Bratt's Pak

2006-10-15T17:06:00.000-07:00

Please don't say that a 'minority' of Senators blocked the destruction of the Caribou calving grounds.

What makes you think they aren't monitoring every blog post too, looking for keywords of disagreement with the Bush administration.

I mean really, doesn't it seem likely, from the people who take John Yoo as their patron saint?

2005-12-21T18:42:00.000-08:00

Alito Opposition Grows

Groups opposing the nomination include civil rights organizations, environmental groups, organizations representing the concerns of women and children and working families, and disability rights groups. The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence announced Tuesday it was opposing the confirmation of a Supreme Court nominee for the first time in its history.

Several organizations, including the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the National Partnership for Women and Families, have released extensive analyses of Alito's record, which they say have led to their opposition to the nominee.

"There is just one possible conclusion from a close examination of his record: Judge Alito would turn the Supreme Court sharply to the right, and vote to reverse crucial gains from recent years," the National Partnership's report on Alito, ">Tipping the Balance: The Record of Samuel Alito and What's at Stake for Women, states. Alito Opposition Grows

2005-12-21T01:52:00.000-08:00

Yep, This is It!

Now is the time for Americans to stand up and tell the Bush administration "We will not take this any longer!!"

If we ignore this, the road to fascism is pretty straight on.

Obviously you can't make a society where the middle class can be drained of resources for the good of the rich without putting controls on them that will violate their rights. Similarly you can't do it before the vote can be manipulated either or you'll get yourself kicked out of office.

If you don't hear windows breaking now, I guess you never will.

And in every case the Republicans of Congress have been the Bush administration's enablers.

No enablers, no Bush administration stepping on our rights.

Or they can stand with us for Impeachment.

Give them a choice. Impeach the Illegal Duo in the White House and Vice President's Mansion or spend a lot more time with their families after next year's election.

WRITE YOUR CONGRESS PEOPLE!!!!

Clash Is Latest Chapter in Bush Effort to Widen Executive Power

Ah, and look at Bush (picture at link). He's got his Unca Dick back by his side. I'm sure he feels a lot braver now with Ol' Bottom Teeth growling at everyone around.

2005-12-21T01:38:00.000-08:00

God Bless You, Judge Robertson

Now there's a man with real morals.

A federal judge has resigned from the court that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases in protest of President Bush's secret authorization of a domestic spying program, according to two sources.

...

Two associates familiar with his decision said yesterday that Robertson privately expressed deep concern that the warrantless surveillance program authorized by the president in 2001 was legally questionable and may have tainted the FISA court's work.

I figure someone better ask some good for this man whom the ravening wolves of the right will tear to pieces in the next few days.

See: Spy Court Judge Quits In Protest

As long as the good people of America sit quiet while the right wing is able to destroy the lives of anyone who opposes them, we will see our nation slide down the ever steeper slide to fascism.

2005-12-20T10:58:00.000-08:00

Bill Keller on Why they Waited to Publish the report on Homeland Spying

...From the outset, the question was not why we would publish it, but why we would not.

"A year ago, when this information first became known to Times reporters, the Administration argued strongly that writing about this eavesdropping program would give terrorists clues about the vulnerability of their communications and would deprive the government of an effective tool for the protection of the country's security.

"Officials also assured senior editors of The Times that a variety of legal checks had been imposed that satisfied everyone involved that the program raised no legal questions.

"As we have done before in rare instances when faced with a convincing national security argument, we agreed not to publish at that time.

"We also continued reporting, and in the ensuing months two things happened that changed our thinking.

"First, we developed a fuller picture of the concerns and misgivings that had been expressed during the life of the program.

"It is not our place to pass judgment on the legal or civil liberties questions involved in such a program, but it became clear those questions loomed larger within the government than we had previously understood.

"Second, in the course of subsequent reporting we satisfied ourselves that we could write about this program -- withholding a number of technical details -- in a way that would not expose any intelligence-gathering methods or capabilities that are not already on the public record.

"The fact that the government eavesdrops on those suspected of terrorist connections is well-known. The fact that the NSA can legally monitor communications within the United States with a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is also public information.

"What is new is that the NSA has for the past three years had the authority to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States without a warrant.

"It is that expansion of authority -- not the need for a robust anti-terror intelligence operation -- that prompted debate within the government, and that is the subject of the article."

2005-12-20T09:50:00.000-08:00

Dont Read This if You Like Sleeping at Nights

Analyst asks:

What kind of program is so intrusive that even Republicans, even with 9/11 still freshly in mind, wouldn't have supported it?

2005-12-20T04:40:00.000-08:00

I Can't Believe they Brought Up Moussaoui

The reason that Massaoui's laptop was not wiretapped was a lack of will on the part of former Attorney General John Ashcroft.

In the summer of 2001 US District Judge Royce Lamberth, had a chat with the Justice Department over the way the FBI was misusing wiretap priviledges. After that Ashcroft shut wiretapping down until after 9/11, mostly one can assume, because of his own ties to militias (famously touchy about taps), not because of necessity. We wouldn't want to upset those who can help get us a job if we ever have to leave the cushy one we've got.

Another point is that:

FISA allows a 3 day waiting period before court approval is required to be sought.

First, a lot can be learned within 3 days.

Second, as many had pointed out, there was always the option of going back to Congress and asking for more freedom.

Some feel that if the Bush people had been smart and fair that Frances Townsend would have been Attorney General, not Ashcroft, and in fact she is now employed by the Bush administration, gets a long famously with the president, and maybe even more importantly gets things done. Alas, though she was a Clintonite.

BTW, it was just about the time that Ashcroft shut down FBI wiretapping that he started taking charter flights instead of commercial ones. Seems to me someone knew how important his lack of intestinal fortitude was even then.

Another reason for 911 is that the US had an incompetent FBI chief until the first week of September 2001. The reason that we had an incompetent FBI chief is that when Louis Freeh realized that Clinton was likely to fire him, he went to Congress and cooked up a scheme with the Republicans in charge since 1995.

The deal: Investigations galore against the president and his wife in return for immunity. We saw the rest. At least Freeh worked well with the Republicans of Congress in their impeachment scam. He soaked up those resources of the FBI to focus like a laser beam and any salacious allegation against president. Meanwhile his Republican friends in Congress hinted that any attempt by the president to replace Louis Freeh would bring him down faster than Nixon.

The 911 commission singled out those scandalmongering actions of the Republican controlled Congress in their report.

Mr. Kristol knows that the press ignored that point in the report--apparently worried about offending corporate masters with any detail that might point a finger at Republicans. So, as usual, Mr Kristol, is going to lie and pass out reasons that America has to give up her rights to the Bush administration who had promised fat cats and big business to hand over the keys to the nation in perpetuity through schemes that might have made Nixon blush.

The Bush administration also dismantled a lot of Clinton's safeguards, and didn't even get around to hiring any but a shell of counterterrorist officials until late Spring 2001, though they were warned strongly during the transition about the danger of terrorism.

They also didn't issue warnings to airlines and airports when they knew there was a danger of hijackings in the summer of 2001. Yes, the Bush administration says they did, but the airlines and airports say they didn't. I'd say that except for when dishing out estimated take off and landing times, the airlines have lied to us less than the Bush administration, so I'm taking their word over the ones of the Bush administration.

On the other hand, in December of 1999, the Clinton administration did warn Americans, and even earlier border and custom officials, which is probably why the would be LAX bomber Ressam was caught. And Ressam exposed the other players in the scheme to attack at multiple points at the turn of the millennium.

I guess now, people can see what the Clinton administration was able to do even without the Patriot Act, even with the Republican controlled Congress trying to hamstring him every step of the way.

That's the difference between William Jefferson Clinton and George W. Bush and between their administrations.

BTW, Judge Royce Lamberth was first appointed by President Nixon, and IIRC was appointed to higher positions by Reagan and possibly Clinton, but has done much for Indian rights, harassing the Interior Departments of both the Clinton and the Bush administrations.

2005-12-20T04:13:00.000-08:00

Sources on "I can't believe they brought up Massaoui"

Judge Lamberth's impact From "What Went Wrong" in Newsweek May of 2002.

NEWSWEEK has learned there was one other major complication as
America headed into that threat-spiked summer. In Washington, Royce
Lamberth, chief judge of the special federal court that reviews
national-security wiretaps, erupted in anger when he found that an FBI
official was misrepresenting petitions for taps on terror suspects. Lamberth
prodded Ashcroft to launch an investigation, which reverberated throughout
the bureau

I can't find the whole article anymore as Newsweek hides them after a certain amount of time.

Ashcroft shut down wiretaps--Though the article didn't say so in exactly, that is an analysis I assumed. Royce Lamberth did not shut down the wiretaps. He exploded with anger over improper representation of need. (Could some of those taps have been made in regard to trying to find dirt on the former president?) What kind of legitimate or needful criminal investigation would make a District Judge erupt with anger? If you remember Louis Freeh was no friend of Clinton's and, in fact, was working to have the former president removed during his term.

Ashcroft's political ties to militia groups is well known, but I cannot -- at the time of first publication of this post -- get the recorded information that was available when he was first nominated to be Attorney General.

Bio of sorts on Frances Townsend There was a good article in the Washington Post in August about her new job.

RE: Second, as many had pointed out, there was always the option of going back to Congress and asking for more freedom. See this and follow link

More later on this. Work calls.

BTW, of course this was written after the above post. I changed the time on this this post to put it in a better position for the way people read.

2005-12-20T00:21:00.000-08:00

Look, Mr. President. A Gentle Hint from George Will.

Really, you should read this.

Na, go ahead with that spying on rights groups. We wouldn't want to bother you with anyone's ideas besides Cheney's and Rove's on how to do things.

2005-12-19T23:33:00.000-08:00

New York Times Beats itself up over Leaks

Oh we're so evil!!

Yes, we may have doomed all the little boys and girls of America to instant incineration by dirty, nucleotide bombers sent by Usama bin Laden. Because we leaked just like the Post leaked in 1998. Bad, bad, New York Times!

Thanks to our Dear Glorious leader George Bush for setting us straight.

What's this all about?

Well, the New York Times has published a post on the evils of leaking and of publishing leaks. Of course, first note that in doing so they get to hand out baseball bats with which the paid right wing bloggers can batter the Washington Post, so that helps make it all much more worth the pain.

Secondly, this is definitely 'opinion'. Another opinion piece in the Times that isn't in the Op/ed or editorial department. Geez, how many times do they have to do that to make up for one lousy report on illegal government spying? That neocon fairness doctrine is a b#$%@.

Okay, so the Washington Post mentioned in August 1998 that Usama bin Laden used a certain type of satellite phone, which, according to Lee Hamilton, vice chair of the 9/11 commission caused bin Laden to stop using the type of phone that could be tracked or to start using other persons' phones.

So you see, according to our President, it was a leak of info in the Washington Post in 1998 that caused 911.

It wasn't that the Clinton impeachment charades used up to 70 million of Americans' taxpayer dollars and the services of up to 200 agents at any one time,

It wasn't that all those resources could have been used for counterterrorism but weren't.

It wasn't because, the Republican controlled Congress of the late nineties used their time to engage in scandalmongering rather than in providing oversight to the counterterrorism agencies in our nation to make sure they had what they needed. (Even though the 9/11 commission did report that as a major reason that al Qaeda was able to hit us so hard on 9/11.

It wasn't because the Republicans wouldn't let Clinton bomb terror camps that were churning out more trainees per year than the FBI and CIA combined.

It wasn't that the Bush administration led by Condi dismantled many of the programs that Clinton had in place, and then didn't fill any but the top positions in the Departments that were supposed to be keeping us protected from terrorists until after they had gotten their tax cuts passed

And it certainly wasn't because President George Bush ignored serious warnings that even CIA Director George Tenet (the guy with the WMDs stuck in his eye) could see!

No, 9/11 happened because of a little piece of newsprint.

Watch what you say. Watch what you do! Don't you think bad things about our glorious leader!

Now the Times folks are going to strip naked, climb in a pyramid and let Karen and Karl and Lynndie England beat them raw. Then they'll thank their abusers effusively.

Thank you, Sir. Can I have some more?

2005-12-19T23:30:00.000-08:00

Way to go Senator Rockefeller!

The good Senator stood up to Cheney years ago on this.

Rockefeller "was frustrated by the characterization that Congress was on board on this," said one official who is close to him and who spoke on background because of the topic's sensitive nature. "Four congressmen, at least one of whom was raising serious concerns, does not constitute being on board."

He also fought Poindexter's TIA.

2005-12-19T23:25:00.000-08:00

Poor Caribou

The Bush buddy Republicans in the Houes and Senate have been attaching the measure to destroy their calving grounds to bill after bill. (That's against Congressional rules.)

...the ANWR provision...flouts Senate rules against unrelated legislation on spending bills.

I guess the Bush administration is too superior to follow laws.

BTW, when people start talking about a fillibuster again, please remember that Democratic Senators represent more Americans. (By dividing the populations of states with a Dem and an R senator, and counting the populations of each double r or d state).

2005-12-19T23:19:00.000-08:00

President is Offensive with Press--Oh Wait

Anyway, I think my headline is a little more descriptive of what happened.

2005-12-19T14:46:00.000-08:00

Stealth Bill in Senate Gives Bush Administration their 'Torture' Rights Back

Harsh interrogation over seas will be okay if bill passes.

NEWSWEEK has obtained a draft of a less-known companion bill sponsored by two Republican senators, Lindsey Graham and Jon Kyl, and Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, in which the administration has won tougher language giving it the right to use information obtained from harsh interrogations overseas.

...

According to an amended draft of the measure being circulated Thursday among the sponsors, Graham has agreed to language that loosens the restrictions on terror evidence that's obtained through 'coercive' interrogations that may occur in other countries. Whereas Graham's previous draft had forbidden the use of such evidenceÂin accordance with standard rules of military justice - the new draft says that it should be barred only 'to the extent practicable.' The latest bill language also now says that the 'probative value' of evidence should be considered-in other words, whether the information is persuasive.

This shows the extent of manipulation the Bush administration will go to in order to totally control the United States.

Once again the old Bush administration Shell Game

What business do these people have teaching 'democracy' to Iraq?

BTW, Representative Duncan Hunter plans to continue to fight Sen. John McCain's bill in the conference committee hearings.

Huh?

What's up?

I'd check Mr. Hunter's garage for signs of Rolls Royce.

Mr. Hunter like, "Duke" Cunningham represents an area around San Diego, CA. If you remember the business that was supplying privatized intelligence agents accused of setting up harsh practices at Abu Ghraib was from the San Diego, CA area. But is Hunter the type to allow pay for play?

Well, he took money from Wilkes and Wade, Cunningham's donors, too.

2005-12-19T14:07:00.000-08:00

Bush is #1!

In poll for least popular of last 10 presidents!

The President also poll highest in:

Most bellicose.

Most Warlike

Worst for the Economy

Least Effective

The 3 Most popular presidents of the last 10 were:

John F Kennedy

William Jefferson Clinton

And

Ronald Reagan

2005-12-19T13:03:00.000-08:00

Bush wants to talk to Senators from Los Angeles and Las Vegas

Um, Okay Sir, I guess we can scrounge someone up and crown them "Senator" for a day.

But as far as I know cities don't have Senators, only states do.

(Would you like to speak with the Senator from Africa, too, Sir?)

"I want senators from New York or Los Angeles or Las Vegas to explain why these cities are safer" without the extension, he said.

LOL, Typical, right wing jabberwocky tactics.

He would make a top notch paid right wing blogger though, wouldn't he? Then again the top spot in that group isn't far from the bottom anyway.

I note that Bush is claiming that the senators who want more protections on the the Patriot Act before it's extended have argued something they haven't.

In fact, as Senator Reid said:

"Americans want both liberty and security," ... "They are not contradictory. We do not have to sacrifice our basic liberties in the course of strengthening national security."

2005-12-19T12:42:00.000-08:00

Bush Seems more and more like Hitler all the time.

How dare anyone whistleblow on my administration!!

How dare they question me!!

Seig Heil, Seig Heil!!

And look at that hand. I't almost in the right place. Just a little straighter with that arm and those fingers.

You've got the American taxpayer paying for your pundits, message board spammers, and personal "friendly" propaganda passers.

You've got the spying down, the military is even spying on Quakers!

You can do this, you only need to push a little more and you'll have that dictatorship you wanted.

2005-12-19T10:59:00.000-08:00

The Clock is Ticking on Sharon

No, not the time clock, the health or death watch clock. The political clock.

Warrior turned peacenick Sharon is on his way out if the neocons in Israel have anything to say about it, apparently.

The Israeli news is hitting his health problems big. Don't trust that new party, the leader's going to kick off any second!

From JP

"Kadima is not one man, it is a path," Transportation Minister and Kadima stalwart Meir Sheetrit told Army Radio Monday morning, the day after Kadima's founder and star - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon - suffered a mild stroke.

Say what?

Sheetrit, generally sober, was engaging in some wishful thinking.

Kadima is Sharon. He is the magnet that has attracted politicians as diverse as Haim Ramon on the left and Tzachi Hanegbi on the right. He is the glue that binds the party together. Without Sharon, there is no cement keeping Shimon Peres and Shaul Mofaz in the same party.

Sheetrit is kidding himself if he believes that the public views Kadima as presenting a clear ideological path. For the public, Kadima represents a vehicle through which Sharon can continue to pursue his policies - policies which, if the polls are to be believed, the majority of the country wants continued.

The bad news for Sharon's strategists is that the stroke has thrust the health of the 77-year old, overweight prime minister onto center stage in the campaign.

From Financial Times (reporter in Jerusalem)

Some analysts said doubts about the health of Mr Sharon, who would be 82 if he completed a third term, could affect support for Kadima in the general election...

As Mr Sharon faced calls to be more forthcoming in future about his health, a debate also opened over choosing a deputy leader for Kadima.

Although Mr Sharon has received powerful backing for the new centrist grouping, it remains essentially the creation of one man.

From CBC World News (reporter in Jerusalem)

It also left his new centrist Kadima Party scrambling. Without Sharon, Kadima likely would not amount to much since the prime minister's popularity is the overriding factor behind the party's commanding lead in polls. With balloting three months away, concerns about his health could become a focus of the campaign, and improve the prospects of the hardline Likud party he abandoned.

Drip, drip, drip.

How to destroy a new political party that doesn't serve the warmongers?

2005-12-19T09:06:00.000-08:00

Bush Speeches for Xmas? I'd rather see Harry Connick Jr.

Seeing as a music program starring Connick would be as reality based as another Bush speech about his little war in Iraq, why not?

I'm a news addict, but Bush's Santa Claus act brings us no 'news'. In fact he seems to pick up his speeches from the Lincoln group as he rides to the site of the talk.

And Furthermore, with all this talk about the "War on Christmas" why aren't the Christians up in arms about the President taking up valuable Sunday before Christmas time without wearing a Creche around his neck?

I guess for the same reason that the Southern Baptist Church is sending out Christmas Cards with the Supreme Court Building on them.

I love this part of the speech:

"I have heard your disagreement and I know how deeply it is felt," Bush said.

But, of course, understood is the fact that he can totally ignore anything we say and laugh about it.

Like they admonished us before: "Just be patient. Wait a couple of years and see how good things get". Well, it's a couple of years and we are stuck in civil war in Iraq where the people we are protecting (the Iraqi officials) are allowing their militias to kill and torture their political, religious, and social enemies.

Meantime administration officials in our country are brandishing swords at Syria and Iran, while experts agree there can be no more conflicts without a draft. Luckily, the president gave the Selective Service the order in 2004 to make sure a draft could be called within 75 days. We wouldn't want to miss our chance.

2005-12-19T08:29:00.000-08:00

Gonzales Justifies Bush administration's Date Rape of Americans

We expected what else from Bush's underqualified crony?

Congress 'Authorized' Domestic Surveillance in Iraq War Resolution, Claims Attorney General

Excuse me, I have to go choke now.

Please, Mr. Attorney General, don't insult our intelligence.

The Washington Post is doing a good job of pulling apart that rotten chicken leg of an argument up at the top of their article. I'm sure in the interest of the neocon fairness policy they will have to print ten op/eds and an analysis that 'prove' the Attorney General is right (yes, extreme right).

He acknowledged that such eavesdropping would be illegal under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). But that act, he said, makes an exception for eavesdropping when "otherwise authorized" by statute. That authorizing statute, he argued, was the 2001 resolution, known as the "Authorization to use Military Force."

That resolution makes no reference to eavesdropping or detention policies. The administration has cited it in justification of both, however.

...

"The president has, I think, made up a law that we never passed," said [Wisconsin Sen. Russell] Feingold.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he intends to hold hearings. "They talk about constitutional authority," Specter said. "There are limits as to what the president can do."

"Good Boy Gonzales. Now you get a puppy biscuit!"

2005-12-19T08:24:00.000-08:00

Waco area to get 10.9 million from Defense Bill

Geez. Why didn't someone tell me? I've have moved to Waco a few years ago if I knew that was the way to get an easy million or two from the government.

This smacks so much of the Cunningham bribery crap. Has anyone checked out Bush's real estate doings in the past few six or seven years?

Forget that Stadium deal. That was pure bribery, but if Texas wants to be known for dirty politics associated with their part time governors then let them.

This is our money.

(Then again, if a crook gets away with it once, he'll do it again, won't he?)

2005-12-19T08:06:00.000-08:00

Gop Leaders agree to Medicaid Cut. How Cozy!

I'm so glad they could get together and work things out so they could cut Medicaid.*

Next year they can come together and push through those tax cuts for the affluent.

Cut out the Medicaid for the poor. Good going guys!

And thank goodness they basically did away with that nasty Medicare (in the Medicare Destruciton Act of 2003), and turned it into more of a pork barrel for pharmaceuticals, HMOs, and even unrelated businesses. Those corporations need the help more than our seniors do.

*Return to above Yes, I'm afraid I've given up on trying to reason with some people and most of the rest of you know what is going on. So I'm celebrating the season with sarcasm.

2005-12-19T07:52:00.000-08:00

Excuse Me? O'Neal and Raspberry out as Columnists at the Post?

What gives?

I think we need to watch this closely.

Are they going to do a Los Angeles Times on us?

The White House and their Post's coporate masters could be performing more of their magic in which news sources must adhere to the neocon notion of "fairness".

Which is about as fair as your local energy company.

2005-12-18T22:13:00.000-08:00

The Drumbeat for War on Syria goes on

This guy in Syria does sound really bad, and actively bad now, not like Saddam, a pest in the past.

I've got an idea, we've got Saddam over a barrel now. He's scared he's been complying with the UNMOVIC inspectors like the timid bunny. I bet he'd do just about anything to keep on our good side.

Why don't we tell the old guy with a mustache to put the squeeze on his buddy Baathist in Syria. Get him to make his friend behave.

OH yeah, wait a minute. We deposed Saddam didn't we?

So after spilling over 2000 American lives and 100k Iraqi lives, an estimated total of 400 billion American taxpayer dollars, and endless grief we've managed to screw up possibly the only resource that could have helped us with Syria.

Nothing to it, but to invade, I suppose.

But since Saddam didn't have WMDs wouldn't it have been better to use him as a resource for keeping the peace in the region?

I think that' would have been better than making a terrorist training ground in Iraq.

Well, that's life. Everyone get ready for the draft.

2005-12-18T20:45:00.000-08:00

How Did I Get into the LTTE Section?

There I was following a link from Google News and suddenly I'm reading an article at the New York Times that has all the objectivity, evidence of quality investigation, and clear headedness of "astroturf".

Astroturf, as called by journalists, is mass output of talking points into nearly identical letters to the editor (LTTEs), usually a result of the an effort from the RNC to spam the news outlets with their assertions and cooked up facts.

In other words Mr. Thom Shanker's article "Not Too Far From the Mark on All Those Numbers in the Speech" is a good example of biased analysis. And look it's available just a short time after the president's speech. How many people want to guess that it was written before the speech was given? One look through can show that Mr. Shanker didn't make much of an effort to verify the items beyond possibly calling the Pentagon, if he did that. Most likely he did a Judith Miller and just rewrote something the administration put out.

And I do see "The Facts" at the top so this obviously is a column. Most older adults know that means "consider the source", but coming in from google news myself, and I think that many other especially younger readers take what comes in a newspaper as careful balanced reporting, and to get these talking points instead is a shock.

Established journalistic analysts have noted before that certain articles in newspapers even under a category of "analysis" can sound much like talking to Karen Hughes. A column sadly in certain hands becomes a venue for the writer to spout unverified garbage without regard to journalistic principles. In fact, it seems that 'columns' should have warning labels if placed outside of op/ed pages. I know that certain magazines use their conservative columnists as reporters and have 3 to 1 conservative to moderately liberal ones. That's why I no longer subscribe to "US News". No one needs the (some say biased) 'Top Colleges' report that much.

In fact, I was so suspicious of the rapid response and tilted analysis by Thom Shanker that I tried anagraming it back to Karen Hughes. I almost got there.

I know that's kind of a biased thing to say, but I'm a blogger. Mr. Shanker is paid to be a journalist which a columnists purport to be. There is supposed to be a difference.

Otherwise maybe NY Times wants my address. They could start sending me half of Ol' Thom's check.

We liberals have a harder time getting talking points. They aren't passed out like Halloween candy like the right wing one come from the RNC and the White House. But I'm guessing I could dredge some up real fast and slap them on a page. How much do you offer for such a job, Mr. Keller?

2005-12-18T13:14:00.000-08:00

Root of Crime Money Problems

Yeah, I watch Cops occasionally. It's so much the same thing that it's not a constant thing.

Mostly what I see is that great money problems create crime. Even physical abuse is driven partly by money problems, though also by the sense of entitlement to abuse that the abuser has.

These two young adults had great need for money in a society that has been destroying people's hopes for a decent life.

This is what happens when that collides. Expect more of it with Bushonomics and his new amnesty program for immigrants.

2005-12-18T12:42:00.000-08:00

Bush Gets Free Self Campaigning Time Tonight

Who pays for this? Do the networks offer free time to the president.

This is such an obvious campaign like stunt that the opposition on both sides should be offered equal time at the same rate. That would be free if the Bush team gets it for free.

Taxpayer, how do you like paying for Bush's latest campaign for his own poll numbers? Every trip on Airforce 1 to make a self aggrandizing speech costs a million dollars.

And the Vice President has decided his office doesn't need to comply with US rules and submit their traveling expenses or the names of those who pay them.

2005-12-18T12:29:00.000-08:00

Okay I forgive Carolyn Hax Everything

For every time I disagreed with CH and thought it was a major offense on her part. And, yes, that is a stupid attitude to take. I'm not Big Bird.

Read her advice to the really nice guy that wants to break up with a well, I guess you'd call her a she devil or something (link under title), and I promise to not put links to advice columnists very often. This reply is special. Seriously. (Okay, Brothers, try turning it around so the girl is "Big Bird", and see how it looks then.)

And nice to know Ms Hax is distrustful of self praise.

2005-12-18T11:21:00.000-08:00

Do You Want Basic High Quality Health Care or Don't You?

That's the question there. This in not about whether some rich guy gets gold plated treatment as so many claim will not happen if universal health care is ever available here.

First of all, we have people who's dental care is to pull out the teeth that get too painful, and to ignore everything else that isn't immediately killing them.

This is a large part of the working class which is either uninsured, or underinsured. Again, of course our working people are hurt by illegal immigration, and lack of union representation, but universal health would go a long way toward relieving that problems that causes.

In fact, businesses are moving to nations that either have a good universal health plan like Canada or wages low enough to offset shipping and the major inconvenience of transportation like India or China. If universal health were so bad, then why would company after company move north to Canada which has high living costs? Well, for one reason, because they don't have to pay for anyone's health insurance there.

It's time that American workers stopped allowing the right wing to control their minds. Think for yourself. Is a decent quality medical care good for you?

2005-12-18T09:39:00.000-08:00

The New Okies

I want you to know I use the term "Okie" with great respect. I am the descendent of Okies. I admire the hardship they met with souls full of steel and caring.

But if you've read Grapes of Wrath, you know they were brought here under false pretenses. After years of the Dust Bowl had reduced their livelihoods to nil. The the people of the area who had lost their farms were looking for something to keep their families alive on. They had seen handouts showing jobs with great wages and living conditions in the West and they took the painful journey when they were almost out of strength already to get there.

Unfortunately, the most of the jobs offered were proverbial farm laborer ones with all the hardships and lack of living resources attendent in the name. Others were large builders that would work their new laborers as badly as the farms did.

A recent study reported at Washington Post (Study: Illegal Immigrants Not Drawn by Jobs published December 7, 2005) showed that Mexicans are not even coming because they have no jobs. It could be said that they are coming because their wages are low, even ridiculously low as the Mexican economy has been run to cater to the elite in Mexico for many years. Also NAFTA has been found by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (try Mexicans jobs in a search engine to find that) to have hurt the working person in Mexico to a large extent and swelled the floods of Mexicans coming since.

The new 'handouts' is 'word of mouth', and yes actually considering what they come from getting a job in the US is great news to a man who might make $5 a day at home, $7 an hour or even $10 an hour is actually great news. If an immigrant is willing to live in the manner they must to be able to save money after their 2K-5K fee to the coyote that got them across the border, they send a lot of money down South. That's why President Fox is desperate to keep their workers flooding our markets. It's like making a heist, or a lottery win, if a resident of Mexico gets up here alive and gets a job. It's not desperation. Heck if you knew that jobs were going for $30 bucks an hour minimum down in Mexico they would be building the walls not us, but that's basically what even the low wages they get here, are like to them. What they don't know about at first is that the cost of living here is so much higher than at home, but they soon find a way to live with up to 20 people in a one bedroom apartment. For a while many live in field or parks. A couple of our major fires in my areas have been proven to have been started by activities that immigrants were undertaking while trying to stretch out their earnings, even while serious warnings not to light fires were up in English and Spanish.

Now it isn't easy being a illegal, but apparently, finally New Orleans, they got the full treatment that our relatives did years earlier. I don't think that it is any coincidence that the President had taken off a strong law protecting workers rights for the clean up of New Orleans. (The law was later reinstated, but only for new hires and, anyway, no one keeps tabs on the underground hiring of illegals) as todays article (only one in many reported lately) shows.

It's really about the rights of working people. We already have people selling drugs or their bodies because the alternative is below minimum wage (which hasn't risen since the Republicans took control of Congress) at a fast food place. This is a public safety concern even when you don't add in the desperate people coming from the South who aren't even paid enough to afford decent living conditions.

I do think it's amusing that the right wing had only one solution for poor people in their pocket. They promised to cut off the flow of illegal aliens in the US. Then Reagan called a general amnesty which actually added 11 million more to our burden, Bob Dole, as Senate majority leader, cut off a bill on a national database for business to check to see if their workers were legal ones and then the same year left that body, and campaigned for president on an anti-immigrant rhetorhic. At least this time the Republicans in the House have actually done something. The Republicans in the Senate and the House leaders though will expunge that out fast enough though.

Actually there is another solution and that would be to unionize Americans and immigrants. That would shake more money lose from business, but unionization is mostly anathema to Americans now too. Well, then Americans expect anything good from this congress to turn to dust just like the prescription drug benefit turned into a massive pork barrel for the pharmaceuticals, HMOS and unrelated businesses, while it turned Medicare into a nightmare for seniors.

2005-12-18T03:10:00.000-08:00

Slouching Towards Fascism

No president before Bush mounted a frontal challenge to Congress's authority to limit espionage against Americans. In a Sept. 25, 2002, brief signed by then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, the Justice Department asserted "the Constitution vests in the President inherent authority to conduct warrantless intelligence surveillance (electronic or otherwise) of foreign powers or their agents, and Congress cannot by statute extinguish that constitutional authority."

The brief made no distinction between suspected agents who are U.S. citizens and those who are not. Other Bush administration legal arguments have said the "war on terror" is global and indefinite in scope, effectively removing traditional limits of wartime authority to the times and places of imminent or actual battle.

Spying on American citizens, creating databases of the information obtained from evil groups such as Quakers, aggressive invasions of nations that have what Republican campaign donors want. Add to that the intimidation of news media, which apparently isn't quite complete yet.

Is there any wonder why people such as Cheney, Rumsfeld et al were part of a group that said the nation needed a new Pearl Harbor.

If you remember, the Reagan era fizzled out, and we had the golden years of the mid to late nineties. The call for a new Pearl Harbor was a call for a neocon administration that couldn't lose its power as people found out what they were doing. It was a call for fear so they could find a way to break, and intimidate the opposition. So far, it's working very well.

You have to give president Cheney er Bush credit for that.

BTW, because the VP's office has not been reporting its travel expenses, the VP probably could be removed from office. Write your Congress people.

2005-12-17T22:45:00.000-08:00

America's anti-torture tradition

George vs George

Excerpt:

Every schoolchild knows that Gen. George Washington made extraordinary efforts to protect America's civilian population from the ravages of war. Fewer Americans know that Revolutionary War leaders, including Washington and the Continental Congress, considered the decent treatment of enemy combatants to be one of the principal strategic preoccupations of the American Revolution.

"In 1776," wrote historian David Hackett Fischer in "Washington's Crossing," "American leaders believed it was not enough to win the war. They also had to win in a way that was consistent with the values of their society and the principles of their cause. One of their greatest achievements … was to manage the war in a manner that was true to the expanding humanitarian ideals of the American Revolution."

The fact that the patriots refused to abandon these principles, even in the dark times when the war seemed lost, when the enemy controlled our cities and our ragged army was barefoot and starving, credits the character of Washington and the founding fathers and puts to shame the conduct of America's present leadership.

Fischer writes that leaders in both the Continental Congress and the Continental Army resolved that the War of Independence would be conducted with a respect for human rights. This was all the more extraordinary because these courtesies were not reciprocated by King George's armies. Indeed, the British conducted a deliberate campaign of atrocities against American soldiers and civilians. While Americans extended quarter to combatants as a matter of right and treated their prisoners with humanity, British regulars and German mercenaries were threatened by their own officers with severe punishment if they showed mercy to a surrendering American soldier. Captured Americans were tortured, starved and cruelly maltreated aboard prison ships.

Washington decided to behave differently. After capturing 1,000 Hessians in the Battle of Trenton, he ordered that enemy prisoners be treated with the same rights for which our young nation was fighting. In an order covering prisoners taken in the Battle of Princeton, Washington wrote: "Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to Complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British Army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren…. Provide everything necessary for them on the road."

John Adams argued that humane treatment of prisoners and deep concern for civilian populations not only reflected the American Revolution's highest ideals, they were a moral and strategic requirement. His thoughts on the subject, expressed in a 1777 letter to his wife, might make a profitable read for Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld as we endeavor to win hearts and minds in Iraq. Adams wrote: "I know of no policy, God is my witness, but this — Piety, Humanity and Honesty are the best Policy. Blasphemy, Cruelty and Villainy have prevailed and may again. But they won't prevail against America, in this Contest, because I find the more of them are employed, the less they succeed."

2005-12-17T19:26:00.000-08:00

Maybe George W. Bush Is More Like Churchill Than We Thought

Brits Tortured Nazis [and others] in Secret Camps AFTER World War II.

And he got the details from the UK Guardian.

Businessmen and others that benefitted from the Third Reich's actions were also caught up in the prison treatment.

See more and other links to mainstream reports on the subject at The Washington Note. The 'Haaretz' article has some pretty depressing stories to relate. (I haven't read the UK Guardian report yet.)

2005-12-17T17:50:00.000-08:00

Good for Att Gen Gonzales

At least the AG is doing something, because he sure isn't protecting Americans' civil rights.

Nineteen people have been arrested among 31 who have been indicted for sexual trafficking in children, taking minors across state lines for prostitution and other crimes, Gonzales said. "The abhorrent acts alleged in these charges include children being herded around the country as sex slaves . . . and beaten at the hands of pimps and peddlers," he said at a Justice Department news conference.

Interesting that the growing child prostitution and human trafficking is rather third world type practices. And none of the names of the perps were offered. That's kind of unusual.

I think we will see more human trafficking and prostitution as the US sinks under the weight of its mounting debt, especially if Bush is allowed to continue his invasions of nations that aren't very friendly to capitalists.

2005-12-17T17:32:00.000-08:00

Steve Clemens: "Make the List Public"

A man who has long been in on the know in Washington says that the names of those spied upon without judicial review should be released.

Post the list. It should be made public because at this point there is NO NATIONAL SECURITY rationale to justify the monitoring of citizens in cases that have not been approved by a court. That means that all of those citizens monitored are innocent -- and unwitting victims of this domestic spy campaign launched by George W. Bush.

2005-12-17T11:44:00.000-08:00

So When Does Bush Sprout Wings?

Bush says he ordered the spying on people within the Unites States to protect us. I'd like to know who plotted this new "guardian angel" persona for the president.

Is he the guardian angel of all those US troops that died? How about the angel to the 100,000 Iraqis killed as of Summer of 2004 and not counting either of the Fallujan massacres, or the one at Tal Afar or many other Iraqi towns since that time.

Washington Post article shows that the New York Times report on the NSA spying on Americans was delayed for a year and says:

The paper offered no explanation to its readers about what had changed in the past year to warrant publication. It also did not disclose that the information is included in a forthcoming book, "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration," written by James Risen, the lead reporter on yesterday's story. The book will be published in mid-January, according to its publisher, Simon & Schuster.

Huh?

From the New York Times article they are talking about:

In the ensuing months, Keller wrote, two things changed the paper's thinking. The paper developed a fuller picture of misgivings about the program by some in the government. And the paper satisfied itself through more reporting that it could write the story without exposing "any intelligence-gathering methods or capabilities that are not already on the public record."

and After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting.

Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted.

It sounds to me like the New York Times did explain what had changed. But what do I know? I'm just a blogger.

The rest of the Washington Post article is a beautiful example of dog pile journalism. The first rule of Dog Pile journalism is: If your competitor is being beaten up by controversy, be sure to be there to hand out baseball bats. The closer in kind your competitor is, the more bats you bring, but any news source is good for a bat exchange, look at Dan Rather. The newspapers -- supposedly the bastions of good reporting that they often are -- let the idea that the TANG memos were proven false (even though many of the typewriter experts that claimed so were found to be frauds) and that Bush's AWOL was proven false become the dominant feature of the controversy even though that was patently wrong. Bush's former superiors again and again said that, even if the memos were false, they showed accurately how Bush was treated while in the guard, and that his AWOL was covered over.

Note to newspapers and other important quality journalistic sources: Maybe, if you guys stopped handing out baseball bats when your competitors are under attack, you wouldn't get beaten up so much yourselves.

2005-12-17T10:01:00.000-08:00

The One Kiloton Straw Drops

Is the camel dead yet?

Funny how this administration seems to have seen that last piece of dried wheat many times.

Sure the Congress is in an uproar, but the rightwing talking points people haven't had their Sunday yet.

Then again some people were feeling good about what was deemed by the yapping heads 'President Bush's new candor over the war in Iraq'. I guess they're feeling pretty silly right now. Some of us found that 'candor' to be a slight of hand in itself. Insurgents like the people who fought or lived through the revolutionary war? Six more years of war just okay with the administration?

Please!

Now this. The right wingers are playing this as a major exposure of a necessary program that will undermine the War on Terrorism, but the New York Times held back the report for a year. This bit of info undermines the right wing talking points that the author only put this info out because he has a book coming out. He wanted the a report published last year, 13 months before his book would be published apparently. Also, more investigation was done, and the authors found that many in the NSA were unhappy to be spying on people within the US without proper authorization. That is included in another WP article as well as the New York Times article, but the WP seems to be touchy about any extra links (to the Post or not) in comments on their pieces so you will have to look those up yourself. The reporters took much out of their report to protect the effort on the War on Terror, yet the right wingers are still calling for their heads.

It makes you wonder when they'll get their pitchforks and torches out.

Risen's book comes out in January and will be published a company owned by Viacom. This is a fact that Tony Blankley found very important yesterday on NPR's "Left, Right, and Center". You could almost hear his head nodding as if we were supposed to be in on the 'joke'. I've looked all over and can find only one connection between the New York Times and Viacom. Their buildings sit next to each other in NYC. See that at http://www.petergof.com/nyc/new_york_times.htm. Accoding to the data at Columbia Journalism Review they do not share parentage or investments. Viacom did sell a small Oklahoma station to the New York Times company in the past few years. So the "Viacom" must be a knee jerk joke among right wingers.

BTW, lets talk about Tony Blankley. You know him. He's the Editorial/Op-Ed editor at the Reverend Moon owned Washington Times that has been caught actually changing the writing without the knowledge let alone the approval of his underlings. Yes sir! Just chock full of ethics there, aren't we?

2005-12-16T11:30:00.000-08:00

Hearsay becomes Truth as long as it serves the Bush administration's purpose

If you remember all this stuff started coming out after Bush visited Korea. Apparently the president's team brought along evidence of a minor scandal ((As reported by the Washington Post) that drove the top scientist out and caused a shake up of the team--I believe someone in cahoots with the Bush team was planted in the group. Now they are getting serious charges out of others on the team. What did the Bush administration promise them is my question?

Really, this is too much like the Bush administration's allegations about North Korea having a second nuclear program (according to something John Bolton's team heard at a cocktail party. Really, can you imagine? US policy was twisted because something that John Bolton or one of his underlings thinks they heard at a party?) The CIA continues to believe that there is no 2nd North Korea program.

Shades of Iraq controversy right?

In fact, why would they have done such a thing? Well, before the 2002 unilateral declaration of a 2nd nuclear program by the Bush administration the record stood that North Korea had created its first 2 nuclear bombs during the Bush 41 era from technology they got and work they did during the Reagan and Bush 41 era. This did not work with allegations of Bush's base that Clinton sold nuclear technology to China which then got to NK. So I think it's safe to assume that the Bush people cooked up a second nuclear program.

The plutonium that NK removed and made more bombs with after John Bolton destroyed the 1994 framework and the 2003 negotiations was from the Bush 41 era. So, thanks to John Bolton, Reagan, and Bush 41, North Korea now has 8 nuclear bombs (estimated). But the Bush team, by spurious 'outings' and 'intelligence' the Bush team has created 'proof' that Clinton allowed (and by right wing assertion actually effectively helped)nuclear technology to get to North Korea, even though NK had 2 nuclear bombs and large enough stores of plutonium to make a lot more devices before Clinton came into office!!!

Why is this lie allowed to exist without the mainstream 'news' media challenging it? We know of course that the Bush administration and their corporate owners never work the levers as to what gets in the news right? Right?

We really need to wait on this stem cell controversy until something is proven (by a source other than the Bush administration or spurious claims by 'team members'. This serves Bush's base too well, and your life might depend on healthy stem cell research within the next decade or two.

The last 2 turns at believe Bush administration cooked up information got us the Iraq war and gave North Korea 6 more nuclear bombs.

Lets wait on this until something has been proven.

Oh wait, the Bush administration and their base has actually cooked up another controversy too. It turns out that the Oil For Food program is actually a US and UK business controversy, not a UN scandal. Yet, just the other day Bush repeated the lie that Saddam was using the oil for food program to influence nations (according to Bush's base that's code for France and Russia) to get the sanctions dropped (at which time Saddam would have gone back to making WMDs) and therefore he (Bush) needed to invade to stop that scenario. But the UN had told the administration that they had no intention of removing UNMOVIC inspectors while Saddam or any similar leader was in power in Iraq. The Bush team knew that, but none of this will ever come out until the Republicans are no longer in control of Congress.

The Bush team is using your money, taxpayer, to cook up the truth. I think something needs to be done about that. Our next chance to change things comes next November. Will we change Congress or will we allow them to go on with the Bush agenda, including crippling Social Security, putting the tax burden on the middle class, and ignoring the mess they've made of Medicare?

Please note: I am surmising on the new stem cell controversy, but the other ways that the Bush team has created 'truth' for their "base" is part of record, though not often reported to the American public.

2005-12-16T11:17:00.000-08:00

Bush Pledges $1.5 Billion for New Orleans

Interesting when you remember that Bush didn't get all the money he pledged to NYC after 9/11 and then the Republican controlled Congress sought to get a some of the money given to NYC back.

2005-12-16T10:57:00.000-08:00

Report: Bush Had More Prewar Intelligence Than Congress

Alert the 'Bush Base'! They need to stop their lying!

Oh wait a minute. In two days or less some other big news will break.

I mean more big news--wait there's the hard to prove or disprove allegation that the Iraqis caught al Zarqawi and let him go.

Well, there will be more too, and then this 'news' will be olds and the papers and TV won't report on it anymore, but the Bush base will run around the web spouting their lies that Bush and Congress had the same intelligence over and over again.

Senator Mark Warner called it right in 2002 or very early 2003 when he said (paraphrased) that bad leaders use war to cover up their manipulations and their stealing from their own people.

2005-12-16T10:20:00.000-08:00

Investigation into shooting of Alpizar being handled locally

gregoryp at Follow the Bouncing Blogger has the some news on the Alpizar investigation, and opens a controversy over the poor treatment of blog reporters.

2005-12-16T10:14:00.000-08:00

Toon: Bush Speech

This guy's got it right!

More (text) info and analysis about recent Bush speeches start here.

And this toon's sad.

2005-12-15T10:17:00.000-08:00

How Sweet The Military is Looking out for Us

Oh wait, no , they're looking at us.

Yep, if you've protested the War, Recruiting, or anything military they've probably been checking you twice and making a list.

According to the Washington Post the military claims the controversy is only over a couple of years backlog in clearing out their list of possible 'terrorist' activity.

And the Post notes some of the groups that have been checked out making sure to mention some -- gasp -- "Muslims".

But MSNBC reports that one of the groups that the military did extensive checking on was a group of Quakers. And they spied on the Quakers, more than once while they knew the people were Quakers. It was an ongoing thing, noting threats like "postcards".

And it turns out all this spying is not to protect Americans, but to protect the military.

Thanks guys.

2005-12-15T09:03:00.000-08:00

Did You Miss Black Ink Monday?

I hate to say, I did too. But that's okay because Daryl Cagle caught all the action and has it there for you on his site. Inspired by the firing off all staff cartoonists at News media goliath, The Tribune Company.

I am also amused by the fact that in this case Daryl Cagle finds he can be one sided. (I guess it helps that you aren't going to find an editorial cartoonist who is for the Tribune's practices anywhere, but Cagle's rigorous adherence to including unfunny toons for the sake of 'balance' is happily absent in this string.

Before I give you the link, I'll warn you what you are first going to see is a written editorial. I thought it pretty good, but only got halfway through myself. Hey, I already agreed with it, and everyone knows what we go to Cagle's for is toons right?

So I'll let you know right now in case you haven't visited a Cagle line that starts with an editorial. You can just scroll down to start the line of toons in which it seems the nation's snarky editorial artists have outdone themselves (as often happens when artistry meets great passion).

BLACK INK MONDAY

2005-12-15T08:17:00.000-08:00

Bush Knows!

Novak is telling people to ask Bush who the leaker is.

2005-12-15T07:03:00.000-08:00

Bush's Double Speak

Actually reading what an analyst in corporate news is really saying doesn't always work out so perfectly, but this time it does.

Bush's rise in polls (all of 2 points on approval of war) apparently was due to (according to pundits) the president's explainations to Americans on what his plan for ending the war was.

If you're like me you didn't hear a plan in Bush's speeches, only platitudes. Well, it turned out that a couple of those platitudes were plans.

Peter Baker notes:

As President Bush wrapped up a series of speeches on the war yesterday, he once again gave a clear answer to when U.S. troops would come home from Iraq: "We will not leave until victory has been achieved."

And he also gave this clear answer to when U.S. troops would come home from Iraq: "As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down."

Then Mr. Baker diligently tries to reconcile the two "plans" as if they were actual seriously being being carried out by the White House.

Kudos for Mr. Baker noting Bush's

desire to project Churchillian resolve

. Little Bush needs to feel that he is the great British Prime Minister. You can tell when he is up there mouthing the platitudes, he pictures the news media picking up the things Karl and Karen tell him to say as serious policy. Phrases to win wars by. Maybe they'll make a plaque out of it!

Gee, imagine me a spoiled preppie cheerleader as a great president! (As long as I keep giving corporate America what they want.)

Then Baker notes:

The "stand up, stand down" formulation, by contrast, is intended to signal that the United States will not remain forever enmeshed in a bloody overseas conflict fueled by sectarian enmity.

Well, there's the rub. First of all, it looks like the Shiites are pretty happy to have us around killing as many Sunnis as we can while their militias go out and kill more of their enemies, meanwhile our troops are protecting them from potential civil war from Kurds looking to maximize their 'take' before the nation splits like the Balkans.

What concerns me is that our troops appear to be used like Stalinist death squads for the Shiites that don't want to compromise with their fellow countrymen, the Sunnis. So we really need to watch that standing up. They haven't stood up very well so far.

Unfortunately, Bush is totally in line with the type of Democracy where the party that wins the vote by hook or by crook gets everything. So it doesn't look good that he'll understand the sharing concept very well or if he'll care. The South Vietnamese government was happy to let our young men kill and get killed in their war to maintain their own corrupt government for many years. In fact, I'm sure that when we pulled our troops out they sent their money overseas and lined up passage for their families.

There are signs that ordinary Iraqis do want more normalcy. Sunnis in Ramadi captured one of their own worst killers who had been slicing people up while still alive. Captured, beat, but turned the man over alive to authorities.

But until their leaders capture the idea of sharing the nation with the opposition, until they understand that just a vote does not mean you get to rape the nation for your own purposes, they don't deserve our troops dying for them. Once they do, they won't need our troops for very much longer.

The real question is whether we want to watch people die and listen to Bush's platitudes about it until (if ever) the Shiites and Kurds learn that.

The outcome is in question since their big brother in the US doesn't believe if sharing the nation with the opposition, and instead uses Pillager Democracy. To the Victor goes everyone's spoils.

Holly and Richard on the other hand took the president's speeches much too seriously.

More here on Bush's recent speeches:

Groundhog Bush Says 6 More Years of War in Iraq is Okay

'I'm Incompetent'! So I Get to Fix Things

Bush:"Oil for Food" makes the war worth the dying

2005-12-15T00:32:00.000-08:00

Insiders Say that one of Novak's Sources was Rove

According to John Dickerson at Slate magazine.

A source close to Rove confirmed to me the widely held speculation that Rove was one of Novak's sources.

Dickerson has written a good analysis of Rove's defense (at link under title).

2005-12-14T18:35:00.000-08:00

Att. General Gonzales Calls for Reauthorization of Patriot Act

Frankly, I expected a little more proof from the US Attorney General. He writes like one who believes every word he speaks should be accepted as gospel. I almost miss John Ashcroft.

But some of the things he says are quite amusing.

The bill to be considered this week is a good one. It equips law enforcement with the tools needed to fight terrorists, and it also includes new civil liberties protections. Members of Congress should put aside the rhetoric and focus on the facts surrounding this vital legislation.

Yeah, I know that's not funny. But when you remember that Clinton introduced much of the Patriot Act as the Counterterrorism Act of 1995 it gets more amusing. Try to keep a straight face when you meander back in your mind (you do remember this don't you?) and call up how the Republican controlled House shut Clinton's bill down.

And please don't spill your coffee as that leads to remembering how in December of the same year the Republican leaders in Congress reintroduced the bill as their own work. I remember the sigh of relief as people realized that though the means might have been skullduggerous, the ends might be the same.

But wait there's more. During path of the second bill an amendment was introduced by representative Bob Barr that stripped the Counterterrorism bill of most of it's effectiveness. Yes, you remember correctly that was Republican Representative Bob Barr. And the members of the House who voted for the Barr amendment were mostly Republican. You can see the results of the vote partial list of US Representatives who voted to make you less secure in 1996. If you scroll up a little you can read a list of the Senators of 2003 who most likely were Representatives who voted for the Barr amendment and against the 1995-96 version of the Patriot Act(which was not as dangerous as the one the Republicans pushed in 2001 after the tragedy of 9/11. That's just a little bit of hypocrisy for you to chuckle over .

Ready for some more laughs?

Well, how about the revelation that TSA had collected data on passengers when the Bush administration had said they would not be doing that.

Or the number of times that the Dept of Justice said they weren't really checking library and book store records, yet, last month, it was revealed that they did try to check computer use records at libraries (only stopped by the librarians who refused to offer up the information).

And now Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez says "Trust us!" and "We need this" (which we didn't need in 1995, of course.)

2005-12-14T12:24:00.000-08:00

We want proof!

So the Bush administration is assuring us that our voting systems are safe, accessable and, secure?

Hey, aren't they the same guys who assured us that Saddam had WMDs?

Seriously! Where is the proof?

And why does the news media just repeat the Bush administration's talking points?

2005-12-14T10:48:00.000-08:00

Bush:"Oil for Food" makes the war worth the dying and hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars.

Another embarrassing exploit by Bush in a speech and repeated by the right wing talking points columnists as their thoughts for the week, is that the Oil for Food Scandal made the aggressive invasion of Iraq worth the hundreds of billions of dollars that the American taxpayer is dropping down the drain in of military cost and big time Republican contributors' pockets, not to mention over 2500 US troop deaths and over 100k Iraqi civilian deaths.

Bush said:

...chief weapons inspector Charles Duelfer found that Saddam was using the U.N. oil-for-food program to influence countries and companies in an effort to undermine sanctions, with the intent of restarting his weapons programs once the sanctions collapsed and the world looked the other way.

But, in the first place we know that Oil For Food was not a UN or a problem of "nations". It was a problem of businesses paying kick backs. Also we know that already the right wing talking points people have claimed that the majority of companies paying the kickbacks were French and Russian, but it has been found that the "French and Russian" companies paying kickbacks were actually subsidiaries of American and British companies.

It is the Bush administration's contention that this changed the minds of nations like France and Russia, not a reality based in fact. It's just another one of Rove's allegations that has been repeated a hundred thousand times like right wing propaganda always is. Why would France and Russia be swayed by special favors going to US and UK Companies? But as long as corporate news hides facts from Americans and goes with the latest safe talking points -- current is the drumbeat for overthrowing Syria and Iran" Americans will be misinformed.

Secondly, the UN told the Bush administration before the invasion that their inspectors were never going to leave Iraq even after sanctions were removed as long as Saddam or a successor or any aggressive administration was controlling the nation.

The inspectors were back in Iraq with boots on the ground and had the best spy equipment available. In fact, it was the inspectors that turned out to be right and the cooked Bush administration intelligence that was bad. Yes, Iraq could be inspected totally and secured from making WMDs in the future and the UN had every intention of doing so. The cost of inspections would not only have been lower than the Halliburton supporting war, but also shared by the world, not put 99% onto the American taxpayer.

A joke was going around in the Spring of 2003 that Bush had to invade when he did, because otherwise UNMOVIC would have proven that Saddam did not have WMDs and we couldn't have held the invasion at all.

Unfortunately the punchline proved to be tragedy in Iraq, massive debt, and lots of money for Republican campaign contributors, and an actual rise in Bush's poll numbers that allowed the president and Republicans in Congress to subvert the will of Americans in many other aspects of life.

2005-12-14T09:22:00.000-08:00

Today's Speech: Bush 'I'm Incompetent'! So I Get to Fix Things

"It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As president I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq," the president told a foreign policy forum on the eve of elections to establish Iraq's first permanent, democratically elected government. "And I'm also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities.

Did your blood pressure just go up? Mine did.

After all we know how the Bush team took information from INC created by the Rendon Group and from Iraqi exiles seeking visas willing to spout lies who actually failed CIA lie detector tests, not to mention that tortured prisoner al Libi, which was later totally refuted even before the aggressive invasion of Iraq, Bush proclaims that because they went to war after passing false information to Americans, he and his same crew get to remake 'intelligence' in the US to suit their purposes.

We've, of course seen the result. Political cronies being put into top intelligence positions. What this means that if the FBI and CIA do start to work for political purposes, no one is going to leak this time. And, in fact, though we got a leak a few months ago (on the fact that, though they promised they wouldn't, they are checking library records -- on computer usage this time -- but what next?

But go ahead and trust George. He's only gotten us into a war for Big Oil, and big contracts for Republican campaign contributors. His administration has only been caught lying to us a few hundred times.

This speech was almost as good for laughs as the one he gave to the World Affairs Council on Monday where he basically said the insurgents were just like the founding fathers. (That part disappeared from news reports -- even the one I linked to for my post below -- on the subject. The transcript for the World Affairs Council speech is at whitehouse.gov. Link, which opens in new window goes straight to speech as of time of posting this. We don't make you search for information.)

2005-12-14T09:05:00.000-08:00

Dang. I know this is a promotion but... Dang

2005-12-14T09:00:00.000-08:00

The First Casualty of War is Truth

Here's a guy who's forgotten that proverb What does 'truth' have to do with what people who are immersed in propaganda, as our troops are, believe?

2005-12-13T10:51:00.000-08:00

"Tookie" Williams lawyers: Witnesses could have proved that Williams was innocent. Stay requested hours before execution rejected.

His lawyers tried frantically until the end to find a way to save him. Just two hours before Tuesday's execution, they pleaded with Schwarzenegger for a 60-day stay, arguing that in the 11th hour a witness had surfaced who could shed new light on the case. Earlier in the day, they said three jailhouse witnesses had come forward this week with evidence that could show Williams had been framed for the four shotgun murders that put him on Death Row.

But the governor, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected all the defense efforts to spare Williams' life.

WILLIAMS EXECUTED

Schwarzenegger Clemency Denial Called Politically Safe

Scwarzenegger is such a coward.

More on the execution

2005-12-13T10:07:00.000-08:00

Bush estimates 30,000 Iraqis have died in war

Article has been changed. See note below.

Showing once again, that Bush lies.

In the first case the 30k number is only the total of civilians by Iraq Body Count and they only took the evidence they could glean from news reports (like no one even died in Iraq without getting into the news.0>

But Republican presidents can never be called liars by corporate news.

A more complete and substantial record issued in 2004 showed that as of the summer of that year at least 100,000 civilians had died in Iraq.

So, of course Bush is happy to go with the 30k numbers.

And,later his spokesman, said that:

Bush was not giving an official figure on the deaths but simply repeating public estimates

Groundhog Bush Says 6 More Years of War in Iraq is Okay

Bush later went on with something Karen Hughes or Karl Rove or maybe the Lincoln Group must have worked up for him

Speaking a few blocks from Independence Hall, Bush noted that even America's early beginnings had major setbacks.

''The eight years from the end of the Revolutionary War to the election of a constitutional government were a time of disorder and upheaval," Bush said.

''There were uprisings, with mobs attacking courthouses and government buildings. In 1783, Congress was chased from this city by angry veterans demanding back pay, and they stayed on the run for six months," he said.

So he means that Americans were slaughtering each other wholesale for 8 years* and therefore we get to incite the horrible violence we are seeing in Iraq for 6 more years? Six more years of American troops dying before we even see if we've created a democracy or a monster?

Thanks for letting us know, Sir.

I suggest we take Jack Murtha's solution.

No wonder the Republican party is trying to cook up public approval for a draft.

As it is, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the US military is nearly worn out and it will take a couple of years (assumed to mean after its bleeding in Iraq is stopped) for it to recover.

*Update 12/13/05--I just couldn't get my mind off our insurgent founding fathers. How many got their heads cut off, I wonder. Who did the cutting? Was Patrick Henry running around crying "god is good" with a big knife in his hand?

And while I sympathize with that Congress driven out by vets... (Wait a minute, no I don't. If you don't pay your vets, you'd better go hide. That's a hint 107th and 109th.)

* Return to aboveThough this seems to be the report I took Bush's remarks from, the statements that comparing the insurgents with our founding fathers has been removed from it, and cannot be found in news reports on the web that I could discover. They are on whitehouse.gov though in the transcript of the speech. Which I have saved and I suggest you do so too in case the White House

2005-12-13T08:49:00.000-08:00

Could 'Tookie' Williams be innocent?

First posted Dec 10, 2005: I was reading ‘I Should Give Up?’ Karen Teslau's report on and interview with Stanley (Tookie) Williams I was reminded of what happened to Geronimo Pratt, and what has happened to other minorities in the LA area and I've started to wonder:

Have they actually had a decent hearing? Every minority in the Los Angeles area has known cooked up evidence used against them or a friend at some time.

So I imagine they are thinking about the examples of false convictions of their friends or famous people before.

The case of Geronimo Pratt is a good one. He was also convicted of murder, but released many years later. So long later that IIRC he was in prison about the same number of years as Nelson Mandela.

From Memphis Miasma written in 1998--which I use only to fill in the details from what I remember:

Gill Carcetti is the D.A. in L.A. County, [who thinks he] never makes a mistake. So it took Johnny Cochran and others 27 years to get Geranimo Pratt into a courtroom just for a simple evidentiary hearing. That took place last December. It was before an Orange County judge who had been appointed by Ronald Reagan, and that judge on hearing the witnesses and hearing the evidence told the D.A. in Los Angeles county to release Geranimo Pratt from prison and you either order a new trial or you let him go. Geranimo Pratt had been accused in 1968 of a murder in Santa Monica that he had not done. He stayed in jail for 27 years.

If Los Angeles blows up over the death of Williams, it won't only be because of the man, but because the things that happen daily to minorities in Los Angeles. There were two big revelations that the LAPD is corrupt and bigoted and still they remain so. The latest chief, William Bratton, no relation to yours truly, might be the worst one yet. His lack of compassion and understanding disgusts most of the minorities in the city and a lot of the rest of us too.

Any time anything goes wrong, you bet he'll be on TV whining about how bad the cops feel about this and it's of course all the fault of someone else. Yep, the cops kill a 13 year old boy and its someone elses fault.

There is also the case of New Orleans. That was such a visual show of racism and people around here know people from the area. What they are hearing is that not much is being done for the poor, many of whom worked extra hard all their lives to buy a home some several homes to help out their family members with living quarters. Now they get nothing but bills, while rich white folk argue about how to divide up the money they'll get will wrench the devalued property from the hands of the owners through eminent domain (entitled by the Reagan-Bush 41 majority Supreme Court late last spring).

There are reports that who you are and what you look like determine if you will actually get the money from the insurance company that you paid for all these years.

The racism of America may hit the fan next week, but don't blame gang members this time.

This is all our doing.

More on Pratt if you don't know the whole story.

Excerpt:

Last month, Dickey ordered prosecutors either to give Pratt a new trial or drop the case. The conviction was overturned in light of new evidence that the chief witness against him was a police and FBI informant who lied under oath.

Pratt always has maintained his innocence in the murder, contending he was in Oakland at the time of the killing. In addition, a former FBI agent now says Pratt was framed.

2005-12-12T23:38:00.000-08:00

Jonathan Alter: The Real Price of Propaganda

Alter's column on the US program to create news for Iraqi consumption is pure gold. (Hint it should be read in entirety. That's why I haven't excerpted it here.)

The only thing he leaves out is that according to a NY Times article (here copied in the IHT), Rendon gave Iraqex (later the Lincoln Group) their start in the Iraq manufactured news field.

It is something of a mystery how Lincoln landed more than $25 million in Pentagon contracts in a war zone.

The two men who ran the small business had no background in public relations or the media, according to associates and a résumé.

Before coming to Washington and setting up Lincoln in 2004, Christian Bailey, born in Britain and now 30, had worked briefly in California and New York. Paige Craig, now 31, was a former U.S. Marine intelligence officer.

When the company was incorporated last year, using the name Iraqex, its stated purpose was to provide support services for business development, trade and investment in Iraq. The company's earliest ventures there included providing security to the military and renovating buildings. Iraqex also started a short-lived online business publication.

In mid-2004, the company formed a partnership with the Rendon Group and later won a $5 million Pentagon contract for an advertising and public relations campaign to "accurately inform the Iraqi people of the coalition's goals and gain their support."

Soon the company changed its name to Lincoln Group. It is not clear how the partnership with Rendon was formed; Rendon dropped out weeks after the contract was awarded.

Within a few months, Lincoln shifted to information operations and psychological operations, two former employees said. The company was awarded three new Pentagon contracts, worth tens of millions of dollars, they added.

Joe Conason writing for the New York Observer (but here at Working for Change:

The practical problem with such schemes — as any historian of the Cold War might have told the Bush administration’s eager beavers — is their inevitable exposure. That’s what happened decades ago, when C.I.A.-financed journalists and publications were exposed at home and abroad. Certainly that was the predictable conclusion of this misadventure, too, which relied rather heavily on the tradecraft of inexperienced and arrogant young Republican boobs at an outfit called the Lincoln Group.

Unlike their Cold War forebears, the Lincoln Group flacks couldn’t keep the secret for months, let alone years. But the end result is always the same: international embarrassment and severely diminished credibility.

A commentator at the NPR noted that for 300 million they could have had the best of US news reporters write a few novels, but instead they got bunk that few Iraqis believed anyway.

But notice 300 million going to a Republican friendly group.

It sounds an awful like the Cunningham-Wilkes-Wade triangle in the San Diego area. Has anyone checked to see if any other?

2005-12-12T20:43:00.000-08:00

Some people say Bush is too lucky

Whenever news is needed to cover up for Bush's failures, it seems like something spectacular happens.

It makes some folks wonder.

Bush needs some cover with spectacular world events so his backhanded propaganda has time to work.

Boom! Air marshals shoot a man.

Boom! there goes an oil depot in the UK.

Boom! an important publisher in Lebanon is killed.

Some suspect that these are covert(and overt) actions of US agents.

I disagree.

I do think that the devil has something signed with a former part-time governor's blood somewhere though.

(Just kidding)

It's just very curious. Maybe it's that the world has become such a dangerous place since Bush took office that something is happening most of the time.

2005-12-12T20:38:00.000-08:00

Two months in Iraq prison and US authorities congratulate themselves on 'quick' handling of imprisoned US filmmaker

Man was not allowed to contact embassy.

His photographer tells about life these day in Abu Ghraib.

Somebody tell Bubble Boy about this little incident, please.

2005-12-12T19:32:00.000-08:00

New Ad from RNC has echoes of Third Reich!

What was that Goering said?

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

Snopes.com status on that quote: TRUE (Many on the right are trying to pretend that it's a phony quote.)

An advertisement that could have been done by Hitler's Third Reich pops out of the RNC to tar the Democrats. Apparently this video was concocted after Jack Murtha noticed that Bush's war was not doing well, and that the Bush administration hasn't had the guts to what is needed to actually win, nor will they agree to withdraw the troops from within Iraq to allow a cooling period (while watching closely from Kuwait and other neighbors.

Instead the Bush administration is bent on following the inept middle way figuring that with the new Swift Boat type ad they can increase Bush's approval numbers without either seeking more political means to protect the nascent democracy in Iraq, nor sending in the amount of troops that would actually be needed to really win the conflict and secure the nation militarily. They truly feel that with new propaganda the slow killing off of rekatuively few wives and husbands, sons and daughters, mothers, and fathers will be palatable enough to the lazy American electorate (you and I).

At the very least, the rabid bunch of people who corner neighbors in the street and monopolize conversation on the internet to repeat repeat repeat the White House propaganda the great need right now is to have some twisted 'come back' by which the pathetic chatterers for Bush (often paid with political and even taxpayer money to post or blog--but that will all come out when the investigation is done)can mask their own deficiencies of logic and knowledge.

The article linked above says:

The RNC's new Web video "Retreat and Defeat" starts with a flat-screen TV playing clips from Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, Sen. Barbara Boxer, and Sen. John Kerry. As they speak, a white flag waves over their faces while ominous music moans...

Excerpt:

Then the camera pans back, and we learn that we've been watching these clips over the shoulder of a U.S. soldier dressed in desert camouflage, his service rifle strapped to his back. Candy canes hang on the wall just above the screen, which flashes the message: "Our soldiers are watching and our enemies are too."

The video conveys the impression that somewhere in Iraq, a soldier is having his mission and Christmas tarnished by weak-willed Democrats. Here is a frame from the ad and the actual picture of the soldier, taken two years ago. As shown below, the soldier was really watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

And later

Web ads are a special low art meant to stir the base.

...Bush has distorted images of U.S. soldiers before. During the 2004 campaign, he got into trouble when one of his ads, titled "Whatever It Takes," doctored the images of soldiers. The ad showed a crowd of soldiers listening to the president. But some of the faces appeared several times in several different places within the same crowd shot, the result of an attempt to increase the number of soldiers appearing to listen to Mr. Bush.

What neither party has done until now is inject the idea that the other party is undermining our troops overseas. The RNC is pimping a mute and unnamed soldier not just to defend the Iraq war but to imply that Democrats are white-handkerchief-waving cowards who want the United States to lose.

And

It goes almost without saying that some of the quotes from Democrats are taken out of context in a way that completely distorts their meanings. In the statement excerpted in the video, Kerry was not accusing U.S. soldiers of war crimes in Iraq. He was saying local police and militaryÂnot American forcesÂshould be doing the difficult work of going into Iraqi homes in the dead of night, which is also the president's wish.

The video's treatment of Barbara Boxer is just bizarre. "So there's no specific time frame," they quote her as saying, "but I would say the withdrawal ought to start now, right after the elections December 15th." The liberal California senator has surely said something more incendiary somewhere, but that quote is simply stating administration policy. Here's what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said two weeks before Boxer's remarks, when he answered a question on Face the Nation about whether troops would withdraw: "No question. I mean, we went up for the referendum in October 15th and we went from 138,000 to 160,000. We're now at 159,000. We're going to stay that size roughly through the December 15th election. We're clearly going to go back down to 138,000 after the election."

2005-12-12T18:42:00.000-08:00

Bush: I'm not Bubble Boy!

In response to questions asked that seem to have been inspired by a Newsweek article (though other articles have maintained the same scenario in the recent past) Bush proclaimed that he is not living in a bubble.

The Reuters report says that the president asserted he reads a newspaper every morning though not all the articles in it. (Bush is often seen holding the Washington Times, owned by the Reverend Sun Myong Moon and often under fire for suspected slanted coverage.) Ooo! can't finish all the puny short articles in the Washington Times son? Too bad.

Also:

"I don't feel in a bubble," Bush said in an interview on "NBC Nightly News."

"I feel like I'm getting really good advice from very capable people, and that people from all walks of life have informed me and informed those who advise me. And I feel very comfortable that I'm very aware of what's going on," Bush said.

Though he inserts the Rovism

"I mean you feel in a bubble in the sense that I can't go walking out the front gate and you know, go shopping, like I'd love to do for my wife," he said.

I guess that's something Bush could do while part time governor of Texas. You know, friend, there is such a thing as being too ambitious. Maybe you should have stayed in that part time job, my friend.

Bush said. "And it's a myth to think that I'm not aware that there (are) opinions that don't agree with mine. Because I'm fully aware of that."

Yes, Sir, but do you listen to those other opinions?

BTW, notice his emphasis on how he feels. That certainly doesn't reasure me.

2005-12-12T15:48:00.000-08:00

What if Alpizar didn't say he had a bomb?

A witness has told Time Magazine he never heard the word bomb coming from Alpizar.

Follow the Bouncing Blogger (gregoryp) has the link to the Time article and that's where I found it so I'm going to pass you on to him (link under title above). Plus he has other insights as well.

I did find another article that has a claim by a second passenger:

Mary Gardner, another passenger, also said she did not hear Alpizar mention a bomb.

This second article doesn't have any more revelations that that though. The Time article also shows the belligerent behavior of the Marchals after they had shot Mr. Alpizar. Again that link is at FTBB.

BTW, I'd like to report that I'm officially furious with myself.

Heidi Allen found the easter egg in the Newsweek article and spit it out in a fashion even 'speed readers' like I am can catch.

At least seven witnesses now say that Alpizar didn’t say anything at all as he ran towards the plane’s door; only that, before rising from his seat, he shouted “I have to get off!"

I know that others have mentioned it too in the list on who's linking to the article. Ms. Allen's is the first blog I read that had noted that fact clearly.

She also notes Capital Hill Blue's report on the of resolution of the DHS investigation. (Link and details at Allen's blog which I linked in the paragraph above.) The mainstream press never does seem to pick up CHB's reporting. I don't know what to say about that. Some of claims are pretty breathtaking, yet I've never seen the mainstream news refute their assertions either.

Ms. Allen also reminds us not to judge the man going without his meds as Mrs. Buechner's fanny pack was stolen in Quito, and that the couple was coming back after working as medical missionaries.

And finally, I've found another report that has a picture of Alpizar showing the backpack in question placed on his front. Apparently that was the "fanny" pack other passengers in Miami talk about, and reports on his erratic behaviour at the Quito airport. Again the question is why a person who was acting erratically allowed on a plane. Can we blame Ecuador? I don't think so. Every plane heading for the US should be treated like an American flight. I believe there are supposed to be more Marshals for international flights than for domestic ones.

Yes, I understand that Alpizar looks a little 'weird' according to our standards. Wierd is always worrisome to certain types. I'm sure there are some out there that can decide the certainly Jesus would have shot Alpizar, but I think the opposite.

I have South American friends. Even after years in the US they often refuse to conform to our ways of macho normalcy. (Obviously, as well, it's quite uncomfortable to sit in a airplane seat with a backpack on the back. Or you can go through the trapeze artistry of trying to remove the thing in the crowded aisle or seat. Why not wear it on the front?)

Again (my former piece) I do think that the Marshals were acting on prejudice more than need.

2005-12-12T12:56:00.000-08:00

They should study the Alpizar shooting long and hard

It seems that the only thing more dangerous on a flight than being bipolar and without medicine is to be bipolar, without medicine and have medium dark skin.

More on this subject starts here.

2005-12-12T11:03:00.000-08:00

College student seeks to be held against will for 6 months while he learns aggression and poss. rescue skills. If interested contact his employers at 1-800-Republican Party

Sean M. Harris whines: Just imagine if we had a national service program. (He talks about a voluntary one when he's writing about what candidates etc like Clark or McCain said in 2004 but then he specifically says:

Imagine, though, if the government took all the anxiety out of the process of determining one's immediate future by mandating that every student partake in a national service program after commencement.
Gee, if he doesn't know what he's going to do after college then there's always the option of joining up himself. According to reports, some servicemen have release dates of 2025 on their papers (though they joined up for a much shorter time).

Six months forced service? You're going to have a clearer head after 6 months? That's June to December. I don't think so.

You can't train troops in 6 months. They've told us that. How can you train people to be both troops or rescuers in 6 months especially if you are then are going to lose them to the civilian workforce?

But what couldn't we do when we have enough captive graduates (enlistments are easily extended at the whisper of "War on Terror") to invade countries and supposedly rescue people. I can't get over that whole idea.

And if they did do it? Lets examine that scenario:

Major disaster happening lets go dump a whole bunch of recent college graduates and other young people off in the middle of dangerous flood and see what happens. Well, most of them would care deeply I know (Oh, but FEMA's forgotten to buy any boats so they first had to buy some). I think the death toll would have gone much higher if we put undertrained and underequipped young people in the city and tell them to rescue people. Maybe I'm wrong though. It would be hard to do worse than the Bush government did.

It would have broken the hearts of the most vulnerable, caring young folks I know, as the government had neglected it's duty to protect that city or rescue it in time. There were actually plenty of troops once they were deployed. It was lack of caring that killed people in New Orleans and the federal government. taking the funds from the 2003 levee repair to play war on Iraq.

I know a lot of National Guard are young too, but at least they had 'years' of training.

My family's experience with the draft:

My soon to be brother in law was taken straight out of college having "won" the Vietnam draft lottery that year and at that time losing his deferment. He was a conscientious objector so he was kept stateside. When his draft was done he had a wife and child and still no marketable skills and had to reup.

He was offered Germany (I believe no one was going to Nam anymore by then, but since he reupped he had lost his 'conscientious' status, but we'd learned our lesson by then right?)

He was supposed to be taught pharmacist asst. skills but never was. They played football and kept the grounds of the base neat for work, actually.

And every major world crisis had him being bundled up for Ramstein getting ready to face a situation in which he probably would have been killed as he would not kill others. The only hope was a truly peaceful peacekeeping assignment, but again he had given up his rights to hope.

After 3 more years so five in total he was honorably discharged, still without skill, much money or a job and now a wife and 2 kids.

A "short" mandatory national service program is not a solution to what you are going to do after graduating.

If done, it won't be short, and it won't be peaceful. The Bush administration has a Christmas list of invasions to make the world safe for their campaign contributors to make big bucks.

2005-12-12T06:47:00.000-08:00

Think Victory!

Joel Klein reveals what's behind Bush's new "Plan for Victory" theme. He says a new national security staff member told Bush that if people expect victory they will stomach the 'carnage'. What an apt description. Over 100k Iraqis dead. Over 2k Americans. Bush's ability to kill off people's loved ones in this war that mainly has benefited campaign contributors shows how Democracy can be turned into the dictatorship of the majority. What the heck. It isn't my son or daughter.

And in true credit card nation fashion we are ignoring the fact that the bill will come due soon on our Lawrence of Arabia game.

Bush is even admitting that the war is going badly. Even the cities he cites as 'successes' are not secure, happy, and free.

But like during the presidential debates the corporate news media play up the Bush administration's side and mask the incompetence, lies, and yes, even the carnage behind the words. Most of the printed news does include reports on all those things in with writings that like Judith Millers seem to have been heavily influenced or worse by the White House. TV News even hits the latest bloodbath by insurgents, but American massacres of Iraqis in towns like Tal Afar, Fallujah, and places whose names I've forgotten are "operations against insurgents". If we had one major news reporter break down over the deaths of civilians in Iraq like Cronkite did over the deaths of American in Vietnam the American public would probably wake up.

I'm sorry to disagree with Mr. Klein, but what we really need is for Americans to receive their news with a discerning eye. To read what a report is really saying instead of just sucking up the tone, which corporate news is careful to control for the Bush people while they maintain that the content of news is balanced.

Balance between slightly conservative mostly wealthy white male Democrats and the raging loonies of the right who also happen to be mostly wealthy white and male is what kind of balance again?

In extreme need of course that balance is every thrown to the sharks. The presidential debates is a good example.

In December 2000 an AP report on a poll was released showing that, of previously undecided voters, those who read the transcripts of the debates or listen to them on the radio, or even watched the debates on TV, but without the post debate commentary, etc. a majority thought Al Gore had won every presidential debate and had swayed more to vote for him. Of those people who had watched the debates on television and stayed to watch the post debate analysis, and other gimmicks like supposedly independent minded people who suddenly swooned over the republican candidate after hearing his platitudes, most viewers decided that the part time Governor of Texas had won the debates.

I didn't watch the 2004 debates, but read the transcripts instead. I guess I should have watched to see what corporate controlled news could come up with next. But since the phony focus groups worked four year before, I didn't see any hope the networks would change their methods.

If the networks offered truly balanced information and analysis (and printed material could cut out some of the truly contrived reports and analysis that get direction from the White House) Americans wouldn't have trouble figuring out what to do now. But don't expect corporate news to tell you that.

2005-12-11T21:59:00.000-08:00

Blame the Boomers

I've been reading the "blame the Boomers" type articles since the 80s. Funny thing that was about the time that the right wing started showing just how much they really hated the ny genereation.

You see the other generations went about their merry way and there is nothing wrong with that. They were into growing up and getting families, or even into war. (WW1 and 2 were obviously very necessary, of course, and Korea and Vietnam had people yanked out of their homes to go kill and, later, the volunteer army offered so many opportunities for young people to think they are going to get a college education, a career, or even just some extra money and then get basically drafted to fight another war for the rich folks. I don't want to make it seem like I don't appreciate what those who went to war did, except for those who feel I cannot say my piece because they fought for my freedom to do so.) Some generations were really into having fun like the 50s and 80s through 2000 groups. Well, the evil boomer generation go all hot and bothered about inequality and unjust wars and people dying of hunger. Liberal stuff like that.

So the right wingers decided that the Boomers had to be hurt big time. They've used their usual hold on the corporate media to work their magic on us.

Sure a few of us went on to be rich and famous. That wasn't the most of us.

Some of decided early on to work work work. Again that wasn't the most of us.

We had a great time in the 60s and 70s between working for peace and true economic justice in this world and "finding ourselves". I don't know where today's young people get the idea that the Boomers were all about work. In fact, it was the reality of the election of Reagan that started making life so much harder for everyone but the rich, with the respite of the Clinton years, that made many of us work so hard. But mostly we just wanted to raise our families and we did it without asking for 3 car garages.

I don't know what anyone's history is, but lets not tar any generation with a brush you borrowed from the right wing.

Middle Class folks of the Boomers, Xers and Yers area ll being asked to carry a relatively heavier proportion of the tax burden that the rich. Meanwhile all the extra money being dumped in the laps of the rich via tax cuts makes inflation rise and hurts us twice.

We need to work together so you young folk can have a decent life instead of looking at debt slavery in 20 years.

Don't listen the lies of Morgoth (I know a lot of you know who Morgoth is*. Like us boomers you went and got in to the books by Tolkein or you will. Like you, we Boomers could do that. I just spent a couple of years rereading the Silmarillion together with the Lays of Beleriand. Yeah, a lot of Boomers do things like that. We haven't given up everything for the sake of money.)

And a lot of us are still working for peace and economic justice. Stop in a liberal forum some time and see how many Boomers are there mixed in with Xers and Yers.

Lets work together to make this a better world. This is what many of us Boomers want. I think it's what you want too.

Young adults admire boomers, sometimes — but are ready to forge their own legacy

* For those who haven't read the Silmarillion or Lays or the History of Middle Earth, Morgoth was one of the top angelic spirits that ruled Arda (ME). He turned evil and in fact introduced evil to the world while it was being made via song.

Morgoth was really powerful. The favorite pastime of an afternoon for some awfully powerful elves was to go lose a war to Morgoth.

If you really need an idea of how powerful Morgoth was--um-- well, Sauron was just his servant. Still one of his major weapons was the whispering of lies to unsuspecting people (or elves as the case may be.)

2005-12-11T09:19:00.000-08:00

Bubble Boy

Evan Thomas and Richard Wolffe byline a report on President Boy and his tendency to stick to the same advisors.

It also compares his style with those of previous presidents Democrat and Republican and discusses the president's style of humor, and reveals where Bush's new talking up the 'economy' came from.

What I found most interesting in the article though were the breaks in which assertions from Bush allies and administration members were allowed to make comments on the reporting.

Comment by Bush supporters is included in just about every mainstream news report. One thing that reporters know is that if they don't give the White House freedom to respond and get heard they will be in big trouble. In this article the responses act more like breaks into individual sections. It's actually very amusing. I almost feel like Andrew Card is standing by my shoulder breaking in whenever we come to a part he knows the Bush team wouldn't like. (The feeling also makes me wonder if the White House aide is part of the sources that refuse to be named about that weren't too supportive of the president or at least of his humor). I asked Mr. Card to get me a cheeseburger*, but he just laughed at me and pored coffee over my head. Still can't take a mean spirited joke, can he?

One comment I have to make is about their assertion that Bush reached out to the Council on Foreign Relations when he made a speech there in early December. In fact, he only made a speech. He did not take questions or advice. That was not really reaching out, but more of the same top down lecturing that the Bush administration is famous for.

* RE: Cheeseburger.

Bush will tease Card in meetings for his long-windedness and tendency to veer off on tangents. People who have watched them together say the president will sometimes order Card around in a tone that suggests he's talking to a servant. In "The Price of Loyalty," former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill describes a scene in which Bush impatiently demands that Card get him a cheeseburger.

Pressure Cooker (html Google cache)

2005-12-11T07:03:00.000-08:00

Sleuther tracks down Wikipedia "Prankster". Man loses job.

The New York Times reports that a third party sleuther using nothing but 'some online tools' tracked down the person who made the Wikipedia connection between the assassination of John F Kennedy and his brother and John Seigenthaler Sr. a former editor of The Tennessean in Nashville.

Previous reports in newspapers have shown that people have been tracked based on other internet users suspicions that they are child molesters or scam artists.

Though we would all like such criminals as child molesters to be dealt with by the authorities, the first thing that happened in each of these cases was that the accused lost their job. This is punishment without a trial, without even actual law enforcement or judicial advice.

It would also be the perfect tool by which to destroy freedom of speech even on the internet.

Excerpt:

Using information in Mr. Seigenthaler's article and some online tools, Mr. Brandt traced the computer used to make the Wikipedia entry to the delivery company in Nashville. Mr. Brandt called the company and told employees there about the Wikipedia problem but was not able to learn anything definitive.

Mr. Brandt then sent an e-mail message to the company, asking for information about its courier services. A response bore the same Internet Protocol address that was left by the creator of the Wikipedia entry, offering further evidence of a connection.

A call by a New York Times reporter to the delivery company on Thursday made employees nervous, Mr. Chase later told Mr. Seigenthaler. On Friday, Mr. Chase hand-delivered a letter to Mr. Seigenthaler's office, confessing what he had done, and later they talked at length.

Mr. Chase told him that the Seigenthaler name had come up at work and that he had popped it into a search engine and was led to Wikipedia, where, he said, he was surprised that anyone could make an entry.

Yes, there is a problem with unregistered writers. And, in fact, I've noticed that any subject that is of current political interest in Wikipedia gets the special attention of the right wing internet machine. Even the legion of librarians (which were suggested by a previous news report) who spend millions (hyperbole mine) of hours 'correcting' entries cannot keep up with the right wing spin and outright lies on an entry on a subject making political waves.

For example, during the run up to the California recall election in 2003 the Wikipedia a person checking up on Gray Davis' history would find that indeed the recallers were quite correct in claiming Mr. Davis was one of the worst governors ever. The amazing amount of things the man had done and not done were right there to see! Lately though the 'librarians' have gotten the entry back to middle of the road on Mr. Davis while some other political subject will be under attack.

This is not to mention the danger that we could be in by the the internet sleuthers of the world.

But back to Wikipedia, personally, I always found the idea of making big bucks off other people's free work particularly odious (unless I could be the one making the money, I suppose). The fact that it blows up in the owners' of Wikipedia faces is not that surprising to me. I believe Wikipedia is non profit, but the amount of money made by non profits is usually pretty good, though I have no idea what Wikipedia does. The owners apparently made his money in other internet ventures.

This model has been so attractive that many other people have been trying to get clones started. But usually they find that the market for people who can find time to donate to try to help maintain such a huge task is already tapped out. And in the end I admire the Wikipedia rank and file, those who do what they can to keep it balanced. It is a momentous task and for the most they are an informed and hard working group. Maybe they are librarians. I hope they get the reward (spiritual, psychological, and/or sociological) that they deserve in return. The fact that Wikipedia has not devolved into a prankster and political propaganda tool is owed all to them, not to those who are making the money and getting the credit for the site.

BTW, in case you didn't know, many wealthy and famous people have their names searched upon daily in news and on the internet. A friend of mine has a site that lists the crimes of pastors and people of influence in the church. He is always careful to document what mainstream news source the information came from and throw out any from non mainstream sources just to be fair. The company that records the hits the site receives (statcounter.com) also recorded that (among others) a search came in daily for the name of a certain bishop that was in deep trouble with the law.

2005-12-10T21:25:00.000-08:00

US's Imperial Diplomacy

Hey, nice to know that Bush treats the rest of the world as bad as he treats us.

Fareed Zakarias notes:

America has developed an imperial style of diplomacy. There is much communication with foreign leaders, but it's a one-way street. Most leaders who are consulted are simply informed of U.S. policy. Senior American officials live in their own bubbles, rarely having any genuine interaction with their overseas counterparts, let alone other foreigners. "When we meet with American officials, they talk and we listen—we rarely disagree or speak frankly because they simply can't take it in," explained one senior foreign official who requested anonymity for fear of angering his U.S. counterparts.

It is worth quoting at length from the recently published—and extremely well-written—memoirs of Chris Patten (who is ardently pro-American), recounting his experiences as Europe's commissioner for external affairs. "Even for a senior official dealing with the U.S. administration," he writes, "you are aware of your role as a tributary; however courteous your hosts you come as a subordinate bearing goodwill and hoping to depart with a blessing on your endeavours.

"Attending any conference abroad," Patten continues, "American cabinet officers arrive with the sort of entourage that would have done Darius [The Persian King I assume] proud. Hotels are commandeered; cities brought to a halt; innocent bystanders are barged into corners by thick-necked men with bits of plastic hanging out of their ears. It is not a spectacle that wins hearts and minds."

American leaders blew off the UN inspectors in Iraq and in fact told the inspectors what they should find there ignoring the evidence of the lack of WMDs from those who already had their boots on the ground in Iraq.

Rest of Zakaria's report is
here.

Now we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars in a failed war.

My thoughts are that this incurious administration that won't listen to other leaders are going to mess up more in the future. Yep, the administration has lots of other failures coming up that will cost us 'Big Time'. In fact, its about time for Cheney to check his list and decide to start the wind up for another war. Unfortunately both Iran and North Korea have real armies, not just relatives of the leader ordering around some scared conscripts. Does anyone feel a draft?

2005-12-10T12:04:00.000-08:00

The War on Christmas

Fine article by Ruth Markus titled "What War on Christmas?" makes a lot of good points.

I was reading in the LA Times that stores are being boycotted for not linking the holiday shopping to Christ birth. So spending ridiculously on things for ourselves, families, and friends while ignoring the poor people of New Orleans not to mention the rest of the poor in the US and the world is the proper Christian way to celebrate the birth of Christ? Personally, except for the tragedy and loss I preferred the post Tsunami, and Katrina seasons. The ones where we cared about people and tried to help them. Personally, in remembrance of Iraq, New Orleans, and Asia, I have no lights up, I am giving small gift certificates to my nephews and nieces, and the soaps I make to the grown ups on my list.

Last year, the crazy ultra right was actually trying to kill the Christmas shopping season itself. This year they are working up their paranoia to promote it. First of all, paranoia is the only way to promote fascism among the masses. They aren't into massive greed like the leaders of such fascist movements are. And this also shows the conjunction of fanatical leaders and big business that is the only way to make a truly fascist society.

Now the right wing Christians have actually gotten volunteer lawyers to sue if a city does not have a creche!!!

Yes, if you string up some lights and have an ecumenical Christmas display then you are depriving the most extreme Christians of their right!! Can you imagine that?

Excerpt from LA Times:

Defenders of Christmas hailed the news with triumph.

But they haven't stopped at the mall door.

At least 1,500 attorneys have volunteered to sue any town that tries to keep Nativity scenes out of its holiday displays. About 8,000 public school teachers stand ready to report any principal who removes "Silent Night" from the choir program.

Welcome to Christo-fascism.

2005-12-10T11:28:00.000-08:00

'Top Gun' Cunningham is a real work of art

Newsweek article reports that Cunningham claims to be the real "Top Gun" that Tom Cruise played in the movie.

Trying to seduce women, calling for stiff penalties for drug users then begging for clemency when his own son is caught flying marijuana across country, calling for the death of Democratic leaders.

The real point is that Cunningham could be the tip of the iceberg. Members of Congress are passing the donations that Wilkes and Wade who bribed Cunningham to charities, hoping that the long eye of the law will overlook their parts of the scam.

Some analysts say that as long as the bribes are campaign donations and fall within the law (as far as provable), nothing will come of this.

Still the Pentagon spent nearly 800 million dollars on services they didn't want, services that were a duplicate of their own between Wilkes' and Wade's companies.

That 800 million dollars would go a long way towards restoring the private housing of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

But no, instead they went to making copies for the Defense Department (which had its own copy department and didn't want the outside service) and for software (from Wade's company) which the Defense Department said never actually worked well and wasn't needed. Details search for "Cunningham" in the Technorati search box on the side (the Eblogger search never seems to work) or Start Here.

2005-12-09T22:00:00.000-08:00

Spanish At School Translates to Suspension

It makes you wonder what really is the matter with Kansas? Seriously folks!

"It was, like, totally not in the classroom," the high school junior said, recalling the infraction. "We were in the, like, hall or whatever, on restroom break. This kid I know, he's like, 'Me prestas un dolar?' ['Will you lend me a dollar?'] Well, he asked in Spanish; it just seemed natural to answer that way. So I'm like, 'No problema.' "

But that conversation turned out to be a big problem for the staff at the Endeavor Alternative School, a small public high school in an ethnically mixed blue-collar neighborhood. A teacher who overheard the two boys sent Zach to the office, where Principal Jennifer Watts ordered him to call his father and leave the school.

2005-12-09T21:21:00.000-08:00

Psychiatry Ponders Whether Extreme Bias Can Be an Illness

No. I'm sorry. Bigotry is always a choice. Are you going to blame others for your failure or are you not?

I can see a lot of the reasoning of the article. I still think that if people want to ruin their lives with their racism or other bigotry, it's there problem.

A lot of the bigotry in this nation has been cooked up by the Republican party.

How can you say it's an illness. Can a political party create an illness?

Ken Mehlman has been going in front of black groups and admitting the fact that a little over 30 years the Republican party under the lead of Richard A. Nixon decided to pick up the scum of the earth by telling them it was okay to be a bigot. To think that women don't have the same brainpower as men or that minorities are lazy, shiftless or dishonest or to think everyone is getting a break but you.

Before that time bigotry was disappearing in the US. I was there. It really was confined to small and regional groups and on the decline, because no large political movement with the bucks of big business behind them was actively promoting it.

Of course, you don't make money in psychology and psychiatry by studying things like that.

2005-12-09T10:55:00.000-08:00

Conservative Retired Businessman has Advice for Bush

Well said, Sir

2005-12-09T09:18:00.000-08:00

Tax Cuts for Fat Cats Extended

"You can't tax the rich" George Bush campaign 2004. What did you think that meant? Bush's words are 'focus grouped' five ways to Sunday. He's says nothing that isn't studied for their effect as well as for showing what they're really going to do. Therefore if questioned they can claim they told us so. It's not their fault that you were distracted by their dancing on the gay marriage and abortion ban issues.

In 2000 he said "I don't think any place in the US should be off limits to oil exploration. Now we are in a fight to keep exploration out of caribou calving grounds. What fools we are!!!! While the Congress has kept the Bush buddies oily little hands out of an Alaskan area, the Bush administration has worked around them (without being called out on it by most of Congress) and let their campaign contributors in Big Oil rape beautiful wild areas of the lower 50 states for "exploration" and drilling.

No kidding! The beautiful eastern edge of the Sierras and other places in the Westhave had parts of its wildlife habitat torn up. They even gave an company the right to start 'exploring' (and drilling) in a delicate habitat in New Mexico. This has the potential to create massive polluted or "otherwise" flooding or even outright destruction of habitat, environment, and private property as we know has happened in Montana and other places. How could that be you ask? You thought that because Congress was stopping ANWR they were taking care of the rest of our environment?

No, my friend let some inner discussion over John Bolton inform you. When a Congressman was asked by administration sources if he would vote for Mr. (Shoe Banger) Bolton, the usually liberal man said he could because his constituents didn't have any idea who the former Undersecretary of State was (or the way he had destroyed the negotiations with North Korea). Soon a very vocal number of liberals and moderate bloggers (and some liberal columnists) forced even the lazy mainstream news media (sorry Mr Kurtz, but it's true. Your news guys were not willing to show the horrors of our current UN ambassador until we forced the issue into news so please don't say that bloggers do not break news.) As a result, Mr. Bolton only got his job by recess appointment. At least this showed the world that Mr. Bolton does not speak for the majority of the nation.

The lessons here are that:

Congress will do what will give them the biggest campaign contributions as long as the 'electorate knows no better.'

Your nightly news cast does not cover the news. Most news programs including the best cable 24 hour spots CNN and CSPN cover rerun news and fluff enough to keep you ignorant.

You'd need to partoicipate in a good liberal news forum or read the Washington Post, LA Times, and New York Times daily along with some of the best of the liberal news and analysis sources to keep up. You'd also need to keep writing letters to the editors, and to your Congressional Representative and Senators to let them know you know and that you are upset with what the Bush administration is doing and that you will hold them responsible for their actions in these matters. Do keep track of the votes of your Congress people and let them know how you feel about them.

Bush does what he says he's going to do (unless stopped by an outcry bigger than the returns his handlers expect to receive otherwise). His words are 'vetted' to deceive, but not actually lie. When he says he's going to do something odious, you'd better believe he means it and act on it. I know it's hard to believe Bush said that he plans to stop taxing the rich and put the burden on the middle class. I could hardly believe it when I heard it, and even more amazing was how the affluent news analysts ignored the statement. Oh wait a minute... no, I guess that wasn't amazing. They're the 'rich'.

2005-12-09T09:03:00.000-08:00

U.S. Military Probing Video Of Road Violence

Well, apparently the US ignoring previous acts of attrocities (by private US contractors) in Iraq has led to a free for all on Iraqi citizens. No wonder they hate us.

2005-12-09T08:52:00.000-08:00

What does it mean to be bipolar?

Here's a guy who suffers from the disorder.

I found reading his blog to be very eye opening.

One should be able to intuitively think "Hey they are people just like us on whom an extraordinary illness has fallen", but often we need to know someone who is afflicted to really understand that.

It seems to me, there should be programs for someone who suffers from bipolar disorder or even cancer, and other serious illnesses of any kind, so that they wouldn't be in danger of becoming homeless because of their illness. The fact that there isn't makes one wonder what is wrong with our nation.

More on this subject here.

2005-12-08T22:39:00.000-08:00

Was a 'Kill' Desired from marshals?

A report the other day showed that training of customs and immigration officials to act as Federal marshals in case of terrorist attack or other emergencies (to create a pool of extra protection) was stopped by Congress in 2004 because of the cost. Did the administration think that some kind of situation was needed to get attention for Federal marshals program?

Plus the Patriot Act was being debated in the House and Senate and having trouble.

In fact the whole meme from the Bush administration (code name 'Propaganda White House') is "terror terror terror" this week as they justify their rendition program, and try to get Bush's numbers up with a campaign that the US taxpayer pays for.

And their talking points seemed to be ready at hand soon after the Alpizar incident.

It just makes you wonder if they were looking for a way to have the marshals take some action.

Think about it: How many men would take their wives on a plane to blow it up?

BTW, another AP report says that Alpizar was clearly agitated at the gate. Now wouldn't that have been a good time to stop Mr. Alpizar, before force became necessary? Wouldn't that have been the time to call the marshals have them examine Mr. Alpizar from a mirrored room if need be to keep their identities a secret? Since the marshals were safeguarding that flight they should have made the decision as to whether someone 'agitated' could get on. After he had boarded, if the man really had a bomb, there probably would have been a bloodbath before they could even shoot him.

So now can we blame some poorly paid gate keepers? No, there should have been procedures to deal with someone who is having trouble with agitation or strange behavior at the airline gate. Those procedures already decided on, and written down. The transportation board or the marshals themselves should have checked to make sure that the airlines had trained their personnel on what they should do when a person having problems like Mr. Alpizar was.

That's what leaders do, Mr. Bush. They make sure that their agencies are making things work for good in these United States and work to make the world a better place. That's what you get paid for. That's what you get called the leader of the free world for. And what you get to hobnob with the rich and famous for. You don't get those things for your bike riding ability, though you seem to think you do.

There are too many questions. Did they adequately warn Mr. Alpizar to put the bag down in Spanish (which one Marshall knew) and English? Did they warn him what would happen if he didn't? At least one government is now looking at charges in their "we kill 'terrorists'" incident.

Our administration has basically promised us that we will see Martial Law if bird flu strikes our nation. Sometimes it seems that nothing is beyond their imagination.

More on this subject here.

2005-12-08T20:38:00.000-08:00

Some in DC want Bars and small businesses excluded from smoking ban

I remember an ad we had here in the LA area before our ban was passed (by the electorate actually).

The waitress telling us that working 8 hours in a bars with smokers was like smoking a couple of packs a day. That's lung cancer in the 40s for many people.

I lost my sister when she was 47. It wasn't any kind of cancer, but I'm telling you that for her, for us, and especially for her children who still needed her, that's too young.

I can't even believe that there are people selfish enough to think it's okay for a waitress to have to face that kind of early death so they or (in the case of bar owners) their customers can have a smoke without moving the feet to the out of doors.

Hey, LA survived our smoking ban. New York survived their smoking ban.

What? Is DC full of delicate jellyfish?

Give the waitresses a break, a chance to live to see their kids grow up.

Be a grown man or woman yourself and be willing to step outside for a smoke.

2005-12-08T11:31:00.000-08:00

Messy Winter Storm Heads Toward Region

Good Luck North East!

2005-12-08T10:34:00.000-08:00

Oh Good. Some more bad news about China! Look Look everyone!

And then there's a suicide bombing in Baghdad thanks to our war, a Croatian general caught in Tenerife, Egyptian police killing voters

Anything to divert the attention of corporate news from the horrendous national debt and the simmering scandal about Congressional bribery linked to big time payouts by the Pentagon for programs and services they didn't want. Still you have to admire the Post for taking the president to task for his BS on Iraq in his speech Wednesday.

2005-12-08T09:16:00.000-08:00

Rice allays CIA prison row fears

According to a BBC report:

European ministers are satisfied with Condoleezza Rice's explanation on the issue of alleged secret CIA prisons overseas, Nato and EU officials say.

So that's all they needed? The change in Condi's tone from defiance (paraphrase)'We saved your hairy butts by torturing people'(/paraphrase) in front of EU demands for information on and the stopping of using EU nations for torture camps to the most obfustication since Reagan, came about apparently after talking to EU leaders and finding all they needed was something to tell their electorates. I hope it all blows up in their forked tongue faces.

Even the lazy US press was on to Condi's lies.

New York Times notes:

But her [The Secretary of State's] statement did little to clear up widespread confusion about where the administration draws the line or to dispel hints of an internal debate among President Bush's inner circle on that topic. It was interpreted variously as a subtle but important shift in policy, a restatement of the administration's long-held position or an artful dodge intended to retain flexibility in dealing with detainees while soothing public opinion in the United States and Europe.

...

Speaking Wednesday in Kiev, Ukraine, Ms. Rice suggested that the prohibitions contained in an international convention against the use of cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment were applied by the United States to American personnel working anywhere in the world.

After her aides passed word to reporters traveling with her in Europe that she wanted to be asked about the issue, Ms. Rice, when asked, answered by referring to the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment, a treaty adopted by the United Nations more than two decades ago and ratified by the United States in 1994.

"As a matter of U.S. policy, the United States obligations under the C.A.T., which prohibits, of course, cruel and inhumane and degrading treatment, those obligations extend to U.S. personnel wherever they are, whether they are in the United States or outside of the United States," she said.

Her wording appeared to be an effort to signal explicitly that the United States considered itself bound by those standards when it came to interrogations of non-Americans by C.I.A. officers operating outside the United States. But it did not directly address another practice that has drawn criticism at home and abroad, that of sending detainees to third countries for interrogation by foreign intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

EU has been the shining hope of the world outside of China on this. And this changed when the woman whom some call The Vampire went over there. What I'm wondering is how much what they offered EU is going to cost the US taxpayer. They've already got the national debt up to 7 trillion. If the tax cuts are extended as Bush wants reports say it will be 12 trillion.

Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer you are the one that has to pay that back. Next year or after we give the Congress to the Republicans again in 2007 there are plans to put the tax burden on the middle class. I've been reading their talking points and obscure political news. It is going to happen. This isn't about passing on this massive debt to your children (though I don't know how anyone thinks that's okay. Apparently there are enough 'buy now, make my children pay my debt' people out there to re-elect the horrors who control our country -- horrors who think nothing of killing 100k people in another country while spending 400 billion taxpayer dollars and that is nothing spectacular when one considers the money the Republicans have spent on useless programs from their favored their big time contributors.

And in fact, the US's nearly shoe banging team of simians to the UN attacked

the UN human rights commissioner Louise Arbour for criticizing its anti-terror tactics as the alleged secret jails row goes on.

(BBC)

Other US reports on Condi's speech (not quite as incisive as the NY Times.)

Rice Seeks To Clarify Policy on Prisoners
NATO Allies Welcome Rice's Explanation
Rice Offers Assurances on Torture
Rice Fails to Clarify U.S. View on Torture
Pentagon Memo on Torture-Motivated Transfer Cited

2005-12-08T00:56:00.000-08:00

The propaganda presidency of George W. Bush

Yep the Bush people sure did away with that spin of the Clinton people.

A frequent complaint about the Clinton administration was that it tried too hard to "spin" everything in its own favor. Clinton's spin doctors had a variety of individual styles but shared a grating habit of relentlessly coloring the news to support their side in any argument. George Stephanopoulos, with whom the technique was closely identified, once defined spin as "a hope dressed up as an observation." In practice, Clinton-era spinning meant that officials seldom conceded the obvious or acknowledged losing, failing, or being wrong about anything.

George W. Bush arrived in Washington avowing an end to all that. He promised he would never parse, shade, or play nice with the truth the way that Clinton had. But if Bush has shunned spinning, it has been in favor of something far more insidious. If the Clintonites were inveterate spinners, the Bushies have proved themselves to be thoroughgoing propagandists.

But which is worse?

Habitual spin is irksome, especially to the journalists upon whom it is practiced, but it does not threaten democracy. Propaganda is far more malignant. A calculated and systematic effort to manage public opinion, it transcends mere lying and routine political dishonesty. When the Bush administration manufactures fake "news," suppresses real news, disguises the former as the latter, and challenges the legitimacy of the independent press, it corrodes trust in leaders, institutions, and, to the rest of the world, the United States as a whole.

Do read the rest at link under title. It would be worth a cover charge, but it's free!

2005-12-08T00:16:00.000-08:00

President's Accounts of Gains Depict Only Part of the Picture

President Bush on Wednesday cited a teaching hospital in Najaf as perhaps the top example of a successful rebuilding project in Iraq. Since the American-led attack against local militias leveled large portions of Najaf in August 2004, however, the hospital has been most notable as a place where claims of success have fallen far short of reality.

During two visits to the hospital by reporters for The New York Times over the past year, the most recent in late summer, work on refurbishing it had been limited to largely cosmetic work like new ceilings and lighting and fresh paint. Critical medical equipment was missing and the upper floors remained a chaotic mess.

Numerous Iraqis at the site said the hospital had not been ruined by the militia that occupied it during the 2004 fighting, but instead by looters who entered after the American military left it unguarded after the battle.

American officials in charge of the project said $2 million had been spent on the first phase of a planned two-phase, $12 million renovation. So it is possible that work on the second phase has addressed some of the problems at the site.

...

The hospital, named after Mr. Sadr's father, is an example of the slow pace of rebuilding. Wayne White, a former State Department official whose responsibilities included Iraq from 2003 to 2005, and who is now at the Middle East Institute, a research organization, said the American mission in Iraq was often undermined by that slow pace.

The Washington Post has a pretty good article on that subject too.

Why are we spending 14 million on an Iraqi hospital? With the Iraqis leading the job it would be much less.

Indeed we are not throwing 14 million at Iraqis. We are throwing it at Bechtel and Halliburton. The same way that 800 millions dollars were thrown at companies to do the copying for the Pentagon when the Defense Department had its own copy department and didn't want the service. These companies bribe Congress to throw all these millions their way.

No wonder Bush wants to Stay in Iraq.

There's millions more to be thrown at his buddies by doing so!

2005-12-07T22:33:00.000-08:00

Arriana on Bribing our Elected Officials

If the press were doing its job, we’d have a run of stories showing how we’ve become a banana republic -- a place where the surest way to guarantee a profitable investment is to buy a politician.

The Cunningham case is a textbook example of how the pay-to-play system works -- and a powerful advertisement for the value of graft (“It really, really works!”).

The article mostly deals with Cunningham co-conspirator number 2 (Mitch Wade) and how he bought his way into lucrative deals.

For instance, MZM was granted a $5 million contract to be the sole provider of interpreters in Iraq. That’s troubling in any language.

The ongoing war in Iraq and the war on terror guarantee that tens of billions of dollars in government contracts will be handed out to defense contractors. We need independent legislators who will keep them in check, not bought-and-paid-for stooges eager to do their bidding -- and a vigilant press corps determined to act as watchdogs for the public good.

Also see: Cunningham only the tip of the Iceberg in bribery

2005-12-07T22:17:00.000-08:00

Two ways Not To Go

Schwarzenegger vs Bush. Which is better. To reinvent oneself to win votes like Schwarzenegger or to never change a thing like Bush.

Harold Meyerson says their needs to be a third way.

That said, I'm not sure what upsets me more -- Schwarzenegger's makeover or Bush's obdurate refusal to change anything. Representative democracy requires some consistency of identity in our elected officials, and Arnold has become a blur of reinvention. The most corporeal figure in American political history has crossed the line from particle to wave, while our president is as steadfast, and as open to experience, as a bump on a log.

Agreed, Sir.

2005-12-07T21:01:00.000-08:00

New York Times reports that wife explicitly said that man was bipolar and hadn't taken his medicine.

An analysis this year by the Treatment Advocacy Center, a nonprofit group in Virginia, found that mentally ill people were four times more likely than members of the general public to be killed by the police.

In Maitland, a middle-class suburb of Orlando, neighbors of Mr. Alpizar described him as quiet and friendly and said he never acted erratically. The one-story home he shared with his wife, Anne Buechner, was white brick with a red door and shutters and a Christmas wreath.

One neighbor, Louis Gunther, said Ms. Buechner was a social worker and that Mr. Alpizar had worked at a Home Depot in Orlando. He said the couple had gone out of town to work with a church group. Ms. Buechner works for the Council on Quality and Leadership, a national advocacy group for the disabled and mentally ill.

Janice Tweedie, a widow who knew the couple, said Mr. Alpizar used to help her in her yard and share electricity with her during hurricanes. She called the shooting "a huge mistake...

BTW, a little while ago there was a report saying GAO: Congress nixed costly terror training

Efforts to train thousands of federal agents to protect commercial flights during heightened terror alerts were quietly abandoned more than a year ago because Congress objected to the cost, government investigators said Tuesday.

The Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, reported that the federal air marshal service suspended its efforts to develop such a "surge capacity" by training customs and immigration agents to protect passenger airliners.

Airline Passenger Who Made Threat Killed

2005-12-07T20:23:00.000-08:00

Democrats Fear Backlash at Polls for Antiwar Remarks

Yeah, lets focus on some inner party discussion, picking up any comment you can find that might make the Democrats look a little weak.

Thanks for proving whom you work for WashPo writers. You work for the rich and the corporations that pass you your big checks.

While your vaunted holiness of a Mainstream Newspaper ignores a huge system to funnel money from the US taxpayer to RNC candidates' coffers.

The Washington Post is like the girl with the curl.

2005-12-07T20:01:00.000-08:00

Jurors at Moussaoui Trial Might See All 9/11 Victims' Photos

Federal prosecutors revealed their strategy yesterday for introducing the testimony of Sept. 11 victims at the death penalty trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, saying they intend to display in court the name and photograph of every person killed in the terrorist assaults.

The government plans to tell in detail the stories of 45 victims through testimony from family members and people injured in the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, prosecutors said in a filing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria.

Hmmm... Interesting idea.

Now if only the lying Bush administration would help us collect the stories of the over 2500 Americans and 100k Iraqis killed in our little excursion over there. How so a so joined because he or she needed an education, wanted to get a decent career, or needed money and now they are dead as old dinosaur bones so Halliburton could make more money.

BTW is anyone else as tired of the president's campaign to make himself look good as I am?

Just think, this time -- because there is no election -- the American taxpayer pays for all of that. What a Scam!

2005-12-07T13:13:00.000-08:00

Shades of London

Interesting story. And happens just when the Bush administration needed something to cover up the massive effort to siphon hundred of millions of dollars from the American taxpayer to Republican canidates which started after the Rs took control of Congress.

I'll be waiting for a few days to see what the real story is.

Then again the real story may be that a mentally ill person made a threat and the Marshalls shot him.

For most he's someone they've never met.

No big deal.

Lets all praise Bush.

Airline Passenger Who Made Threat Killed

2005-12-07T10:36:00.000-08:00

Bush and Blair picked apart by Harold Pinter

Literature Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter slams US UK in acceptance speech

On Wednesday his lecture, entitled Art, Truth and Politics, studied the importance of truth in art before decrying its perceived absence in politics.

He said politicians feel it is "essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives".

...

Pinter said that since World War II the US government "supported and in many cases engendered every right-wing military dictatorship in the world".

"I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador and, of course, Chile."

Rest at link above.

Pinter gave speech on tape as he is was admitted to the hospital this week.

2005-12-07T10:09:00.000-08:00

Ten albums out to benefit New Orleans.

This has Xmas gifts written all over it.

But this time it seems to be for the good. The good that the Bush administration is not doing for New Orleans.

Washington Post has the goods on what they're calling the 2 best.

Hitting Katrina From Two Directions

2005-12-07T10:06:00.001-08:00

Go to War for Us and you can be a citizen--maybe after you're dead though.

Very sad tale of loss and typical incompetence at link above.

I do find it sickening though that an immigrant army is being built.

Just like the foreign legion? How pre WW2! Just like much of the Bush administration.

2005-12-07T09:30:00.000-08:00

Cunningham only the tip of the Iceberg in bribery. Why is the Mainstream News Media ignoring this?

No wonder they had him roll over so quickly.

This goes way beyond Cunningham to "Defense Contractors" that seem to be a set up to funnel money to Republican candidates.

Indeed they did seem to do some service to the US copying old Defense Department Data and digitizing it, but their 'patents' seem to be based on BS and the Defense Department didn't want their services.

Cannonfire finds all kinds of shadow companies whose employee list contributed to Republican campaign in on similar scams. Start at: Deeper into the Wilkes/MZM scandals

That report links to a San Diego Tribune article which apparently the furthest mainstream news has gotten on this Contractor 'knew how to grease the wheels' Wilkes Cunningham bribes ACDS Schwarzenegger

2005-12-07T00:26:00.000-08:00

It's Definitely 1984 Now

I think the Orwell book is the radical right's real Bible.

Last year it was bad to commit the sin of decorating for Christmas. All that glitter and junk.

Poor Laura who can't win for losing spent 6 months decorating for Christmas in 2004 and then it was bad form.

This year they send out "Holiday Cards" and they are evil thingies for not calling them Christmas Cards.

And the Congressional Tree must be a Christmas Tree.

Talk about Theocracy.

It is funny to see the right wingers in DC try to keep dancing to a new tune every time the Religious Right decides to change it.

Well, it would be funny if it weren't heading us to a "Christian" dictatorship.

'Holiday' Cards Ring Hollow for Some on Bushes' List

2005-12-06T21:29:00.000-08:00

Rummy Invested to $18 million in Tamiflu Company

With no vaccine in sight, the U.S. government, along with others, is belatedly stocking up on Tamiflu, a drug that supposedly offers some defense against bird flu. But last week Japanese newspapers told how children who were administered Tamiflu went mad and tried to kill themselves by jumping out of windows. In a cautionary statement the FDA noted 12 deaths among children, and said there are reports of psychiatric disturbances, including hallucinations, along with heart and lung disorders. Roche, the manufacturer, is quoted by the BBC as stating that the rate of deaths and psychiatric problems is no higher among those taking its medication than among those with flu. The company is increasing Tamiflu production to 300 million doses a year to meet demand.

here are other reasons people are leery of Tamiflu. Given the rip-offs in Iraq and after the hurricanes, people are understandably interested in knowing just who is going to get rich off the plague. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, himself former CEO of drug company Searle, currently owns stock in the one company that owns Tamiflu patents—to the tune of at least $18 million. Rumsfeld says he understands why people might question his holdings, but selling them would raise even more questions. So he is hanging on to what he's got.

Yeah, sure guy. We would all raise heck to see you drop your shares in Tamiflu before you make more millions on it.

2005-12-06T18:59:00.000-08:00

Bush to Use the Council on Foreign Relations as a pawn in his popularity wars

According to Dan Froomkin, the White House will have Bush speak in front of the Council on Foreign Relations, but breaking with tradition he will not have to answer questions from the group.

Froomkin says (and I swear this is the last repetition of a part of the article) that the president's team is counting on the dignity of the body to make sure the audience gives a standing ovation because of their respect for the office.

If you ever wondered what would happen to the United States if there were a presidential team totally focused on just keeping in power (and of course handing the reins of real power to the rich and big business). Well, now we have it.

If you read about Hitler and Mussolini you find the immense focus on keeping oneself popular of those fascist leaders too.

A couple of years ago Sen. John Warner said the despots depend on wars and fears to keep their people in line. Funny, but China doesn't have a war on, and we do.