?
It is clear now that one way the Bush administration might end would be with the president's resignation, in order for him to duck into more tranquil quarters. Who knows, maybe he could spend his days getting tanked in Crawford, not writing another book, or going into exile, perhaps in the south of France.
Of course, a pardon deal would have to be prearranged with Cheney, if they haven't convicted him yet, or with Hastert if they have. And, equally certainly, the resignation would be put down to "the president wanting to spend more time with his family", or some such ludicrous McClellanism, no more or less plausible than the rest of his daily fare. But the truth would be plain for all to see. The frat-boy party-time president who condemns kids less than half his age to the hell of futile battle in support of his lies would himself be deserting as commander-in-chief when the fun part ended. Kinda like he did last time he wore a uniform.
History, it would seem, all too rarely delivers justice. The privileged few go out of this life richer than they came into it, while the poor often leave even poorer, not to mention sooner. Those who commit unspeakable crimes sometimes become presidents or prime ministers, while those who dare speak truthfully of those deeds are crushed owing to the threat posed by their honesty.
Even more rare yet are the cases in which history delivers justice with a deliciously deserved irony. But George Bush has provided us with just such a case. And the very delicious irony is that he is now being undone by a cynical choice he himself made to go to war in Iraq with other people's blood and other people's treasure, for the purpose of enhancing his tenuous self-esteem and the power of his presidency.
Goodbye, George. May you know precisely the rest and precisely the peace someone who would do such a thing deserves.
You would not want to be George W. Bush right now.
Not that you ever would anyhow, but especially not now. Indeed, there are indications that not even George W. Bush wants to be George W. Bush right now.
That second term in office, the one that just a year or two ago seemed so precious that he was willing to launch a war just to obtain it, now feels like a life sentence. Plans for four years spending political capital now look a lot more like endless months of capital punishment.
The Bush Administration has nowhere to go but down, and that is precisely where it is headed. Poll data show that even members of his solid-to-the-point-of-twelve-step-eligibility base are now deserting him as his job approval ratings plunge like so much Enron stock, lately crashing southward through the forty percent threshold. With almost his entire second term still in front of him, Bush is poised to set new records for presidential unpopularity. That scraping noise you hear? It's the sound of sheepish voters creeping out to the garage late at night, furtively removing "Bush-Cheney 2004" bumperstickers from the back of their SUVs when no one is looking.
Meanwhile, as the scales fall from the eyes of the hoi polloi, even the one constituency which could plausibly make the claim that Bush has been good for America (read: their wallets), is speaking the unspeakable as well. Robert Novak, of all people, wrote a column last week chronicling his experience watching rich Republicans at an Aspen retreat bash the idiocy of Bush administration policies on Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, stem-cell research and more. Perhaps these folks realized when they saw Trent Lott's house go under that Mother Nature doesn't care whether you're rich and well-connected any more than does al Qaeda. You may be on Karl Rove's Rolodex, but now Bush is taking you down and your yacht too, not just forgotten kids from the ghetto who enlisted in the Army as the only alternative to a life of poverty.
Even conservative columnists like David Brooks (though not Novak) are writing articles nowadays accurately describing the changed mood of the American public. Where those powerful currents are heading is unclear, but given the radical right experiment of the present as their point of departure, there would seem to be only two choices. We can either go completely off the deep-end and finally constitute the Fascist Republic of Cheney, or we can turn to the left, toward some semblance of rational policymaking. The latter seems far more likely, especially as America increasingly regains its senses after a long bout of temporary insanity. These are bad bits of news for poor George, but worse yet is that they are only the first signs of the coming apocalypse. The real fun stuff is just around the corner. I'll confess to more than a little schadenfreude as I contemplate the ugly situation staring Republicans officeholders in the face right now. They are tethered to a sinking ship, and have only two lousy options to choose from as November 2006 approaches. One is to stay the course and drown. The other is to start renouncing Bush and his policies, appear to voters as the complete hypocrites and political whores many will prove to be, and then still drown anyhow. Nobody could be more deserving of such a fate, with the possible exception of Democrats like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry who have been even more hypocritical yet in facilitating many of the president's disastrous policies.
Watching these GOP opportunists jump ship will certainly be fun, but the greatest fun awaits the president himself. Bush has now lost everything that once sustained him. That includes 9/11, now safely in the rearview mirror for most Americans. That includes his wartime rally-around-the-flag free pass, as he has failed to capture America's real enemy, while lying about bogus ones to justify an invasion pinning our defense forces down in an endless quagmire. That includes, post-Katrina, the ridiculous frame of Bush as competent leader, and the former reality of the press as frightened presidential waterboys.
And that's the good news for W. The bad news is all the chickens coming home to roost. The economy is anemic and fragile, and yet Bush has played the one card in his deck ostensibly (but never really) intended to remedy the country's economic woes. (Remember during the 2000 campaign when times were flush and tax cuts were the prescription? Remember in 2001 when the economy was in a recession and tax cuts were still the prescription?). In any case, Bush's one-note economic symphony has succeeded in producing precisely the cacophony of disaster that progressive commentators have predicted all along: massive deficits, little or no economic boost, a hemorrhaging of jobs overseas, and a vastly more polarized America of rich, poor and a disappearing middle class.
Another angry chicken, of course, is coming home in the form of devastating storms and a grossly incompetent administration to deal with them. Bush is not entirely responsible for Hurricanes Katrina or Rita, of course, but he is partially responsible for them by his willful ignorance of the global warming issue. And he is more than a little responsible for the carnage and damage done, because of his budget-slashing on preventative structural projects, because of his deployment of needed-at-home Guard forces to Iraq, because of his staffing of the government with completely incompetent crony hacks, and because of his and their astonishingly lame performance in responding to a known crisis. Where I come from, a president who remains on vacation during possibly the worst natural disaster to hit this country, praises his FEMA chief for doing a "heckuva job" when the guy doesn't know what any American with a TV set has known for 24 hours about New Orleans, and then later fires him for poor performance, is a president who should be impeached for those reasons alone.
The other demons awaiting George W. Bush just around the bend are multiple and grim. One of these days (right?), Patrick Fitzgerald is actually going to move on the Treasongate story, and signs suggest that multiple heads will roll within the White House. The political damage will be even worse than the legal, though, as Bush's clean and patriotic image will be smashed beyond repair, as no one will believe that he himself didn't know all along who committed treason by outing an American spy, and as he will likely lose the key magicians who have kept him afloat for five years and more. Oh well. W's loss will be Leavenworth's gain.
And there is more. The Jack Abramoff investigation has now been tied to the White House. There are also presumably an infinite number of other scandals waiting to explode (can you say 'Halliburton'?) should the Democrats capture either branch of Congress next year, not least of which being those concerning the Downing Street Memo revelations. Gas prices are off the charts and home heating bills are supposed to soar this winter. Jobs are disappearing, along with pensions and healthcare coverage, inflation is likely to rise, and voters are surly already.
But, of course, the biggest cross for Bush to bear is the one he built for himself, and thus the most richly deserved. In Iraq, simply put, there are no good options. None for America, that is, but even fewer for George W. Bush.
What can he do?
He can't win. America (or, more accurately, America's oligarchy) is clearly losing the war as it is. It is a fantasy to imagine that, at this late date, more troops could pacify the resistance. But even if that were so the political consequences to Bush, especially given his promise of no draft on his watch, would be devastating and rapid. American public opinion has already turned decisively against the war. Imagine if there were a draft and all the bumper-sticker patriots across the land had to actually make a sacrifice for their president's transparent lies. All hell would break loose, and the Republican Party would be dead for a generation.
He can't lose. The major downside to wrapping yourself in the flag, landing on aircraft carriers, labeling yourself a "war president", and being marketed in an election campaign as the reliable national security choice is that you had better deliver. Egged on by the likes of Cheney, Wolfowitz and Perle, Bush no doubt thought Iraq would be a fine little walk in the park from which he would benefit politically for the rest of his presidency. (Nor, assuming this president possesses anything resembling a conscience, need he have concerned himself with resulting deaths, since he told Pat Robertson "we're not going to have any casualties", and he may have even believed it.) Unfortunately for all concerned - most especially the Iraqis and American soldiers - Bush's presidency would be one very real casualty indeed should he decide to pick up his marbles and leave the arena, and so he will not, no matter the carnage or the futility. Doing so would be effectively admitting that there was no legitimate reason for the war in the first place. Everyone now knows that, of course, but were Bush ever to even hint at it, he would be committing instant political suicide. He can't draw. One option is to find some - any - kind of stability, declare victory and go home, saying we got Saddam, we brought democracy, yada, yada, yada. But how many Americans are now going to be fooled by calling an Iraq ruled by militants of one stripe or another a victory, after all the hooey about fighting for democracy in the Middle East? How many think replacing Saddam with a brutal dictator of another name is worth the price of 2,000 American troops and two or three hundred billion dollars? How many will be convinced that Iraqi women having fewer rights than they did under Saddam Hussein, of all regimes, represents a win for the home team? How many will still be unschooled enough to look at a Iranian-dominated theocracy in Iraq and call that a triumph? Moreover, even these total disasters presume a stability of some sort which may be little short of fantasy at this point. When the Saudi foreign minister goes public with his concerns that Iraq is careening toward civil war, you know you're in deep, and no amount inanities sanctimoniously uttered by Scotty McClellan can keep the truth at bay.
He can't get help. Now there's a good one. Maybe the French have finally seen the light and realized what a mistake they made by not bringing something to the party in 2003, eh? No doubt there's a long queue of countries behind them wanting to commit forces to the farces that are decomposing in the Cradle of Civilization. Luckily for George Bush you can still thumb your nose at the rest of the world and have them come to your rescue afterwards. Just think of what a pickle he would be in if that weren't the case...
He can't divert attention. Time was, a government in trouble at home could throw a little war in some hell-hole abroad and divert public attention away from their domestic or other foreign failures. Kinda like Reagan in Grenada, or the Argentinians in the Malvinas, or Thatcher in the Falklands. Yet, while the American public has managed to massively and repeatedly disappoint still sane observers in recent years, it doesn't appear to be in any mood for more of Mr. Bush's Fun With Foreign Policy antics. Not that the country any longer has the available military force to pull it off anyhow, but it hardly seems that an invasion of Iran right now would have much effect diverting attention from Iraq, even if it could somehow successfully be done, another fantasy in its own right.
In short, George W. Bush is toast, as is the whole regressive conservative movement of which he is but the most egregious exemplar. Not even another 9/11 would be likely to help him, as the security president who fails to provide security is the nothing (but simply failed) president. The demise of the right is now likely be true even if Democrats continue hurtling down their current path toward breaking all world records for political cowardice by a major party. Indeed, the worst of the Democrats may now also be in trouble amongst the base - as well they should be - for their cozy associations with the right, enabling its destructive march to the sea these last years.
It is thus too bad, as we emerge from the nightmare of the last quarter-century, that so many of us lefties are atheists, agnostics or otherwise debauched secular humanists. Not only have we had to suffer the reign of Bad King George here on Earth, we can't even have the satisfaction of knowing that he'll be spending the rest of eternity rotting in Hell.
The good news, though, is that he's already there, and the flames are only beginning to warm him up. Perhaps that is why Time describes the dry heaves of a young staffer who had to breach the fantasy bubble and tell this "cold and snappish" president the unhappy truth about an issue, or the National Enquirer's report that Bush, who according to a family member is "falling apart", is back to drinking.
Thus does a new possible ending to the Bush administration suddenly emerge as a real possibility. Previously, I had assumed that our long national nightmare would be over in one of three ways, either with Bush somehow managing to finish his term, with him being impeached, convicted and run out of Washington, or with him being impeached, convicted and then refusing to leave, precipitating a constitutional crisis and even, possibly, a civil war. Now I see a fourth very real possibility.
It was all fun and games when everybody loved him. When the guy who had failed at everything in life except having the right last name all of a sudden was showing those elitist snobs who was tops after all. When the man with a Texas size inferiority complex got to be adored by millions as if he were some kind of religious icon.
But what if that all changes? What if Diminutive George, just like LBJ before him, can't leave the completely scripted bubble his staff manufactures, just as such set-pieces become increasingly difficult to sustain? What if the Peevish President can't escape - even by going to Crawford or Camp David - the mothers of dead children, the baby-killer taunts, the stinging-because-they're-so-accurate chickenhawk accusations, the calls for his own daughters to go to Iraq, the possibility that everyone was right about him all along when they dismissed him as the family clown? What if all of a sudden, it sucks being president? Why bother, then?
It is clear now that one way the Bush administration might end would be with the president's resignation, in order for him to duck into more tranquil quarters. Who knows, maybe he could spend his days getting tanked in Crawford, not writing another book, or going into exile, perhaps in the south of France.
Of course, a pardon deal would have to be prearranged with Cheney, if they haven't convicted him yet, or with Hastert if they have. And, equally certainly, the resignation would be put down to "the president wanting to spend more time with his family", or some such ludicrous McClellanism, no more or less plausible than the rest of his daily fare. But the truth would be plain for all to see. The frat-boy party-time president who condemns kids less than half his age to the hell of futile battle in support of his lies would himself be deserting as commander-in-chief when the fun part ended. Kinda like he did last time he wore a uniform.
History, it would seem, all too rarely delivers justice. The privileged few go out of this life richer than they came into it, while the poor often leave even poorer, not to mention sooner. Those who commit unspeakable crimes sometimes become presidents or prime ministers, while those who dare speak truthfully of those deeds are crushed owing to the threat posed by their honesty.
Even more rare yet are the cases in which history delivers justice with a deliciously deserved irony. But George Bush has provided us with just such a case. And the very delicious irony is that he is now being undone by a cynical choice he himself made to go to war in Iraq with other people's blood and other people's treasure, for the purpose of enhancing his tenuous self-esteem and the power of his presidency.
Goodbye, George. May you know precisely the rest and precisely the peace someone who would do such a thing deserves.
Hugo Chávez: The Anti-Elite President
by César Chelala
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's recent criticism of the Bush administration at the United Nations is only the latest in a war of words with the U.S. President. Chávez has repeatedly accused the Bush administration of trying to assassinate him, a charge U.S. officials have repeatedly denied. Chávez has threatened to cut off his country's oil supply to the United States. Not a light threat, since Venezuela is the world's fifth largest oil exporter, and the U.S. market absorbs almost 60 percent of its exports.
Who is Chávez, and what explains the current antagonism between him and the Bush administration?
Chávez is essentially a product of the failure of Venezuelan traditional parties to bring progress with economic justice to Venezuelans. He is as disliked by the elites in Venezuela as by members of the Bush administration - many of whom have been favorite targets of Chávez's scorn.
The feeling is mutual. At her Senate confirmation hearings in January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Chávez of meddling in the affairs of Venezuela's neighboring countries, a charge recently repeated by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during his visit to Latin America earlier this month.
Chávez, by contrast, has accused the United States of trying to topple him and has charged that U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency officials stationed in Venezuela have been conducting espionage and ordered them out of the country. In addition, to increase the Bush administration's displeasure, he hired 16,000 Cuban doctors to provide free medical attention to the poor. The Bush administration has been a severe critic of Chávez's close ties to Fidel Castro.
After winning a recall referendum last August, Chávez has embarked on a Latin American crusade that has won him popular support in several countries in the continent. He has carried out important economic cooperation agreements with countries such as Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. Through the PetroCaribe program, he has offered Venezuelan oil in very favorable conditions to Caribbean nations. He has also signed energy deals with France, India and China.
Chávez has taken advantage of his country's enormous oil reserves to improve the economic status of Venezuela's poor. Seventy-five percent of Venezuelans are poor, and 45 percent live in extreme poverty. Although many dislike his vociferous and authoritarian style, Chávez has done more for the poor and dispossessed in his country than any Venezuelan president in recent memory.
His government is pursuing an ambitious agrarian reform program. In addition, he is carrying out an educational program for people in the shantytowns of Venezuela aimed at including the disenfranchised and ignored into the country's political process.
Chávez has used oil revenues to finance infrastructure development, conduct literacy programs and create scores of small-scale workers' cooperatives in agriculture and other sectors. In 2004 Venezuela's state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela (PdVSA) spent more than $3.7 billion in housing for the poor, free medical clinics, schools, and literacy programs. More than 1.2 million adults have learned how to read since Chávez came into office, and the country now has one of highest literacy rates (93.4 percent) in the hemisphere.
Although Chávez is in general not accused of corruption himself, he has not been exempt from charges of economically favoring his allies. Critics of his government contend that his reforms are unsustainable, and that he is squandering valuable state resources. Also, he has been accused of increasingly concentrating power in his own hands, since he has now complete control of all state institutions.
Why do Venezuela's elites hate him so? Maybe because he has sharply curtailed their benefits. Through his "Zero Evasion Tax Plan," he has forced large corporations and landowners to pay taxes to an extent that they haven't done in the past. Elites, mainly white, also may hate him because, in this racially divided country, he is a darker color than they are.
Chavez's bold political initiatives have clearly put him on a collision course with the United States, a course in which he has the overwhelming support of the Latin American masses. Unless the relationship between both countries is more carefully managed, democracy may become the main casualty of this confrontation.
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Undeclared Civil War In Iraq
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 26, 2005
Behind the blood and chaos of the insurgents' bombs, there is an undeclared civil war already underway in Iraq, between the Sunni minority who ruled this country under Saddam and the Shiite majority.
CBS News correspondent Lara Logan reports there is a secret, ruthless cleansing of the country's towns and cities. Bodies — blindfolded, bound and executed — just appear, like the rotting corpses of 36 Sunni men that turned up in a dry riverbed south of Baghdad.
CBS News traced 16 of those men to a single street in a Baghdad suburb, where family members showed CBS News how the killers forced their way into their homes in the middle of the night and dragged away their sons and fathers.
"My uncles were tortured, they even poured acid on them," a young boy told CBS News.
Clutching photographs of the murdered men, the women and children left behind came together to grieve.
One woman said as her husband was marched away she sent her son after him with his slippers, but his abductor sent the child back with a chilling message: No need for slippers — he will come back dead.
They were targeted for one reason alone: all were Sunnis.
At a news conference with a U.S. ambassador, a prominent Sunni politician shouted that the mostly Shiite police force was behind many of the killings — a charge the police deny.
And the killing isn't one-sided. An ambush in a western Baghdad suburb last month began with the execution of an entire Shiite family inside their home.
CBS News was shown a pamphlet by a young man too afraid to reveal his face. It's an order for all Shiites to leave his neighborhood, or be killed — given to him in broad daylight by masked terrorists. The man said if he did not leave, he will die.
The police did nothing, so within days, a powerful Shiite militia struck back at the terrorists, raiding the same neighborhood. In much of Iraq, armed factions like this one operate beyond the law.
These killings have created a climate of fear, fuelled by the fact that no one is being held responsible. What is worse, no one appears to be capable, or more importantly, willing to stop the murders from escalating into an all out civil war.
Behind the blood and chaos of the insurgents' bombs, there is an undeclared civil war already underway in Iraq, between the Sunni minority who ruled this country under Saddam and the Shiite majority.
CBS News correspondent Lara Logan reports there is a secret, ruthless cleansing of the country's towns and cities. Bodies — blindfolded, bound and executed — just appear, like the rotting corpses of 36 Sunni men that turned up in a dry riverbed south of Baghdad.
CBS News traced 16 of those men to a single street in a Baghdad suburb, where family members showed CBS News how the killers forced their way into their homes in the middle of the night and dragged away their sons and fathers.
"My uncles were tortured, they even poured acid on them," a young boy told CBS News.
Clutching photographs of the murdered men, the women and children left behind came together to grieve.
One woman said as her husband was marched away she sent her son after him with his slippers, but his abductor sent the child back with a chilling message: No need for slippers — he will come back dead.
They were targeted for one reason alone: all were Sunnis.
At a news conference with a U.S. ambassador, a prominent Sunni politician shouted that the mostly Shiite police force was behind many of the killings — a charge the police deny.
And the killing isn't one-sided. An ambush in a western Baghdad suburb last month began with the execution of an entire Shiite family inside their home.
CBS News was shown a pamphlet by a young man too afraid to reveal his face. It's an order for all Shiites to leave his neighborhood, or be killed — given to him in broad daylight by masked terrorists. The man said if he did not leave, he will die.
The police did nothing, so within days, a powerful Shiite militia struck back at the terrorists, raiding the same neighborhood. In much of Iraq, armed factions like this one operate beyond the law.
These killings have created a climate of fear, fuelled by the fact that no one is being held responsible. What is worse, no one appears to be capable, or more importantly, willing to stop the murders from escalating into an all out civil war.
How Many More Will Die in Iraq?
The sacrifices are being made on the other side of the globe
by Sydney H. Schanberg
We are a nation at war—globally—against terrorism. But here at home, except for extra security at travel terminals, one could hardly guess it.
There is no war footing to be seen. Washington has not mobilized Americans on the home front. President Bush has made it clear that he wants it that way.
Yet the war is real. And the sacrifices are being borne solely by the roughly 160,000 men and women in uniform who are risking—and losing—their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. And by their grieving and worried families. National politicians, though they lavish the country's military population with warm rhetoric in public, privately do not regard them as a voting bloc to worry about.
As of early this week, 1,918 American soldiers have died in Iraq and another 236 in Afghanistan, for a total of 2,154. The count of wounded is has passed 15,000—more than 14,000 of them in Iraq. There is no official count of Iraqi civilian deaths in this war, but independent surveys put the death figure somewhere between 26,000 and 30,000. No reliable casualty figures on Afghan civilians are available.
While our soldiers die, the policies of the Bush administration call for virtually no sacrifices or commitments from the 300 million other Americans. To the contrary, they are told that their taxes will continue to be reduced—even as the war goes on, costing upwards of $5 billion each month.
The closest President Bush has come to seeking a nationwide commitment was a speech in which he asked Americans to use the Fourth of July to "find a way to thank the men and women defending our freedom by flying the flag, sending a letter to our troops in the field, or helping the military family down the street." A professor emeritus of military sociology at Northwestern University, Charles Moskos, calls this "Patriotism Lite." "That's what we're experiencing now in both political parties," he was quoted as saying in a recent New York Times story. "The political leaders are afraid to ask the public for any real sacrifice . . . "
So what does this failure to seek shared sacrifice mean? It seems to mean that our leaders—not only the Republicans but the Democrats, who followed meekly behind—knew that if they had spoken candidly to the public and told them that the threat from Iraq was not only not imminent but minimal and that therefore this was not a war of necessity but one of choice for other, unexplained reasons, then voters might have been aroused enough to rally and block the White House's rush to invasion. This would indicate that President Bush was convinced that, after the invasion, continued support for his crusade had to be conditioned on demanding little from the public. Meanwhile, our soldiers are being killed and crippled every day. In our system of democracy, this leaps out as a perversion. Are these volunteer men and women in uniform to be regarded simply as mercenaries? Or do we care about them?
This, therefore, has to be the strangest war ever declared by a United States president. Mr. Bush, who is commander in chief, will not attend military funerals. He will not speak with mourning family members who have publicly criticized his war policies. He gives speeches only to audiences of supporters carefully selected by his handlers. He has chosen to be sealed off from any dissenter. Even Richard Nixon during the Vietnam War came out of his bubble to talk to protesters at least once, at the Lincoln Memorial.
Also, the president keeps saying "we" must not withdraw precipitously from the war, when he should be saying "they"—the soldiers who are actually fighting the war and living, or dying, amid its bestialities. In his life, George W. Bush has never been in war of any kind. Neither have the civilians in his close circle, who, with him, conceived the Iraq war and told America that with the "shock and awe" blitzkrieg they had planned, it was going to be, well, easy.
Nothing has turned out the way these neoconservatives said it would. And they have never brought themselves to utter even a modest "excuse me." A great nation has to have enough character and spine to be able to say "I'm sorry." Our current leaders have to be tall enough to admit their mistakes—or be judged small by history. At the moment, they are sticking to their guns, in a manner of speaking.
In Iraq right now, little is stable. With a newly drafted, American-guided Iraqi constitution having alienated the Sunni portion of the population and left other key issues vague, such as the formula for how oil revenues would be shared among the competing blocs, the threat of an Iraqi civil war looms once more. This comes as no surprise to anyone who took a glance at Iraqi history before we went to war. That was another piece of the truth the Bush White House ignored as it broke all speed limits in getting the shooting started in March 2003.
Let us remember wistfully those Pentagon generals who, before the war, said openly that we were going into Iraq with too few troops. They warned that twice the number—250,000 to 300,000—would be needed if, after the initial invasion, we hoped to secure Iraq and keep the peace while the Iraqis struggled through their tribal hatreds toward a form of life, democracy, that they had never known but that Bush promised would be the end result. But Bush and his war planners rudely dismissed the generals' cautions. So here we are, as a nation, with a failed, unreal crusade, yet feeling responsible for the mess our leaders have created and therefore realizing that we can't just walk out of Iraq tomorrow and slam the door behind us.
But we can—and should—immediately produce a clearly stated plan that will set calendar goals for a phased withdrawal. The Iraqis will then know we are serious about not allowing this chaos to continue indefinitely. They, with our help, will have to speed up the training of their new army and police forces. And maybe they will have to ask their allies in the Middle East, Arab and non-Arab, to help them militarily.
President Bush, if he has any hope of being remembered as a leader who arrived eventually at reality and wisdom, will have to stop scorning as unpatriotic everyone who proposes an exit strategy. He describes such dissenters—that would include myself—as misguided Americans who want to "cut and run" and thus help the terrorists. As bold and brave as he may imagine himself, the truly brave are those on the battlefield, who were sent there by him. (Humility, he seems to forget, is another trait that marks a great leader.)
Let us honor these men and women by giving them a blueprint for getting them home. We cannot ask them to be the only Americans to make sacrifices for their country and to do so without end. Each of our soldiers' lives is as important as that of the president or any member of his family. The president might think hard about that—as the numbers of the fallen keep multiplying.
..
by Sydney H. Schanberg
We are a nation at war—globally—against terrorism. But here at home, except for extra security at travel terminals, one could hardly guess it.
There is no war footing to be seen. Washington has not mobilized Americans on the home front. President Bush has made it clear that he wants it that way.
Yet the war is real. And the sacrifices are being borne solely by the roughly 160,000 men and women in uniform who are risking—and losing—their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. And by their grieving and worried families. National politicians, though they lavish the country's military population with warm rhetoric in public, privately do not regard them as a voting bloc to worry about.
As of early this week, 1,918 American soldiers have died in Iraq and another 236 in Afghanistan, for a total of 2,154. The count of wounded is has passed 15,000—more than 14,000 of them in Iraq. There is no official count of Iraqi civilian deaths in this war, but independent surveys put the death figure somewhere between 26,000 and 30,000. No reliable casualty figures on Afghan civilians are available.
While our soldiers die, the policies of the Bush administration call for virtually no sacrifices or commitments from the 300 million other Americans. To the contrary, they are told that their taxes will continue to be reduced—even as the war goes on, costing upwards of $5 billion each month.
The closest President Bush has come to seeking a nationwide commitment was a speech in which he asked Americans to use the Fourth of July to "find a way to thank the men and women defending our freedom by flying the flag, sending a letter to our troops in the field, or helping the military family down the street." A professor emeritus of military sociology at Northwestern University, Charles Moskos, calls this "Patriotism Lite." "That's what we're experiencing now in both political parties," he was quoted as saying in a recent New York Times story. "The political leaders are afraid to ask the public for any real sacrifice . . . "
So what does this failure to seek shared sacrifice mean? It seems to mean that our leaders—not only the Republicans but the Democrats, who followed meekly behind—knew that if they had spoken candidly to the public and told them that the threat from Iraq was not only not imminent but minimal and that therefore this was not a war of necessity but one of choice for other, unexplained reasons, then voters might have been aroused enough to rally and block the White House's rush to invasion. This would indicate that President Bush was convinced that, after the invasion, continued support for his crusade had to be conditioned on demanding little from the public. Meanwhile, our soldiers are being killed and crippled every day. In our system of democracy, this leaps out as a perversion. Are these volunteer men and women in uniform to be regarded simply as mercenaries? Or do we care about them?
This, therefore, has to be the strangest war ever declared by a United States president. Mr. Bush, who is commander in chief, will not attend military funerals. He will not speak with mourning family members who have publicly criticized his war policies. He gives speeches only to audiences of supporters carefully selected by his handlers. He has chosen to be sealed off from any dissenter. Even Richard Nixon during the Vietnam War came out of his bubble to talk to protesters at least once, at the Lincoln Memorial.
Also, the president keeps saying "we" must not withdraw precipitously from the war, when he should be saying "they"—the soldiers who are actually fighting the war and living, or dying, amid its bestialities. In his life, George W. Bush has never been in war of any kind. Neither have the civilians in his close circle, who, with him, conceived the Iraq war and told America that with the "shock and awe" blitzkrieg they had planned, it was going to be, well, easy.
Nothing has turned out the way these neoconservatives said it would. And they have never brought themselves to utter even a modest "excuse me." A great nation has to have enough character and spine to be able to say "I'm sorry." Our current leaders have to be tall enough to admit their mistakes—or be judged small by history. At the moment, they are sticking to their guns, in a manner of speaking.
In Iraq right now, little is stable. With a newly drafted, American-guided Iraqi constitution having alienated the Sunni portion of the population and left other key issues vague, such as the formula for how oil revenues would be shared among the competing blocs, the threat of an Iraqi civil war looms once more. This comes as no surprise to anyone who took a glance at Iraqi history before we went to war. That was another piece of the truth the Bush White House ignored as it broke all speed limits in getting the shooting started in March 2003.
Let us remember wistfully those Pentagon generals who, before the war, said openly that we were going into Iraq with too few troops. They warned that twice the number—250,000 to 300,000—would be needed if, after the initial invasion, we hoped to secure Iraq and keep the peace while the Iraqis struggled through their tribal hatreds toward a form of life, democracy, that they had never known but that Bush promised would be the end result. But Bush and his war planners rudely dismissed the generals' cautions. So here we are, as a nation, with a failed, unreal crusade, yet feeling responsible for the mess our leaders have created and therefore realizing that we can't just walk out of Iraq tomorrow and slam the door behind us.
But we can—and should—immediately produce a clearly stated plan that will set calendar goals for a phased withdrawal. The Iraqis will then know we are serious about not allowing this chaos to continue indefinitely. They, with our help, will have to speed up the training of their new army and police forces. And maybe they will have to ask their allies in the Middle East, Arab and non-Arab, to help them militarily.
President Bush, if he has any hope of being remembered as a leader who arrived eventually at reality and wisdom, will have to stop scorning as unpatriotic everyone who proposes an exit strategy. He describes such dissenters—that would include myself—as misguided Americans who want to "cut and run" and thus help the terrorists. As bold and brave as he may imagine himself, the truly brave are those on the battlefield, who were sent there by him. (Humility, he seems to forget, is another trait that marks a great leader.)
Let us honor these men and women by giving them a blueprint for getting them home. We cannot ask them to be the only Americans to make sacrifices for their country and to do so without end. Each of our soldiers' lives is as important as that of the president or any member of his family. The president might think hard about that—as the numbers of the fallen keep multiplying.
..
Sen. Frist: Avoiding Conflict for Fun and Profit
by Arianna Huffington
For over a decade Bill Frist has steadfastly rejected all suggestions that his ownership of up to $25 million worth of stock in HCA -- the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chain, founded by his father -- created a conflict of interest for a Senator deeply involved in shaping health care policy.
Then, this past June, Frist suddenly changed course and, in what he claims was an effort to avoid any conflict of interest, decided to sell off the stock. Nine days before the share price hit an all time high.
And just one month before a company warning of weakening earnings sent the stock price tumbling.
As the Church Lady would say: “How convenient!”
After all, the Good Doctor has had ample opportunity to examine the conflict question. He insisted owning HCA stock wasn't a conflict back in 1994 when he first ran for the Senate -- and the stock was trading at $27 a share. He was just as adamant in 1999 when the issue was raised during his efforts to block President Clinton’s patients’ bill of rights -- and the stock was at $24. And again in 2003, when he championed the Medicare prescription drug bill that directly benefited HCA -- and the stock was at $41. And again in 2004, when consumer groups cried foul about his involvement in the debate over malpractice reform (another potential financial boon to HCA) -- and the stock was at $40.
So, if owning HCA stock wasn’t a conflict of interest when it was trading at $24, $27, $40, and $41 a share, why did it suddenly become a problem at $58 a share? Was the Majority Leader’s sudden burst of ethical sensitivity due to the latest round of complaints raised by… oh, sorry, there weren’t any complaints. Then maybe it was the brewing firestorm over… hmm, there wasn’t a firestorm either.
Or could it, just maybe, I don’t know… have been part and parcel of a massive stock sell-off by HCA insiders? Now, I’m not saying that Frist was pulling a Martha Stewart. But, if he wasn’t, then he sure is one lucky SOB.
Forget running for president. Frist’s next gig should be doling out stock tips on CNBC (although he clearly hasn’t always been so blessed when it comes to playing the market).
Which bring us to the other big question facing Frist: why has he spent so much time and energy lying about how blind his not-at-all-blind trust actually is?
According to Senate rules, Frist is allowed to receive information about the trust, and has the power to order the sale of a stock. Then why has he long been painting such a dramatically different picture?
“I have absolutely no input,” he said of the trust in 2000. “[The trustees] have 100 percent control.” An out and out lie -- unless determining when to sell the stock doesn’t qualify as “input”.
And that’s far from the only time Frist has been deceptive about his level of awareness and input regarding his stock holdings.
In January 2003, Frist told a television interviewer, “It should be understood that I put this into a blind trust. So as far as I know, I own no HCA stock” Sounds very reasonable and very convincing. I mean, it’s called a “blind trust,” right? Only problem is, we now have the documents that show that just two weeks before making that claim, Frist had been informed that more HCA stock had been added to his trust. And eight months earlier he had been advised that the trust had purchased $750,000 to $1.5 million in HCA stock.
In that same interview, Frist said of the trust, “I have no control. It is illegal right now for me to know what the composition of those trusts are. So I have no idea.” But it isn’t illegal -- and Frist had a damn good idea about the makeup of the trust, having received nearly two dozen updates from the trustees between 2001 and July 2005.
Even after the story broke last week, Frist’s staff steadfastly stuck to playing the clueless card. “Frist had no control over when the stocks were sold,” said his spokesperson, Amy Call. Other than knowing the perfect moment to dump it, that is.
Politicians clearly want to have it both ways, and not-really-blind trusts let them do just that -- able to control their assets while giving voters the illusion of absolutely no control. But Frist went that extra mile, repeatedly lying through his teeth not to cover up a crime -- but to make himself look better.
In doing so, he has transformed himself from ready-made 2008 frontrunner into instant political punchline: “Bill Frist has this all upside down,” said Rahm Emanuel. “He thought Terri Schiavo could see and his trust was blind.”
A Majority Leader who is a proven serial liar -- and probably an insider trader -- is the last thing the GOP needs right now. Frist should remember what happened to Trent Lott (after all, he helped shove him aside) and resign while he can.
For over a decade Bill Frist has steadfastly rejected all suggestions that his ownership of up to $25 million worth of stock in HCA -- the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chain, founded by his father -- created a conflict of interest for a Senator deeply involved in shaping health care policy.
Then, this past June, Frist suddenly changed course and, in what he claims was an effort to avoid any conflict of interest, decided to sell off the stock. Nine days before the share price hit an all time high.
And just one month before a company warning of weakening earnings sent the stock price tumbling.
As the Church Lady would say: “How convenient!”
After all, the Good Doctor has had ample opportunity to examine the conflict question. He insisted owning HCA stock wasn't a conflict back in 1994 when he first ran for the Senate -- and the stock was trading at $27 a share. He was just as adamant in 1999 when the issue was raised during his efforts to block President Clinton’s patients’ bill of rights -- and the stock was at $24. And again in 2003, when he championed the Medicare prescription drug bill that directly benefited HCA -- and the stock was at $41. And again in 2004, when consumer groups cried foul about his involvement in the debate over malpractice reform (another potential financial boon to HCA) -- and the stock was at $40.
So, if owning HCA stock wasn’t a conflict of interest when it was trading at $24, $27, $40, and $41 a share, why did it suddenly become a problem at $58 a share? Was the Majority Leader’s sudden burst of ethical sensitivity due to the latest round of complaints raised by… oh, sorry, there weren’t any complaints. Then maybe it was the brewing firestorm over… hmm, there wasn’t a firestorm either.
Or could it, just maybe, I don’t know… have been part and parcel of a massive stock sell-off by HCA insiders? Now, I’m not saying that Frist was pulling a Martha Stewart. But, if he wasn’t, then he sure is one lucky SOB.
Forget running for president. Frist’s next gig should be doling out stock tips on CNBC (although he clearly hasn’t always been so blessed when it comes to playing the market).
Which bring us to the other big question facing Frist: why has he spent so much time and energy lying about how blind his not-at-all-blind trust actually is?
According to Senate rules, Frist is allowed to receive information about the trust, and has the power to order the sale of a stock. Then why has he long been painting such a dramatically different picture?
“I have absolutely no input,” he said of the trust in 2000. “[The trustees] have 100 percent control.” An out and out lie -- unless determining when to sell the stock doesn’t qualify as “input”.
And that’s far from the only time Frist has been deceptive about his level of awareness and input regarding his stock holdings.
In January 2003, Frist told a television interviewer, “It should be understood that I put this into a blind trust. So as far as I know, I own no HCA stock” Sounds very reasonable and very convincing. I mean, it’s called a “blind trust,” right? Only problem is, we now have the documents that show that just two weeks before making that claim, Frist had been informed that more HCA stock had been added to his trust. And eight months earlier he had been advised that the trust had purchased $750,000 to $1.5 million in HCA stock.
In that same interview, Frist said of the trust, “I have no control. It is illegal right now for me to know what the composition of those trusts are. So I have no idea.” But it isn’t illegal -- and Frist had a damn good idea about the makeup of the trust, having received nearly two dozen updates from the trustees between 2001 and July 2005.
Even after the story broke last week, Frist’s staff steadfastly stuck to playing the clueless card. “Frist had no control over when the stocks were sold,” said his spokesperson, Amy Call. Other than knowing the perfect moment to dump it, that is.
Politicians clearly want to have it both ways, and not-really-blind trusts let them do just that -- able to control their assets while giving voters the illusion of absolutely no control. But Frist went that extra mile, repeatedly lying through his teeth not to cover up a crime -- but to make himself look better.
In doing so, he has transformed himself from ready-made 2008 frontrunner into instant political punchline: “Bill Frist has this all upside down,” said Rahm Emanuel. “He thought Terri Schiavo could see and his trust was blind.”
A Majority Leader who is a proven serial liar -- and probably an insider trader -- is the last thing the GOP needs right now. Frist should remember what happened to Trent Lott (after all, he helped shove him aside) and resign while he can.
The late-night crew hammers away at President Bush
"Bush is keeping track of Hurricane Rita as it hits his home state of Texas. That's Bush's worst nightmare: an electric chair with no power."
--Jay Leno
"Hurricane Rita is supposed to make landfall in Texas, which is good for Barbara Bush because she can insult survivors closer to home."
--Bill Maher
"Yesterday President Bush made his fifth visit to the area that received the most damage from Hurricane Katrina. In other words, the White House."
--Conan O'Brien
"The president believes the government should be limited not in size, Jon, but in effectiveness. In terms of effectiveness, this is the most limited government we've ever had."
--Daily Show correspondent Rob Corddry
"Now here's some sad information coming out of Washington. According to reports, President Bush may be drinking again. And I thought, `Well, why not? He's got everybody else drinking.'"
--David Letterman
--Jay Leno
"Hurricane Rita is supposed to make landfall in Texas, which is good for Barbara Bush because she can insult survivors closer to home."
--Bill Maher
"Yesterday President Bush made his fifth visit to the area that received the most damage from Hurricane Katrina. In other words, the White House."
--Conan O'Brien
"The president believes the government should be limited not in size, Jon, but in effectiveness. In terms of effectiveness, this is the most limited government we've ever had."
--Daily Show correspondent Rob Corddry
"Now here's some sad information coming out of Washington. According to reports, President Bush may be drinking again. And I thought, `Well, why not? He's got everybody else drinking.'"
--David Letterman
American Family Voices from Miriam V.
AM Feed - September 27, 2005
Hot Topics
List of 2 items
New tougher personal bankruptcy laws are set to take effect less than three
weeks from today - laws that will almost certainly further squeeze victims
of
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. And yet the White House and leading House
Republicans have rejected calls to offer these victims relief. Remember,
when the
credit card industry backed law was passed last spring, the
Republican-controlled House explicitly rejected an amendment that would have
granted leeway
for natural disaster victims. It appears all the destruction in along the
Gulf Coast hasn't changed any minds. Some victims could scramble to file
before
the law takes effect on October 17, but for many of the displaced, that is
an impossibility - bankruptcy charges must be filed in a local court. White
House spokesman Trent Duffy says the Bush administration "doesn't see a lot
of merit" in trying to delay the new law from taking effect.
[link]
The new chair and vice chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have
donated nearly $1 million to Republican causes over the last 15 years
between
the two of them. Cheryl Halpern, who replaces the contentious Kenneth
Tomlinson as chair, and new vice chair Gay Hart Gaines, have made a long and
expensive
habit of filling conservative coffers. Halpern also has close ties to
Tomlinson, who led a crusade to shoehorn more conservatives into public
airwaves
and awarded contracts to Republican lobbyists without informing the rest of
the board.
[link]
list end
Who Says That?
"I think that what a lot of Americans saw was a - some poverty that they had
never imagined before. And we need to address that, whether it be rural or
urban. And I have done that as the President." - President Bush, discussing
his record on poverty.
Morning Snark
List of 1 items
For the record: The poverty rate in this country has risen for four straight
years from 2001-2004 after declining every year from 1993-2000, and
President
Bush has slashed funding for multiple programs designed to help low-income
Americans. Mr. President, whatever you think you're doing to address this
problem,
please stop immediately.
list end
Monday, September 26, 2005
Republicans' Proposed Cuts to Offset Cost of Rebuilding Gulf Coast
List of 12 items
. $225 billion cut from Medicaid, the last-resort health insurance program
for the very poor.
. $200 billion cut from Medicare, the health care safety net for the elderly
and the disabled.
. $25 billion cut from the Centers for Disease Control
. $6.7 billion cut from school lunches for poor children
. $7.5 billion cut from programs to fight global AIDS
. $5.5 billion to eliminate all funding for the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting
. $3.6 billion cut to eliminate the National Endowments for the Arts and
Humanities
. $8.5 billion cut to eliminate all subsidized loans to graduate students.
. $2.5 billion cut from Amtrak
. $2.5 billion to eliminate the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative
. $417 million cut to eliminate the Minority Business Development Agency
. $4.8 billion cut to eliminate all funding for the Safe and Drug-Free
schools program
list end
Posted by Miriam V.
from Miriam V.
I guess you heard about Rumsfeld's briefing this morning. He told Bush that
3 Brazilian soldiers were killed in Iraq and -- to everyone's amazement --
Bush just lost it. Head in hands, really shaken . . . kinda whimpering.
Finally, he asks Rumsfeld, "how many is a brazillion?"
Block quote end
The Ghosts of New Orleans
by Bob Dylan
Memories of a magic place: One of the passages in Bob Dylan's "Chronicles, Volume One" is about time he spent in New Orleans in the late 1980s. It was written before the city was devastated by the storm Katrina.
The first thing you notice about New Orleans are the burying grounds - the cemeteries - and they're a cold proposition, one of the best things there are here. Going by, you try to be as quiet as possible, better to let them sleep. Greek, Roman, sepulchres- palatial mausoleums made to order, phantomesque, signs and symbols of hidden decay - ghosts of women and men who have sinned and who've died and are now living in tombs. The past doesn't pass away so quickly here. You could be dead for a long time.
The ghosts race towards the light, you can almost hear the heavy breathing spirits, all determined to get somewhere. New Orleans, unlike a lot of those places you go back to and that don't have the magic anymore, still has got it. Night can swallow you up, yet none of it touches you. Around any corner, there's a promise of something daring and ideal and things are just getting going. There's something obscenely joyful behind every door, either that or somebody crying with their head in their hands. A lazy rhythm looms in the dreamy air and the atmosphere pulsates with bygone duels, past-life romance, comrades requesting comrades to aid them in some way. You can't see it, but you know it's here. Somebody is always sinking. Everyone seems to be from some very old Southern families. Either that or a foreigner. I like the way it is.
There are a lot of places I like, but I like New Orleans better. There's a thousand different angles at any moment. At any time you could run into a ritual honoring some vaguely known queen. Bluebloods, titled persons like crazy drunks, lean weakly against the walls and drag themselves through the gutter. Even they seem to have insights you might want to listen to. No action seems inappropriate here. The city is one very long poem. Gardens full of pansies, pink petunias, opiates. Flower-bedecked shrines, white myrtles, bougainvillea and purple oleander stimulate your senses, make you feel cool and clear inside.
Everything in New Orleans is a good idea. Bijou temple-type cottages and lyric cathedrals side by side. Houses and mansions, structures of wild grace. Italianate, Gothic, Romanesque, Greek Revival standing in a long line in the rain. Roman Catholic art. Sweeping front porches, turrets, cast-iron balconies, colonnades- 30-foot columns, gloriously beautiful- double pitched roofs, all the architecture of the whole wide world and it doesn't move. All that and a town square where public executions took place. In New Orleans you could almost see other dimensions. There's only one day at a time here, then it's tonight and then tomorrow will be today again. Chronic melancholia hanging from the trees. You never get tired of it. After a while you start to feel like a ghost from one of the tombs, like you're in a wax museum below crimson clouds. Spirit empire. Wealthy empire. One of Napoleon's generals, Lallemaud, was said to have come here to check it out, looking for a place for his commander to seek refuge after Waterloo. He scouted around and left, said that here the devil is damned, just like everybody else, only worse. The devil comes here and sighs. New Orleans. Exquisite, old-fashioned. A great place to live vicariously. Nothing makes any difference and you never feel hurt, a great place to really hit on things. Somebody puts something in front of you here and you might as well drink it. Great place to be intimate or do nothing. A place to come and hope you'll get smart - to feed pigeons looking for handouts. A great place to record. It has to be - or so I thought.
Excerpted from ''Chronicles, Volume One'' by Bob Dylan. Copyright © 2004 by Bob Dylan. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc., NY.
Copyright © 2005 The International Herald Tribune
###
Response to Rita illustrates how government failed after Katrina
By Jonathan S. Landay, Seth Borenstein and Alison Young, Knight Ridder Newspapers
Sun Sep 25, 8:18 PM ET
WASHINGTON - The speed with which the federal government marshaled significant military and other resources to evacuate, rescue and care for victims of Hurricane Rita raises new questions about why Washington was so slow to respond to Hurricane Katrina less than four weeks earlier.
The Bush administration says it's researching whether the federal government needs to have greater authority to respond to disasters - and whether the military should be in charge.
The response to Rita, however, suggests that the government had plenty of authority to respond to Katrina and that what was lacking during Katrina was an understanding of when to use that authority.
"The atmosphere here is very, very different than it was in the days following Katrina," said John Pine, Louisiana State University Disaster Science and Management director. Pine was in Louisiana's emergency operations center in Baton Rouge on Sunday and said that nearly as many federal officials were present as those from state and local agencies.
A day after Katrina, "it was all on the shoulders of state and locals," Pine said. "There was a lot more staging of a lot more operations in place for the second storm. ... I think you see a huge difference."
To be sure, the devastation wreaked last month by Katrina appears to have been far greater than that caused by Rita. But experts say the threat posed by both should have prompted similar preparations and responses - and similar high-level attention from the Bush administration.
Both storms barreled through the Gulf of Mexico toward large population centers. Both reached Category 5 strength before weakening slightly as they made landfall. And both storms had similar potential for catastrophe - with the approach of Katrina perhaps causing even greater concern because of its track toward New Orleans' below-sea-level population, which was at risk both from the storm and from levees long known to be vulnerable to a direct hit.
Federal officials have been avoiding a detailed discussion of what went wrong during Katrina, when President Bush and other top federal officials were on vacation.
But in praising response to Rita, they provide some guidance, even if unintended, in assessing the government's response to Katrina, which killed more than 1,000 people in Louisiana and Mississippi. At least some of those deaths came in the days during which Katrina victims went largely without federal assistance.
Among the differences:
-President Bush took an active role in monitoring preparations for Rita, even traveling to Colorado to observe how the military's Northern Command responded to the disaster. During Katrina, Bush remained in Crawford, Texas, then traveled to Arizona and California for previously scheduled political appearances as the storm hit.
Other top officials were more actively involved in Rita preparations and remained on the case as the storm came ashore. For Katrina, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld attended a ball game in San Diego as New Orleans flooded and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff attended a previously scheduled briefing on avian flu in Atlanta.
- For Rita, FEMA was more aggressive in getting supplies into the affected areas. As Katrina hit, FEMA said it would have 500 truckloads of water and 500 truckloads of ice for the first 10 days after the storm. The day after Rita hit, 348 truckloads of water and 275 truckloads of ice were already on hand and FEMA's acting director promised that Louisiana would get an additional 200 truckloads of water and 200 truckloads of ice each day thereafter.
-FEMA also moved nearly twice as many urban search and rescue teams into the area for Rita than for Katrina, according to the agency's documents. Before Katrina struck, nine rescue teams were pre-deployed; the number was 17 for Rita.
-Chertoff moved much more quickly in declaring Rita an "incident of national significance," something he did two days before Rita struck, but 36 hours after Katrina had devastated the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts. Chertoff's spokesman says the designation had little practical impact, but others said it allowed the appointment of a Coast Guard admiral to be the top federal official running the federal response even before Rita arrived.
-The Defense Department was actively involved in preparing for Rita in contrast to days of delay before activating its response to Katrina.
U.S. military involvement with Hurricane Rita began while the storm was still churning across the Gulf of Mexico. The Pentagon announced the creation of a joint task force for Rita relief efforts four days before the storm hit, and thousands of active-duty troops were placed on alert for immediate deployment before landfall.
By comparison, the Pentagon did not activate its Katrina task force until two days after Katrina struck and active-duty military units were not used in any major way until at least three days after. The first major deployment of active-duty ground troops did not occur until five days after Katrina struck.
Perhaps the most startling difference was the military's role in evacuating thousands of nursing home residents, hospital patients and other frail people ahead of Rita. During Katrina, hundreds of such patients languished for days in water-surrounded facilities.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the military conducted the evacuations at the request of the Department of Health and Human Services, a request Whitman acknowledged was "a bit outside the chain of command." Under the federal government's National Response Plan, such a request would normally come from FEMA.
Northern Command's preparations for Hurricane Rita also included placing on alert five two-man teams to set up long-range communications in the hardest-hit areas if requested by federal disaster relief officials. The teams were equipped with satellite telephones and fax machines.
Michael Kucharek, a Northern Command spokesman, said the move was "probably one of the quick lessons learned" from Hurricane Katrina, which knocked out phone lines and cellular towers in Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama, hampering relief operations for days.
Sun Sep 25, 8:18 PM ET
WASHINGTON - The speed with which the federal government marshaled significant military and other resources to evacuate, rescue and care for victims of Hurricane Rita raises new questions about why Washington was so slow to respond to Hurricane Katrina less than four weeks earlier.
The Bush administration says it's researching whether the federal government needs to have greater authority to respond to disasters - and whether the military should be in charge.
The response to Rita, however, suggests that the government had plenty of authority to respond to Katrina and that what was lacking during Katrina was an understanding of when to use that authority.
"The atmosphere here is very, very different than it was in the days following Katrina," said John Pine, Louisiana State University Disaster Science and Management director. Pine was in Louisiana's emergency operations center in Baton Rouge on Sunday and said that nearly as many federal officials were present as those from state and local agencies.
A day after Katrina, "it was all on the shoulders of state and locals," Pine said. "There was a lot more staging of a lot more operations in place for the second storm. ... I think you see a huge difference."
To be sure, the devastation wreaked last month by Katrina appears to have been far greater than that caused by Rita. But experts say the threat posed by both should have prompted similar preparations and responses - and similar high-level attention from the Bush administration.
Both storms barreled through the Gulf of Mexico toward large population centers. Both reached Category 5 strength before weakening slightly as they made landfall. And both storms had similar potential for catastrophe - with the approach of Katrina perhaps causing even greater concern because of its track toward New Orleans' below-sea-level population, which was at risk both from the storm and from levees long known to be vulnerable to a direct hit.
Federal officials have been avoiding a detailed discussion of what went wrong during Katrina, when President Bush and other top federal officials were on vacation.
But in praising response to Rita, they provide some guidance, even if unintended, in assessing the government's response to Katrina, which killed more than 1,000 people in Louisiana and Mississippi. At least some of those deaths came in the days during which Katrina victims went largely without federal assistance.
Among the differences:
-President Bush took an active role in monitoring preparations for Rita, even traveling to Colorado to observe how the military's Northern Command responded to the disaster. During Katrina, Bush remained in Crawford, Texas, then traveled to Arizona and California for previously scheduled political appearances as the storm hit.
Other top officials were more actively involved in Rita preparations and remained on the case as the storm came ashore. For Katrina, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld attended a ball game in San Diego as New Orleans flooded and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff attended a previously scheduled briefing on avian flu in Atlanta.
- For Rita, FEMA was more aggressive in getting supplies into the affected areas. As Katrina hit, FEMA said it would have 500 truckloads of water and 500 truckloads of ice for the first 10 days after the storm. The day after Rita hit, 348 truckloads of water and 275 truckloads of ice were already on hand and FEMA's acting director promised that Louisiana would get an additional 200 truckloads of water and 200 truckloads of ice each day thereafter.
-FEMA also moved nearly twice as many urban search and rescue teams into the area for Rita than for Katrina, according to the agency's documents. Before Katrina struck, nine rescue teams were pre-deployed; the number was 17 for Rita.
-Chertoff moved much more quickly in declaring Rita an "incident of national significance," something he did two days before Rita struck, but 36 hours after Katrina had devastated the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts. Chertoff's spokesman says the designation had little practical impact, but others said it allowed the appointment of a Coast Guard admiral to be the top federal official running the federal response even before Rita arrived.
-The Defense Department was actively involved in preparing for Rita in contrast to days of delay before activating its response to Katrina.
U.S. military involvement with Hurricane Rita began while the storm was still churning across the Gulf of Mexico. The Pentagon announced the creation of a joint task force for Rita relief efforts four days before the storm hit, and thousands of active-duty troops were placed on alert for immediate deployment before landfall.
By comparison, the Pentagon did not activate its Katrina task force until two days after Katrina struck and active-duty military units were not used in any major way until at least three days after. The first major deployment of active-duty ground troops did not occur until five days after Katrina struck.
Perhaps the most startling difference was the military's role in evacuating thousands of nursing home residents, hospital patients and other frail people ahead of Rita. During Katrina, hundreds of such patients languished for days in water-surrounded facilities.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the military conducted the evacuations at the request of the Department of Health and Human Services, a request Whitman acknowledged was "a bit outside the chain of command." Under the federal government's National Response Plan, such a request would normally come from FEMA.
Northern Command's preparations for Hurricane Rita also included placing on alert five two-man teams to set up long-range communications in the hardest-hit areas if requested by federal disaster relief officials. The teams were equipped with satellite telephones and fax machines.
Michael Kucharek, a Northern Command spokesman, said the move was "probably one of the quick lessons learned" from Hurricane Katrina, which knocked out phone lines and cellular towers in Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama, hampering relief operations for days.
Find the Brownie
September 26, 2005
Find the Brownie
By PAUL KRUGMAN
For the politically curious seeking entertainment, I'd like to propose two new trivia games: "Find the Brownie" and "Two Degrees of Jack Abramoff."
The objective in Find the Brownie is to find an obscure but important government job held by someone whose only apparent qualifications for that job are political loyalty and personal connections. It's inspired by President Bush's praise, four days after Katrina hit, for the hapless Michael Brown, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." I guess it depends on the meaning of the word heck.
There are a lot of Brownies. As Time magazine puts it in its latest issue, "Bush has gone further than most presidents to put political stalwarts in some of the most important government jobs you've never heard of." Time offers a couple of fresh examples, such as the former editor of a Wall Street medical-industry newsletter who now holds a crucial position at the Food and Drug Administration.
A tipster urged me to look for Brownies among regional administrators for the General Services Administration, which oversees federal property and leases. There are several potential ways a position at G.S.A. could be abused. For example, an official might give a particular businessman an inside track in the purchase of government property - the charge against David Safavian, who was recently arrested - or give a particular landlord an inside track in renting space to federal agencies.
Some of the regional administrators at G.S.A. are longtime professionals. But the regional administrator for the Northeast and Caribbean region, which includes New York, has no obvious qualifications other than being the daughter of the chairman of the Conservative Party of New York State. The regional administrator for the Southwest, appointed in 2002 after a failed bid for his father's Congressional seat, is Scott Armey, the son of Dick Armey, the former House majority leader.
You get the idea. Go ahead, see what - or rather who - you can come up with.
Jack Abramoff is a lobbyist who was paid huge sums by clients such as casino-owning Indian tribes and sweatshop operators on Saipan. Two Degrees of Jack Abramoff is inspired by the remarkable centrality of Mr. Abramoff, who was indicted last month on charges of fraud, in Washington's power structure.
The goal isn't to find important political players who were chummy with Mr. Abramoff - that's too easy. Instead, you have to find people linked by employment. One degree of Jack Abramoff is someone who actually worked for the lobbyist. Two degrees is a powerful Washington figure who hired someone who formerly worked for Mr. Abramoff, or who had one of his own former employees go to work for Mr. Abramoff.
Grover Norquist, the powerful antitax lobbyist, is a one-degree man. Mr. Norquist was Mr. Abramoff's campaign manager when he ran for chairman of the College Republican National Committee, then became his executive director. And don't dismiss this as kid stuff: as Franklin Foer explains in The New Republic, the college Republican organization pays serious salaries and has been a steppingstone for the likes of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove.
Mr. Rove, by the way, is a two-degree man. He hired Susan Ralston, Mr. Abramoff's personal assistant, as his own personal assistant. For those unfamiliar with what that means, Ms. Ralston became Mr. Rove's gatekeeper - the person who determined who got to see the great man.
Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, is also a two-degree man. Tony Rudy, who worked for Mr. DeLay in several capacities, left to work for Mr. Abramoff.
Finally, somebody should be considered a two-degree man on account of the recently arrested Mr. Safavian, who worked for both Mr. Abramoff and Mr. Norquist, then went first to the G.S.A. and on to the White House Office of Management and Budget, where he oversaw procurement policy. But I'm not sure who gets credit for hiring Mr. Safavian.
O.K., enough joking. The point of my games - which are actually research programs for enterprising journalists - is that all the scandals now surfacing are linked. Something is rotten in the state of the U.S. government. And the lesson of Hurricane Katrina is that a culture of cronyism and corruption can have lethal consequences.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
No Direction Home: Bob Dylan A Martin Scorsese Picture
DOCUMENTARY PORTRAIT WILL AIR ON PBS'S AMERICAN MASTERS SERIES SEPTEMBER 26-27 (check local listings) AND IN THE UK ON BBC'S ARENA SERIES SEPTEMBER 26
PARAMOUNT HOME ENTERTAINMENT TO RELEASE DVD WITH EXTENSIVE BONUS FEATURES ONE WEEK PRIOR TO BROADCAST
Bob Dylan Opens Archives For The Film, Which Features Previously Unreleased Footage From Dylan's Groundbreaking Live Concerts, Studio Recording Sessions, Outtakes, And Interviews
In an event that has brought together Bob Dylan and Martin Scorsese, NO DIRECTION HOME: BOB DYLAN, a production of Spitfire Pictures, Grey Water Park Productions, Thirteen/WNET New York and Sikelia Productions, in co-production with Vulcan Productions, BBC and NHK, will make its U.S. broadcast premiere on Thirteen/WNET's award-winning AMERICAN MASTERS series Monday and Tuesday, September 26-27 at 9 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings). Part One will also premiere on September 26 in the UK, on BBC Two on the internationally prestigious series ARENA, closely followed by Part Two. This will be a historic collaboration between the world's two principal public broadcasters, brought together in a production forged by independent producers Spitfire Pictures. Paramount Home Entertainment will also release a DVD version of the documentary with extensive, additional, never-before-seen footage on September 20. Apple will present the DVD and international version of NO DIRECTION HOME: BOB DYLAN, and is the corporate underwriter of the PBS broadcast.
The two-part film, which focuses on the singer-songwriter's life and music from 1961-66, includes never-seen performance footage and interviews with artists and musicians whose lives intertwined with Dylan's during that time. Dylan talks openly and extensively about this critical period in his career, detailing the journey from his hometown of Hibbing, Minnesota, to Greenwich Village, New York, where he became the center of a musical and cultural upheaval, the effects of which are still felt today.
For the first time, The Bob Dylan Archives has made available rare treasures from its film, tape and stills collection, including footage from Murray Lerner's film Festival documenting performances at the 1963, 1964 and 1965 Newport Folk Festivals, previously unreleased outtakes from D.A. Pennebaker's famed 1967 documentary Don't Look Back, and interviews with Allen Ginsberg, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Maria Muldaur, and many others. In anticipation of the film, members of Dylan's worldwide community of fans also contributed rarities from their own collections.
NO DIRECTION HOME: BOB DYLAN, A Martin Scorsese Picture, comes on the heels of Dylan's bestselling memoir, Chronicles: Volume I, which spent 19 weeks on The New York Times Hardcover Non-Fiction Bestseller list.
In addition to being the director of such dramatic films as Raging Bull, Goodfellas and The Aviator, Scorsese is an avid chronicler of the history of American popular music. Most recently, he executive-produced the music miniseries The Blues, which aired on PBS, as well as the related concert film Lightning in a Bottle, directed by Antoine Fuqua. Scorsese also directed the documentary The Last Waltz (1978), which captured the legendary farewell concert of The Band, and he served as an assistant director and editor on Woodstock (1970).
In discussing his excitement about the current project, Scorsese remarked, "I had been a great fan for many years when I had the privilege to film Bob Dylan for The Last Waltz. I've admired and enjoyed his many musical transformations. For me, there is no other musical artist who weaves his influences so densely to create something so personal and unique."
Along with Scorsese, NO DIRECTION HOME: BOB DYLAN is being individually produced by Jeff Rosen of Grey Water Park, Nigel Sinclair of Spitfire, Anthony Wall of the BBC's Arena series, and Susan Lacy of Thirteen/WNET New York's AMERICAN MASTERS series, which has won the Emmy for Outstanding Primetime Non-Fiction Series five of the last six years.
"When we first began discussing this project years ago, we were overwhelmed by the material at hand - home movies and history-making concert footage, fascinating interviews with Dylan's friends and fellow performers and, of course, Dylan himself, speaking so frankly about this incredible period in his life," said Lacy, series creator and executive producer of AMERICAN MASTERS. "What we needed - above all - was an artist with a singular vision who could fuse this material into a unique visual narrative. That artist was Martin Scorsese, who graciously agreed to direct."
Added Spitfire's Sinclair: "Bob Dylan is a true cultural worldwide icon. This is the first time Bob has given this unprecedented access, which, coupled with Marty's outstanding filmmaking talents, should provide an unparalleled portrait of Dylan's indelible mark on the culture of the 20th century."
"This is history," said Wall, ARENA series editor. "As Dylan's extraordinary career is building to another great peak, it's also a milestone for the BBC and PBS."
The film's soundtrack will be a double CD set comprised of key songs in the film as well as rare and unreleased recordings from 1961 to 1966. Volume 7 of Bob Dylan's Bootleg Series, No Direction Home: The Soundtrack, is slated for release August 30, on Columbia/Legacy Records.
The Bob Dylan Scrapbook 1956-1966 will be published by Simon & Schuster on September 20 and sell for $45. The book features Dylan's early years, illustrated and packaged in a slipcased scrapbook complete with rare photographs, removable documents, reproductions of memorabilia, and a 45-minute CD. This unique book features interviews, archival photographs, and reproductions of song lyrics, plus other rare materials drawn from the film.
REBUILDING
A Call To Action
Latino immigrants, many of them here illegally, will rebuild the Gulf Coast -- and stay there.
By Gregory Rodriguez
Gregory Rodriguez is a contributing editor to The Times and Irvine Senior fellow at the New America Foundation.
September 25, 2005
NO MATTER WHAT ALL the politicians and activists want, African Americans and impoverished white Cajuns will not be first in line to rebuild the Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast and New Orleans. Latino immigrants, many of them undocumented, will. And when they're done, they're going to stay, making New Orleans look like Los Angeles. It's the federal government that will have made the transformation possible, further exposing the hollowness of the immigration debate.
President Bush has promised that Washington will pick up the greater part of the cost for "one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen." To that end, he suspended provisions of the Davis-Bacon Act that would have required government contractors to pay prevailing wages in Louisiana and devastated parts of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. And the Department of Homeland Security has temporarily suspended sanctioning employers who hire workers who cannot document their citizenship. The idea is to benefit Americans who may have lost everything in the hurricane, but the main effect will be to let contractors hire illegal immigrants.
Mexican and Central American laborers are already arriving in southeastern Louisiana. One construction firm based in Metairie, La., sent a foreman to Houston to round up 150 workers willing to do cleanup work for $15 an hour, more than twice their wages in Texas. The men — most of whom are undocumented, according to news accounts — live outside New Orleans in mobile homes without running water and electricity. The foreman expects them to stay "until there's no more work" but "there's going to be a lot of construction jobs for a really long time."
Because they are young and lack roots in the United States, many recent migrants are ideal for the explosion of construction jobs to come. Those living in the U.S. will relocate to the Gulf Coast, while others will come from south of the border. Most will not intend to stay where their new jobs are, but the longer the jobs last, the more likely they will settle permanently. One recent poll of New Orleans evacuees living in Houston emergency shelters found that fewer than half intend to return home. In part, their places will be taken by the migrant workers. Former President Clinton recently hinted as much on NBC's "Meet the Press" when he said New Orleans will be resettled with a different population.
It is not the first time that hurricanes and other natural disasters have triggered population movements. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch slammed into Central America, sending waves of migrants northward. The 2001 earthquakes in El Salvador produced similar shifts. The effects of Hurricane Andrew may better foretell New Orleans' future. The 1992 storm displaced 250,000 residents in southeastern Florida. The construction boom that followed attracted large numbers of Latin American immigrants, who rebuilt towns such as Homestead, whose Latino population has increased by 50% since then.
At the same time, U.S. construction firms have become increasingly reliant on Latino immigrant labor. In 1990, only 3.3% of construction workers were Mexican immigrants. Ten years later, the number was 8.5%. In 2004, 17% of Latino immigrants worked in the business, a higher percentage than in any other industry. Nor is this an exclusively Southwest phenomenon. Even before Katrina, more and more Latin American immigrant workers were locating in the South, with North Carolina and Arkansas incurring the greatest percentage gains between 1990 and 2000. This helps explain why 40% of the workers who rebuilt the Pentagon after the 9/11 attack were Latino.
Reliance on immigrant labor to complete huge projects is part of U.S. history. In the early 19th century, mostly Irish immigrant laborers, who worked for as little as 37 1/2 cents an hour, built the Erie Canal, one of the greatest engineering feats of its day. Later that century, Italian immigrants, sometimes making just $1.50 a day, were the backbone of the workforce that constructed the New York subway system. In 1890, 90% of New York City's public works employees, and 99% of Chicago's street workers, were Italian.
After Congress authorized construction of the transcontinental railroad in 1862, one of the most ambitious projects in U.S. history, Charles Crocker, head of construction for Central Pacific railroad, recognized that the Civil War was creating a labor shortage. So he turned to Chinese immigrants to do the job. By 1867, 12,000 of Central Pacific's 13,500 workers were Chinese immigrants, who were paid between $26 and $35 for a six-day workweek of 12 hours a day. At the turn of the 20th century, Mexican immigrant laborers did most of the railroad construction in Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada.
Mexican workers were also essential in turning the Southwest into a fertile region, which by 1929 produced 40% of the United States' fruits and vegetables. They cleared the mesquite brush of south Texas to make room for the expansion of agriculture, then played a primary role in the success of cotton farming in the state. A generation earlier, German immigrants from Russia and Norwegians had busted the prairie sod to turn the grasslands of North Dakota into arable fields.
The major difference between then and now is that neither the American public nor the government will admit their dependence on a labor force that is heavily undocumented. When Mexican President Vicente Fox offered to provide Mexican labor to help rebuild New Orleans — "If there is anything Mexicans are good at, it is construction," he said — the federal government ignored him. At the same time, some of the undocumented Mexicans who have cleaned up and begun to rebuild Biloxi, Miss., are wondering whether they deserve at least a temporary visa so they can live in the U.S. legally.
Last week, the White House said it will push its plan to allow illegal immigrants already in the U.S. to become legal guest workers. Good. Hurricane Katrina exposed the nation's black-white divide. Post-Katrina reconstruction will soon spotlight the hypocrisy of refusing to grant legal status to those who will rebuild the Gulf Coast and New Orleans.
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
Latino immigrants, many of them here illegally, will rebuild the Gulf Coast -- and stay there.
By Gregory Rodriguez
Gregory Rodriguez is a contributing editor to The Times and Irvine Senior fellow at the New America Foundation.
September 25, 2005
NO MATTER WHAT ALL the politicians and activists want, African Americans and impoverished white Cajuns will not be first in line to rebuild the Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast and New Orleans. Latino immigrants, many of them undocumented, will. And when they're done, they're going to stay, making New Orleans look like Los Angeles. It's the federal government that will have made the transformation possible, further exposing the hollowness of the immigration debate.
President Bush has promised that Washington will pick up the greater part of the cost for "one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen." To that end, he suspended provisions of the Davis-Bacon Act that would have required government contractors to pay prevailing wages in Louisiana and devastated parts of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. And the Department of Homeland Security has temporarily suspended sanctioning employers who hire workers who cannot document their citizenship. The idea is to benefit Americans who may have lost everything in the hurricane, but the main effect will be to let contractors hire illegal immigrants.
Mexican and Central American laborers are already arriving in southeastern Louisiana. One construction firm based in Metairie, La., sent a foreman to Houston to round up 150 workers willing to do cleanup work for $15 an hour, more than twice their wages in Texas. The men — most of whom are undocumented, according to news accounts — live outside New Orleans in mobile homes without running water and electricity. The foreman expects them to stay "until there's no more work" but "there's going to be a lot of construction jobs for a really long time."
Because they are young and lack roots in the United States, many recent migrants are ideal for the explosion of construction jobs to come. Those living in the U.S. will relocate to the Gulf Coast, while others will come from south of the border. Most will not intend to stay where their new jobs are, but the longer the jobs last, the more likely they will settle permanently. One recent poll of New Orleans evacuees living in Houston emergency shelters found that fewer than half intend to return home. In part, their places will be taken by the migrant workers. Former President Clinton recently hinted as much on NBC's "Meet the Press" when he said New Orleans will be resettled with a different population.
It is not the first time that hurricanes and other natural disasters have triggered population movements. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch slammed into Central America, sending waves of migrants northward. The 2001 earthquakes in El Salvador produced similar shifts. The effects of Hurricane Andrew may better foretell New Orleans' future. The 1992 storm displaced 250,000 residents in southeastern Florida. The construction boom that followed attracted large numbers of Latin American immigrants, who rebuilt towns such as Homestead, whose Latino population has increased by 50% since then.
At the same time, U.S. construction firms have become increasingly reliant on Latino immigrant labor. In 1990, only 3.3% of construction workers were Mexican immigrants. Ten years later, the number was 8.5%. In 2004, 17% of Latino immigrants worked in the business, a higher percentage than in any other industry. Nor is this an exclusively Southwest phenomenon. Even before Katrina, more and more Latin American immigrant workers were locating in the South, with North Carolina and Arkansas incurring the greatest percentage gains between 1990 and 2000. This helps explain why 40% of the workers who rebuilt the Pentagon after the 9/11 attack were Latino.
Reliance on immigrant labor to complete huge projects is part of U.S. history. In the early 19th century, mostly Irish immigrant laborers, who worked for as little as 37 1/2 cents an hour, built the Erie Canal, one of the greatest engineering feats of its day. Later that century, Italian immigrants, sometimes making just $1.50 a day, were the backbone of the workforce that constructed the New York subway system. In 1890, 90% of New York City's public works employees, and 99% of Chicago's street workers, were Italian.
After Congress authorized construction of the transcontinental railroad in 1862, one of the most ambitious projects in U.S. history, Charles Crocker, head of construction for Central Pacific railroad, recognized that the Civil War was creating a labor shortage. So he turned to Chinese immigrants to do the job. By 1867, 12,000 of Central Pacific's 13,500 workers were Chinese immigrants, who were paid between $26 and $35 for a six-day workweek of 12 hours a day. At the turn of the 20th century, Mexican immigrant laborers did most of the railroad construction in Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada.
Mexican workers were also essential in turning the Southwest into a fertile region, which by 1929 produced 40% of the United States' fruits and vegetables. They cleared the mesquite brush of south Texas to make room for the expansion of agriculture, then played a primary role in the success of cotton farming in the state. A generation earlier, German immigrants from Russia and Norwegians had busted the prairie sod to turn the grasslands of North Dakota into arable fields.
The major difference between then and now is that neither the American public nor the government will admit their dependence on a labor force that is heavily undocumented. When Mexican President Vicente Fox offered to provide Mexican labor to help rebuild New Orleans — "If there is anything Mexicans are good at, it is construction," he said — the federal government ignored him. At the same time, some of the undocumented Mexicans who have cleaned up and begun to rebuild Biloxi, Miss., are wondering whether they deserve at least a temporary visa so they can live in the U.S. legally.
Last week, the White House said it will push its plan to allow illegal immigrants already in the U.S. to become legal guest workers. Good. Hurricane Katrina exposed the nation's black-white divide. Post-Katrina reconstruction will soon spotlight the hypocrisy of refusing to grant legal status to those who will rebuild the Gulf Coast and New Orleans.
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Soo...Who's the Muslim Brotherhood again? More Unqualified Cronies to the Rescue
In Mideast, Hughes Tries to 'Make a Connection'
Bush Adviser's First Diplomatic Tour Opens in Cairo
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 25, 2005; 4:03 PM
CAIRO, Sept. 25 -- Karen Hughes, the new public diplomacy czar charged with improving the United States' image, began her maiden diplomatic voyage Sunday by largely meeting in picturesque settings with Egyptian students who have benefited from American largess.
Hughes said she would steer clear of meeting representatives of Egypt's largest opposition group and a lunch scheduled for Monday with "opinion leaders" includes mostly people supportive of the government that has ruled the country under emergency decree for a quarter-century.
Outside her carefully vetted settings, interviews with ordinary Egyptians indicated deep anger at the policies of the Bush administration.
"You American people are 100 percent good," said Farouq Hickel, a bearded minivan driver who was walking past the Bab Zuwella, a 900-year-old Islamic monument restored with U.S. funds that Hughes toured. "We have no problems with Americans. But look at what Bush is doing -- he is messing up the world." He added that Hurricane Katrina was clearly God's revenge for President Bush's actions.
Hughes, who was recently confirmed as undersecretary of state, has attracted enormous attention in her new role, largely because she is one of the president's closest confidantes. While undersecretaries generally travel with a handful of aides, Hughes is bringing along a planeload of reporters, including representatives of all five U.S. networks, a correspondent from Al-Arabiya television and even a writer from GQ magazine.
Speaking to reporters for nearly an hour as she flew to Cairo, Hughes appeared to set a relatively low bar for judging the success of her mission.
"Many of the differences and many of the concerns are deep-seated and I'm probably not going to change many minds," Hughes said. "But if I make a connection with a person or two who I can keep following up with after I leave here on my trip, I would consider it a success."
Hughes betrayed some nervousness in her first diplomatic foray, which will also take her to Saudi Arabia and Turkey. This is her first visit to all three countries, and as she spoke to reporters she clutched briefing papers that appeared to be the diplomatic equivalent of Cliffs Notes. Turkey was a "democratic state" and Egypt was the "most populous" country in the region, the document said.
Asked if she was meeting with the Muslim Brotherhood, Hughes turned uncertainly to an aide and indicated she wasn't quite sure of the answer. The aide whispered back and Hughes replied, "We are respectful of Egypt's laws."
The activities of the Muslim Brotherhood are officially banned, but it is regarded as the country's largest opposition party and has pressed for a more open political system in Egypt, the stated goal of U.S. policy. She also has no plans to meet with representatives of Kifaya, an umbrella opposition group.
The magnitude of Hughes's task was demonstrated by the headlines of Sunday morning's edition of Le Progres Egyptien, a French-language publication. It featured Israel's attack in Gaza, a declaration that Egypt's reforms will never be imposed from above, new accusations of atrocities against the U.S. forces in Iraq and a feature on Bush being considered a greater menace than Osama bin Laden.
Hughes acknowledged that "it is a huge challenge" but said she would focus on contrasting the compassion of the United States with violent extremism. The administration's policies are offering "education, opportunity, freedom of speech and expression," she said. "Terrorists, their policies, force young people, other people's daughters and sons, to strap on bombs and blow themselves up."
Hughes traveled first to the 1,000-year-old Al-Azhar University for a meeting with Sunni Islamic leader Sheik Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, who is close to the government and has spoken out against extremism. A recent fatwa by Tantawi -- saying normalization of ties with Israel was religiously acceptable -- has generated controversy and anger in Egypt. The local media speculated that he issued it because the Egyptian government recently deployed troops to guard the southern part of Gaza after Israel's withdrawal.
At Bab Zuwella, Hughes went up a tower to gaze over the city skyline. "It's magical," the former television reporter said. "A thousand minarets -- and satellite dishes."
Then she sat down with five high school exchange students who had spent a year living in the United States. Ahmed Gammal, 18, lived in Hudson, Ind., and said no one in the small town knew anything about Egypt. "When I said I was [from] Egypt, they asked, 'Do you ride camels or live in pyramids?' They were serious."
Police lined the side streets outside the site, suspiciously eyeing people who spoke to reporters. Mohamed Osman, a government employee, said Hughes's trip was potentially important because "Americans are biased against Islam -- look what they are doing in Iraq." But then he scurried away after two policemen stood on either side of him during the interview.
Amani Fikri, an editor at an opposition newspaper, tried to stay for the student event but was asked to leave. She said Hughes needed to tell Bush to change his policies, that he needed to stop backing nondemocratic governments in Egypt and across the Middle East.
"The American people are very good and kind," Fikri said, but added that Bush's reelection makes it "very difficult to differentiate between the American people and American policy. It's not about saying, but about doing. Not words, but actions."
Hughes also met with students -- who all received scholarships from a U.S.-funded program -- at the American University in Cairo, an elite institution that teaches in English. The students asked generally polite but occasionally pointed questions on Iraq and U.S. policy toward Syria and Iran.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
Bush Adviser's First Diplomatic Tour Opens in Cairo
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 25, 2005; 4:03 PM
CAIRO, Sept. 25 -- Karen Hughes, the new public diplomacy czar charged with improving the United States' image, began her maiden diplomatic voyage Sunday by largely meeting in picturesque settings with Egyptian students who have benefited from American largess.
Hughes said she would steer clear of meeting representatives of Egypt's largest opposition group and a lunch scheduled for Monday with "opinion leaders" includes mostly people supportive of the government that has ruled the country under emergency decree for a quarter-century.
Outside her carefully vetted settings, interviews with ordinary Egyptians indicated deep anger at the policies of the Bush administration.
"You American people are 100 percent good," said Farouq Hickel, a bearded minivan driver who was walking past the Bab Zuwella, a 900-year-old Islamic monument restored with U.S. funds that Hughes toured. "We have no problems with Americans. But look at what Bush is doing -- he is messing up the world." He added that Hurricane Katrina was clearly God's revenge for President Bush's actions.
Hughes, who was recently confirmed as undersecretary of state, has attracted enormous attention in her new role, largely because she is one of the president's closest confidantes. While undersecretaries generally travel with a handful of aides, Hughes is bringing along a planeload of reporters, including representatives of all five U.S. networks, a correspondent from Al-Arabiya television and even a writer from GQ magazine.
Speaking to reporters for nearly an hour as she flew to Cairo, Hughes appeared to set a relatively low bar for judging the success of her mission.
"Many of the differences and many of the concerns are deep-seated and I'm probably not going to change many minds," Hughes said. "But if I make a connection with a person or two who I can keep following up with after I leave here on my trip, I would consider it a success."
Hughes betrayed some nervousness in her first diplomatic foray, which will also take her to Saudi Arabia and Turkey. This is her first visit to all three countries, and as she spoke to reporters she clutched briefing papers that appeared to be the diplomatic equivalent of Cliffs Notes. Turkey was a "democratic state" and Egypt was the "most populous" country in the region, the document said.
Asked if she was meeting with the Muslim Brotherhood, Hughes turned uncertainly to an aide and indicated she wasn't quite sure of the answer. The aide whispered back and Hughes replied, "We are respectful of Egypt's laws."
The activities of the Muslim Brotherhood are officially banned, but it is regarded as the country's largest opposition party and has pressed for a more open political system in Egypt, the stated goal of U.S. policy. She also has no plans to meet with representatives of Kifaya, an umbrella opposition group.
The magnitude of Hughes's task was demonstrated by the headlines of Sunday morning's edition of Le Progres Egyptien, a French-language publication. It featured Israel's attack in Gaza, a declaration that Egypt's reforms will never be imposed from above, new accusations of atrocities against the U.S. forces in Iraq and a feature on Bush being considered a greater menace than Osama bin Laden.
Hughes acknowledged that "it is a huge challenge" but said she would focus on contrasting the compassion of the United States with violent extremism. The administration's policies are offering "education, opportunity, freedom of speech and expression," she said. "Terrorists, their policies, force young people, other people's daughters and sons, to strap on bombs and blow themselves up."
Hughes traveled first to the 1,000-year-old Al-Azhar University for a meeting with Sunni Islamic leader Sheik Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, who is close to the government and has spoken out against extremism. A recent fatwa by Tantawi -- saying normalization of ties with Israel was religiously acceptable -- has generated controversy and anger in Egypt. The local media speculated that he issued it because the Egyptian government recently deployed troops to guard the southern part of Gaza after Israel's withdrawal.
At Bab Zuwella, Hughes went up a tower to gaze over the city skyline. "It's magical," the former television reporter said. "A thousand minarets -- and satellite dishes."
Then she sat down with five high school exchange students who had spent a year living in the United States. Ahmed Gammal, 18, lived in Hudson, Ind., and said no one in the small town knew anything about Egypt. "When I said I was [from] Egypt, they asked, 'Do you ride camels or live in pyramids?' They were serious."
Police lined the side streets outside the site, suspiciously eyeing people who spoke to reporters. Mohamed Osman, a government employee, said Hughes's trip was potentially important because "Americans are biased against Islam -- look what they are doing in Iraq." But then he scurried away after two policemen stood on either side of him during the interview.
Amani Fikri, an editor at an opposition newspaper, tried to stay for the student event but was asked to leave. She said Hughes needed to tell Bush to change his policies, that he needed to stop backing nondemocratic governments in Egypt and across the Middle East.
"The American people are very good and kind," Fikri said, but added that Bush's reelection makes it "very difficult to differentiate between the American people and American policy. It's not about saying, but about doing. Not words, but actions."
Hughes also met with students -- who all received scholarships from a U.S.-funded program -- at the American University in Cairo, an elite institution that teaches in English. The students asked generally polite but occasionally pointed questions on Iraq and U.S. policy toward Syria and Iran.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
The Gulf Will Rise Again - New York Times
The New York Times
September 25, 2005
The Gulf Will Rise Again
By JOHN GRISHAM
Biloxi, Miss.
ON Aug. 17, 1969, Hurricane Camille roared onto the Gulf Coast with winds of
more than 200 miles an hour, only the second Category 5 storm to hit the
mainland
United States. It killed 143 people in Mississippi, and 201 more in flooding
in central Virginia.
Over the years, Hurricane Camille's legend grew, and it was not uncommon
when I was a child and student in Mississippi to hear horrific tales from
coast
residents who had survived it. I myself was sleeping in a Boy Scout pup tent
200 miles inland when the storm swept through. Our losses were minimal - the
tents, sleeping bags, some food - but over time I managed to spice up the
adventure and add a little danger to it.
For almost 40 years, it was a well-established belief that the Gulf Coast
had taken nature's mightiest blow, picked itself up, learned some lessons
and
survived rather well. There could simply never be another storm like
Hurricane Camille.
After walking the flattened streets of Biloxi, though, I suspect that
Hurricane Camille will soon be downgraded to an April shower. The
devastation from
Hurricane Katrina, a storm surge 80 miles wide and close to 30 feet high, is
incomprehensible. North from the beach for a half a mile, virtually every
house has been reduced to kindling and debris. At least 100,000 people in
Jackson County - poor, middle-class, wealthy - are homeless.
I search for a friend's home, a grand old place with a long wide porch where
we'd sit and gaze at the ocean, and find nothing but rubble. Mary Mahoney's,
the venerable French restaurant and my favorite place to eat on the coast,
is standing, but gutted. It's built of stone and survived many storms but
had
seen nothing like Hurricane Katrina.
Even without Hurricane Rita chewing its way across the region, the notion of
starting again is nearly impossible to grasp. Some areas will have no
electricity
for months. The schools, churches, libraries and offices lucky enough to be
standing can't open for weeks. Those not standing will be scooped up in the
rubble, then rebuilt. But where, and at what cost?
So much has disappeared - highways, streets, bridges, treatment plants,
docks, ports. The next seafood harvest is years away, and the shrimpers have
lost
their boats. The bustling casino business - 14,000 jobs and $500,000 a day
in tax revenues - will be closed for months and may take years to recover.
Lawyer
friends of mine lost not only their homes and offices, but their records and
their courthouses.
At least half of the homes and businesses destroyed were not insured against
flood losses. For decades, developers, builders, real estate and insurance
agents have been telling people: "Don't worry, Camille didn't touch this
area. It'll never flood." This advice was not ill intentioned; it simply
reflected
what most people believed. Now, those who listened to it and built anyway
are facing bankruptcy.
As dark as these days are, though, there is hope. It doesn't come from
handouts or legislation, and it certainly doesn't come from speeches
promising rosy
days ahead. Folks dependent on donated groceries are completely unmoved by
campaign-style predictions of a glorious future. It's much too early for
such
talk.
Hope here comes from the people and their remarkable belief that, if we all
stick together, we'll survive. The residents of the Gulf Coast have an
enormous
pride in their ability to take a punch, even a knockout blow, and stagger
gamely back into the center of the ring. Their parents survived Camille, and
Betsy and Frederic, and they are determined to get the best of this latest
legend.
Those who've lost everything have nothing to give but their courage and
sweat, and there is an abundance of both along the coast these days. At a
school
in the small town of De Lisle, the superintendent, who's living in the
parking lot, gives a quick tour of the gymnasium, which is now a makeshift
food
dispensary where everything is free and volunteers hurriedly unpack
supplies. Two nearby schools have vanished, so in three weeks she plans to
open doors
to any student who can get to her school. Temporary trailers have been
ordered and she hopes they're on the way. Ninety-five percent of her
teachers are
homeless but nonetheless eager to return to the classrooms.
Though she is uncertain where she'll find the money to pay the teachers,
rent the trailers and buy gas for the buses, she and her staff are excited
about
reopening. It's important for her students to touch and feel something
normal. She's lost her home, but her primary concern is for the children.
"Could
you send us some books?" she asks me. Choking back tears, my wife and I say,
"Yes, we certainly could."
Normalcy is the key, and the people cling to anything that's familiar - the
school, a church, a routine, but especially to one another. Flying low in a
Black Hawk over the devastated beach towns, the National Guard general who
is our host says, "What this place needs is a good football game." And he's
right. It's Friday, and a few lucky schools are gearing up for the big
games, all of which have been rescheduled out of town. Signs of normal life
are
slowly emerging.
The task of rebuilding is monumental and disheartening to the outsider. But
to the battle-scarred survivors of the Gulf Coast, today is better than
yesterday,
and tomorrow something good will happen.
When William Faulkner accepted the Nobel Prize in 1950, he said, in part: "I
believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal,
not
because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he
has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion, sacrifice and endurance."
Today, Faulkner would find in his native state a resilient spirit that is
amazing to behold. The people here will sacrifice and give and give until
one
day this storm will be behind them, and they will look back, like their
parents and grandparents, and quietly say, "We prevailed."
John Grisham is the author, most recently, of "The Broker."
Posted by Miriam V.
A Health Care Disaster - New York Times
The New York Times
September 25, 2005
A Health Care Disaster
By
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
KILN, Miss.
In the richest country in the world, a man named Eugene Johnson is going
blind in a homeless shelter, because his eye medicine washed away in
Hurricane
Katrina and he can't afford to buy more.
At one level, that's an indictment of the official rescue effort: the
authorities were sufficiently concerned about hurricanes that last year they
pre-positioned
10,000 body bags in New Orleans, but they dozed as Katrina approached.
Yet at a deeper level, Mr. Johnson's plight is a window into our broken
health care system. Sure, we need to think about how to rebuild New Orleans,
but
we also need to reconstruct a sensible health care system. And that task is
urgent, for one study suggests that more than 18,000 Americans will die this
year as a consequence of not having health insurance.
Barbara Bush thought that Hurricane Katrina worked out pretty well for the
poor. ("Many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged
anyway," she said after touring the Astrodome, "so this is working very well
for them.") I'd like her to come here to the rural Mississippi town of Kiln,
near the Louisiana line, and meet Mr. Johnson. A barrel-chested retired
plumber, a white man of 57, Mr. Johnson suffers from diabetes that has
already
cost him two toes. Complications also threaten his eyesight, and so he must
take nine prescription medicines, including two to preserve his vision.
But the hurricane destroyed Mr. Johnson's house. Since then, he has been
bouncing from one shelter to the next and is now sleeping on a cot in a
school
gymnasium, along with his wife and four of his five children (one is grown
and has left home).
Once Mr. Johnson found a pharmacy that was open and had one of the medicines
he needs. But it charged $119 for it, and he couldn't afford that. So Mr.
Johnson
is slowly going blind.
"My eyes are starting to mess up," Mr. Johnson explained. "I see little
spots. And then sometimes they all move around, like a TV picture that's
gone bad."
Finally, a first-rate aid group, Children's Health Fund, brought doctors and
a mobile clinic to Mr. Johnson's shelter. One of the doctors, David Krol,
examined
Mr. Johnson, was horrified, and is working on obtaining the medications he
needs. But as Dr. Krol described the mobile clinic: "We're a stopgap.
Nothing
more."
If Mr. Johnson were more mobile, more adept at working the system, and more
of a complainer, he might have gotten help earlier. But the poor tend to be
stuck in shelters, without vehicles, and many are busy looking after small
children. And many, like Mr. Johnson, are disastrously polite, patient,
deferential
and even cheerful. Around here, if you have the patience of Job, you suffer
like Job.
Nearly every medical worker I spoke to warned that there would be a surge in
deaths from heart disease, strokes and other ailments, concentrated among
the
poor, because of the interruption in medicines. Dr. Jay Lemery told of
treating a single mother in a shelter whose three children were bouncing off
the
walls because they had attention-deficit disorder and hadn't had their
medication. The mother herself was prone to depression and had run out of
her own
medicine as well - in an environment that would make Pangloss suicidal.
The shelter was hot and tempers were so frayed that two women were having a
fistfight. Dr. Lemery added: "Even the Red Cross people, who have the
patience
of Mother Teresa, were in tears."
Yet the reality is that our medical system failed this region long before
Katrina arrived. One of the Children's Health Fund doctors discovered a
previously
undetected hole in a 4-year-old boy's heart. The mother said nobody had ever
listened to the boy's chest before.
In both Mississippi and Louisiana, infant mortality is worse (for every
1,000 babies born, 10 die in their first year of life) than in Costa Rica (8
die
per 1,000). For black babies in either state, the picture is still more
horrifying: 15 die per 1,000. In poor, war-torn Sri Lanka, where per capita
medical
spending is only $131, babies have better odds, with 13 dying per 1,000.
So let's rebuild the levees, but let's also construct a health care system
that works. A dozen years after the last, failed attempt to reform health
care,
the system is more broken than ever. For the sake of Mr. Johnson, and for
our children, it's time to try again.
Posted by Miriam V.
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Stormy Spins in a Vortex - New York Times
The New York Times
September 24, 2005
Stormy Spins in a Vortex
By
MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
Stormy was testy.
He had put aside the guitar and packed his slicker.
The First Weatherman was working hard, man, harder than he had in years,
even spending nights away from home - and Barney - in strange places.
And still the pesky press was painting him as a storm groupie, racing Rita
to Texas just to score a windswept backdrop to recapture his image as
protector.
Stormy preened for the cameras at FEEBLE FEMA headquarters in Washington
yesterday. On CNN, a bilious image of a hurricane spun next to his head. You
could
imagine the little hurricane trailing him through the rest of his
presidency, like the storm cloud with a lightning bolt that always trailed
Joe Btfsplk
in "Li'l Abner."
He said he was jetting to San Antonio to check out "the prepositioned
assets" and then riding out the storm watching "the interface" between the
military
and state and local authorities at Northcom in Colorado.
But David Gregory at NBC quizzed W. on what good he could really do in
Texas: "Might you get in the way, Mr. President?"
Stormy didn't like that. "One thing I won't do is get in the way," he
snipped.
Mr. Gregory, part of a newly amped-up press corps, followed up: "Isn't there
a risk of you and your entourage getting in the way?"
Now Stormy let off a little high pressure. "There will be no risk of me
getting in the way, I promise you," he said dismissively.
The smart aleck reporters didn't understand how crucial it was for the
president to intertwine, inter alia, with the interfacers. So W. explained
it again:
"See, Northcom is the main entity that interfaces - that uses federal
assets, federal troops, to interface with local and state government. I want
to watch
that relationship."
But soon the San Antonio leg of the trip was scotched amid fears that Stormy
would really be interfering more than interfacing. And besides, the weather
was too sunny there for poses in foul-weather gear.
Stormy is like his dad, Desert Stormy. They both love wardrobe calls: cool
costumes, sports outfits, presidential windbreakers, "Top Gun" get-ups,
weather
gear.
But leadership is not a series of costume changes. The former Andover
cheerleader has been too reliant on photo-ops, drop-bys and "Mission
Accomplished"
strut-bys, rather than a font of personal knowledge.
What Katrina exposed was a president who - remarkable as this may sound -
seemed bored after his re-election, just as Bill Clinton had drifted after
his
re-election. Before the Monica scandal broke, Mr. Clinton's aides had to beg
him to call lawmakers on the Hill to support his own legislative agenda.
Before the Katrina scandal, W. had lethargically wandered the country,
lifelessly promoting his Social Security plan and an energy bill that did
nothing
to solve the energy crisis, and endlessly vacationing in Crawford.
He campaigned as a strong daddy who would keep us safe, but then seemed lost
when his daddy figure, Dick Cheney, kept vacationing as Katrina exposed a
grotesque
rescue apartheid in New Orleans.
The more tuned-in W. is now, the more obvious it is that he tuned out as New
Orleans drowned. There is a high cost for presidential learning curves.
Hundreds of thousands of people died in Bosnia before Bill Clinton got it
right in Kosovo. A lot of elderly hospital and nursing home patients died in
New
Orleans before W. could pay attention to Houston and Galveston.
On Wednesday, Stormy tried to make one of his strained linkages, this time
with Katrina and terror. The terrorists, he said, were "the kind of people
who
look at Katrina and wish they had caused it," while he is the kind of person
who looks at Katrina and tries to energize himself to deal with natural
disasters
by thinking, What if this had been done by terrorists?
On Thursday, he tried to move past the image he had projected of a lost boy
wandering alone in the storm, and stood at the Pentagon flanked by his war
council,
talking about how he was moving to "develop a secure, safe democracy in
Iraq." Unfortunately, the Saudi foreign minister was in town dropping a
bomblet
by saying that Iraq was going down the tubes, a judgment other Sunni Arab
leaders had been conveying privately.
After his Pentagon remarks, W. looked at his vice president for approval and
received a proud, avuncular smile that said, "You're the Man."
But before he chases any more wind tunnels, Stormy should heed the Bob Dylan
line: "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."
Posted by Miriam V.
Time to Do Some "Outing" in Vatican City
by Steve Clemons
I visited the Vatican in early August and met a person who is deeply "embedded" in the world of those who run Vatican City and who govern the global machinery of the Catholic Church.
According to this person's estimation, he guesses that a "conservative estimate" of those cardinals and senior church officials who are gay is about 50%. Practicing, as opposed to just flirtatious, homosexuals at the highest levels of the church are probably about 30%.
When I asked whether homosexuals would be better served under Pope Benedict XVI than under John Paul II, he responded, "Don't think that we will be any better served under a gay pope than a straight one."
While there wasn't much love lost between Pope John Paul II and the homosexual community, John Paul didn't spend his every waking moment thinking about how to screw over the gay community. This very-connected individual I got to know in Italy had a different view (let's just leave it at that) of Benedict XVI.
But here's the deal. The Vatican is now readying a new policy on gay priests -- working harder to ban them before ordination and pretty much symbolically lumping in predatory pedophiles with those who are gay -- which I find outrageous.
From a report by the Washington Post's Alan Cooperman:
The agency said the new document would indicate that men with homosexual tendencies shouldn't be ordained even if they are celibate "because their condition suggests a serious personality disorder which detracts from their ability to serve as ministers."
In an apparently new element, the agency said the document would also say that already ordained priests, if they have homosexual tendencies, would be "strongly urged to renew their dedication to chastity and a manner of life appropriate to the priesthood."
The American prelate overseeing the evaluations, Archbishop Edwin O'Brien, said earlier this month that most gay candidates for the priesthood struggle to remain celibate and the church must "stay on the safe side" by restricting their enrollment. He stressed that the church was not "hounding" gays out of the priesthood, but wants to enroll seminarians who can maintain their vows of celibacy.
The document has been controversial from the start, and there had been speculation that it may never be released because of its sensitive nature. Some priests have said the document is sorely needed. Others say it will do more harm than good, antagonizing existing homosexual priests and driving others underground.
I am generally opposed to "outing" those who are homosexual unless they are engaged in political activity that helps to repress others in society who are also gay.
I really do think that it is time to OUT specific cardinals and other senior church officials who contribute to this policy. Vatican City is a recognized city state -- and thus is subject as well to the currents of politics.
It is time that some of the currents ran back against this bigoted policy.
Note to John Aravosis and other bloggers -- time to direct some blog time to some Vatican confessions.
Posted by steve at September 23, 2005 12:51 PM
I visited the Vatican in early August and met a person who is deeply "embedded" in the world of those who run Vatican City and who govern the global machinery of the Catholic Church.
According to this person's estimation, he guesses that a "conservative estimate" of those cardinals and senior church officials who are gay is about 50%. Practicing, as opposed to just flirtatious, homosexuals at the highest levels of the church are probably about 30%.
When I asked whether homosexuals would be better served under Pope Benedict XVI than under John Paul II, he responded, "Don't think that we will be any better served under a gay pope than a straight one."
While there wasn't much love lost between Pope John Paul II and the homosexual community, John Paul didn't spend his every waking moment thinking about how to screw over the gay community. This very-connected individual I got to know in Italy had a different view (let's just leave it at that) of Benedict XVI.
But here's the deal. The Vatican is now readying a new policy on gay priests -- working harder to ban them before ordination and pretty much symbolically lumping in predatory pedophiles with those who are gay -- which I find outrageous.
From a report by the Washington Post's Alan Cooperman:
The agency said the new document would indicate that men with homosexual tendencies shouldn't be ordained even if they are celibate "because their condition suggests a serious personality disorder which detracts from their ability to serve as ministers."
In an apparently new element, the agency said the document would also say that already ordained priests, if they have homosexual tendencies, would be "strongly urged to renew their dedication to chastity and a manner of life appropriate to the priesthood."
The American prelate overseeing the evaluations, Archbishop Edwin O'Brien, said earlier this month that most gay candidates for the priesthood struggle to remain celibate and the church must "stay on the safe side" by restricting their enrollment. He stressed that the church was not "hounding" gays out of the priesthood, but wants to enroll seminarians who can maintain their vows of celibacy.
The document has been controversial from the start, and there had been speculation that it may never be released because of its sensitive nature. Some priests have said the document is sorely needed. Others say it will do more harm than good, antagonizing existing homosexual priests and driving others underground.
I am generally opposed to "outing" those who are homosexual unless they are engaged in political activity that helps to repress others in society who are also gay.
I really do think that it is time to OUT specific cardinals and other senior church officials who contribute to this policy. Vatican City is a recognized city state -- and thus is subject as well to the currents of politics.
It is time that some of the currents ran back against this bigoted policy.
Note to John Aravosis and other bloggers -- time to direct some blog time to some Vatican confessions.
Posted by steve at September 23, 2005 12:51 PM
Fristed
This doesn't sound very good. And by not "very good" I mean really really funny:
WASHINGTON Sep 24, 2005 — Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., was updated several times about his investments in blind trusts during 2002, the last time two weeks before he publicly denied any knowledge of what was in the accounts, documents show.
Frist, asked in a television interview in January 2003 whether he should sell his HCA stock, responded: "Well, I think really for our viewers it should be understood that I put this into a blind trust. So as far as I know, I own no HCA stock"
Frist, referring to his trust and those of his family, also said in the interview, "I have no control. It is illegal right now for me to know what the composition of those trusts are. So I have no idea."
Documents filed with the Senate showed that just two weeks before those comments, the trustee of the senator's trust, M. Kirk Scobey Jr., wrote to Frist that HCA stock was contributed to the trust. It was valued at $15,000 and $50,000.
On May 16, 2002, Scobey advised Frist that four investments were contributed to a Frist blind trust, including HCA stock valued at $500,000 to $1 million. A second letter the same day mentions the same four investments going into a different trust, but with different valuations, including HCA stock valued at $250,000 to $500,000
Whether or not he's actually done anything illegal, Bill Frist can and should now be referred to in the press as "Senator Bill Frist, documented liar."
WASHINGTON Sep 24, 2005 — Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., was updated several times about his investments in blind trusts during 2002, the last time two weeks before he publicly denied any knowledge of what was in the accounts, documents show.
Frist, asked in a television interview in January 2003 whether he should sell his HCA stock, responded: "Well, I think really for our viewers it should be understood that I put this into a blind trust. So as far as I know, I own no HCA stock"
Frist, referring to his trust and those of his family, also said in the interview, "I have no control. It is illegal right now for me to know what the composition of those trusts are. So I have no idea."
Documents filed with the Senate showed that just two weeks before those comments, the trustee of the senator's trust, M. Kirk Scobey Jr., wrote to Frist that HCA stock was contributed to the trust. It was valued at $15,000 and $50,000.
On May 16, 2002, Scobey advised Frist that four investments were contributed to a Frist blind trust, including HCA stock valued at $500,000 to $1 million. A second letter the same day mentions the same four investments going into a different trust, but with different valuations, including HCA stock valued at $250,000 to $500,000
Whether or not he's actually done anything illegal, Bill Frist can and should now be referred to in the press as "Senator Bill Frist, documented liar."
Soldier's Chilling Testimony Fuels Demonstrations Against Iraq War
by Andrew Buncombe in Washington
A former American soldier who served in Iraq and filed for conscientious objector status has given an extraordinary insight into the war's dehumanizing effects an insight that helps explain why the British and American public has turned sharply against the occupation.
On the eve of large anti-war demonstrations in Washington and London, Hart Viges has told how indiscriminate fire from US troops is likely to have killed an untold number of Iraqi civilians. Mr Viges, 29, said he was still haunted by the memories of what he experienced and urged President George Bush to withdraw US troops from Iraq.
"I don't know how many innocents I killed with my mortar rounds," Mr Viges, who served with the 82nd Airborne Division, said during a presentation this week at American University in Washington. "In Baghdad, I had days that I don't want to remember. I try to forget," he added
The rare insight into the chaos of the combat including an order to open fire on all taxis in the city of Samawa because it was believed Iraqi forces were using them for transport comes as US support for the war in Iraq slumps to an all-time low. Polls suggest that 60 per cent now believe the war was wrong. Mr Bush's personal approval ratings are also at a record low.
British attitudes to the Iraq war have shown a nation divided over the decision to invade but by last October the balance had tilted 46 per cent to 40 per cent towards an anti-war position, according to an ICM poll published in The Guardian.
Not since August 1968, the high point of the opposition to the war in Vietnam, has there been a majority of people in America who believe that an ongoing conflict was wrong. That historic turning point in public opinion came seven months after North Vietnamese forces launched the devastating Tet Offensive, as the divided Democratic Party Convention in Chicago was choosing Hubert Humphrey rather than Eugene McCarthy as its presidential candidate and 10,000 anti-war protesters fought pitched battles with police in the streets.
Now, in September 2005, campaigners say it has reached the point where opposition to the war in Iraq has become a mainstream issue. "I certainly think this should encourage people to go to Washington and participate in the peace demos," said Kathy Kelly, a veteran campaigner with the group Voices in the Wilderness.
"The politicians are going to counter that these demonstrators just come to Washington for a day and then go back to their normal lives. But I think they are going to have to realize that when people are out in the streets saying 'Bring them home now' they are saying the same thing as what many of the voters think."
She added: "My sense is that people are having a serious disillusionment with any sense of competence with the leaders of this country and that makes many people very afraid."
Mr Bush's response to the falling public support has been a stubborn refusal to accept any error and to vow the US will remain in Iraq and will not " abandon the mission".
He has described the peace demonstrators who want him to withdraw forces as well-intentioned but wrong.
Yesterday, US forces in Iraq announced two more of its troops had been killed west of Baghdad. One was killed by a roadside bomb between the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, the other by small arms fire in Ramadi.
In Baghdad, a suicide bomber riding on a small public bus set off explosives in a bustling open-air bus terminal, killing at least five people and wounding eight. Also in Baghdad, gunmen killed a member of the commission charged with ensuring that former members of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime were banned from the Iraqi hierarchy.
Earlier, authorities said a second member of the 323-member Supreme National Commission for de-Baathification had also been killed but the committee's head, Ali al-Lami, said the second member had been abducted on Wednesday by insurgents and was freed on Thursday by the Iraqi army.
The latest casualties add to a total of US deaths in Iraq that stands at more than 1,900. No one knows precisely how many Iraqi civilians have been killed as a result of the war but a report published last year in The Lancet suggested that up to 100,000 may have lost their lives.
Hart Viges' own journey into the chaos and violence of Iraq started on 11 September 2001. The day after he watched al- Qa'ida terrorists fly airliners into targets in New York and Washington he quit his job as a waiter in Seattle and signed up for the US Army.
Deployed to the Middle East in early 2003, he saw action in Baghdad and Fallujah, among other hot spots.
Despite his growing horror with what he was experiencing, it was only when he watched Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ, that he decided to file for conscientious objector status. "I consider myself a Christian and I thought Jesus wasn't talking smack," he told the American-Statesman newspaper, in his current home of Austin, Texas.
Mr Viges visited Washington this week as part of an anti-war protest organised by Cindy Sheehan, the mother who camped outside Mr Bush's ranch at Crawford, Texas, over the summer to protest against the war in which her son was killed.
Bush's ideological quagmire
Negotiating a cease-fire with the Iraq insurgents, using the carrot of U.S. withdrawal, is the smartest exit strategy for Bush. But he's too stubborn and foolish to do it.
By Joe Conason
Sept. 24, 2005 | On the eve of renewed antiwar protests in Washington and on the West Coast, and with public confidence in him plunging, George W. Bush vowed to continue Iraq war policies that have already failed. Bereft of resources and ideas, he resorted again Thursday to the slogans and clichés that used to serve him so well. And as if further proof were needed, he showed once more how poorly he understands the strategies and goals of America's real enemies.
From the beginning, Bush has sought to connect the overthrow of Saddam Hussein with the U.S.-led war against al-Qaida, a notion thoroughly discredited but never surrendered. Speaking after a Defense Department briefing on the "global war against terror," he vowed that his administration would not withdraw troops from Iraq "on my watch" because that would permit terrorists "to claim an historic victory over the United States."
Said Bush, "The only way the terrorists can win is if we lose our nerve and abandon the mission." Should that occur, he warned, then terrorist leaders Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would come "to dominate the Middle East and launch more attacks on America and other free nations." He also said that we must "honor the sacrifice" of the nearly two thousand American troops who have died in Iraq "by completing the mission and winning the war on terrorism."
The notion that we must keep sending our soldiers to be killed because others have been killed scarcely deserves rebuttal. The American people have already rejected that argument, with 66 percent now in favor of bringing some or all U.S. troops home immediately, according to the latest Gallup Poll.
But what of Bush's insistence that an American withdrawal from Iraq would encourage Islamist terror? He is wrong -- and yet the concerns he is exploiting cannot be dismissed lightly.
The most obvious truth -- anticipated by experts and acknowledged most recently in a study by the eminently conservative and mostly Republican Center for Strategic and International Studies -- is that the precipitous, unjustified and destructive invasion of Iraq has further alienated the Muslim world and promoted Islamist fascism.
Based on Saudi interrogations of insurgents captured in battle, the study validated two important arguments for changing course. It showed that the invasion promoted terrorist ideology among young Saudis -- and it also indicated that the number of foreign terrorists in Iraq is far smaller than the White House has suggested.
Indeed, the CSIS study estimates that only a small percentage of the Iraqi insurgents are foreigners -- no more than 10 percent and perhaps as little as 5 percent. Just as important, even the foreign fighters in Iraq, according to the study, are motivated less by an all-encompassing Islamist ideology than by the specific goal of expelling Western occupiers from an Arab land.
So Bush is wrong to claim that continuing warfare in Iraq will defeat terrorism, when we know that terror is expanding there and that terrorist organizations are winning new adherents due to the war. He is also wrong because the Iraqi insurgency is a homegrown nationalist force, not a foreign-directed terrorist conspiracy.
Nevertheless, the war could end in a perceived defeat for the United States -- and a perceived victory for al-Qaida and its allies. Bush is understandably determined to prevent that, and even many of his most implacable critics agree that such an outcome must be avoided. The problem is that neither this arrogant and inept president nor his critics have outlined a plausible plan to escape the disaster he has created.
That's because Iraq has become as much a quandary as it is a quagmire. If American troops leave precipitously, the country will descend into a horrific civil war, perhaps even worse than what is happening now. Yet so long as our troops remain, more Iraqis are provoked into supporting the insurgency, and the situation continues to deteriorate.
The best and perhaps only way out is a negotiated settlement, reached under the auspices of the United Nations and Iraq's neighbors -- which could eventually persuade the Sunni nationalist rebels to lay down their weapons and enter the nascent political system instead. The way to bring the insurgents to the bargaining table is to promise that if they agree to a cease-fire and begin talks with the Iraqi government, we will begin to withdraw troops -- and to assure the Iraqis that a successful negotiation would lead to our complete withdrawal.
No doubt Bush would reply that we must not "negotiate with terrorists," but that would merely be more diversionary and meaningless verbiage. The long-standing policy of the U.S. government is to deal when necessary with governments that sponsor terror, such as Pakistan and Iran -- and to encourage our allies, such as Israel, to negotiate with terrorist groups. Certainly we can negotiate with the Sunni insurgents, despite their vile tactics, in order to bring peace and stability to Iraq.
Should that effort ultimately succeed, it could bring a valuable dividend. If and when the Sunni rebels decide to end their insurgency, they may well decide that the time has come to expel (or kill) Zarqawi and his irreconcilable gang of Islamist murderers. To whatever extent the former Baathists and other disgruntled Sunnis have been working with their old enemies in al-Qaida or other radical Islamists, their alliance of convenience is likely to crumble after the invasion and occupation that brought them together are over. By decoupling Arab nationalism from Islamist terrorism, the damage that Bush's war has done to American interests can begin to be repaired.
That would represent a real victory in the "war on terror."
Friday, September 23, 2005
Fw: No on Roberts
Thank Goodness! Had she decided to vote "yes" after having voted "yes" for
the war, what would I have done?
----- Original Message -----
From: "Hillary Rodham Clinton" <info@friendsofhillary.com>
To: <miriamvieni@optonline.net>
Sent: Friday, September 23, 2005 2:59 PM
Subject: No on Roberts
Dear Friend:
With the future of women's rights, civil rights, and privacy rights at
stake, I cannot vote to confirm John Roberts.
I have an obligation to my constituents to make sure that I cast my vote for
Chief Justice of the United States for someone I am convinced will be
steadfast in protecting fundamental women's rights, civil rights, privacy
rights, and who will respect the appropriate separation of powers among the
three branches. After the Judiciary Hearings, I believe the record on these
matters has been left unclear. That uncertainty means as a matter of
conscience, I cannot vote to confirm despite Judge Roberts' long history of
public service.
In one memo, for example, Judge Roberts argued that Congress has the power
to deny the Supreme Court the right to hear appeals from lower courts on
constitutional claims involving flag burning, abortion, and other matters.
He wrote that the United States would be far better off with fifty different
interpretations of the right to choose than with what he called the
"judicial excesses embodied in Roe v. Wade."
When questioned about his legal memoranda, Judge Roberts claimed they did
not necessarily reflect his views and that he was merely making the best
possible case for his clients or responding to a superior's request that he
make a particular argument. It is hard to believe he has no opinion on so
many critical issues after years as a Justice Department and White House
lawyer, appellate advocate and judge.
It is telling that President Bush has said the Justices he most admires are
the two most conservative justices, Justices Thomas and Scalia. It is not
unreasonable to believe that the President has picked someone in Judge
Roberts whom he believes holds a similarly conservative philosophy, and that
voting as a bloc they could further limit the power of the Congress, expand
the purview of the Executive, and overturn key rulings like Roe v. Wade.
I will, therefore, vote against his confirmation. My desire to maintain the
already fragile Supreme Court majority for civil rights, voting rights and
women's rights outweighs the respect I have for Judge Roberts' intellect,
character, and legal skills.
Sincerely,
Hillary Rodham Clinton
P.S. Today we have the latest episode of Conversations with Hillary.
Hillary talks to Representative Nita Lowey about women's rights, the Court
and our country.
Watch the video: http://www.hillaryclinton.com/conversation/lowey
Make a Contribution: https://contribute.hillaryclinton.com/form.html?sc=1010
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Thursday, September 22, 2005
Prez on the Precipice
Two-term presidencies rarely end on the twentieth day of January in the odd year following a national election. Rather, history tells us, they tend to flame out months--sometimes years--before the Oval Office officially changes hands. After a response to Hurricane Katrina that reinforced Americans' doubts about George W. Bush's competence and his caring, and with continuing turns for the worse in Iraq, the President has blundered toward the precipice of a prematurely finished presidency. But as history also tells us, presidencies don't plunge into political free-fall on their own. The opposition party must stoke public resentment and offer convincing alternatives to the Commander in Chief's failed vision.
Bush boosted his sagging approval ratings a bit by tarting up his Gulf Coast reconstruction plans in Franklin Roosevelt drag. But he's facing a revolt within his own party over what some see as an attempt to spend his way out of the doghouse. The danger for Democrats is that the debate over rebuilding New Orleans and the rest of the stricken region could play out as an intramural fight between a "compassionate" President and his fiscally conservative compatriots. That would leave Democrats where they were after the 9/11 terrorist attacks--as hapless allies with a President they are unwilling, or unsure of how, to challenge.
This is no time for such timidity. If Democrats want to get the better of Bush at last, and if they want to advance an agenda that could revitalize their party and their country, they must not get stuck between the Administration and its right flank. They must be blunt about the fact that while it has a big price tag, Bush's response to the Gulf Coast crisis is inadequate and irresponsible. The first step is fighting the President's decision to waive prevailing-wage laws on the Gulf Coast--a giveaway to contractors that denies displaced workers a chance to earn enough to piece their lives back together. Democrats should reject the President's attempts to ease environmental regulations in a region already ecologically devastated. They should back a proposal by Senator Russ Feingold and Representative John Conyers to delay the implementation of bankruptcy "reforms" that will make it tougher for Gulf Coast residents to get back on their feet. And they should launch a frontal assault on the tax policies of an Administration that has starved the government's capacity to provide basic protections and services. That means shooting down the President's proposal to eliminate estate taxes. It also means demanding that Bush be accountable for the $200 billion he has sunk into Iraq, with no end in sight.
At a time when savvy Republicans are starting to put distance between themselves and the President, Democrats have a chance to develop broad coalitions to demand accountability. Not just accountability for the occupation of Iraq and the campaign of calculated deceit that led us to war but for reckless tax cuts, environmental degradation and other domestic disasters this President has ushered in.
But pushing back against Bush's destructive policies is not enough. While Democrats expose and oppose the President's attempt to make the Gulf Coast a laboratory for conservative pet projects and crony capitalism, they must also lay out a full-scale reconstruction plan of their own--a "people's reconstruction" that advances a democratically accountable, economically viable, socially just and environmentally sustainable plan for regional rebuilding. By doing so, Democrats will accomplish something more lasting and important than nudging a faltering President over the precipice. They will identify their party as the credible alternative--the credible leader--it has failed to be for far too long.
Bush boosted his sagging approval ratings a bit by tarting up his Gulf Coast reconstruction plans in Franklin Roosevelt drag. But he's facing a revolt within his own party over what some see as an attempt to spend his way out of the doghouse. The danger for Democrats is that the debate over rebuilding New Orleans and the rest of the stricken region could play out as an intramural fight between a "compassionate" President and his fiscally conservative compatriots. That would leave Democrats where they were after the 9/11 terrorist attacks--as hapless allies with a President they are unwilling, or unsure of how, to challenge.
This is no time for such timidity. If Democrats want to get the better of Bush at last, and if they want to advance an agenda that could revitalize their party and their country, they must not get stuck between the Administration and its right flank. They must be blunt about the fact that while it has a big price tag, Bush's response to the Gulf Coast crisis is inadequate and irresponsible. The first step is fighting the President's decision to waive prevailing-wage laws on the Gulf Coast--a giveaway to contractors that denies displaced workers a chance to earn enough to piece their lives back together. Democrats should reject the President's attempts to ease environmental regulations in a region already ecologically devastated. They should back a proposal by Senator Russ Feingold and Representative John Conyers to delay the implementation of bankruptcy "reforms" that will make it tougher for Gulf Coast residents to get back on their feet. And they should launch a frontal assault on the tax policies of an Administration that has starved the government's capacity to provide basic protections and services. That means shooting down the President's proposal to eliminate estate taxes. It also means demanding that Bush be accountable for the $200 billion he has sunk into Iraq, with no end in sight.
At a time when savvy Republicans are starting to put distance between themselves and the President, Democrats have a chance to develop broad coalitions to demand accountability. Not just accountability for the occupation of Iraq and the campaign of calculated deceit that led us to war but for reckless tax cuts, environmental degradation and other domestic disasters this President has ushered in.
But pushing back against Bush's destructive policies is not enough. While Democrats expose and oppose the President's attempt to make the Gulf Coast a laboratory for conservative pet projects and crony capitalism, they must also lay out a full-scale reconstruction plan of their own--a "people's reconstruction" that advances a democratically accountable, economically viable, socially just and environmentally sustainable plan for regional rebuilding. By doing so, Democrats will accomplish something more lasting and important than nudging a faltering President over the precipice. They will identify their party as the credible alternative--the credible leader--it has failed to be for far too long.
The Bifurcated President:
Yesterday's speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition (motto: "Yep, we're the Israel-lovin' moneylenders you've heard so much about") by President Bush was one of those frightening exercises in logical leaps the likes of which generally take place only after one has discovered oneself wearing another person's pants after awaking from an acid dream involving pixies, a Sousaphone, and the gibbering skull of Rimbaud.
First, there was the introduction of Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, who, Bush said, "was looking for a meal -- he told me that on the plane yesterday." Oh, ho, oh, ho, you get it? See, part of his state was smashed into toothpicks by Hurricane Katrina, with starving citizens living in shelters, and Barbour was honoring them by eating Glatt chicken with his party's Hebraic faithful. One might think Barbour'd be busy helping his state figure out how to rebuild, say, a half-dozen gutted, flattened towns. But not when Bush needs a Katrina prop and there's no poor Negroes to fly in for the event.
Then, in praising the "strength" of the nation, Bush said that people have been moved to action; "I'm not talking about just government, I'm talking about the whole country," because, if he was talking about just government, well, shit, he'd be lying. Then there was this line, one that he's been repeating on a loop: "[W]e're going to stay as long as it takes," which begs the question: what other fuckin choice do we have? Cut Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama off and send them out into the wild Gulf of Mexico to become sovereign islands? Is the federal government's abandonment those states even an option? Bush assured, "There's a federal role to play, and we'll play it," because, you know, if there's a federal role, it'd be pretty fuckin' silly if, say, the crazy homeless guy on the corner played it. But don't worry about that federal role, because "We'll make sure your money is spent wisely." At that point, economists around the nation curled into a ball, shitting themselves, and muttering, "So cold, so very cold, please give me soup."
After going through his same blah, blah, blah list of shit he thinks will do some good for the poor and ruined of the Gulf Coast, Bush made this incredible, lemur-like, crazy-legged jump from one jungle tree to the next: "You know, something we -- I've been thinking a lot about how America has responded, and it's clear to me that Americans value human life, and value every person as important. And that stands in stark contrast, by the way, to the terrorists we have to deal with. You see, we look at the destruction caused by Katrina, and our hearts break. They're the kind of people who look at Katrina and wish they had caused it." Although one might argue that perhaps one of their butterflies flapped its terrorist wings and started the air moving that would cause Katrina, what the fuck?
Well, if you have to ask a stupid question, motherfucker, you get a stupid answer: "We're in a war against these people. It's a war on terror." Which made more than one robo-grinnin' circumcised Republican there do a double take that'd make a Catskills stand-up comic proud. Bush continued: "These are evil men who target the suffering. They killed 3,000 people on September the 11th, 2001." So, like, he's saying that the Goldman Sachs people in the World Trade Center were suffering. Or maybe, because we're all sinners, we're all suffering, and thus we're targeted because of our sinning suffering. Or maybe words just pop into his head that must be spoken or they'll eat his brain.
Blathering on without anyone there to stop him, Bush said, "And they've continued to kill. See, sometimes we forget about the evil deeds of these people." And then the President reminded us of what we might have forgotten: "They've killed in Madrid, and Istanbul, and Baghdad, and Bali, and London, and Sharm el-Sheikh, and Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv. Around the world they continue to kill." But never fear, "We're also going to defeat the enemy because they have no vision for the future that's positive." Unlike American evangelicals, who have a vision for the future that involves the torture and incineration of most of the people left behind after God takes all the Jesus-lovers away.
George W. Bush is a glass half-full kind of President: every tragedy of immense and horrific proportions is actually an opportunity, a chance to turn that frown upside down: "[T]he attacks of September the 11th really causes us to be more determined than ever to defend our way of life. And it also gave us an opportunity to advance the cause of freedom that were previously unthinkable," which, if you think about it, is not only grammatically incomprehensible, but means that he's admitting that 9/11 was just an excuse to go to war elsewhere.
Then, promising to open the change purse again, Bush said, "And out of the horror of Katrina is going to come a rebirth for parts of our country that -- that will mean people down there will be able to live with greater hope and prosperity -- the hope of prosperity -- than ever before." Solving problems before they become problems - that's the Bush administration's way, except when it isn't.
Yep, the glass is always half-full, just a chance to do good where no good could be done. Or, as we're learning now, if the glass is half-full, it's just an excuse for George W. Bush to finish that drink in one swallow.
First, there was the introduction of Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, who, Bush said, "was looking for a meal -- he told me that on the plane yesterday." Oh, ho, oh, ho, you get it? See, part of his state was smashed into toothpicks by Hurricane Katrina, with starving citizens living in shelters, and Barbour was honoring them by eating Glatt chicken with his party's Hebraic faithful. One might think Barbour'd be busy helping his state figure out how to rebuild, say, a half-dozen gutted, flattened towns. But not when Bush needs a Katrina prop and there's no poor Negroes to fly in for the event.
Then, in praising the "strength" of the nation, Bush said that people have been moved to action; "I'm not talking about just government, I'm talking about the whole country," because, if he was talking about just government, well, shit, he'd be lying. Then there was this line, one that he's been repeating on a loop: "[W]e're going to stay as long as it takes," which begs the question: what other fuckin choice do we have? Cut Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama off and send them out into the wild Gulf of Mexico to become sovereign islands? Is the federal government's abandonment those states even an option? Bush assured, "There's a federal role to play, and we'll play it," because, you know, if there's a federal role, it'd be pretty fuckin' silly if, say, the crazy homeless guy on the corner played it. But don't worry about that federal role, because "We'll make sure your money is spent wisely." At that point, economists around the nation curled into a ball, shitting themselves, and muttering, "So cold, so very cold, please give me soup."
After going through his same blah, blah, blah list of shit he thinks will do some good for the poor and ruined of the Gulf Coast, Bush made this incredible, lemur-like, crazy-legged jump from one jungle tree to the next: "You know, something we -- I've been thinking a lot about how America has responded, and it's clear to me that Americans value human life, and value every person as important. And that stands in stark contrast, by the way, to the terrorists we have to deal with. You see, we look at the destruction caused by Katrina, and our hearts break. They're the kind of people who look at Katrina and wish they had caused it." Although one might argue that perhaps one of their butterflies flapped its terrorist wings and started the air moving that would cause Katrina, what the fuck?
Well, if you have to ask a stupid question, motherfucker, you get a stupid answer: "We're in a war against these people. It's a war on terror." Which made more than one robo-grinnin' circumcised Republican there do a double take that'd make a Catskills stand-up comic proud. Bush continued: "These are evil men who target the suffering. They killed 3,000 people on September the 11th, 2001." So, like, he's saying that the Goldman Sachs people in the World Trade Center were suffering. Or maybe, because we're all sinners, we're all suffering, and thus we're targeted because of our sinning suffering. Or maybe words just pop into his head that must be spoken or they'll eat his brain.
Blathering on without anyone there to stop him, Bush said, "And they've continued to kill. See, sometimes we forget about the evil deeds of these people." And then the President reminded us of what we might have forgotten: "They've killed in Madrid, and Istanbul, and Baghdad, and Bali, and London, and Sharm el-Sheikh, and Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv. Around the world they continue to kill." But never fear, "We're also going to defeat the enemy because they have no vision for the future that's positive." Unlike American evangelicals, who have a vision for the future that involves the torture and incineration of most of the people left behind after God takes all the Jesus-lovers away.
George W. Bush is a glass half-full kind of President: every tragedy of immense and horrific proportions is actually an opportunity, a chance to turn that frown upside down: "[T]he attacks of September the 11th really causes us to be more determined than ever to defend our way of life. And it also gave us an opportunity to advance the cause of freedom that were previously unthinkable," which, if you think about it, is not only grammatically incomprehensible, but means that he's admitting that 9/11 was just an excuse to go to war elsewhere.
Then, promising to open the change purse again, Bush said, "And out of the horror of Katrina is going to come a rebirth for parts of our country that -- that will mean people down there will be able to live with greater hope and prosperity -- the hope of prosperity -- than ever before." Solving problems before they become problems - that's the Bush administration's way, except when it isn't.
Yep, the glass is always half-full, just a chance to do good where no good could be done. Or, as we're learning now, if the glass is half-full, it's just an excuse for George W. Bush to finish that drink in one swallow.
American Family Voices - Miriam V.
AM Feed - September 22, 2005
Hot Topics
List of 2 items
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) has some explaining to do regarding
his quickie stock sale of the family company. Frist offloaded all his shares
of HCA just days before its stock plummeted, a move his spokesman said Frist
made merely to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. Nice try, but
Frist steadfastly held onto his stock when such charges were leveled before.
That explanation does nothing to answer the pressing question: Why now? HCA
stock, which was under $40 earlier this year, peaked at $58 in June. Frist
told the managers of his blind trust to sell the stock just nine days before
its peak - and just a few weeks before a disappointing financial report
caused it to plummet by 9 percent.
[link]
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives opened their version of
an investigation into the government?s response to Hurricane Katrina
yesterday,
as Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) appointed 11 more GOP members to the group.
The Republican leadership has steadfastly ignored calls for an independent
investigation into this major issue, and Democrats have responded by
boycotting the committee, which would have been dominated by Republicans
even with
their participation. Only one member of the group hails from a state
actually hit by the hurricane.
[link]
list end
Who Says That?
"You know, the attacks of September the 11th really causes us to be more
determined than ever to defend our way of life. And it also gave us an
opportunity
to advance the cause of freedom that were previously unthinkable." -
President Bush, during his remarks to the Republican Jewish Coalition
yesterday.
Morning Snark
List of 2 items
You know, President Bush is exactly right: It was previously unthinkable to
invade a country like Iraq with no demonstrable ties to people that actually
attacked us.
Anyone want to bet that the House investigation into Hurricane Katrina
parcels out much of the blame to state and local governments (both run by
Democrats)?
Why not just dispense with the sham entirely and just get a bunch of
reporters from FOX News to write up the report?
list end
Poker party
In politics as in poker, the only way to win is to seize the initiative. The Democrats need to make bold wagers or risk being rolled over again.
By David Mamet
ONE NEEDS TO know but three words to play poker: call, raise or fold.
Fold means keep the money, I'm out of the hand; call means to match your opponents' bet. That leaves raise, which is the only way to win at poker. The raiser puts his opponent on the defensive, seizing the initiative. Initiative is only important if one wants to win.
The military axiom is "he who imposes the terms of the battle imposes the terms of the peace." The gambling equivalent is: "Don't call unless you could raise"; that is, to merely match one's opponent's bet is effective only if it makes the opponent question the caller's motives. And that can only occur if the caller has acted aggressively enough in the past to cause his opponents to wonder if the mere call is a ruse de guerre.
If you are branded as passive, the table will roll right over you — your opponents will steal antes without fear. Why? Because the addicted caller has never exhibited what, in the wider world, is known as courage.
In poker, one must have courage: the courage to bet, to back one's convictions, one's intuitions, one's understanding. There can be no victory without courage. The successful player must be willing to wager on likelihoods. Should he wait for absolutely risk-free certainty, he will win nothing, regardless of the cards he is dealt.
For example, take a player who has never acted with initiative — he has never raised, merely called. Now, at the end of the evening, he is dealt a royal flush. The hand, per se, is unbeatable, but the passive player has never acted aggressively; his current bet (on the sure thing) will signal to the other players that his hand is unbeatable, and they will fold.
His patient, passive quest for certainty has won nothing.
The Democrats, similarly, in their quest for a strategy that would alienate no voters, have given away the store, and they have given away the country.
Committed Democrats watched while Al Gore frittered away the sure-thing election of 2000. They watched, passively, while the Bush administration concocted a phony war; they, in the main, voted for the war knowing it was purposeless, out of fear of being thought weak. They then ran a candidate who refused to stand up to accusations of lack of patriotism.
The Republicans, like the perpetual raiser at the poker table, became increasingly bold as the Democrats signaled their absolute reluctance to seize the initiative.
John Kerry lost the 2004 election combating an indictment of his Vietnam War record. A decorated war hero muddled himself in merely "calling" the attacks of a man with, curiously, a vanishing record of military attendance. Even if the Democrats and Kerry had prevailed (that is, succeeded in nullifying the Republicans arguably absurd accusations), they would have been back only where they started before the accusations began.
Control of the initiative is control of the battle. In the alley, at the poker table or in politics. One must raise. The American public chose Bush over Kerry in 2004. How, the undecided electorate rightly wondered, could one believe that Kerry would stand up for America when he could not stand up to Bush? A possible response to the Swift boat veterans would have been: "I served. He didn't. I didn't bring up the subject, but, if all George Bush has to show for his time in the Guard is a scrap of paper with some doodling on it, I say the man was a deserter."
This would have been a raise. Here the initiative has been seized, and the opponent must now fume and bluster and scream unfair. In combat, in politics, in poker, there is no certainty; there is only likelihood, and the likelihood is that aggression will prevail.
The press, quiescent during five years of aggressive behavior by the White House, has, perhaps, begun to recover its pride. In speaking of Karl Rove, Scott McClellan and the White House's Valerie Plame disgrace, they have begun to use words such as "other than true," "fabricated." The word that they circle, still, is "lie." The word the Democratic constituency, heartsick over the behavior of its party leaders, has been forced to consider applying to them is "coward."
One may sit at the poker table all night and never bet and still go home broke, having anted away one's stake.
The Democrats are anteing away their time at the table. They may be bold and risk defeat, or be passive and ensure it.
DAVID MAMET is a screenwriter, novelist and the author of award-winning plays, including "Glengarry Glen Ross."
By David Mamet
ONE NEEDS TO know but three words to play poker: call, raise or fold.
Fold means keep the money, I'm out of the hand; call means to match your opponents' bet. That leaves raise, which is the only way to win at poker. The raiser puts his opponent on the defensive, seizing the initiative. Initiative is only important if one wants to win.
The military axiom is "he who imposes the terms of the battle imposes the terms of the peace." The gambling equivalent is: "Don't call unless you could raise"; that is, to merely match one's opponent's bet is effective only if it makes the opponent question the caller's motives. And that can only occur if the caller has acted aggressively enough in the past to cause his opponents to wonder if the mere call is a ruse de guerre.
If you are branded as passive, the table will roll right over you — your opponents will steal antes without fear. Why? Because the addicted caller has never exhibited what, in the wider world, is known as courage.
In poker, one must have courage: the courage to bet, to back one's convictions, one's intuitions, one's understanding. There can be no victory without courage. The successful player must be willing to wager on likelihoods. Should he wait for absolutely risk-free certainty, he will win nothing, regardless of the cards he is dealt.
For example, take a player who has never acted with initiative — he has never raised, merely called. Now, at the end of the evening, he is dealt a royal flush. The hand, per se, is unbeatable, but the passive player has never acted aggressively; his current bet (on the sure thing) will signal to the other players that his hand is unbeatable, and they will fold.
His patient, passive quest for certainty has won nothing.
The Democrats, similarly, in their quest for a strategy that would alienate no voters, have given away the store, and they have given away the country.
Committed Democrats watched while Al Gore frittered away the sure-thing election of 2000. They watched, passively, while the Bush administration concocted a phony war; they, in the main, voted for the war knowing it was purposeless, out of fear of being thought weak. They then ran a candidate who refused to stand up to accusations of lack of patriotism.
The Republicans, like the perpetual raiser at the poker table, became increasingly bold as the Democrats signaled their absolute reluctance to seize the initiative.
John Kerry lost the 2004 election combating an indictment of his Vietnam War record. A decorated war hero muddled himself in merely "calling" the attacks of a man with, curiously, a vanishing record of military attendance. Even if the Democrats and Kerry had prevailed (that is, succeeded in nullifying the Republicans arguably absurd accusations), they would have been back only where they started before the accusations began.
Control of the initiative is control of the battle. In the alley, at the poker table or in politics. One must raise. The American public chose Bush over Kerry in 2004. How, the undecided electorate rightly wondered, could one believe that Kerry would stand up for America when he could not stand up to Bush? A possible response to the Swift boat veterans would have been: "I served. He didn't. I didn't bring up the subject, but, if all George Bush has to show for his time in the Guard is a scrap of paper with some doodling on it, I say the man was a deserter."
This would have been a raise. Here the initiative has been seized, and the opponent must now fume and bluster and scream unfair. In combat, in politics, in poker, there is no certainty; there is only likelihood, and the likelihood is that aggression will prevail.
The press, quiescent during five years of aggressive behavior by the White House, has, perhaps, begun to recover its pride. In speaking of Karl Rove, Scott McClellan and the White House's Valerie Plame disgrace, they have begun to use words such as "other than true," "fabricated." The word that they circle, still, is "lie." The word the Democratic constituency, heartsick over the behavior of its party leaders, has been forced to consider applying to them is "coward."
One may sit at the poker table all night and never bet and still go home broke, having anted away one's stake.
The Democrats are anteing away their time at the table. They may be bold and risk defeat, or be passive and ensure it.
DAVID MAMET is a screenwriter, novelist and the author of award-winning plays, including "Glengarry Glen Ross."
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Fw: What's Next for UN-U.S. Relations? - FCNL
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kathy Guthrie" <kathyguthrie@fcnl.org>
To: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@optonline.net>
Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2005 12:12 PM
Subject: What's Next for UN-U.S. Relations? - FCNL
Heads of state from more than 150 countries meeting at the United
Nations in New York last week agreed to a package of proposals to
improve the international system and better address global issues of
peace and security, development, human rights, and the management of
the UN itself. The final summit declaration from the world leaders
included both successes, such as the agreement to create a
Peacebuilding Commission to help countries transition from war to
peace, and failures, such as the lack of any agreement at all on
disarmament and nonproliferation goals.
But the greatest success of the meeting might be that the international
community now has before it a broad agenda for strengthening the UN and
addressing global problems that must be implemented in the coming
months and years.
The U.S. played an instrumental role in shaping the outcome of that
agenda and will be a major player in determining whether and how it is
advanced. The new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton,
was largely responsible for throwing what had been months of delicate
negotiations into disarray when, in the final weeks before the summit,
he proposed more than 700 changes to what many other countries thought
was a near-final agreement. Other countries soon followed suit in
pressing their own agendas and backtracking on agreements already
negotiated. In the end a number of important advances were lost, and
the U.S. must take responsibility for acting as one of the spoilers.
Despite these disruptions, the leaders gathered for the summit were
successful in reaching substantive agreement on a wide range of issues.
Important commitments included
* an agreement to increase annual global development assistance by $50
billion by 2010;
* strengthening the peacebuilding and human rights capacities of the UN; and
* affirming a collective "responsibility to protect" populations
threatened by genocide and other crimes against humanity when national
governments fail to do so, with a focus on prevention and action
through the Security Council.
For details on these and other Summit outcomes see
http://capwiz.com/fconl/utr/1/ILZXFBEBCS/GMXTFBEDGS/
Most importantly, an international consensus is now in place for
advancing these and other steps toward improving the UN system to
better address global issues.
WHAT'S NEXT FOR THE UN AND U.S-UN RELATIONS?
President Bush addressed the General Assembly on the opening day of the
2005 Global Summit, and the U.S. joined other world leaders in
reaffirming Athe vital importance of an effective multilateral system,
in accordance with international law." Thanks to the important
organizing and advocacy efforts of many who care about the UN and
international cooperation, the U.S. was forced to pull back some of its
most extreme proposals and demonstrate renewed commitment to
international cooperation.
Unfortunately, many who oppose strong U.S. UN relations are already
organizing in Congress to use the outcomes of the Summit to further
undermine UN effectiveness and U.S. UN relations.
In June, the House passed UN reform legislation (H.R. 2745) that would
mandate cuts to the U.S. contribution to the world body and prevent
U.S. contributions to new peacekeeping missions if UN does not agree to
a list of specific reforms dictated from Washington. This legislation
focuses on micro managing the institution rather than working to
achieve substantive government commitments that would strengthen the
ability of the UN system to prevent war and promote development and
human rights.
Similar legislation has recently been introduced in the Senate (S. 1394
and S. 1383). Reports from the Hill suggest proponents of these bills
will work "on all fronts" to advance them this fall. The Senate bills
may be brought up for a vote as amendments to other legislation or
pushed to the floor in last minute moves that leave little time for
organizing against them.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration has apparently decided to reward
Ambassador John Bolton for his role in the Summit by resubmitting to
the Senate for confirmation Bolton's nomination as U.S. ambassador to
the UN. (The Senate this summer had refused to confirm Bolton's
appointment as U.S. Ambassador. The president then chose to use his
executive powers to appoint Bolton to his current position in a recess
appointment which will expire at the end of this Congress unless the
Senate confirms him in the post.) Ambassador Bolton is expected to
appear before congressional hearings next week to discuss the Summit
outcomes and next steps on UN reform.
ACTION: Urge your senators to oppose efforts to undermine the important
advances made at the Global Summit. Cutting U.S. dues to the UN is the
surest way to thwart the international consensus that has now been
developed to address critical global issues. Urge your senators to
oppose proposals to cut UN dues and to vote against S. 1394 and S. 1383
should they be brought to a vote . Your advocacy work around the
country can make a difference in providing clear, concise information
on the United Nations and encouraging others to contact their elected
officials.
To see a sample letter and send a message to your senators, see our web
site at http://capwiz.com/fconl/utr/1/ILZXFBEBCS/MBXKFBEDGT/ You will
need to enter your zip code to see the message.
Are you having trouble following links or reading this message? See the
web version at
www.fcnl.org/issues/item.php?item_id=1538&issue_id=113
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Conspiracy? - Miriam V.
>The Great New Orleans Land Grab
>The 17th Street Canal levy was breeched on purpose
>By Ernesto Cienfuegos La Voz de Aztlan
>
>Los Angeles, Alta California - September 7, 2005 - (ACN) There were
>numerous incidents that occurred during and immediately after Katrina
>struck that point to the "unthinkable." It now appears that a
>sophisticated plan was implemented that utilized the "cover of a
>hurricane" to first destroy and then take over the City of New Orleans?
>As the world watched the events unfolding, one could not help think
>that something was terribly afoot concerning the rescue by FEMA of the
>city's poor and
>predominate Black population.
>
>It seems that a well laid out plan was put into effect to grab valuable
>
>real estate from well established but poverty stricken Black families
>of New Orleans?
>What is being implemented now is nothing less than a sophisticated
>scheme to purge and ethnically cleanse what Whites have termed "Black
>and 'welfare bloated' New Orleans." Among the most telling anomalies
>pointing to something terribly afoot is the gun battle, killing 5, that
>occurred at the breeched levy between the New Orleans Police Department
>and, what have now been identified as US military agents.
>
>An Associated Press report, which has now disappeared, stated that at
>least five USA Defense Department personnel where shot dead by New
>Orleans police officers in the proximity of the breeched levy. A
>spokesman for the Army Corps of
>Engineers said later that those killed
>were "federal contractors" on their way to "repair" a canal. The
>"contractors" were on their way to launch barges into Lake
>Pontchartrain, in an operation to "fix" the 17th Street Canal,
>according to the Army Corps of Engineers spokesman. Deputy Police Chief
>W.J. Riley
>of New Orleans later reported that his policemen had shot at eight
>suspicious people near the breeched levy, killing five or six. Who
>were these "military agents" that were killed by the police near the
>17th Street Canal breeched levy and what were they doing there? Why did
>the New Orleans police find it necessary to shoot and kill 5 or 6 of
>them? No one is saying anything and it appears that the news story has
>now been swept under the rug. Were these US Department of Defense
>personnel a Special Forces group or Navy Seals with top
>secret orders
>to sabotage the levy? There are verifiable reports that at least 100
>New Orleans police officers have disappeared from the face of the earth
>and that two have committed suicide.
>
>Could these be policemen that died defending the levy against sabotage
>by "federal contractors"? Another telling incident that points to a
>"nefarious plan" is what New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said at the height
>of the crisis. He said publicly, "I fear the CIA may take me out!"
>Mayor Nagin, a Black, said this twice. He told a reporter for the
>Associated Press: "If the CIA slips me something and next week you
>don't see me, you'll all know what happened." Later he told
>interviewers for CNN on a live broadcast that he feared the "CIA might
>take me out." What does Mayor Ray Nagin know and why does he fear the
>CIA?
>
>In an interview by WWL TV,
>Mayor Nagin complained vociferously that
>Louisiana National Guard Blackhawk helicopters were being stopped from
>dropping sandbags to plug the levy soon after it breeched. There is
>evidence that no repairs were allowed on the levy until after New
>Orleans was totally flooded!
>
>Many civilian groups who were attempting to aid people trapped in their
>attics, on their roofs and at the Superdome are reporting that FEMA,
>other federal agents and the US military essentially "stopped" them
>from doing so.
>Convoys that were organized by truckers and carrying "food and water"
>were blocked by agents of the federal government on the highways and
>roads leading to New Orleans. The American Red Cross, in addition,
>encountered numerous incidents and has made formal complaints.
>
>A private ham radio network that deployed throughout the hurricane
>
>ravished region reported that the airwaves were being "jammed" making
>it impossible to communicate emergency information. Churches, hospitals
>and other essential community groups reported that the first thing that
>the US military did, when they arrived, was to cut their telephone
>lines and confiscate communications devices. We all witnessed news
>reports and heard statements by flood victims concerning the behavior
>of the US military. Many Black families complained that
>military vehicles did not stop to assist them but just drove by. One
>news report showed military personnel playing cards inside a barrack
>while Black citizens were dying of thirst and hunger.
>
>Today, it is very revealing how the federal government is handling the
>disaster.
>They want every Black out of New Orleans and those who insist on
>staying in their homes will
>be removed by force. The government,
>through some media, is utilizing scare tactics to cleanse New Orleans
>of all Blacks. They want no witnesses and this will make the "land
>grab" a lot easier to undertake.
>One scare tactic is calling the flood water "a horrid toxic soup of
>feces a rotting flesh of corpses". The military thugs are now getting
>tough with Black families that have owned their old but beloved homes
>for many generations. Mr. Rufus Johnson, a family patriarch who lives
>in the French Quarter, said in an interview, "The army has given me an
>ultimatum to leave or suffer the consequences of a forced eviction. I
>do not understand . My entire family and I survived Katrina and now
>they want to throw me out of the home we have had for generations". Mr.
>Johnson lives in a neighborhood where the flood has subsided and his
>home is not
>heavily damaged yet FEMA wants him out!
>
>The fact that Vice President Dick Cheney is heavily involved in the
>FEMA
>operations from behind the scenes is very troublesome. Cheney and his
>cronies at Halliburton are in line for the lucrative contracts to
>"reconstruct a New Orleans". Deals are already being made with a Las
>Vegas business group to construct multi-million dollar casinos in the
>Big Easy on prime real estate that was owned by Black families. Whites
>throughout history have been notorious "land grabbers".
>
>In the USA they first confiscated land that belonged to American
>Indians. Most of the Indians ended up in worthless tracts of land
>called "reservations". The largest "land grab", however, was the theft
>of Aztlan. This occurred soon after the Mexican-American War. In Alta
>California , vast "Ranchos" were stolen from the
>Californios through a
>variety of scams. A favorite ploy was to impose extremely heavy land
>taxes on the Mexicans and then foreclosing on the properties. The land
>was then given or sold at very low prices to the Forty Niners who came
>in large hordes to Alta California during the so called "Gold Rush" of
>1849.
>
>
>Old-Line Families Escape Worst of Flood And Plot the Future
>
>
>By CHRISTOPHER COOPER
>Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
>September 8, 2005; Page A1
>
>NEW ORLEANS -- On a sultry morning earlier this week, Ashton O'Dwyer
>stepped out of his home on this city's grandest street and made a beeline
>for his neighbor's pool. Wearing nothing but a pair of blue swim trunks and
>carrying two milk jugs, he drew enough pool water to flush the toilet in
>his home.
>
>The mostly African-American neighborhoods of New Orleans are largely
>underwater, and the people who lived there have scattered across the
>country. But in many of the predominantly white and more affluent areas,
>streets are dry and passable.
>Gracious homes are mostly intact and powered by generators. Yesterday,
>officials reiterated that all residents must leave New Orleans, but it's
>still unclear how far they will go to enforce the order.
>The green expanse of Audubon Park, in the city's Uptown area, has doubled
>in recent days as a heliport for the city's rich -- and a terminus for the
>small armies of private security guards who have been dispatched to keep
>the homes there safe and habitable. Mr. O'Dwyer has cellphone service and
>ice cubes to cool off his highballs in the evening. By yesterday, the city
>water service even sprang to life, making the daily trips to his neighbor's
>pool unnecessary. A pair of oil-company engineers, dispatched by his
>son-in-law, delivered four cases of water, a box of delicacies including
>herring with mustard sauce and 15 gallons of generator gasoline.
>Despite the disaster that has
>overwhelmed New Orleans, the city's monied, mostly white elite is hanging
>on and maneuvering to play a role in the recovery when the floodwaters of
>Katrina are gone. "New Orleans is ready to be rebuilt. Let's start right
>here," says Mr. O'Dwyer, standing in his expansive kitchen, next to a
>counter covered with a jumble of weaponry and electric wires.
>More than a few people in Uptown, the fashionable district surrounding St.
>Charles Ave., have ancestors who arrived here in the 1700s. High society is
>still dominated by these old-line families, represented today by prominent
>figures such as former New Orleans Board of Trade President Thomas
>Westfeldt; Richard Freeman, scion of the family that long owned the city's
>Coca-Cola bottling plant; and William Boatner Reily, owner of a Louisiana
>coffee company. Their social pecking order is dictated by the mysterious
>hierarchy of "krewes,"
>groups with hereditary membership that participate in the annual carnival
>leading up to Mardi Gras. In recent years, the city's most powerful
>business circles have expanded to include some newcomers and non-whites,
>such as Mayor Ray Nagin, the former Cox Communications executive elected in
>2002.
>
>
>
>A few blocks from Mr. O'Dwyer, in an exclusive gated community known as
>Audubon Place, is the home of James Reiss, descendent of an old-line Uptown
>family. He fled Hurricane Katrina just before the storm and returned soon
>afterward by private helicopter. Mr. Reiss became wealthy as a supplier of
>electronic systems to shipbuilders, and he serves in Mayor Nagin's
>administration as chairman of the city's Regional Transit Authority. When
>New Orleans descended into a spiral of looting and anarchy, Mr. Reiss
>helicoptered in an Israeli security company
>to guard his Audubon Place house and those of his neighbors.
>He says he has been in contact with about 40 other New Orleans business
>leaders since the storm. Tomorrow, he says, he and some of those leaders
>plan to be in Dallas, meeting with Mr. Nagin to begin mapping out a future
>for the city.
>The power elite of New Orleans -- whether they are still in the city or
>have moved temporarily to enclaves such as Destin, Fla., and Vail, Colo. --
>insist the remade city won't simply restore the old order. New Orleans
>before the flood was burdened by a teeming underclass, substandard schools
>and a high crime rate. The city has few corporate headquarters.
>The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with better
>services and fewer poor people. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt
>want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically,
>geographically and
>politically," he says. "I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way
>we've been living is not going to happen again, or we're out."
>Not every white business leader or prominent family supports that view.
>Some black leaders and their allies in New Orleans fear that it boils down
>to preventing large numbers of blacks from returning to the city and
>eliminating the African-American voting majority. Rep. William Jefferson, a
>sharecropper's son who was educated at Harvard and is currently serving his
>eighth term in Congress, points out that the evacuees from New Orleans
>already have been spread out across many states far from their old home and
>won't be able to afford to return. "This is an example of poor people
>forced to make choices because they don't have the money to do otherwise,"
>Mr. Jefferson says.
>
>Calvin Fayard, a wealthy white plaintiffs' lawyer who lives near Mr.
>O'Dwyer, says the mass evacuation could turn a Democratic stronghold into a
>Republican one. Mr. Fayard, a prominent Democratic fund-raiser, says
>tampering with the city's demographics means tampering with its unique
>culture and shouldn't be done. "People can't survive a year temporarily --
>they'll go somewhere, get a job and never come back," he says.
>Mr. Reiss acknowledges that shrinking parts of the city occupied by
>hardscrabble neighborhoods would inevitably result in fewer poor and
>African-American residents. But he says the electoral balance of the city
>wouldn't change significantly and that the business elite isn't trying to
>reverse the last 30 years of black political control. "We understand that
>African Americans have had a great deal of influence on the history of New
>Orleans," he says.
>A key question will be the position of Mr. Nagin, who was elected with the
>support of
>the city's business leadership. He couldn't be reached yesterday. Mr. Reiss
>says the mayor suggested the Dallas meeting and will likely attend when he
>goes there to visit his evacuated family
>Black politicians have controlled City Hall here since the late 1970s, but
>the wealthy white families of New Orleans have never been fully eclipsed.
>Stuffing campaign coffers with donations, these families dominate the
>city's professional and executive classes, including the white-shoe law
>firms, engineering offices, and local shipping companies. White voters
>often act as a swing bloc, propelling blacks or Creoles into the city's top
>political jobs. That was the case with Mr. Nagin, who defeated another
>African American to win the mayoral election in 2002.
>Creoles, as many mixed-race residents of New Orleans call themselves,
>dominate the city's white-collar and government ranks and tend to
>ally themselves with white voters on issues such as crime and education,
>while sharing many of the same social concerns as African-American voters.
>Though the flooding took a toll on many Creole neighborhoods, it's likely
>that Creoles will return to the city in fairly large numbers, since many of
>them have the means to do so.
>Copyright 2005, Dow Jones, Inc. All rights reserved.
Posted by Miriam V.
American Family Voices - Miriam V.
Hot Topics
List of 3 items
Quick, what's the difference between Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and
Martha Stewart? Maybe not as much as it seems. It appears Frist sold off all
his stock shares in his family's hospital company just two weeks before it
issued a discouraging earnings report and share prices tumbled 9 percent.
Frist's
stocks are held in a blind trust, but the senator is the one who made the
decision to sell.
[link]
The governors of eight states have joined together to fire off a letter to
President Bush and Congress demanding an investigation into skyrocketing oil
and gas prices in the immediate wake of Hurricane Katrina. The governors
question whether oil companies used the disaster as an excuse to inflate
prices,
and are calling for legislation to refund any excess profits to customers.
"To price-gouge consumers under normal circumstances is dishonest enough,
but
to make money off the severe misfortune of others is downright immoral," the
letter stated.
[link]
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has openly vowed to vote against
the confirmation of John Roberts as US Supreme Court Chief Justice. Reid
cited
memos written by Roberts that contest Affirmative Action, civil rights and
women's rights as the reason for his decision. Roberts is still expected to
be confirmed easily by the Republican-controlled Senate.
[link]
list end
Who Says That?
"At any rate, we look forward to working with you. Let me put it another
way: We look forward to hearing your vision, so we can more better do our
job.
That's what I'm telling you." - President Bush, during remarks in
Mississippi yesterday
Morning Snark
List of 2 items
Possible White House spin for the above quote: Look, look how busy President
Bush is being a leader! He's even too busy to bother with proper grammar!
What
a guy!
Here's guessing he'll also be "too busy" to investigate those oil companies
for possible price gouging
list end
Biden To Vote Against Roberts...
Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.) will vote against the confirmation of John G. Roberts as Chief Justice of the United States, a source who has spoken to the senator told The Huffington Post.
Last Wednesday, Biden told Roberts, "We're rolling the dice with you, judge because you won't share your views with us. You've told me nothing in this Kabuki dance. The public has a right to know what you think."
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid announced he would vote against Robert’s confirmation yesterday.
Last Wednesday, Biden told Roberts, "We're rolling the dice with you, judge because you won't share your views with us. You've told me nothing in this Kabuki dance. The public has a right to know what you think."
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid announced he would vote against Robert’s confirmation yesterday.
Senator Sold Stock Before Price Dropped
Shares Fell Two Weeks Later
By Jonathan M. Katz
Associated Press
Wednesday, September 21, 2005; A03
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a potential presidential candidate in 2008, sold all his stock in his family's hospital corporation about two weeks before it issued a disappointing earnings report and the price fell nearly 15 percent.
Frist held an undisclosed amount of stock in Hospital Corporation of America, based in Nashville, the nation's largest for-profit hospital chain. On June 13, he instructed the trustee managing the assets to sell his HCA shares and those of his wife and children, said Amy Call, a spokeswoman for Frist.
Frist's shares were sold by July 1 and those of his wife and children by July 8, Call said. The trustee decided when to sell the shares, and the Tennessee Republican had no control over the exact time they were sold, she said.
HCA shares peaked at midyear, climbing to $58.22 a share on June 22. After slipping slightly for two weeks, the price fell to $49.90 on July 13 after the company announced its quarterly earnings would not meet analysts' expectations. On Tuesday, the shares closed at $48.76.
The value of Frist's stock at the time of the sale was not disclosed. Earlier this year, he reported holding blind trusts valued at $7 million to $35 million.
Blind trusts are used to avoid conflicts of interest. Assets are turned over to a trustee who manages them without divulging any purchases or sales and reports only the total value and income earned to the owner.
To keep the trust blind, Frist was not allowed to know how much HCA stock he owned, Call said, but he was allowed to ask for all of it to be sold.
Frist, a surgeon first elected to the Senate in 1994, had been criticized for maintaining the holdings while dealing with legislation affecting the medical industry and managed care. Call said the Senate Select Committee on Ethics has found nothing wrong with Frist's holdings in the company in a blind trust.
"To avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest, Senator Frist went beyond what ethics requires and sold the stock," Call said. Asked why he had not done so before, she said, "I don't know that he's been worried about it in the past."
An HCA spokesman said the company had no part in Frist's decision.
Frist's father, Thomas, founded the company, and his brother, Thomas Jr., is a director and leading stockholder. The family is worth $1.1 billion, according to Forbes magazine.
HCA -- formerly known as Columbia HCA Healthcare Corp. -- has been a top contributor to the senator's campaigns, donating $83,450 since 1989, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
The sale of the shares was first reported by Congressional Quarterly.
By Jonathan M. Katz
Associated Press
Wednesday, September 21, 2005; A03
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a potential presidential candidate in 2008, sold all his stock in his family's hospital corporation about two weeks before it issued a disappointing earnings report and the price fell nearly 15 percent.
Frist held an undisclosed amount of stock in Hospital Corporation of America, based in Nashville, the nation's largest for-profit hospital chain. On June 13, he instructed the trustee managing the assets to sell his HCA shares and those of his wife and children, said Amy Call, a spokeswoman for Frist.
Frist's shares were sold by July 1 and those of his wife and children by July 8, Call said. The trustee decided when to sell the shares, and the Tennessee Republican had no control over the exact time they were sold, she said.
HCA shares peaked at midyear, climbing to $58.22 a share on June 22. After slipping slightly for two weeks, the price fell to $49.90 on July 13 after the company announced its quarterly earnings would not meet analysts' expectations. On Tuesday, the shares closed at $48.76.
The value of Frist's stock at the time of the sale was not disclosed. Earlier this year, he reported holding blind trusts valued at $7 million to $35 million.
Blind trusts are used to avoid conflicts of interest. Assets are turned over to a trustee who manages them without divulging any purchases or sales and reports only the total value and income earned to the owner.
To keep the trust blind, Frist was not allowed to know how much HCA stock he owned, Call said, but he was allowed to ask for all of it to be sold.
Frist, a surgeon first elected to the Senate in 1994, had been criticized for maintaining the holdings while dealing with legislation affecting the medical industry and managed care. Call said the Senate Select Committee on Ethics has found nothing wrong with Frist's holdings in the company in a blind trust.
"To avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest, Senator Frist went beyond what ethics requires and sold the stock," Call said. Asked why he had not done so before, she said, "I don't know that he's been worried about it in the past."
An HCA spokesman said the company had no part in Frist's decision.
Frist's father, Thomas, founded the company, and his brother, Thomas Jr., is a director and leading stockholder. The family is worth $1.1 billion, according to Forbes magazine.
HCA -- formerly known as Columbia HCA Healthcare Corp. -- has been a top contributor to the senator's campaigns, donating $83,450 since 1989, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
The sale of the shares was first reported by Congressional Quarterly.
Bush's Waterlogged Halo
September 21, 2005
Bush's Waterlogged Halo
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Following President Bush's speech in New Orleans, many U.S. papers carried the same basic headline: "Bush Rules Out Raising Taxes for Gulf Relief." The president is planning to rely on "spending cuts" instead to pay for rebuilding New Orleans. Yeah, right - and if you believe that, I have some beachfront property in Biloxi I'd like to sell you. The underlying message of all these stories is that the Bush team sees no reason to change course in response to Katrina.
I beg to differ. Katrina deprived the Bush team of the energy source that propelled it forward for the last four years: 9/11 and the halo over the presidency that came with it. The events of 9/11 created a deference in the U.S. public, and media, for the administration, which exploited it to the hilt to push an uncompassionate conservative agenda on tax cuts and runaway spending, on which it never could have gotten elected. That deference is over.
If Mr. Bush wants to make anything of his second term, he'll have to do his own Nixon-to-China turnaround, reframe the debate and recast the priorities of his presidency. He seems to think that by offering to spend billions of dollars to rebuild one city, New Orleans, he'll get his leadership halo back. Wrong. Just throwing more borrowed money at New Orleans is not leadership. Mr. Bush needs to frame a new agenda for rebuilding all our cities and strengthening the nation as a whole. And what should be the centerpiece of a policy of American renewal is blindingly obvious: making a quest for energy independence the moon shot of our generation.
The president should have done that on the morning of Sept. 12, 2001. The country was ready. But the president whiffed. Katrina - nature's 9/11 - has given him a rare do-over. Imagine - I know it is a stretch - that the president announced tomorrow that he wanted an immediate 50-cents-a-gallon gasoline tax - the "American Renewal Tax," to be used to rebuild New Orleans, pay down the deficit, fund tax breaks for Americans to convert their cars to hybrid technology or biofuels, fund a Manhattan Project to develop alternatives for energy independence, and subsidize mass transit systems for our major cities.
And imagine if he tied this to an appeal to young people to go into science, math and engineering for the great national purpose of making us the greenest nation on the planet, to help liberate us from dependence on the worst regimes in the world for our oil and to help ease the global warming that is heating up the oceans, making our hurricanes more intense and our lowlands more vulnerable. America's kids are hungry to be challenged for some larger purpose, which has been utterly absent in this presidency.
Americans will change their long-term energy habits, and companies will develop green products, only if they are certain the price of gasoline will not go back down. A gasoline tax (Americans have already shown they'll tolerate higher prices) and stronger regulation would force U.S. companies to innovate in what is going to be one of the most important global industries in the 21st century: green technologies. By coddling our auto and industrial companies when it comes to mileage standards and the environment, all the Bush team is doing is ensuring that they will be dinosaurs and that Chinese, Japanese and Indian companies will take the lead in green technologies - because they have to and ours don't.
Look what Jeff Immelt, the C.E.O. of G.E., said: "America should strive to make energy and environmental practices a national core competency and by doing so, create exports in jobs. ... America is the leading consumer of energy. However, we are not the technical leader. Europe today is the major force for environmental innovation. European governments have encouraged their companies to invest [in] and produce clean power technologies. The same is true for nuclear power. ... And government policy that encourages this with subsidies and other incentives is giving European companies a leg up. While Europe has been a driver for innovation, China promises to be its market."
Setting the goal of energy independence, along with a gasoline tax, could help to solve so many of our problems today - from the deficit to climate change and national security. And Americans would pay it if they thought the extra money was going to renew America, not Iran, and not just New Orleans. And if the Texas-oilman president became the energy-independence president - now, that would snap heads and make this a truly relevant presidency.
No way, you say. Probably right. But either Mr. Bush does a Nixon-to-China or his next three years are going to be a Bush-to-Nowhere.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
American Family Voices - Miriam V.
AM Feed - September 20, 2005
Hot Topics
List of 3 items
You might think that Hurricane Katrina taught President Bush a lesson about
appointing people with minimal experience to top government positions.
Sadly,
you'd be wrong. The Bush administration is pushing to install Julie Myers as
head of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, a division
of Homeland Security. Myers, the niece of departing chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers, has held several jobs in the administration
over
the past four years, though none required such large bureaucratic
management. ICE has 20,000 employees and a budget of $4 billion.
[link]
A former Bush administration official was arrested yesterday on charges of
obstructing the investigation into lobbyist Jack Abramoff and lying to
investigators.
David Safavian was a senior White House budget official until his sudden
resignation late last week. It seems Safavian, a Bush appointee, lied about
his
presence on a golf trip to Scotland with Abramoff in 2002, and also made
false statements about his role in helping Abramoff acquire two pieces of
government-owned
property in Washington, DC.
[link]
Ex-Tyco executives Dennis Kozlowski and Mark Swartz were sentenced to prison
yesterday after being found guilty of stealing $150 million from the
company.
Kozlowski, the former CEO, and Swartz, the former CFO, were each sentenced
to 8-1/3 to 25 years in prison. Both men were ordered to pay some $134
million
in restitution to Tyco and were assessed hefty fines by the state of New
York.
[link]
list end
Quote of the Day
"It appears she's [Julie Myers] got a tremendous amount of experience in
money laundering, in banking and the financial areas. My question is: Who
the hell
is going to enforce the immigration laws?" - Charles Showalter, president of
the National Homeland Security Council, a union that represents 7,800 ICE
agents, officers and support staff.
Jeb Bush Reveals His “Mystical Warrior” Friend
Last week, after “more than an hour of solemn ceremony” swearing in Rep. Marco Rubio (R-FL) as House speaker, Gov. Jeb Bush stepped to the podium to tell “a short story about ‘unleashing Chang,’ his ‘mystical warrior’ friend.”
Below, courtesy of the Gainesville Sun, are Bush’s words, “spoken before hundreds of lawmakers and politicians”:
“Chang is a mystical warrior. Chang is somebody who believes in conservative principles, believes in entrepreneurial capitalism, believes in moral values that underpin a free society.
“I rely on Chang with great regularity in my public life. He has been by my side and sometimes I let him down. But Chang, this mystical warrior, has never let me down.”
Bush then unsheathed a golden sword and gave it to Rubio as a gift.
‘’I'm going to bestow to you the sword of a great conservative warrior,'’ he said, as the crowd roared.
Below, courtesy of the Gainesville Sun, are Bush’s words, “spoken before hundreds of lawmakers and politicians”:
“Chang is a mystical warrior. Chang is somebody who believes in conservative principles, believes in entrepreneurial capitalism, believes in moral values that underpin a free society.
“I rely on Chang with great regularity in my public life. He has been by my side and sometimes I let him down. But Chang, this mystical warrior, has never let me down.”
Bush then unsheathed a golden sword and gave it to Rubio as a gift.
‘’I'm going to bestow to you the sword of a great conservative warrior,'’ he said, as the crowd roared.
Bush Administration Paradox Explained
by Robert Reich
The White House's strategy to make John Roberts the next chief justice has been the very model of meticulous planning, by contrast to its utter clueless-ness in dealing with Katrina. No White House in modern history has been as adept at politics and as ham-fisted at governing. Why?
With politics, the Bush administration has shown remarkable discipline -- squelching leaks and keeping Cabinet members on message, reaching down into the bureaucracy to bend analyses in directions that supports what it wants to do, imposing its will on congressional leaders and even making a political imprint on state legislatures. No recent president has got re-elected with controlling majorities in both houses of Congress, or been as successful in repositioning the national debate around his ideological view of the world.
With governing, it's been almost criminally incompetent -- failing to act on clear predictions of a terrorist attack like 9/11 or a natural disaster like Katrina, botching intelligence over Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction, failing to secure order after invading Iraq, allowing prisoners of war to be tortured, losing complete control over the federal budget, creating a bizarre Medicare drug benefit from which the elderly are now fleeing, barely responding to the wave of corporate lootings and running the Federal Emergency Management Agency into the ground. Not since the hapless administration of Warren G. Harding has there been one as stunningly inept as this one.
The easy answer to the paradox is that Bush cares about winning elections and putting his ideological stamp on the nation, but doesn't give a hoot about governing the place. But that's no explanation because the two are so obviously connected. An administration can't impose a lasting stamp without being managed well, and a president's party can't keep winning elections if the public thinks it's composed of bumbling idiots.
The real answer is that the same discipline and organization that's made the White House into a hugely effective political machine has hobbled its capacity to govern. Blocking data from lower-level political appointees and civil servants that's inconsistent with what it wants to do or sheds doubt on its wisdom, for example, may be effective politics, in the short term. It keeps the media and the opposition party at bay.
But the same squelching of troublesome information prevents top policy makers from ever getting the data they need. Operatives in the CIA suspected Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction and personnel at the Department of State knew the plan to invade Iraq was seriously flawed, but such judgments were suppressed by a White House that made perfectly clear what it wanted and didn't want to hear. Career professionals at the CIA and the Department of State are now wary of sharing what they know with appointed officials, as are scientists and experts all over the federal government.
Similarly, a White House whose Cabinet officers all deliver the same, positive lines can be a formidable message machine. But this same discipline also discourages internal dissent, for the simple reason that in Washington nothing stays completely private. The predictable result is that Bush officials have become yes-men incapable of sounding alarms. The price of dissent is high. Soon after Glenn Hubbard, then chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, warned that the cost of the Iraqi war would be in the range of $200 billion -- almost exactly what it's cost so far -- he was fired. After Paul O'Neill, his Secretary of the Treasury, worried out loud that federal budget deficits didn't seem to matter any longer -- a prescient concern -- he was fired, too. Can it be any wonder why this president doesn't seem to get it?
Political discipline is also honed when the White House staffs agencies with people loyal to the president, along with loyalists' friends. Joe Allbaugh worked as W's chief of staff when he was Texas governor and his 2000 campaign manager, so it seemed perfectly natural to put Allbaugh's college buddy, Michael Brown, in charge of FEMA even though "Brownie" had no previous experience in disaster management. FEMA's acting deputy director and its acting deputy chief of staff had no relevant experience, either; both had been advance men in the White House. Given this, no one should be surprised that FEMA so badly bungled Katrina. Brownie is gone now, but the administration is still crawling with cronies who know their politics, but don't have a clue what they're supposed to manage.
Politics first, competence last: That's the Bush administration all over. Karl Rove, Bush's brain and deputy chief of staff, is in charge of the political juggernaut that's substituted for effective governance. Presumably, he's now at work on a plan to burnish the image of Republicans as managers of the public's business so they don't the hell beaten out of them in the mid-terms a year from now. But the harder Rove works at spinning what this White House has accomplished, the more likely it is that Americans will see that what it's accomplished is basically spin.
Robert B. Reich was U.S. Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, and co-founder of the American Prospect magazine, from whose October issue this is adapted.
Chicken-hawk family traditions
On Saturday night in western Iraq, a roadside bomb exploded near a U.S. soldier on patrol. According to the Associated Press, the soldier was taken to a U.S. military hospital, where he died of his wounds.
Early Friday morning in Austin, Texas, the 21-year-old son of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush -- and the nephew of President George W. Bush -- was arrested on charges of public intoxication and resisting arrest. According to the Austin American-Statesman, John Ellis Bush was taken to the Travis County Jail, where he was released on his own recognizance.
Early Friday morning in Austin, Texas, the 21-year-old son of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush -- and the nephew of President George W. Bush -- was arrested on charges of public intoxication and resisting arrest. According to the Austin American-Statesman, John Ellis Bush was taken to the Travis County Jail, where he was released on his own recognizance.
Monday, September 19, 2005
American Family VOices - Miriam V.
AM Feed - September 19, 2005
Hot Topics
List of 2 items
New information about the Hurricane Katrina relief effort is coming to
light, and it's not making the Bush administration look any less inept. Now
it's
been revealed that the military was not ordered into the flood-ravaged Gulf
Coast until three days after President Bush's speech declaring a major
relief
effort. The speech itself was two days after the hurricane, meaning the
military didn't arrive for almost a week. Using the military to help in such
occasions
is not a new idea - the Pentagon assisted in 18 such disasters between
1992-1996 - so it is unclear what caused the delay. "They're trying to say
that
greater federal authority would have made a difference. The reality is that
the feds are the ones that screwed up in the first place. It's not about
authority.
It's about leadership," said George Haddow, former FEMA deputy chief of
staff and the co-author of a textbook on emergency management.
[link]
How will President Bush pay for his announced plans to rebuild the Gulf
Coast - plans that experts estimate will cost over $200 billion? Budget
accountability
has never been his strong suit (if he were a private citizen, his credit
rating might be in the negative numbers by now), but he could opt to offset
the
cost by reducing his latest round of tax cuts or cutting spending from the
bloated energy or transportation bill. For example, his latest budget
includes
a $70 billion tax cut targeted mainly at the wealthy. But demonstrating
fiscal responsibility would be out of character - President Bush has not
once vetoed
a spending bill and has resisted all calls to reduce his massive tax cuts
for businesses and the rich.
[link]
list end
Quote of the Day
"You can't have an emergency plan that works if it only affects middle-class
people up, and when you tell people to go do something they don't have the
means to do, you're going to leave the poor out." - Former President Bill
Clinton, commenting on the ineffectiveness of the Bush administration's
relief
effort.
Morning Snark
List of 1 items
Some might say former President Clinton is being too harsh, but in fact he's
letting the Bush administration off easy when talking about their emergency
plan - in reality, just about every plan they make targets middle-class
people and above.
list end
Rove Off The Record . . .
Karl Rove, President Bush's top political advisor and deputy White House chief of staff, spoke at businessman Teddy Forstmann's annual off the record gathering in Aspen, Colorado this weekend. Here is what Rove had to say that the press wasn't allowed to report on.
On Katrina: The only mistake we made with Katrina was not overriding the local government...
On The Anti-War Movement: Cindy Sheehan is a clown. There is no real anti-war movement. No serious politician, with anything to do with anything, would show his face at an anti-war rally...
On Bush's Low Poll Numbers: We have not been good at explaining the success in Iraq. Polls go up and down and don't mean anything...
On Iraq: There has been a big difference in the region. Iraq will transform the Middle East...
On Judy Miller And Plamegate: Judy Miller is in jail for reasons I don't really understand...
On Joe Wilson: Joe Wilson and I attend the same church but Joe goes to the wacky mass...
In attendance at the conference, among others were: Harvey Weinstein, Brad Grey, Michael Eisner, Les Moonves, Tom Freston, Tom Friedman, Bob Novak, Barry Diller, Martha Stewart, Margaret Carlson, Alan Greenspan, Andrea Mitchell, Norman Pearlstein and Walter Isaacson.
On Katrina: The only mistake we made with Katrina was not overriding the local government...
On The Anti-War Movement: Cindy Sheehan is a clown. There is no real anti-war movement. No serious politician, with anything to do with anything, would show his face at an anti-war rally...
On Bush's Low Poll Numbers: We have not been good at explaining the success in Iraq. Polls go up and down and don't mean anything...
On Iraq: There has been a big difference in the region. Iraq will transform the Middle East...
On Judy Miller And Plamegate: Judy Miller is in jail for reasons I don't really understand...
On Joe Wilson: Joe Wilson and I attend the same church but Joe goes to the wacky mass...
In attendance at the conference, among others were: Harvey Weinstein, Brad Grey, Michael Eisner, Les Moonves, Tom Freston, Tom Friedman, Bob Novak, Barry Diller, Martha Stewart, Margaret Carlson, Alan Greenspan, Andrea Mitchell, Norman Pearlstein and Walter Isaacson.
The March of the Penguins and Enron, the Smartest Guys in the Room
How Penguins and People Adapt to the Natural World
by Tom Turnipseed
At a recent conference, young Republicans were urged to see the documentary March of the Penguins, according to The New York Times. Conservative film critic Michael Medved said the film is "the motion picture this summer that most passionately affirms traditional norms like monogamy, sacrifice and child rearing."
It would be great if political conservatives admired the penguin film for a more important reason. The documentary depicts this remarkable avian species cooperating with one another and sacrificing their own lives and individual gain for the common good and survival of their own kind in the frigid and hostile environment of Antarctica.
Young and old conservative Republicans should also see another recent documentary, Enron, the Smartest Guys in the Room. Enron is about the human species and, particularly, the criminal activities of corporate chieftains. The film exemplifies the modern conservative attitude of extreme individualism with its me-over-we, money-over-people philosophy that extols taking advantage of others to make money by lying and deceiving. The social behavior of the penguins, by contrast, is more like we-over-me.
Conservatives using the mating ordeals of emperor penguins as a battle in the culture wars might be positively instructed by a species with genuinely admirable attributes of social sacrifice and cooperative collectivism. After a 70 mile journey together, the penguins mate and the females lay an egg. The male penguins then learn to balance the egg laid by their mate on their hooked feet, moving carefully about. They crowd together for warmth in howling 100 mile an hour winds and temperatures of 180 degrees below zero, tenderly protecting the egg while their mates go on a two month journey for food. Huddled together for warmth, a fold of their belly fat sheltering the egg from the elements, they must somehow keep moving, lest they freeze. They regularly alternate moving into the middle of the huddle to increase their body heat and keep from freezing to death in an unselfish effort of group survival. Some freeze to death anyway, usually on the outer edge of the mass of male penguins. Just as their babies hatch, the females arrive with food.
Enron was a self-described “energy” corporation that became the seventh largest corporation in America and was named Fortune magazine’s “most innovative corporation” for six consecutive years. The objective of Enron was not actually to provide energy. Enron’s singular purpose was making money. As the film’s narration so aptly says: it is a story about “the dark side of the American Dream”. Like the Ponzi scheme of the early 20th Century, Enron used get-rich-quick schemes for the guys at the top of their money pyramid. Similar to Ponzi’s rip-off, the money actually represented no goods or services and the fraud was bought into by the largest financial institutions in America.
Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were Enron’s top executives. Lay and Skilling touted Enron as "the best energy company in the world", and President George W. Bush hosted Lay at the White House and referred to his political and energy industry friend as “Kenny Boy”. Meanwhile, Lay and Skilling knew the company was bankrupt, without any real worth for years. Utilizing corrupt bookkeeping practices, they concealed losses and inflated profits, with the prestigious accounting firm Arthur Anderson signing off on the scam and being forced out of business as a consequence.
Enron simply made up impressive quarterly returns to bolster its stock prices and developed an accounting ruse called mark to market. This hoax had Enron pushing a venture projected to make $10 million ten years from now and asserting the $10 million was current income. Another Enron ploy was creating phony offshore corporations and moving their losses to those companies, which were off the books.
The most appalling part of the film is the revelation that Enron created the bogus California energy crisis. There was never a power shortage in California. Enron traders got on the phone with California power plants, and told plant managers to "get a little creative" in closing down plants for "repairs." Between 30 percent and 50 percent of California's energy industry was shut down by Enron much of the time, with closures as high as 76 percent on one occasion. Enron traders drove the price of electricity higher by nine times.
In the film, Enron traders laugh about the rolling blackouts, and boast about the millions they made for Enron. 20,000 employees are fired as the company goes belly up; pensions are gone; stock is valueless. A power company lineman in Portland, who worked for the same utility all his life, says his retirement fund was worth $248,000 before Enron bought the utility. Then that retirement fund was invested in Enron stock. Now it’s worth about $1,200.
Emperor penguins would certainly be better role models for young conservatives than Ken Lay.
by Tom Turnipseed
At a recent conference, young Republicans were urged to see the documentary March of the Penguins, according to The New York Times. Conservative film critic Michael Medved said the film is "the motion picture this summer that most passionately affirms traditional norms like monogamy, sacrifice and child rearing."
It would be great if political conservatives admired the penguin film for a more important reason. The documentary depicts this remarkable avian species cooperating with one another and sacrificing their own lives and individual gain for the common good and survival of their own kind in the frigid and hostile environment of Antarctica.
Young and old conservative Republicans should also see another recent documentary, Enron, the Smartest Guys in the Room. Enron is about the human species and, particularly, the criminal activities of corporate chieftains. The film exemplifies the modern conservative attitude of extreme individualism with its me-over-we, money-over-people philosophy that extols taking advantage of others to make money by lying and deceiving. The social behavior of the penguins, by contrast, is more like we-over-me.
Conservatives using the mating ordeals of emperor penguins as a battle in the culture wars might be positively instructed by a species with genuinely admirable attributes of social sacrifice and cooperative collectivism. After a 70 mile journey together, the penguins mate and the females lay an egg. The male penguins then learn to balance the egg laid by their mate on their hooked feet, moving carefully about. They crowd together for warmth in howling 100 mile an hour winds and temperatures of 180 degrees below zero, tenderly protecting the egg while their mates go on a two month journey for food. Huddled together for warmth, a fold of their belly fat sheltering the egg from the elements, they must somehow keep moving, lest they freeze. They regularly alternate moving into the middle of the huddle to increase their body heat and keep from freezing to death in an unselfish effort of group survival. Some freeze to death anyway, usually on the outer edge of the mass of male penguins. Just as their babies hatch, the females arrive with food.
Enron was a self-described “energy” corporation that became the seventh largest corporation in America and was named Fortune magazine’s “most innovative corporation” for six consecutive years. The objective of Enron was not actually to provide energy. Enron’s singular purpose was making money. As the film’s narration so aptly says: it is a story about “the dark side of the American Dream”. Like the Ponzi scheme of the early 20th Century, Enron used get-rich-quick schemes for the guys at the top of their money pyramid. Similar to Ponzi’s rip-off, the money actually represented no goods or services and the fraud was bought into by the largest financial institutions in America.
Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were Enron’s top executives. Lay and Skilling touted Enron as "the best energy company in the world", and President George W. Bush hosted Lay at the White House and referred to his political and energy industry friend as “Kenny Boy”. Meanwhile, Lay and Skilling knew the company was bankrupt, without any real worth for years. Utilizing corrupt bookkeeping practices, they concealed losses and inflated profits, with the prestigious accounting firm Arthur Anderson signing off on the scam and being forced out of business as a consequence.
Enron simply made up impressive quarterly returns to bolster its stock prices and developed an accounting ruse called mark to market. This hoax had Enron pushing a venture projected to make $10 million ten years from now and asserting the $10 million was current income. Another Enron ploy was creating phony offshore corporations and moving their losses to those companies, which were off the books.
The most appalling part of the film is the revelation that Enron created the bogus California energy crisis. There was never a power shortage in California. Enron traders got on the phone with California power plants, and told plant managers to "get a little creative" in closing down plants for "repairs." Between 30 percent and 50 percent of California's energy industry was shut down by Enron much of the time, with closures as high as 76 percent on one occasion. Enron traders drove the price of electricity higher by nine times.
In the film, Enron traders laugh about the rolling blackouts, and boast about the millions they made for Enron. 20,000 employees are fired as the company goes belly up; pensions are gone; stock is valueless. A power company lineman in Portland, who worked for the same utility all his life, says his retirement fund was worth $248,000 before Enron bought the utility. Then that retirement fund was invested in Enron stock. Now it’s worth about $1,200.
Emperor penguins would certainly be better role models for young conservatives than Ken Lay.
Sunday, September 18, 2005
No Rice at U.N. Dinner On Women's Rights
No Rice at U.N. dinner on women's rights
By Marie-Louise MollerSat Sep 17, 8:07 PM ET
Diplomacy's most powerful woman, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, has turned down a dinner date with other female foreign ministers to discuss women's rights, citing a busy schedule.
Fifteen of the 17 female foreign ministers at the U.N. General Assembly are to attend Sunday's dinner, hosted by Sweden, which said Rice would not be there.
"There is no slight intended. There are many different scheduling demands on the secretary," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, adding Rice had other diplomatic engagements on Sunday.
He said Rice had spoken out frequently on human rights issues affecting women and would continue to do so.
The other minister who could not attend was Roza Otunbayeva of Kyrgyzstan, Swedish diplomats said.
Madeleine Albright, who served as secretary of state under President Bill Clinton, began the tradition of organizing her female colleagues when she was ambassador to the United Nations and continued it when she became secretary of state.
Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds said the fact she had so few female counterparts meant there was even more reason for them to discuss the role of women.
"Even if Sweden has come far in terms of equality when it comes to political representation, there are still areas in our society where women don't have the same rights as men," she told Reuters.
"But when we look at the rest of the world, the situation is very sad. And it is not just about women having access to democratic forums and having power to participate in decision-making, but that they are subject to serious abuse and human rights breaches."
The ministers attending the dinner are from Austria, Croatia, Mozambique, Barbados, Macedonia, Switzerland, Guinea, Columbia, South Africa, Paraguay, Liechtenstein, Georgia, Burundi and Uganda, Swedish officials said.
They will be joined by European Union External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner.
Copyright © 2005 Reuters Limited.
Chavez' Surprise for Bush
Offering to Sell Cheap Oil to America's Poor
by Juan Gonzalez
Worried about the skyrocketing cost of gasoline and heating oil this winter?
Well, Hugo Chavez, the firebrand president of oil-rich Venezuela, wants to help.
Chavez, a former army officer twice elected president in huge landslides, has become a target of the Bush administration for his radical social policies.
Last month, right-wing evangelist Pat Robertson openly urged his assassination.
But now Chavez is firing back at Bush and Robertson with a surprise weapon - cheap oil for America's poor.
In an exclusive interview yesterday, the Venezuelan leader said his country will soon start to ship heating oil and diesel fuel at below market prices to poor communities and schools in the United States.
"We will begin with a pilot project in Chicago on Oct. 14, in a Mexican-American community," said Chavez, who was in town for the United Nations sessions. "We will then expand the program to New York and Boston in November."
The first New York neighborhood in the program will be the South Bronx, where Chavez was to speak today as a guest of Rep. Jose Serrano.
The Venezuelan leader revealed details of the new oil-for-the-poor program during a wide-ranging interview at the upper East Side home of his country's UN ambassador.
"If you want to eliminate poverty, you have to empower the poor, not treat them as beggars," Chavez said.
During the hour-long interview, he also blasted the Iraq war; accused Bush of trying to kill him to reassert U.S. control over Venezuela's oil; offered support for the victims of Hurricane Katrina; and lampooned the UN as out of touch with the world's poor.
Echoing his favorite American writer, radical linguist Noam Chomsky, Chavez warned that "Americans must reorder their style of life" because "this planet cannot sustain" our "irrational" consumption, especially when it comes to oil.
Much of what Chavez said he has expressed before.
But his novel oil-for-the-poor idea in this country is sure to make him an even bigger target of the Bush administration.
Those who scoff at this as a publicity scam should think twice.
With the price of oil at record levels, the Chavez government is swimming in cash.
Those sky-high fuel prices are bound to have a drastic impact on low-income neighborhoods here, especially since Congress redirected much of this winter's usual energy assistance program for victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Venezuela, on the other hand, owns a key U.S. subsidiary called Citgo Petroleum Corp., which has 14,000 gas stations and owns eight oil refineries in this country, none of which was damaged by Katrina.
Chavez said he can afford to sharply reduce Citgo's prices by "cutting out the middle man."
His plan is to set aside 10% of the 800,000 barrels of oil produced by the Citgo refineries and ship that oil directly to schools, religious organizations and nonprofits in poor communities for distribution.
The same approach, he said, has worked in the Caribbean, where Venezuela is already sharply subsidizing oil deliveries to more than a dozen nations.
Cutting oil prices must seem like the worst sort of radicalism to the Big Oil companies and their buddies at the Bush-Cheney White House.
But ordinary Americans fed up with price gouging by these energy companies could begin to look at Chavez in a different light if his oil-for-the-poor project works.
Still, Chavez, warns, we must all think about the future. Americans are 5% of the world's population, yet we consume 25% of the world's oil.
On his drive from Kennedy Airport to Manhattan this week, Chavez noted, "Out of every 100 cars I saw on the road, 99 had only one person in the car.
"These people were using up fuel," he said. "They were polluting the environment. This planet cannot sustain that mode of life."
That's the kind of message that can get a man killed these days - or at least labeled a dangerous madman by folks in the White House.
by Juan Gonzalez
Worried about the skyrocketing cost of gasoline and heating oil this winter?
Well, Hugo Chavez, the firebrand president of oil-rich Venezuela, wants to help.
Chavez, a former army officer twice elected president in huge landslides, has become a target of the Bush administration for his radical social policies.
Last month, right-wing evangelist Pat Robertson openly urged his assassination.
But now Chavez is firing back at Bush and Robertson with a surprise weapon - cheap oil for America's poor.
In an exclusive interview yesterday, the Venezuelan leader said his country will soon start to ship heating oil and diesel fuel at below market prices to poor communities and schools in the United States.
"We will begin with a pilot project in Chicago on Oct. 14, in a Mexican-American community," said Chavez, who was in town for the United Nations sessions. "We will then expand the program to New York and Boston in November."
The first New York neighborhood in the program will be the South Bronx, where Chavez was to speak today as a guest of Rep. Jose Serrano.
The Venezuelan leader revealed details of the new oil-for-the-poor program during a wide-ranging interview at the upper East Side home of his country's UN ambassador.
"If you want to eliminate poverty, you have to empower the poor, not treat them as beggars," Chavez said.
During the hour-long interview, he also blasted the Iraq war; accused Bush of trying to kill him to reassert U.S. control over Venezuela's oil; offered support for the victims of Hurricane Katrina; and lampooned the UN as out of touch with the world's poor.
Echoing his favorite American writer, radical linguist Noam Chomsky, Chavez warned that "Americans must reorder their style of life" because "this planet cannot sustain" our "irrational" consumption, especially when it comes to oil.
Much of what Chavez said he has expressed before.
But his novel oil-for-the-poor idea in this country is sure to make him an even bigger target of the Bush administration.
Those who scoff at this as a publicity scam should think twice.
With the price of oil at record levels, the Chavez government is swimming in cash.
Those sky-high fuel prices are bound to have a drastic impact on low-income neighborhoods here, especially since Congress redirected much of this winter's usual energy assistance program for victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Venezuela, on the other hand, owns a key U.S. subsidiary called Citgo Petroleum Corp., which has 14,000 gas stations and owns eight oil refineries in this country, none of which was damaged by Katrina.
Chavez said he can afford to sharply reduce Citgo's prices by "cutting out the middle man."
His plan is to set aside 10% of the 800,000 barrels of oil produced by the Citgo refineries and ship that oil directly to schools, religious organizations and nonprofits in poor communities for distribution.
The same approach, he said, has worked in the Caribbean, where Venezuela is already sharply subsidizing oil deliveries to more than a dozen nations.
Cutting oil prices must seem like the worst sort of radicalism to the Big Oil companies and their buddies at the Bush-Cheney White House.
But ordinary Americans fed up with price gouging by these energy companies could begin to look at Chavez in a different light if his oil-for-the-poor project works.
Still, Chavez, warns, we must all think about the future. Americans are 5% of the world's population, yet we consume 25% of the world's oil.
On his drive from Kennedy Airport to Manhattan this week, Chavez noted, "Out of every 100 cars I saw on the road, 99 had only one person in the car.
"These people were using up fuel," he said. "They were polluting the environment. This planet cannot sustain that mode of life."
That's the kind of message that can get a man killed these days - or at least labeled a dangerous madman by folks in the White House.
A Call To Actionhttp://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views05/0918-24.htmhttp://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views05/091
A Call To Actionhttp://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views05/0918-24.htmhttp://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views05/091
The War for Latinos
by ROBERTO LOVATO
Jessica Sanchez poses an urgent threat to the US military. For a Pentagon stretched by stagnating enlistments and an Administration bent on waging a "global war on terror," the question of whether this four-foot-eleven Mexican-born legal resident and others like her will decide to join the military has enormous geopolitical implications.
The Pentagon is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to find out whatever it can about Sanchez and other young Latinos: what they wear, where they hang out, what kinds of groups they form, what they read, what they watch on TV, their grades, their dreams. Members of the military's numerous and well-funded recruiting commands use sophisticated Geographic Information Systems maps, souped-up recruiting Hummers and other resources to establish strategic positions in the minds, pocketbooks and neighborhoods of young Latinos like Sanchez.
Recruiters are devising new and often unexpected ways to penetrate daily Latino life. "I went to a birthday celebration at Chuck E. Cheese's," says Sanchez, a 25-year-old single mom from San Marcos, California, just outside San Diego. "We were watching a puppet show when all of a sudden a military song is playing in the background. I thought that was weird but kept watching. A couple of minutes later, all of us were looking at pictures on a TV screen of people in the Army giving food and supplies to kids in Iraq. My friends and I thought that was really weird--and got out."
The bad news for Pentagon planners is not just Sanchez's negative reaction to the puppet show, or even her eventual decision not to join the Navy. It's that she and other Latinos who are rejecting the military's overtures are turning around and organizing a grassroots movement against recruitment in their community.
From the northernmost corner of Washington State to the southernmost beaches of south Florida, veteran Latino counterrecruiters and younger activistas are facing off against thousands of military recruiters in a battle that will determine whether Latino youth continue echoing the "Yo soy el Army" and other Pentagon PR slogans or instead adopt the "Yo estoy en contra del Army" slogan taken up by Sanchez. The counterrecruitment movement, spearheaded by scores of Latinos in Chicago, El Paso, Tucson and other cities, suburbs and rural communities, is largely occurring beneath the radar of the mostly white antiwar movement, despite its potential to alter the course of Iraq and future US wars.
"Latinos are very important to the national security of the United States," says Larry Korb, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower, Reserve Affairs, Installations and Logistics in the Reagan Administration Defense Department, where he administered about 70 percent of the largest line items in the federal budget. "A decrease in Latino enlistment numbers would make things very difficult for the armed forces, because they are the fastest-growing [minority] group in the country and they have a very distinguished record of service in the military. If I were Donald Rumsfeld, I would be very worried about the possibility of decreasing Latino numbers. I'd be thinking about how to make do with smaller numbers of troops or with further lowering standards for aptitude, age, education and other factors."
The centrality of Latinos to the military enterprise can be seen in statements by Pentagon officials like John McLaurin, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Human Resources, who stated that in order to meet recruitment goals, Latino enlistments must grow to 22 percent by the year 2025, when one in four Americans will be Latino. Two factors add to the urgency. One is that while Latinos make up only 13 percent of the active-duty forces, they also make up a fast-growing 16 percent of the 17- to 21-year-old population. In the eyes of Pentagon planners, this rapidly growing, relatively poor population is prime recruiting material. Latinos already in the military are concentrated in the low ranks of the Marines and the Army, serving in the high-casualty, high-risk jobs of front-line troops urgently needed in Iraq. The second factor driving the Latinization of the Pentagon's recruitment strategy is the decrease in African-American and women recruits. Since 2000 the percentage of African-American recruits has dropped from 23.5 percent to less than 14 percent, thanks to the widespread disaffection with the Iraq War--and good organizing--among parents and students in the black community.
And some preliminary indicators show that the Pentagon's efforts are paying off. Latino enlistment increased from 10.4 percent of new recruits in 2000 to 13 percent in 2004. According to University of Maryland military sociologist David Segal, however, the jury is still out on whether the Latino enlistment campaign will solve the Defense Department's recruitment problem in the mid to long term. A drop in Latino numbers could, Segal says, "plunge the military into an even deeper crisis. They will have to learn how to better recruit whites." He adds that "when antiwar efforts focus on recruitment, they're denying recruiters major access they desperately need."
The Bush adventure in Iraq has done much to foster anti-recruitment sentiment and create the "Latino unity" activists have dreamed of for decades. Beyond the anonymous, individualistic rejection of the war measured in recent polls of Latinos, a more vocal and active rejection of war and recruitment is taking hold on the ground, tapping into several currents of Latino political tradition. Vietnam veteran and University of San Diego professor Jorge Mariscal is among those working feverishly to cut Pentagon strings they feel yank young Latinos further and further into imperial entanglements. "We are trying to show the historical continuity of Latino protest against the exploitation of other Latinos in US wars of aggression," says Mariscal, considered by many to be the dean of Latino counterrecruitment efforts.
On this past August 29, Mariscal's organization, the Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities (YANO), and dozens of other Latino groups launched a campaign to educate Latino parents and students about military recruitment in schools. A main focus was simply informing people that the No Child Left Behind Act, which allows recruiters access to student contact information, also contains an opt-out provision. The organizers chose to launch the campaign on August 29 because it was the anniversary of the Chicano Moratorium of 1970--the largest, most radical Latino antiwar, antirecruitment mobilization in US history. The campaign draws strength from the antimilitaristic traditions of US-born Latinos (especially Mexican-Americans and Puerto Ricans) as well as from the anti-militarismo traditions of more recent Latin American immigrants from such countries as El Salvador and the Dominican Republic.
While the war for young Latino hearts rages in all corners of the country, the strategic theater of battle for Latino bodies remains the Southwest, especially Southern California. A 2001 study by the US Army Recruiting Command (USAREC), for example, defined Los Angeles, the rest of Southern California, Phoenix and Sacramento as its top markets for Latino recruits. But California has also become the de facto heart of the nascent movement among US Latinos. Animating it is Fernando Suarez del Solar, a former student activist in Mexico who now lives in Escondido, California. Del Solar traces his struggle against the military to the moment he witnessed Mexican military personnel "push their bayonets into young men--and women" during a 1972 protest in the Zocalo, the central square of Mexico City. "That was my first encounter with militarismo."
Three decades later Del Solar took another, sharper turn against militarismo after his son, Jesus, a marine, died in Iraq in 2003. Since then, his denunciation of the "lies and half-truths" recruiters use on kids like Jesus has been unceasing. Because he can't shake images of how his then-13-year-old boy was first "seduced" by the trinkets, posters and ideas given to him by recruiters at a mall in National City, Del Solar works to educate other parents and students about recruitment and war.
Bemoaning the "lack of leadership among Latinos at the national level," Del Solar and others in the Latino counterrecruitment movement complain that national advocacy groups like the League of United Latin American Citizens and the National Council of La Raza are not only silent but complicit in finding fresh Latino bodies to feed the war machine. LULAC and NCLR do accept sponsorships from and provide forums for Pentagon promotion at some of their national conferences and local events. In their determination to meet what recruiting handbooks call "influencers," Marine, Army and other Defense Department personnel can be seen at LULAC and NCLR events either glad-handing or manning the recruitment Hummers, chin-up challenges, inflatable obstacle courses and other props in front of their trinket-stuffed information booths. To fill the void, Del Solar's organization, Guerrero Azteca, and Mariscal's group, YANO, have joined forces. They plan to convene a national meeting of Latino counterrecruitment organizations and leaders to connect the numerous efforts springing up across the country.
But the forces of counterrecruitment face an armada of military recruitment organizations backed by the best civilian, corporate and community alliances our tax dollars can buy. Continuing the Latino recruitment focus that started with the Clinton Administration's Hispanic Access Initiative, the Pentagon has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to turn poor Latino neighborhoods and decrepit, Latino-heavy schools into soldier factories. Last year alone USAREC deployed five brigades, forty-one battalions, 5,648 recruiters and 1,690 recruiting stations. The military won't reveal what share of its recruitment resources is being targeted at Latinos, but it's clearly substantial. For Hispanic Heritage month, the Army is highlighting Hispanic soldiers in a massive ad campaign and a Congressional Medal of Honor tour of high schools across the country.
In Puerto Rico counterrecruiters have fanned out to all 200 of the island's high schools to deliver the antimilitaristic and opt-out messages to thousands of students there. "We are picketing recruitment offices and asking Puerto Rico's Department of Education to give us 'equal time' or 'equal access' so that we can go to the schools to talk to the students against military recruitment," says Jorge Colon, spokesperson for the Coalición Ciudadana en Contra del Militarismo (Citizen's Coalition Against Militarism), a broad-based network of labor, parent, teacher, student and other groups. Like Mariscal, Colon and other Puerto Ricans link current counterrecruitment efforts to antimilitaristic traditions; much of the energy and momentum of the successful movement to rid the island of Vieques of bombing and other military exercises has been transferred to the counterrecruitment effort.
In the northernmost corner of Washington State, Rosalinda Guillen is also drawing on tradition to combat what she sees as deception in the farmlands of Skagit and Whatcom counties, where recruiters are seeking to harvest new recruits among the Oaxacan and Chiapanecan Indians and Mexican, Salvadoran and Nicaraguan immigrants working the fields. Guillen, a former leader in the United Farm Workers, returned to her hometown to fight for Latino rights, including the right of youth to decline military service. "Recruiters are going into high schools. They're going after our young people and new immigrants," says Guillen, whose organization translates opt-out materials, does educational work and plans larger strategy to fight Latino recruitment.
Like many Latinos I spoke with, Guillen has one message for the larger progressive community, especially those fighting the war and recruitment: "White-led social justice programs and organizations need to do something. They need to make broader strokes to make sure they include Latinos, and they're not right now. All they need to do is help bring the resources and we can do the work like we always have."
Jessica Sanchez poses an urgent threat to the US military. For a Pentagon stretched by stagnating enlistments and an Administration bent on waging a "global war on terror," the question of whether this four-foot-eleven Mexican-born legal resident and others like her will decide to join the military has enormous geopolitical implications.
The Pentagon is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to find out whatever it can about Sanchez and other young Latinos: what they wear, where they hang out, what kinds of groups they form, what they read, what they watch on TV, their grades, their dreams. Members of the military's numerous and well-funded recruiting commands use sophisticated Geographic Information Systems maps, souped-up recruiting Hummers and other resources to establish strategic positions in the minds, pocketbooks and neighborhoods of young Latinos like Sanchez.
Recruiters are devising new and often unexpected ways to penetrate daily Latino life. "I went to a birthday celebration at Chuck E. Cheese's," says Sanchez, a 25-year-old single mom from San Marcos, California, just outside San Diego. "We were watching a puppet show when all of a sudden a military song is playing in the background. I thought that was weird but kept watching. A couple of minutes later, all of us were looking at pictures on a TV screen of people in the Army giving food and supplies to kids in Iraq. My friends and I thought that was really weird--and got out."
The bad news for Pentagon planners is not just Sanchez's negative reaction to the puppet show, or even her eventual decision not to join the Navy. It's that she and other Latinos who are rejecting the military's overtures are turning around and organizing a grassroots movement against recruitment in their community.
From the northernmost corner of Washington State to the southernmost beaches of south Florida, veteran Latino counterrecruiters and younger activistas are facing off against thousands of military recruiters in a battle that will determine whether Latino youth continue echoing the "Yo soy el Army" and other Pentagon PR slogans or instead adopt the "Yo estoy en contra del Army" slogan taken up by Sanchez. The counterrecruitment movement, spearheaded by scores of Latinos in Chicago, El Paso, Tucson and other cities, suburbs and rural communities, is largely occurring beneath the radar of the mostly white antiwar movement, despite its potential to alter the course of Iraq and future US wars.
"Latinos are very important to the national security of the United States," says Larry Korb, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower, Reserve Affairs, Installations and Logistics in the Reagan Administration Defense Department, where he administered about 70 percent of the largest line items in the federal budget. "A decrease in Latino enlistment numbers would make things very difficult for the armed forces, because they are the fastest-growing [minority] group in the country and they have a very distinguished record of service in the military. If I were Donald Rumsfeld, I would be very worried about the possibility of decreasing Latino numbers. I'd be thinking about how to make do with smaller numbers of troops or with further lowering standards for aptitude, age, education and other factors."
The centrality of Latinos to the military enterprise can be seen in statements by Pentagon officials like John McLaurin, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Human Resources, who stated that in order to meet recruitment goals, Latino enlistments must grow to 22 percent by the year 2025, when one in four Americans will be Latino. Two factors add to the urgency. One is that while Latinos make up only 13 percent of the active-duty forces, they also make up a fast-growing 16 percent of the 17- to 21-year-old population. In the eyes of Pentagon planners, this rapidly growing, relatively poor population is prime recruiting material. Latinos already in the military are concentrated in the low ranks of the Marines and the Army, serving in the high-casualty, high-risk jobs of front-line troops urgently needed in Iraq. The second factor driving the Latinization of the Pentagon's recruitment strategy is the decrease in African-American and women recruits. Since 2000 the percentage of African-American recruits has dropped from 23.5 percent to less than 14 percent, thanks to the widespread disaffection with the Iraq War--and good organizing--among parents and students in the black community.
And some preliminary indicators show that the Pentagon's efforts are paying off. Latino enlistment increased from 10.4 percent of new recruits in 2000 to 13 percent in 2004. According to University of Maryland military sociologist David Segal, however, the jury is still out on whether the Latino enlistment campaign will solve the Defense Department's recruitment problem in the mid to long term. A drop in Latino numbers could, Segal says, "plunge the military into an even deeper crisis. They will have to learn how to better recruit whites." He adds that "when antiwar efforts focus on recruitment, they're denying recruiters major access they desperately need."
The Bush adventure in Iraq has done much to foster anti-recruitment sentiment and create the "Latino unity" activists have dreamed of for decades. Beyond the anonymous, individualistic rejection of the war measured in recent polls of Latinos, a more vocal and active rejection of war and recruitment is taking hold on the ground, tapping into several currents of Latino political tradition. Vietnam veteran and University of San Diego professor Jorge Mariscal is among those working feverishly to cut Pentagon strings they feel yank young Latinos further and further into imperial entanglements. "We are trying to show the historical continuity of Latino protest against the exploitation of other Latinos in US wars of aggression," says Mariscal, considered by many to be the dean of Latino counterrecruitment efforts.
On this past August 29, Mariscal's organization, the Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities (YANO), and dozens of other Latino groups launched a campaign to educate Latino parents and students about military recruitment in schools. A main focus was simply informing people that the No Child Left Behind Act, which allows recruiters access to student contact information, also contains an opt-out provision. The organizers chose to launch the campaign on August 29 because it was the anniversary of the Chicano Moratorium of 1970--the largest, most radical Latino antiwar, antirecruitment mobilization in US history. The campaign draws strength from the antimilitaristic traditions of US-born Latinos (especially Mexican-Americans and Puerto Ricans) as well as from the anti-militarismo traditions of more recent Latin American immigrants from such countries as El Salvador and the Dominican Republic.
While the war for young Latino hearts rages in all corners of the country, the strategic theater of battle for Latino bodies remains the Southwest, especially Southern California. A 2001 study by the US Army Recruiting Command (USAREC), for example, defined Los Angeles, the rest of Southern California, Phoenix and Sacramento as its top markets for Latino recruits. But California has also become the de facto heart of the nascent movement among US Latinos. Animating it is Fernando Suarez del Solar, a former student activist in Mexico who now lives in Escondido, California. Del Solar traces his struggle against the military to the moment he witnessed Mexican military personnel "push their bayonets into young men--and women" during a 1972 protest in the Zocalo, the central square of Mexico City. "That was my first encounter with militarismo."
Three decades later Del Solar took another, sharper turn against militarismo after his son, Jesus, a marine, died in Iraq in 2003. Since then, his denunciation of the "lies and half-truths" recruiters use on kids like Jesus has been unceasing. Because he can't shake images of how his then-13-year-old boy was first "seduced" by the trinkets, posters and ideas given to him by recruiters at a mall in National City, Del Solar works to educate other parents and students about recruitment and war.
Bemoaning the "lack of leadership among Latinos at the national level," Del Solar and others in the Latino counterrecruitment movement complain that national advocacy groups like the League of United Latin American Citizens and the National Council of La Raza are not only silent but complicit in finding fresh Latino bodies to feed the war machine. LULAC and NCLR do accept sponsorships from and provide forums for Pentagon promotion at some of their national conferences and local events. In their determination to meet what recruiting handbooks call "influencers," Marine, Army and other Defense Department personnel can be seen at LULAC and NCLR events either glad-handing or manning the recruitment Hummers, chin-up challenges, inflatable obstacle courses and other props in front of their trinket-stuffed information booths. To fill the void, Del Solar's organization, Guerrero Azteca, and Mariscal's group, YANO, have joined forces. They plan to convene a national meeting of Latino counterrecruitment organizations and leaders to connect the numerous efforts springing up across the country.
But the forces of counterrecruitment face an armada of military recruitment organizations backed by the best civilian, corporate and community alliances our tax dollars can buy. Continuing the Latino recruitment focus that started with the Clinton Administration's Hispanic Access Initiative, the Pentagon has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to turn poor Latino neighborhoods and decrepit, Latino-heavy schools into soldier factories. Last year alone USAREC deployed five brigades, forty-one battalions, 5,648 recruiters and 1,690 recruiting stations. The military won't reveal what share of its recruitment resources is being targeted at Latinos, but it's clearly substantial. For Hispanic Heritage month, the Army is highlighting Hispanic soldiers in a massive ad campaign and a Congressional Medal of Honor tour of high schools across the country.
In Puerto Rico counterrecruiters have fanned out to all 200 of the island's high schools to deliver the antimilitaristic and opt-out messages to thousands of students there. "We are picketing recruitment offices and asking Puerto Rico's Department of Education to give us 'equal time' or 'equal access' so that we can go to the schools to talk to the students against military recruitment," says Jorge Colon, spokesperson for the Coalición Ciudadana en Contra del Militarismo (Citizen's Coalition Against Militarism), a broad-based network of labor, parent, teacher, student and other groups. Like Mariscal, Colon and other Puerto Ricans link current counterrecruitment efforts to antimilitaristic traditions; much of the energy and momentum of the successful movement to rid the island of Vieques of bombing and other military exercises has been transferred to the counterrecruitment effort.
In the northernmost corner of Washington State, Rosalinda Guillen is also drawing on tradition to combat what she sees as deception in the farmlands of Skagit and Whatcom counties, where recruiters are seeking to harvest new recruits among the Oaxacan and Chiapanecan Indians and Mexican, Salvadoran and Nicaraguan immigrants working the fields. Guillen, a former leader in the United Farm Workers, returned to her hometown to fight for Latino rights, including the right of youth to decline military service. "Recruiters are going into high schools. They're going after our young people and new immigrants," says Guillen, whose organization translates opt-out materials, does educational work and plans larger strategy to fight Latino recruitment.
Like many Latinos I spoke with, Guillen has one message for the larger progressive community, especially those fighting the war and recruitment: "White-led social justice programs and organizations need to do something. They need to make broader strokes to make sure they include Latinos, and they're not right now. All they need to do is help bring the resources and we can do the work like we always have."
If Corporations Could Laugh
by Ralph Nader
If only corporations could laugh. If only corporations could laugh during the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearings on Judge John Roberts' nomination for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, they would head for the nearest champagne closet in their executive suites.
What a triumph for the most dominant powers in and around our nation. Judge Roberts got away without having important questions asked regarding the interface between corporations, the Constitution, the election laws, the regulatory agencies as they relate to workers, consumers, the environment, manipulated communities, the double standard justice system and the pertinent practices of corporate law firms.
It is not for lack of trying by various citizen groups, including our own, who beseeched one Senator after another to ask this former corporate lawyer about widely reported contemporary conflicts between unusually deceptive or reckless large corporations and real human beings. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers came out big time with big publicity budgets for Judge Roberts. They had not done this for previous nominations for the High Court. That ought to tell you something. Since these two giant business lobbies swarm over Capitol Hill, together with other similar lobbies, and finance many campaigns there, the prediction was that Judge Roberts would not be asked penetrating questions about the federal regulatory role, the federal pre-emption of state laws protecting consumers and injured people, the questionable authority given NAFTA and the World Trade Organization to make decisions overriding our judicial and regulatory institutions or the unequal status under our Constitution, as interpreted by Supreme Court decisions, between corporations and real people. Much has been written about the growing and varied power of global corporations. Recently, the Justice Department has been signing "deferred prosecution" agreements with companies that admitted criminal guilt. The reasons given: prosecution could seriously damage the company or, more quietly, going to full trial would drain the limited resources of the federal government devoted to pursuing trillions of dollars of corporate crime, fraud and abuse.
Corporations, like giant banks, have long been on Washington's list as being "too big to be allowed to fail" no matter how badly these banks behave. So the federal government has bailed them out, because they were too large a factor in the economy to fail. Well then, why weren't the antitrust laws enforced to preclude such massive concentration in our economy? And isn't it unfair competition against smaller companies, smaller banks, who have the freedom to fail all on their own without a federal taxpayer rescue?
Corporate attorney, now Judge Roberts, should have been asked to respond to such questions before the millions of Americans who were watching or listening to these hearings.
For some eleven years, John Roberts worked at the large corporate law firm, Hogan & Hartson, in Washington, D.C. He should have been asked whether he believes in the positions he took on behalf of his major corporate clients. Prominent corporate attorneys like the late Lloyd Cutler pride themselves on asserting that they do believe what they argue.
Much was made of Judge Roberts' integrity and character. But no one tested them. He was not asked about a widespread and well-documented practice of billing abuses by corporate lawyers. What did he know? Did he openly disapprove of these practices by corporate law firms? Did he know of any such billing frauds in his firm or in his own practice?
Judge Roberts made two troubling declarations during his roughly three days of public hearings about which more needs to be made. He was asked whether he regretted or changed his mind about any of the positions he took in hundreds of memos on many significant legal issues which he wrote for the Reagan White House or the positions taken at the Justice Department years ago. He did not name any. Maybe that is understandable for an advocate, but not for a judge repeatedly referring to his "open mind" and judicial temperament.
The other assertion was simply not credible. He stated that when deciding cases he leaves his values and personal philosophy at home. No human being, short of robotic status, can so detach himself or herself. (Later in his testimony, Judge Roberts himself acknowledged widely differing "philosophies" on the Supreme Court now.) He was simply not being forthright.
As has been my practice with Supreme Court nominations, I early on requested to testify, sensing that corporate power subjects would not be given much attention. My request was turned down by Senator Patrick Leahy, who filled his 15 permitted witness slots with good people mostly concentrating on non-corporate issues of law and justice. I was permitted to submit testimony for the hearing record, which is on Democracyrising.us or Nader.org in its entirety.
To emphasize the gravity of his nomination, several Senators noted that, given decent health, Judge Roberts could be Chief Justice for 40 years or until 2045. So then what was the rush with the hearings which started Monday and ended by Thursday afternoon? In fact, Chairman Senator Arlen Specter announced a short recess to let some Senators catch planes.
The Committee called 30 witnesses, many of them from long distances, and gave them 5 minutes each to speak. Most Senators who remained that last Thursday afternoon and early evening did not even bother questioning them, thereby losing an opportunity to make important points, elicit more insights and further inform the millions of people paying attention to these proceedings.
Quite disappointing was that during Panel Six, featuring such significant witnesses as former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, and president to the National Association of Manufacturers, John Engler, the ranking Democrat on the Committee, Senator Patrick Leahy remarked, when his turn came to ask questions, "I'm sorely tempted, but no."
In the future, it would improve the process for such nominations to have some witnesses go first, then receive the nominee, then have some witnesses follow. For forty years of projected tenure to head the Supreme Court, four rushed days were grossly insufficient, in both quality and quantity.
If only corporations could laugh. If only corporations could laugh during the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearings on Judge John Roberts' nomination for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, they would head for the nearest champagne closet in their executive suites.
What a triumph for the most dominant powers in and around our nation. Judge Roberts got away without having important questions asked regarding the interface between corporations, the Constitution, the election laws, the regulatory agencies as they relate to workers, consumers, the environment, manipulated communities, the double standard justice system and the pertinent practices of corporate law firms.
It is not for lack of trying by various citizen groups, including our own, who beseeched one Senator after another to ask this former corporate lawyer about widely reported contemporary conflicts between unusually deceptive or reckless large corporations and real human beings. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers came out big time with big publicity budgets for Judge Roberts. They had not done this for previous nominations for the High Court. That ought to tell you something. Since these two giant business lobbies swarm over Capitol Hill, together with other similar lobbies, and finance many campaigns there, the prediction was that Judge Roberts would not be asked penetrating questions about the federal regulatory role, the federal pre-emption of state laws protecting consumers and injured people, the questionable authority given NAFTA and the World Trade Organization to make decisions overriding our judicial and regulatory institutions or the unequal status under our Constitution, as interpreted by Supreme Court decisions, between corporations and real people. Much has been written about the growing and varied power of global corporations. Recently, the Justice Department has been signing "deferred prosecution" agreements with companies that admitted criminal guilt. The reasons given: prosecution could seriously damage the company or, more quietly, going to full trial would drain the limited resources of the federal government devoted to pursuing trillions of dollars of corporate crime, fraud and abuse.
Corporations, like giant banks, have long been on Washington's list as being "too big to be allowed to fail" no matter how badly these banks behave. So the federal government has bailed them out, because they were too large a factor in the economy to fail. Well then, why weren't the antitrust laws enforced to preclude such massive concentration in our economy? And isn't it unfair competition against smaller companies, smaller banks, who have the freedom to fail all on their own without a federal taxpayer rescue?
Corporate attorney, now Judge Roberts, should have been asked to respond to such questions before the millions of Americans who were watching or listening to these hearings.
For some eleven years, John Roberts worked at the large corporate law firm, Hogan & Hartson, in Washington, D.C. He should have been asked whether he believes in the positions he took on behalf of his major corporate clients. Prominent corporate attorneys like the late Lloyd Cutler pride themselves on asserting that they do believe what they argue.
Much was made of Judge Roberts' integrity and character. But no one tested them. He was not asked about a widespread and well-documented practice of billing abuses by corporate lawyers. What did he know? Did he openly disapprove of these practices by corporate law firms? Did he know of any such billing frauds in his firm or in his own practice?
Judge Roberts made two troubling declarations during his roughly three days of public hearings about which more needs to be made. He was asked whether he regretted or changed his mind about any of the positions he took in hundreds of memos on many significant legal issues which he wrote for the Reagan White House or the positions taken at the Justice Department years ago. He did not name any. Maybe that is understandable for an advocate, but not for a judge repeatedly referring to his "open mind" and judicial temperament.
The other assertion was simply not credible. He stated that when deciding cases he leaves his values and personal philosophy at home. No human being, short of robotic status, can so detach himself or herself. (Later in his testimony, Judge Roberts himself acknowledged widely differing "philosophies" on the Supreme Court now.) He was simply not being forthright.
As has been my practice with Supreme Court nominations, I early on requested to testify, sensing that corporate power subjects would not be given much attention. My request was turned down by Senator Patrick Leahy, who filled his 15 permitted witness slots with good people mostly concentrating on non-corporate issues of law and justice. I was permitted to submit testimony for the hearing record, which is on Democracyrising.us or Nader.org in its entirety.
To emphasize the gravity of his nomination, several Senators noted that, given decent health, Judge Roberts could be Chief Justice for 40 years or until 2045. So then what was the rush with the hearings which started Monday and ended by Thursday afternoon? In fact, Chairman Senator Arlen Specter announced a short recess to let some Senators catch planes.
The Committee called 30 witnesses, many of them from long distances, and gave them 5 minutes each to speak. Most Senators who remained that last Thursday afternoon and early evening did not even bother questioning them, thereby losing an opportunity to make important points, elicit more insights and further inform the millions of people paying attention to these proceedings.
Quite disappointing was that during Panel Six, featuring such significant witnesses as former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, and president to the National Association of Manufacturers, John Engler, the ranking Democrat on the Committee, Senator Patrick Leahy remarked, when his turn came to ask questions, "I'm sorely tempted, but no."
In the future, it would improve the process for such nominations to have some witnesses go first, then receive the nominee, then have some witnesses follow. For forty years of projected tenure to head the Supreme Court, four rushed days were grossly insufficient, in both quality and quantity.
Jeb Bush's son arrested for public intoxication, resisting arrest
AUSTIN John Ellis Bush, the youngest son of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, was arrested early Friday and charged with public intoxication and resisting arrest, law enforcement officials in Texas said.
The 21-year-old nephew of President Bush was arrested by the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission at 2:30 a.m. Friday on a corner of Austin's Sixth Street bar district, said spokesman Roger Wade.
John Ellis Bush was released on $2,500 bond for resisting arrest, and on a personal recognizance bond for the public intoxication charge, officials said.
Alia Faraj, the spokeswoman for Jeb Bush said the incident "is a personal family matter" which the governor and his wife "are dealing with privately."
Gov. Bush and his wife Columba appeared Friday evening at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida for a reception. The governor said it was not an appropriate time to discuss specifics of the incident.
"My son's doing fine. It's a private matter. We will support him. We're sad for him. But I'm not going to discuss it on the public square with 30 cameras," the governor said at the downtown Miami event.
Capt. David Ferrero of the Texas Alcohol Beverage Commission told Miami television station WSVN that the younger Bush "received a small cut on his chin when he was resisting and he was treated and released from the hospital." A staffer answering phones at the commission's offices later Friday evening said he had no information about John Ellis Bush being injured during the incident.
It's not the first time Florida's first family has experienced legal problems with one of their children.
Noelle Bush, the governor's daughter, was arrested in January 2002 and was accused of trying to pass a fraudulent prescription at a Tallahassee pharmacy to obtain the anti-anxiety drug Xanax. She completed a drug rehabilitation program in August 2003 and a judge dismissed the drug charges against her.
Noelle Bush was sent to jail twice for violating rules during her rehab stint. She was jailed for three days in July 2002 after being caught with prescription pills and served 10 days a month later after being accused of having a small rock of crack cocaine in her shoe.
The 21-year-old nephew of President Bush was arrested by the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission at 2:30 a.m. Friday on a corner of Austin's Sixth Street bar district, said spokesman Roger Wade.
John Ellis Bush was released on $2,500 bond for resisting arrest, and on a personal recognizance bond for the public intoxication charge, officials said.
Alia Faraj, the spokeswoman for Jeb Bush said the incident "is a personal family matter" which the governor and his wife "are dealing with privately."
Gov. Bush and his wife Columba appeared Friday evening at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida for a reception. The governor said it was not an appropriate time to discuss specifics of the incident.
"My son's doing fine. It's a private matter. We will support him. We're sad for him. But I'm not going to discuss it on the public square with 30 cameras," the governor said at the downtown Miami event.
Capt. David Ferrero of the Texas Alcohol Beverage Commission told Miami television station WSVN that the younger Bush "received a small cut on his chin when he was resisting and he was treated and released from the hospital." A staffer answering phones at the commission's offices later Friday evening said he had no information about John Ellis Bush being injured during the incident.
It's not the first time Florida's first family has experienced legal problems with one of their children.
Noelle Bush, the governor's daughter, was arrested in January 2002 and was accused of trying to pass a fraudulent prescription at a Tallahassee pharmacy to obtain the anti-anxiety drug Xanax. She completed a drug rehabilitation program in August 2003 and a judge dismissed the drug charges against her.
Noelle Bush was sent to jail twice for violating rules during her rehab stint. She was jailed for three days in July 2002 after being caught with prescription pills and served 10 days a month later after being accused of having a small rock of crack cocaine in her shoe.
Message: I Care About the Black Folks
September 18, 2005
Message: I Care About the Black Folks
By FRANK RICH
ONCE Toto parts the curtain, the Wizard of Oz can never be the wizard again. He is forever Professor Marvel, blowhard and snake-oil salesman. Hurricane Katrina, which is likely to endure in the American psyche as long as L. Frank Baum's mythic tornado, has similarly unmasked George W. Bush.
The worst storm in our history proved perfect for exposing this president because in one big blast it illuminated all his failings: the rampant cronyism, the empty sloganeering of "compassionate conservatism," the lack of concern for the "underprivileged" his mother condescended to at the Astrodome, the reckless lack of planning for all government operations except tax cuts, the use of spin and photo-ops to camouflage failure and to substitute for action.
In the chaos unleashed by Katrina, these plot strands coalesced into a single tragic epic played out in real time on television. The narrative is just too powerful to be undone now by the administration's desperate recycling of its greatest hits: a return Sunshine Boys tour by the surrogate empathizers Clinton and Bush I, another round of prayers at the Washington National Cathedral, another ludicrously overhyped prime-time address flecked with speechwriters' "poetry" and framed by a picturesque backdrop. Reruns never eclipse a riveting new show.
Nor can the president's acceptance of "responsibility" for the disaster dislodge what came before. Mr. Bush didn't cough up his modified-limited mea culpa until he'd seen his whole administration flash before his eyes. His admission that some of the buck may stop with him (about a dime's worth, in Truman dollars) came two weeks after the levees burst and five years after he promised to usher in a new post-Clinton "culture of responsibility." It came only after the plan to heap all the blame on the indeed blameworthy local Democrats failed to lift Mr. Bush's own record-low poll numbers. It came only after America's highest-rated TV news anchor, Brian Williams, started talking about Katrina the way Walter Cronkite once did about Vietnam.
Taking responsibility, as opposed to paying lip service to doing so, is not in this administration's gene pool. It was particularly shameful that Laura Bush was sent among the storm's dispossessed to try to scapegoat the news media for her husband's ineptitude. When she complained of seeing "a lot of the same footage over and over that isn't necessarily representative of what really happened," the first lady sounded just like Donald Rumsfeld shirking responsibility for the looting of Baghdad. The defense secretary, too, griped about seeing the same picture "over and over" on television (a looter with a vase) to hide the reality that the Pentagon had no plan to secure Iraq, a catastrophic failure being paid for in Iraqi and American blood to this day.
This White House doesn't hate all pictures, of course. It loves those by Karl Rove's Imagineers, from the spectacularly lighted Statue of Liberty backdrop of Mr. Bush's first 9/11 anniversary speech to his "Top Gun" stunt to Thursday's laughably stagy stride across the lawn to his lectern in Jackson Square. (Message: I am a leader, not that vacationing slacker who first surveyed the hurricane damage from my presidential jet.)
The most odious image-mongering, however, has been Mr. Bush's repeated deployment of African-Americans as dress extras to advertise his "compassion." In 2000, the Republican convention filled the stage with break dancers and gospel singers, trying to dispel the memory of Mr. Bush's craven appearance at Bob Jones University when it forbade interracial dating. (The few blacks in the convention hall itself were positioned near celebrities so they'd show up in TV shots.) In 2004, the Bush-Cheney campaign Web site had a page titled "Compassion" devoted mainly to photos of the president with black people, Colin Powell included.
Some of these poses are re-enacted in the "Hurricane Relief" photo gallery currently on display on the White House Web site. But this time the old magic isn't working. The "compassion" photos are outweighed by the cinéma vérité of poor people screaming for their lives. The government effort to keep body recovery efforts in New Orleans as invisible as the coffins from Iraq was abandoned when challenged in court by CNN.
But even now the administration's priority of image over substance is embedded like a cancer in the Katrina relief process. Brazenly enough, Mr. Rove has been officially put in charge of the reconstruction effort. The two top deputies at FEMA remaining after Michael Brown's departure, one of them a former local TV newsman, are not disaster relief specialists but experts in P.R., which they'd practiced as advance men for various Bush campaigns. Thus The Salt Lake Tribune discovered a week after the hurricane that some 1,000 firefighters from Utah and elsewhere were sent not to the Gulf Coast but to Atlanta, to be trained as "community relations officers for FEMA" rather than used as emergency workers to rescue the dying in New Orleans. When 50 of them were finally dispatched to Louisiana, the paper reported, their first assignment was "to stand beside President Bush" as he toured devastated areas.
The cashiering of "Brownie," whom Mr. Bush now purports to know as little as he did "Kenny Boy," changes nothing. The Knight Ridder newspapers found last week that it was the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, not Mr. Brown, who had the greater authority to order federal agencies into service without any request from state or local officials. Mr. Chertoff waited a crucial, unexplained 36 hours before declaring Katrina an "incident of national significance," the trigger needed for federal action. Like Mr. Brown, he was oblivious to the humanitarian disaster unfolding in the convention center, confessing his ignorance of conditions there to NPR on the same day that the FEMA chief famously did so to Ted Koppel. Yet Mr. Bush's "culture of responsibility" does not hold Mr. Chertoff accountable. Quite the contrary: on Thursday the president charged Homeland Security with reviewing "emergency plans in every major city in America." Mr. Chertoff will surely do a heck of a job.
WHEN there's money on the line, cronies always come first in this White House, no matter how great the human suffering. After Katrina, the FEMA Web site directing charitable contributions prominently listed Operation Blessing, a Pat Robertson kitty that, according to I.R.S. documents obtained by ABC News, has given more than half of its yearly cash donations to Mr. Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network. If FEMA is that cavalier about charitable donations, imagine what it's doing with the $62 billion (so far) of taxpayers' money sent its way for Katrina relief. Actually, you don't have to imagine: we already know some of it was immediately siphoned into no-bid contracts with a major Republican donor, the Fluor Corporation, as well as with a client of the consultant Joe Allbaugh, the Bush 2000 campaign manager who ran FEMA for this White House until Brownie, Mr. Allbaugh's college roommate, was installed in his place.
It was back in 2000 that Mr. Bush, in a debate with Al Gore, bragged about his gubernatorial prowess "on the front line of catastrophic situations," specifically citing a Texas flood, and paid the Clinton administration a rare compliment for putting a professional as effective as James Lee Witt in charge of FEMA. Exactly why Mr. Bush would staff that same agency months later with political hacks is one of many questions that must be answered by the independent investigation he and the Congressional majority are trying every which way to avoid. With or without a 9/11-style commission, the answers will come out. There are too many Americans who are angry and too many reporters who are on the case. (NBC and CNN are both opening full-time bureaus in New Orleans.) You know the world has changed when the widely despised news media have a far higher approval rating (77 percent) than the president (46 percent), as measured last week in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll.
Like his father before him, Mr. Bush has squandered the huge store of political capital he won in a war. His Thursday-night invocation of "armies of compassion" will prove as worthless as the "thousand points of light" that the first President Bush bestowed upon the poor from on high in New Orleans (at the Superdome, during the 1988 G.O.P. convention). It will be up to other Republicans in Washington to cut through the empty words and image-mongering to demand effective action from Mr. Bush on the Gulf Coast and in Iraq, if only because their own political lives are at stake. It's up to Democrats, though they show scant signs of realizing it, to step into the vacuum and propose an alternative to a fiscally disastrous conservatism that prizes pork over compassion. If the era of Great Society big government is over, the era of big government for special interests is proving a fiasco. Especially when it's presided over by a self-styled C.E.O. with a consistent three-decade record of running private and public enterprises alike into a ditch.
What comes next? Having turned the page on Mr. Bush, the country hungers for a vision that is something other than either liberal boilerplate or Rovian stagecraft. At this point, merely plain old competence, integrity and heart might do.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Saturday, September 17, 2005
1927 The Great Flood
>In 1927, weeks of spring rain sent the Mississippi River rampaging from
>Cairo, Illinois, to New Orleans, flooding dozens of towns, killing
>hundreds, and leaving a million homeless. In Greenville, Mississippi,
>efforts to contain the river pitted a black majority against an
>aristocratic plantation family, the Percys -- and the Percys against
>themselves.
>January 1: In Cairo, Illinois, the first of multiple crests breach flood
>stage on the Mississippi River. The river appears to be on the verge of
>flooding, but the Mississippi River Commission still insists the levees
>will hold.
>March: Huge swells on the Mississippi River move downstream and reach the
>Delta. Heavy rains fall on the Delta throughout March and continue into
>April. Some white residents of Greenville, especially women and children,
>flee the area and head north.
>March and April: LeRoy Percy and other plantation owners send their farm
>hands to raise the height of Washington County levees. Other African
>Americans in the area are pressed into work gangs to heighten and fortify
>the levees Police round up African Americans in town at gun point and send
>them to the levee. Convicts are also pressed into action, and altogether a
>gang of 30,000 men work to save the
>levee.
>April 15, Good Friday: Rains pelt Washington County, and Greenville
>receives 8.12 inches. The storm covers several hundred square miles, and
>counties along the Mississippi receive anywhere from 6 to 15 inches of
>rainfall. LeRoy Percy and other town leaders gather at the home of Seguine
>Allen, chief engineer of the Mississippi Levee Board in Greenville, to
>discuss whether the levee will hold.
>April 16: The Great Flood of 1927 begins. Just 30 miles south of Cairo,
>Illinois, a1,200-foot length of government levee collapses and 175,000
>acres are flooded. In some places the river is
>carrying 3 million cubic feet of water a second -- an unprecedented volume.
>April: Communities on both sides of the river know that if the levee breaks
>on one side, the other side will be spared. Each side of the river fears
>sabotage, and sets up levee patrols to prevent intruders from dynamiting
>their levee. The patrols are prepared to shoot to kill.
>April 21: At 8:00 am, twelve miles up river from Greenville at Mounds
>Landing, despite the efforts of African American work crews who have been
>laboring day and night, the levee bursts. With a force greater than Niagara
>Falls, water gushes through a crevasse three quarters of a mile wide. When
>the levee collapses, many of the African Americans working at the Mounds
>Landing site are swept away with the river.
>April 22: The Great Flood overruns Greenville, Mississippi. Downtown
>Greenville is covered in 10 feet of water. For 60 miles to the east and 90
>miles to the south of the Mounds Landing break, the Delta becomes a
>turbulent, churning inland sea, leaving tens of thousands of people
>stranded on rooftops and clinging to trees. LeRoy Percy appoints his son,
>Will Percy, to head the Flood Relief Committee. Will is 42 years old.
>April 23: Searching for marooned people in Washington County, rescue boats
>follow power lines to farms and houses in the countryside, bringing back
>whomever they find to the high ground on the crown of the Greenville levee.
>Over 10,000 refugees, mostly African Americans, crowd onto the narrow
>eight-foot-wide crown with their salvaged possessions and livestock. With
>the arrival of the refugees, Greenville's population almost doubles.
>April 25: The situation in Greenville is dire. Thirteen thousand African
>Americans are stranded on the levee with nothing but blankets and makeshift
>tents for shelter. There is no food for them. The city's water supply is
>contaminated. The railway has been washed away, and sanitation is
>non-existent. An outbreak of cholera or typhoid is imminent.
>Will Percy decides that the only honorable and decent course of action is
>to evacuate the refugees to safer ground down river and arranges for barges
>to pick up and transport the refugees. Many people are reluctant to abandon
>Greenville, despite the fact that their homes have been submerged. The
>planters, in particular, oppose Will's plan, fearing that if the African
>American refugees leave, they will never return, and there will be no labor
>to work the crops. LeRoy, placing his business interests above his family's
>tradition of aiding those less fortunate, betrays his son and secretly
>sides with the planters. Boats with room for all the refugees arrive, but
>only 33 white women and children are allowed to board. The African American
>refugees are left behind, trapped on the levee. Later, Will Percy will
>write that he was "astounded and horrified" by this turn of events.
>April: To justify his relief committee's failure to evacuate the refugees,
>Will Percy convinces the Red Cross to make Greenville a distribution
>center, with the African Americans providing the labor. Red Cross relief
>provisions arrive in Greenville, but the best provisions go to the whites
>in town. Only African Americans wearing tags around their necks marked
>"laborer" receive rations. National Guard is called in to
>patrol the refugee camps in Greenville. Word filters out of the camps that
>guardsmen are robbing, assaulting, raping and even murdering African
>Americans held on the levee.
>April 26: Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, placed in charge of flood
>relief by President Calvin Coolidge, visits Greenville and approves the
>flood relief committee's plans.
>April 29: The torrent has moved south. With the river almost at the levee
>tops, New Orleans dynamites the Poydras levee, creating a 1500-foot break
>at an estimated cost of $2 million, to direct the flood waters away from
>the city and its half million inhabitants. Movie cameras are on
>hand to record the momentous scene. The New York Times reports that many
>people refuse to quit the area to be flooded by the levee break. One woman
>living in a lighthouse "says she won't quit her post unless Uncle Sam comes
>to take her away."
>May: Slowly word of the abuses in the refugee camps reaches the Northern
>press. Once the situation in the refugee camps hits the national press,
>Herbert Hoover initiates an investigation of the reports. His investigators
>confirm numerous instances of abuse, but Hoover chooses to suppress the
>report. Hoover, known as "the Great Humanitarian," has his eyes set on the
>presidency. He has ridden a wave of good publicity from his flood relief
>efforts, and is determined to maintain his positive image. Hoover forms a
>Colored Advisory
>Commission of influential African American conservatives, led by Robert
>Russa Moton, to further investigate the camps. The commission confirms the
>initial findings. In exchange for keeping the report quiet, Hoover promises
>that if he wins the election, he will support the advancement of African
>Americans, including possible agrarian land reform. Moton agrees, and
>Hoover is never called to account for the treatment of African Americans in
>Washington County.
>June and July: As the flood waters recede, Greenville faces the task of
>digging the town out the mud. Again, the white leadership of the town
>resorts to conscripting African Americans at gun point. African American
>community leaders are outraged and refuse to
>recruit more workers. The Percys convince Hoover to visit Greenville and
>appeal to the workers, but his speech is a failure and the shortage of
>workers persists.
>July 7: James Gooden, a well respected African American in the Greenville
>community, is shot in the back by a white policeman for refusing to return
>for a day shift after working all night on the clean-up. Word of his death
>spreads quickly and work stops. Tensions rise, and both blacks and whites
>arm themselves with guns and other weapons. Greenville is at a standoff.
>Will Percy calls a reconciliation meeting of the African American community
>at a local church, but places the blame on them for the death of their
>neighbor.
>August 31: Will Percy resigns from the Greenville Flood Relief Committee
>and leaves for a trip to Japan the very next day.
>Late summer: Thousands of African Americans pack up their belongings and
>leave Washington County. Most head north and within a year, fifty percent
>of the Delta's African American population will have migrated from the
>region. Once "the Queen of the South," Greenville will never recover the
>prosperity it once enjoyed before the flood.
>1928 After Hoover is elected president, he turns his back on Robert Moton,
>the Colored
>Advisory Commission, and his earlier promises. Burned badly by Hoover, in
>the next election Moton and the African American community shift their
>support from the Republicans to the Democratic party and Franklin Delano
>Roosevelt.
Posted by Miriam V.
>
Disney on Parade
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
The president, as he fondly recalled the other day, used to get well lit in New Orleans. Not any more.
On Thursday night, Mr. Bush wanted to appear casually in charge as he waged his own Battle of New Orleans in Jackson Square. Instead, he looked as if he'd been dropped off by his folks in front of a eerie, blue-hued castle at Disney World. (Must be Sleeping Beauty's Castle, given the somnambulant pace of W.'s response to Katrina.)
All Andrew Jackson's horses, and all the Boy King's men could not put Humpty Dumpty together again. His gladiatorial walk across the darkened greensward, past a St. Louis Cathedral bathed in moon glow from White House klieg lights, just seemed to intensify the sense of an isolated, out-of-touch president clinging to hollow symbols as his disastrous disaster agency continues to flail.
In a ruined city - still largely without power, stinking with piles of garbage and still 40 percent submerged; where people are foraging in the miasma and muck for food, corpses and the sentimental detritus of their lives; and where unbearably sad stories continue to spill out about hordes of evacuees who lost their homes and patients who died in hospitals without either electricity or rescuers - isn't it rather tasteless, not to mention a waste of energy, to haul in White House generators just to give the president a burnished skin tone and a prettified background?
The slick White House TV production team was trying to salvage W.'s "High Noon" snap with some snazzy Hollywood-style lighting - the same Reaganesque stagecraft they had provided when W. made a prime-time television address from Ellis Island on the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. On that occasion, Scott Sforza, a former ABC producer, and Bob DeServi, a former NBC cameraman and a lighting expert, rented three barges of giant Musco lights, the kind used for "Monday Night Football" and Rolling Stones concerts, floated them across New York Harbor and illuminated the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop for Mr. Bush.
Before the presidential address, Mr. DeServi was surveying his handiwork in Jackson Square, crowing to reporters about his cathedral: "Oh, it's heated up. It's going to print loud."
As Elisabeth Bumiller, the White House reporter for The Times, noted in a pool report, the image wizards had put up a large swath of military camouflage netting, held in place by bags of rocks and strung on poles, to hide the president from the deserted and desolate streets of the French Quarter ghost town.
The president is still looking for a tiny spot of unreality in New Orleans - and in Iraq, where a violent rampage has spiked the three-day death tally to over 200.
The Oedipal loop-de-loop of W. and Poppy grows ever loopier.
With Karl Rove's help, Junior designed his presidency as a reverse of his father's. W. would succeed by studying Dad's failures and doing the opposite. But in a bizarre twist of filial fate, the son has stumbled so badly in areas where he tried to one-up Dad that he has ended up giving Dad a leg up in the history books.
As Mark Twain said: "When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."
Of course, it's taken Junior only five years to learn how smart his old man was.
His father made the "mistake" of not conquering and occupying Iraq because he had the silly idea that Iraqis would resent it. His father made the "mistake" of raising taxes, not cutting them, and overly obsessing about the federal deficit. And his father made the "mistake" of hewing to the center, making his base mad and losing his bid for re-election.
Bush père did make a real mistake in responding slowly to Hurricane Andrew in 1992, but that blunder has been dwarfed by what the slothful son hath wrought. Because of his fatal tardiness, W. now has to literally promise the moon to fix New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast, driving up the federal deficit and embarking on the biggest spending bonanza and government public works program since F.D.R.
In his address from the French Quarter, the president sounded like such a spendthrift bleeding heart that he is terrifying the right more than his father ever did.
Read my lips: By the time all this is over, people will be saying that Poppy was the true conservative in the family.
WASHINGTON
The president, as he fondly recalled the other day, used to get well lit in New Orleans. Not any more.
On Thursday night, Mr. Bush wanted to appear casually in charge as he waged his own Battle of New Orleans in Jackson Square. Instead, he looked as if he'd been dropped off by his folks in front of a eerie, blue-hued castle at Disney World. (Must be Sleeping Beauty's Castle, given the somnambulant pace of W.'s response to Katrina.)
All Andrew Jackson's horses, and all the Boy King's men could not put Humpty Dumpty together again. His gladiatorial walk across the darkened greensward, past a St. Louis Cathedral bathed in moon glow from White House klieg lights, just seemed to intensify the sense of an isolated, out-of-touch president clinging to hollow symbols as his disastrous disaster agency continues to flail.
In a ruined city - still largely without power, stinking with piles of garbage and still 40 percent submerged; where people are foraging in the miasma and muck for food, corpses and the sentimental detritus of their lives; and where unbearably sad stories continue to spill out about hordes of evacuees who lost their homes and patients who died in hospitals without either electricity or rescuers - isn't it rather tasteless, not to mention a waste of energy, to haul in White House generators just to give the president a burnished skin tone and a prettified background?
The slick White House TV production team was trying to salvage W.'s "High Noon" snap with some snazzy Hollywood-style lighting - the same Reaganesque stagecraft they had provided when W. made a prime-time television address from Ellis Island on the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. On that occasion, Scott Sforza, a former ABC producer, and Bob DeServi, a former NBC cameraman and a lighting expert, rented three barges of giant Musco lights, the kind used for "Monday Night Football" and Rolling Stones concerts, floated them across New York Harbor and illuminated the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop for Mr. Bush.
Before the presidential address, Mr. DeServi was surveying his handiwork in Jackson Square, crowing to reporters about his cathedral: "Oh, it's heated up. It's going to print loud."
As Elisabeth Bumiller, the White House reporter for The Times, noted in a pool report, the image wizards had put up a large swath of military camouflage netting, held in place by bags of rocks and strung on poles, to hide the president from the deserted and desolate streets of the French Quarter ghost town.
The president is still looking for a tiny spot of unreality in New Orleans - and in Iraq, where a violent rampage has spiked the three-day death tally to over 200.
The Oedipal loop-de-loop of W. and Poppy grows ever loopier.
With Karl Rove's help, Junior designed his presidency as a reverse of his father's. W. would succeed by studying Dad's failures and doing the opposite. But in a bizarre twist of filial fate, the son has stumbled so badly in areas where he tried to one-up Dad that he has ended up giving Dad a leg up in the history books.
As Mark Twain said: "When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."
Of course, it's taken Junior only five years to learn how smart his old man was.
His father made the "mistake" of not conquering and occupying Iraq because he had the silly idea that Iraqis would resent it. His father made the "mistake" of raising taxes, not cutting them, and overly obsessing about the federal deficit. And his father made the "mistake" of hewing to the center, making his base mad and losing his bid for re-election.
Bush père did make a real mistake in responding slowly to Hurricane Andrew in 1992, but that blunder has been dwarfed by what the slothful son hath wrought. Because of his fatal tardiness, W. now has to literally promise the moon to fix New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast, driving up the federal deficit and embarking on the biggest spending bonanza and government public works program since F.D.R.
In his address from the French Quarter, the president sounded like such a spendthrift bleeding heart that he is terrifying the right more than his father ever did.
Read my lips: By the time all this is over, people will be saying that Poppy was the true conservative in the family.
Karl Rove's Big Easy
by Arianna Huffington
Creating an independent, bipartisan commission to look into what went so horribly wrong with the response to Katrina is not only an idea supported by an overwhelming majority of the American people -- including 64% of Republicans -- it’s also, inarguably, the right thing to do.
After all, we’re not talking about a witch hunt to ferret out which public officials should be pilloried in the public square (although surely more than a few members of the administration deserve a good thrashing -- uh, I mean Medal of Freedom) but a chance to make sure that the same mistakes aren’t
made when the dreaded next terrorist attack hits us. If we look at Katrina as a very wet dry run for our response to Hurricane Osama, an independent commission should have been empanelled the second the bodies started piling up in New Orleans.
And it’s not like this kind of fast-track fact-gathering is without precedent. The first of nine investigations into the failures that led to Pearl Harbor convened 11 days after that attack. And LBJ created the Warren Commission seven days after President Kennedy was assassinated.
But a full, public, and unbiased accounting is the last thing the White House and its Congressional allies want. Hence Wednesday’s straight party line vote. Not surprisingly, the GOP prefers the fox guarding the henhouse approach of having a Republican-controlled Congressional panel investigate Katrina.
Of course, we’ve seen this foot-dragging, stonewalling, anything-to-avoid-looking-in-the-mirror tactic before. It took 14 months -- and a candlelight vigil outside the White House by the 9/11 families -- before Bush finally relented and the 9/11 Commission was created. Is that kind of public shaming what it’s going to take to get to the truth about Katrina? If so, let’s not wait 14 months to have the families of Katrina’s victims gather outside the White House demanding answers.
There is too much at stake to let Bush and the GOP Congress play politics with our lives.
And speaking of playing politics, I love how the news that Karl Rove has been placed in charge of the reconstruction effort was buried in the ninth paragraph of a twelve paragraph New York Times story on Bush’s big speech.
This assignment proves that despite the president’s lofty rhetoric about “building a better New Orleans”, his main concern is stanching his political bleeding. Let’s be honest, when it comes to large-scale efforts like this, Ol’ Turd Blossom isn’t exactly Gen. George Marshall, who, before devising the Marshall Plan, had, among other things, been responsible for deploying over eight million soldiers in WW II.
Rove’s genius (aside from a Mensa-level mastery of dirty trickery) is for using imagery, spin, and atmospherics to turn political liabilities into political opportunities.
So here is the White House’s Katrina Plan in a nutshell: block any independent examination of its failings, put the Einstein of damage control in charge of reconstructing New Orleans, keep the dead bodies out of sight, try to get away with general platitudes and palliatives, offer watered-down acceptances of “responsibility” while trying to pin everything you can on local yokels and fall guys like Brownie, and let Bush’s corporate cronies get fat on hefty no-bid reconstruction contracts.
So get ready for the New New Orleans -- Karl Rove’s Big Easy -- featuring the Halliburton French Quarter, the ExxonMobil River (formerly the Mississippi), Lake MBNA (formerly Pontchartrain), and Eli Lilly music (formerly jazz).
With deals like that shimmering on the horizon, it’s no wonder the president’s pals in Congress are doing everything they can to throw a monkey wrench into House Democrats’ efforts to investigate the Plamegate scandal, and the Boy Genius’ involvement in it -- shooting down a pair of bills that would have required Antonio Gonzalez and the Justice Department, and Condi Rice and the State Department to turn over all documents and information pertaining to the outing of Valerie Plame.
God forbid! Mustn’t allow anything to get in the way of Reconstruction Karl’s efforts to rebuild the president’s poll numbers, eh?
© 2005 Huffington Post
Going (Down) by the Book
September 17, 2005
Going (Down) by the Book
By JOHN TIERNEY
NEW ORLEANS
When President Bush spoke from Jackson Square on Thursday night, across the Mississippi River a few men sitting next to a trailer watched him on a television powered by a generator. They listened respectfully, but they were not exactly dazzled.
"Intentions and results are two different things," said one of them, Wayne Savoy, who knows something about results from his work at this makeshift command post of the Acadian Ambulance company. During the flood, it was a lonely island of competence.
The city's communications system was wiped out, but Acadian dispatchers kept working, thanks to a backup power system and a portable antenna rushed here the day after the hurricane. As stranded patients wondered what had happened to the city's medics and ambulances, Acadian medics filled in at the Superdome and evacuated thousands from six hospitals.
While Louisiana officials debated how to accept outside help, Acadian was directing rescues by helicopters from the military and other states. When the Federal Emergency Management Agency's paperwork slowed the evacuation of patients from the airport, Acadian's frustrated medics waited with empty helicopters.
The company sent in outside doctors and nurses to the airport, where patients were dying and medical care was in short supply. FEMA rejected the help because the doctors and nurses weren't certified members of a National Disaster Medical Team.
President Bush has promised to find out what went wrong and make sure the government has a better plan for the next disaster. But plans can do only so much. As the Acadian workers demonstrated, coping with a disaster requires the ability to improvise and break the rules - talents notably absent in most bureaucrats.
After Sept. 11, federal officials vowed to make sure that cities' communications systems would survive a disaster. Improving them was a priority of the new Homeland Security Department. But when a predictable disaster struck New Orleans, city officials couldn't talk to their rescue workers on the street and had a hard time even calling leaders in the state capital.
No government planners expected the only working radio network in New Orleans to be run by a private company, but Acadian had the flexibility to take on the job. It also had better equipment than city agencies - its chief executive, Richard Zuschlag, is a fanatic for state-of-the-art gear and backup systems.
When the phone system failed, his medics were ready with satellite phones. When the hurricane winds knocked over both of the company's antennas in the New Orleans area, Acadian quickly located a mobile antenna and communications trailer owned by Iberia, a rural parish west of New Orleans. The sheriff, fortunately, didn't ask FEMA for permission to move it to Acadian's command post, across the river from the city.
Thanks to their network, Acadian's dispatchers quickly learned before anyone else how bad the flooding was throughout New Orleans. Mr. Zuschlag tried alerting city and state officials, as Gardiner Harris reported in The New York Times. But the city and state communications systems were so bad that nothing got done.
So Acadian directed the evacuation of hospitals and dispatched help to local officials. Its medics improvised as they went along. Trees and light posts were cut down so helicopters could land. Medics commandeered three tractor-trailers to move patients out of a hospital. They packed newborns in cardboard boxes to squeeze more of them into the helicopter.
But when they tried to speed the evacuation of hundreds of patients at the New Orleans airport, the medics were no match for FEMA officials determined to get clearance from their supervisors in Baton Rouge.
"At one point I had 10 helicopters on the ground waiting to go," said Marc Creswell, an Acadian medic, "but FEMA kept stonewalling us with paperwork. Meanwhile, every 30 or 40 minutes someone was dying."
Mr. Creswell said he had ferried in more than a dozen doctors and nurses to help at the airport, but they weren't allowed to work because they weren't certified. This was explained with a line Mr. Bush might keep in mind as he contemplates expanding Washington's role in the next disaster.
"When the doctors asked why they couldn't help these critically ill people lying there unattended," Mr. Creswell recalled, "the FEMA people kept saying, 'You're not federalized.' "
E-mail: tierney@nytimes.com
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Friday, September 16, 2005
Fw: FactCheck Correction: It was Vitter, not Lokey
----- Original Message -----
From: "FactCheck.org" <subscriberservices@FactCheck.org>
To: <miriam@panix.com>
Sent: Friday, September 16, 2005 6:51 PM
Subject: FactCheck Correction: It was Vitter, not Lokey
FEMA has contacted us with video showing that their official William Lokey
was NOT the person who mistakenly denied on Aug. 30 that New Oreleans was
"filling up like a bowl." We relied on a CNN transcript identifying the
speaker as Lokey, but the words were in fact uttered by Sen. David Vitter,
who was standing next to Lokey at the news conference.
We are updating our website to read as follows:
US Sen. David Vitter said of the still-rising water:
Sen. Vitter: In the metropolitan area in general, in the huge majority
of areas, it's not rising at all. It's the same or it may be lowering
slightly. In some parts of New Orleans, because of the 17th Street breach,
it may be rising and that seemed to be the case in parts of downtown.
I don't want to alarm everybody that, you know, New Orleans is filling
up like a bowl. That's just not happening.
None of the officials present at the press conference correct the mistaken
remark.
--Brooks Jackson
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Subject: Fwd: Warning from the Center for Disease Control
Warning from the Center for Disease Control
THE CENTER FOR DISEASE CONTROL has issued a no-nonsense warning about a
new, highly virulent strain of sexually transmitted disease. This disease
Is contracted through dangerous and high risk behavior.
The disease is called Gonorrhea Lectim (pronounced "gonna re-elect him").
Many victims have contracted it after having been screwed for the past four
years, in spite of having taken measures to protect themselves from this
especially troublesome disease.
Cognitive sequellae of individuals infected with Gonorrhea Lectim include,
but are not limited to, anti-social personality disorder traits; delusions
of grandeur with a distinct messianic flavor; chronic mangling of the
English
language; extreme cognitive dissonance; inability to incorporate new
information; pronounced xenophobia and homo! phobia; inability to accept
responsibility for actions; exceptional cowardice masked by acts of
misplaced bravado; uncontrolled facial smirking; total ignorance of
geography and history;
tendencies toward creating evangelical theocracies; and a strong propensity
for categorical, all-or-nothing behavior.
The disease is sweeping Washington. Naturalists and epidemiologists are
amazed and baffled that this malignant disease originated only a few years
ago in a Texas bush.
Posted by Miriam V.
Fw: [Norton AntiSpam] New FactCheck Article: Katrina: What Happened When
----- Original Message -----
From: "FactCheck.org" <subscriberservices@FactCheck.org>
To: <miriam@panix.com>
Sent: Friday, September 16, 2005 2:52 PM
Subject: [Norton AntiSpam] New FactCheck Article: Katrina: What Happened
When
Katrina: What Happened When
It will take months to get the full story, but meanwhile here are some of
the key facts about what happened and when officials acted.
September 16, 2005
Summary
Multiple investigations are likely into the response by federal, state, and
local officials to the disastrous flooding of New Orleans from Hurricane
Katrina. New facts are still emerging, and