November 2: Election Day 2004

Election Day 2008: News, Information and Analysis on the Presidential Race

2008-10-09T03:33:00.000-07:00

This blog has moved. Now posting here.

The Larger Shame

2005-09-06T02:25:00.000-07:00

From Nicholas Kristof's piece in today's New York Times:

"If it's shameful that we have bloated corpses on New Orleans streets, it's even more disgraceful that the infant mortality rate in America's capital is twice as high as in China's capital. That's right - the number of babies who died before their first birthdays amounted to 11.5 per thousand live births in 2002 in Washington, compared with 4.6 in Beijing.

Indeed, according to the United Nations Development Program, an African-American baby in Washington has less chance of surviving its first year than a baby born in urban parts of the state of Kerala in India.

The national infant mortality rate has risen under Mr. Bush for the first time since 1958. The U.S. ranks 43rd in the world in infant mortality, according to the C.I.A.'s World Factbook; if we could reach the level of Singapore, ranked No. 1, we would save 18,900 children's lives each year.

So in some ways the poor children evacuated from New Orleans are the lucky ones because they may now get checkups and vaccinations. But nationally, 29 percent of children had no health insurance at some point in the last 12 months, and many get neither checkups nor vaccinations."

Full column here.

It was forewarned

2005-09-05T16:51:00.000-07:00

"No one thought the levees would break"-George W. Bush

"The administration of President George W. Bush cut the 27.1 million-dollar budget requested by the Corps of Engineers for improving the levees in 2005 by more than 80 percent to 3.9 million, although Congress finally raised the grant to 5.7 million, compare to 10 million in 2001."-AFP news report

In 2002, the New Orleans newspaper reported (in eery detail) exactly what could happen if the levees broke:
Washing Away (five-part series published June 23-27 2002)

Hurricane Relief

2005-09-03T13:23:00.000-07:00

Detailed information about how to assist (donate/volunteer/etc.) victims of Hurrican Katrina can be found on Craig's List.

Poverty rate on the increase

2005-09-01T21:48:00.000-07:00

From the New York Times:

Even as the economy grew, incomes stagnated last year and the poverty rate rose, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday. It was the first time on record that household incomes failed to increase for five straight years.

The portion of Americans without health insurance remained roughly steady at 16 percent, the bureau said...

Median pretax income, $44,389, was at its lowest point since 1997, after inflation.

Though the reasons are not wholly clear, economists say technology and global trade appear to be holding down pay for many workers. The rising cost of health care benefits has also eaten into pay increases.

Full story here.

John Kerry concludes his battle on behalf of Americans with grace

2004-11-04T20:31:00.000-08:00

From John Kerry's address at Fanueil Hall:

"I promise you, that time will come. The time will come, the election will come when your work and your ballots will change the world, and it's worth fighting for.

I want to especially say to the American people in this journey, you have given me honor and the gift of listening and learning from you. I have visited your homes. I have visited your churches. I've visited your union halls. I've heard your stories, I know your struggles, I know your hopes. They're part of me now, and I will never forget you, and I'll never stop fighting for you.

You may not understand completely in what ways, but it is true when I say to you that you have taught me and you've tested me and you've lifted me up, and you made me stronger, I did my best to express my vision and my hopes for America. We worked hard, and we fought hard, and I wish that things had turned out a little differently.

But in an American election, there are no losers, because whether or not our candidates are successful, the next morning we all wake up as Americans. And that -- that is the greatest privilege and the most remarkable good fortune that can come to us on earth.

With that gift also comes obligation. We are required now to work together for the good of our country. In the days ahead, we must find common cause. We must join in common effort without remorse or recrimination, without anger or rancor. America is in need of unity and longing for a larger measure of compassion.

I hope President Bush will advance those values in the coming years. I pledge to do my part to try to bridge the partisan divide. I know this is a difficult time for my supporters, but I ask them, all of you, to join me in doing that.

Now, more than ever, with our soldiers in harm's way, we must stand together and succeed in Iraq and win the war on terror. I will also do everything in my power to ensure that my party, a proud Democratic Party, stands true to our best hopes and ideals.

I believe that what we started in this campaign will not end here. And I know our fight goes on to put America back to work and make our economy a great engine of job growth. Our fight goes on to make affordable health care an accessible right for all Americans, not a privilege. Our fight goes on to protect the environment, to achieve equality, to push the frontiers of science and discovery, and to restore America's reputation in the world. I believe that all of this will happen -- and sooner than we may think -- because we're America. And America always moves forward."

...

The end of this election also means the end of this blog. But I encourage people to remain vigilant and active. The fight for liberty and social justice is just as vital now as it ever was. The most important battles are not the high profile ones, but the ones which are done in the trenches. GET INVOLVED.

Oil prices shoot up in anticipation of Bush victory

2004-11-03T01:20:00.000-08:00

Reuters reports:

"Oil prices spiked up above $50 a barrel on Wednesday as signs of an electoral victory for President Bush raised the prospect of continued high U.S. demand and Middle East supply anxiety.

Some U.S. tallies showed Bush just one electoral vote away from reelection, helping to reverse a slide in prices this week on speculation that a win by Democrat Senator John Kerry could usher new energy policies leading to lower prices...

'A Bush administration continued in its present form would have a Department of Energy that is extremely fossil fuel-centric and, because of the focus on fossil fuels, we would expect prices to rise,' said economist Jason Schenker at Wachovia Securities."

Daily Outrage

2004-11-01T21:45:00.000-08:00

"The trickery also extends to Florida, where Republicans are running newspaper ads and distrubuting fliers placing Kerry's picture next to Yasser Arafat in an attempt to convince Jewish voters that Kerry supports the ailing Palestinian leader. On Sunday morning stickers reading 'Arafat endorses' appeared on Kerry- Edwards signs in heavily Jewish Miami Beach, though it's not clear who put them up. Kerry has a 100 percent lifetime pro-Israel approval rating from AIPAC and his website calls Arafat 'a failed leader unfit to be a partner for peace.'

These tactics aren't new. In 2002, Republican Saxby Chambliss defeated incumbent Democratic Georgia Senator Max Cleland on the strength of an ad flashing pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden before Cleland while questioning the war hero's "courage to lead" because of his procedural votes against the creation of a Department of Homeland Security. Cleland--who lost three limbs in Vietnam--supported a Democratic version that, unlike the Republican bill cited in the ad, included normal labor protection provisions for its workers."

-Ari Berman, "Misleading By Mail"

Almost

2004-11-01T21:39:00.000-08:00

"I was all set to vote for George Bush even after finding out that he wouldn't let me marry Mary Cheney if I wanted to. And when he made the pronunciation of "Lambeau Field" a campaign issue? It seemed fair. After all, he's proved that not knowing the names of foreign leaders is much less important than correctly pronouncing the homes of popular sports teams. Of course, he totally sold me with the debates: any man who explains a mystery bulge as bad tailoring is more than confident enough to take on the Euroweenies. But in the end, with the fate of the free world at stake and all, I've got to go with the guy who would admit that sending thousands of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians to their deaths to protect us from imaginary weapons was, in fact, a mistake."

- Ana Marie Cox, aka "Wonkette"

The Choice Is Yours

2004-11-01T01:11:00.000-08:00

Photo courtesy of Reuters

John Kerry made the following remarks Friday:

"In Iraq, every day, every headline, has brought fresh evidence that our Commander-in-Chief doesn’t see what’s happening -- isn’t leveling with the American people about why we went to war in Iraq…how the war is going – and has no idea how to put our policy back on track. His mistakes and misjudgments have hurt our troops, driven away allies, diverted our focus from Osama bin Laden and the real war on terror.

At home, George Bush looks at lost jobs, falling wages, and rising costs and tells struggling middle-class families that everything’s just fine. That’s because for the powerful and well-connected friends he’s spent the last four years fighting for, it really is the best economy of their lifetime. And now he’s asking us to give him another four years so that he can keep giving them more of the same.

This is George Bush’s record. But it doesn’t have to be our future...

When I’m President, I will bring other nations to our side and train Iraqis so that we can succeed and bring our troops home. As president, I will fight a tougher, smarter, more effective war on terror. We will hunt down, capture, and kill the terrorists wherever they are. I defended this country as a young man and I will defend it as president.

But I believe we need a president who can do more than one thing at a time.

America has always been driven by a powerful idea: that with hard work and good values, we can give our children a better life. Our economy, our society is built on that basic bargain: Everyone who works hard and does right should have the chance to get ahead.

Not long ago, that middle-class dream was within reach of all those willing to work for it. But this President walked away from our basic bargain – and today, America’s great middle class is in danger because this President doesn’t share your values.

With almost every choice he’s made, George Bush has given more to those who have the most at the expense of middle-class families who are working hard to get ahead.

Jobs get shipped overseas, but the companies who send them there get tax breaks.

Today, America is replacing high-paying, middle-class jobs with temporary and part-time jobs that don’t pay enough to make ends meet. But big corporations keep getting higher profits and larger tax breaks.

The middle-class is paying a larger share of the tax burden, but the wealthiest individuals making an average of $1.2 million are getting $89 billion in tax cuts.

American families are earning less but paying more.

Health care’s up 64 percent. College tuition’s up 46 percent. Medicare premiums are up 56 percent. 5 million more Americans don’t health care. 220,000 students couldn’t afford college last year. But George Bush thought it was a good idea to give Enron a $254 million tax break, the big drug companies $139 billion in windfall profits, and Halliburton a $7 billion no-bid contract. You know, as Ronald Reagan used say, facts are stubborn things.

This is George Bush’s record, but it doesn’t have to be our future. On Tuesday, we have the opportunity to make sure the American Dream touches every American heart. We can bring back good-paying jobs for middle-class families so that they don’t just get by – they get ahead. We can bring down the cost of health care and child care and tuition so that you can pay the bills and give your children the same chance at life that your parents gave you.

This can be our future.

But first we must choose.

It’s a choice between four more years of George Bush’s policy to ship jobs overseas and give tax breaks to the companies that do it -- or a President who will reward the companies that create and keep good jobs here in the United States of America.

You can choose a fresh start. And when I’m President, that’s what you’ll get.

On Tuesday, you’ll face a choice between four more years of George Bush’s giveaways to the big drug companies and the big HMOs -- or a President who will finally make health care a right, and not a privilege, for every American.

You can choose a fresh start...

On Tuesday, America faces a choice between four more years of an energy policy for big oil, of big oil, and by big oil -- or a President who finally makes America independent of Mideast oil in ten years. A choice between George Bush’s policy that just yesterday showed record profits for oil companies and record gas prices for American consumers. I believe that America should rely on our own ingenuity and innovation, not the Saudi Royal family.

You can choose a fresh start. And when I’m President, that’s what you’ll get.

I believe that the only way to do this is by coming together as One America. It is time for America to put the politics of polarization behind us. It is time to appeal to the best instincts of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents alike. It is time again for America to honor the truth that what unites us is stronger than what divides us. It is time for America to renew the faith that there is something for everyone single one of us to do – and challenges each of us to try.

My fellow Americans, running for president has been a privilege and a gift. Over two years and more, I have traveled into the communities, the homes, and the town squares of America. I have seen heartache, but I have also seen hope. I have been told stories of struggle, but in those voices there is also a sense of optimism. The people I have met understand how hard the last four years have been, but they know in their hearts that if we believe in ourselves, America’s best days are ahead of us.

Our choice could not be clearer. And the stakes could not be higher."

LA Times: "A Failed Presidency"

2004-11-01T01:01:00.000-08:00

Joining most of the major newspapers in the country, the Los Angeles Times endorsed John Kerry.

The staff writes:

"If elections were solely a job performance review, President George W. Bush would lose in a landslide. He has been a reckless steward of the nation's finances and its environment, a divisive figure at home and abroad. It's fair to say that Bush has devalued the American brand in the global marketplace.

What keeps this a close race is voter discomfort with Sen. John F. Kerry and the success of Republicans in stoking concerns about Kerry's fitness for office. But the thrust of the Bush campaign message — essentially, you are stuck with me in this frightful time because the other guy is too unreliable — is a tacit acknowledgment that he can't allow the election to be a referendum on his record...

Try to imagine Franklin D. Roosevelt being so disdainful of government while trying to rally the nation during World War II. It wouldn't have worked. Nor would it have worked if he had starved the Treasury of the resources needed to accomplish the mission. That is what Bush has done with his reckless tax cuts and unabated domestic spending.

In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the White House initially opposed the move to federalize airport security. Bush was also against creating the Department of Homeland Security, until he realized he was going to lose that fight too. Often forgotten, these were revealing moments...

The Bush years have been a Vegas-style all-you-can-eat buffet for special and not-so-special interests. He is the first president in more than a century not to veto a single piece of legislation, and in the ensuing anything-goes environment, even recent legislation meant to end export subsidies declared illegal by the World Trade Organization somehow degenerated into a $140-billion corporate welfare program."

Full story here.

Dirty dealings by the Republican Majority Leader

2004-10-31T23:56:00.000-08:00

"House Majority leader Tom DeLay is not a physically imposing man. 'Five-foot-seven if he's wearing high heels,' in the words of Fort Bend County sheriff Milton Wright, whom DeLay once spent $70,000 to defeat in an election because the sheriff had hired a woman whose husband had sued DeLay. Yet in the decade since Republicans took control of the U.S. House of Representatives, the former exterminator from suburban Houston has achieved the political stature of the historical giants in Statuary Hall outside his Capitol office. He did it on his own, consolidating his political power and using it with a remarkable sense of purpose.

DeLay's rapid ascent has been the result of more than hard work and a keen understanding of politics. He became majority whip and then majority leader by raising massive sums of money -- a total of $12.6 million between 2000 and 2002 alone -- and by strategically spending it on Republican candidates, in effect buying the loyalty of his colleagues. He has domesticated K Street, demanding loyalty and contributions from lobbyists in return for favorable treatment. And all along the way, he has strained, reinterpreted, and sometimes simply side-stepped ethics regulations in Washington and even in his home state of Texas, which has some of the nation's loosest campaign finance laws.

Now, three separate sets of state and federal investigators are looking into whether DeLay and his associates may have finally crossed the line. They are trying to determine how the majority leader's interlocking political action committees (PACs) work in concert with his protégés in the lobbying industry -- a fundraising apparatus the Washington press corps refers to as "DeLay Inc." They are also considering allegations that this elaborate operation broke state and federal laws -- allegations that have prompted DeLay to hire criminal defense attorneys and raise money for a legal defense fund.

-Lou Dubose, "Justice DeLayed"

Full story here.

Under the Radar

2004-10-31T23:51:00.000-08:00

Justin Scheck writes in Mother Jones:

"[W]ith the public focused on terrorism, war, taxes and healthcare, a small group of government officials and oil executives has seized the moment to close in on a deal to open one of Alaska's biggest wildlife refuges to oil drilling.

Government scientists, environmentalists, and Native Americans in the area say the arrangement -- which has the support of Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens and which won preliminary approval last week from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service -- will be a precedent-setting erosion of historic environmental protections of Alaska wildlands, and could open the way to widespread oil exploration in the nation's wildest places, starting with the 9 million-acre Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge.

For two decades, the debate over drilling in Alaska has focused on the Arctic Refuge. Drilling there would require congressional approval and victory over a formidable array of opponents from more than a dozen well-organized environmental groups. But Alaska's 16 other wildlife refuges have no congressional drilling ban; rather, they have been protected from new oil activity for 30 years by an administrative rule that can be lifted at any time. In recent years, oil companies have taken aim at reserves in these other refuges, and they seem to have hit their target in Yukon Flats, a swath of wetlands and forest that borders the Arctic Refuge's southern boundary and that is home to salmon, waterfowl, caribou and moose, among other species."

Full story here.

Higher prices at the pump give oil companies record profits

2004-10-31T21:03:00.000-08:00

The Miami Herald reported Thursday:

Exxon Mobil (XOM), the world's largest publicly traded oil company, reported record third-quarter profits and may be headed for all-time marks for annual revenue and earnings, thanks to higher prices for oil and natural gas.

The company said it earned $5.68 billion, or 88 cents per share, in the third quarter, compared with $3.65 billion, or 55 cents per share, a year earlier. The company said it would have earned $6.23 billion in the recent quarter after excluding a $550 million charge to cover the cost of a class-action lawsuit by gas station dealers.

The Independent reported Wednesday:

BP forecast yesterday that oil prices would continue to exceed $30 a barrel for the next few years as it reported a 43 per cent jump in quarterly net profits to $3.9bn (£2.2bn), or £1m an hour.

The underlying profit was $3.5bn, before exceptional items, for the third quarter of the year, the highest underlying quarterly profit the company has ever produced. For the first nine months of the year the $12.6bn profit is another record for the oil giant, up 26 per cent on the period last year.

The company is on course to make nearly $17bn for the full year. Oil prices have hit new records, on a weekly or even daily basis, for much of this year, to exceed $50 a barrel.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

"With oil above $51 a barrel, the oil giants have a problem lots of companies only dream about: What to do with all the cash?

The seven largest Western oil companies are expected to generate $71.3 billion in free cash this year - and that is after funding $78.1 billion in spending for new oil and natural-gas projects, according to John S. Herold Inc., an oil consulting firm.

To put that in perspective, the new 'seven sisters,' a term for the largest Western oil companies, could band together and buy eBay Inc. at today's share prices and still have some $6 billion in pocket change. By itself, Exxon Mobil Corp., which will generate an estimated $22.5 billion in cash this year, could snap up Apple Computer Inc.

Expatica reports:

"Oil and fuel giant Royal Dutch/Shell unveiled a 70 percent jump in third quarter profits Thursday and announced plans to merge into one company that will be run from the Netherlands.

Shell reported net profit for the third quarter of this year on a current cost of supply basis at EUR 4.4 billion compared with EUR 2.59 billion in the same period last year."

Reuters reported Friday:

"Sinopec Corp. Asia's largest refiner, said on Friday its third-quarter net profit soared 62 percent to a record high thanks to soaring global oil prices and booming Chinese demand for chemicals and gasoline.

The results at Beijing-controlled Sinopec topped market forecasts, and the company said it was upbeat on its outlook given continued strong demand in energy-hungry China."

The Olympian reports:

"At the same time, the industry's extraordinary gains are putting a dent in the finances of families and businesses.

U.S. consumers are expected to pay $40 billion more this year just to heat their homes and fuel their cars and trucks.

As for corporate America, perhaps no other sector has been hit as hard as the airline industry.

The seven largest U.S. carriers reported more than $1.3 billion in combined net losses for the third quarter as soaring jet fuel bills undermined carriers' best efforts to reduce expenses. "

The Independent again:

"The superheated US election campaign enters its final weekend with Democrats pounding George Bush on the missing 380 tons of explosives in Iraq, and over a potentially embarrassing FBI inquiry into the controversial oil services group Halliburton ú not to mention the sudden intervention last night of Osama bin Laden...

Mr Bush began the day with a speech that for once did not mention Mr Kerry by name, as his strategists aim to give a more forward-looking, upbeat flavour to his message after weeks of pouring scorn and insult on the challenger.

But, even before the emergence of the video message by the al-Qa'ida leader, events are putting the Bush campaign on the back foot. It emerged yesterday that the FBI is investigating possible violations of military procurement rules by the Pentagon, over the award of contracts to repair Iraqi oil fields to Halliburton, formerly headed by the Vice-President Dick Cheney.

Mr Kerry's running mate John Edwards instantly seized on the news: "You cannot stand with Halliburton, big oil companies and the Saudi royal family, and still stand up for the American people," he told a cheering crowd in Davenport, Iowa--a swing state Mr Kerry is fighting to hold in the face of a strong Bush challenge...

The President's campaign has been caught doctoring a TV ad showing Mr Bush addressing a military audience. Simultaneously, aides were scrambling to explain away remarks by the former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani suggesting that the military, not the President, was responsible for guarding the explosives."

New comprehensive study: Global warming is having a rapid effect on environment, industry

2004-10-31T17:47:00.000-08:00

The Washington Post reports:

"The most comprehensive international assessment of Arctic climate change has concluded that Earth's upper latitudes are experiencing unprecedented increases in temperature, glacial melting and weather pattern changes, with most of those changes attributable to the human generation of greenhouse gases from automobiles, power plants and other sources.

The 144-page report is the work of a coalition of eight nations that have Arctic territories -- including the United States, which has hosted and financed the coalition's secretariat at the University of Alaska.

The findings, which reflect four years of study, confirm earlier evidence that the Arctic is warming far more quickly than the earth overall, with temperature increases in some northern regions exceeding by tenfold the average 1 degree Fahrenheit increase experienced on Earth in the past 100 years...

Those changes are already having practical impacts, including a reduction in the number of days each year that the tundra is hard enough to be driven on or drilled safely for oil. They can be expected to have even greater impact in the near future, the report predicts, in terms of agriculture, wildlife ranges for terrestrial and marine plants and animals, and global shoreline flooding because of increases in sea level caused by melting ice...

'Climate change is not something that's going to happen -- it is happening all over the Arctic,' Palsson said. 'The Arctic is sort of a bellwether' for the rest of the earth...

The Bush administration has consistently resisted calls for mandatory curbs on carbon dioxide emissions, saying that it would cost too many American jobs. A coalition headed by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) is pushing legislation that would establish a pollution trading system aimed at cutting carbon dioxide emissions to 2000 levels by 2010, but it lacks the votes for passage."

Full story here.

NASA analyst: Bush wore a device during the first debate

2004-10-31T11:22:00.000-08:00

Salon reports:

"George W. Bush tried to laugh off the bulge. 'I don't know what that is,' he said on 'Good Morning America' on Wednesday, referring to the infamous protrusion beneath his jacket during the presidential debates. 'I'm embarrassed to say it's a poorly tailored shirt.'

Dr. Robert M. Nelson, however, was not laughing. He knew the president was not telling the truth. And Nelson is neither conspiracy theorist nor midnight blogger. He's a senior research scientist for NASA and for Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and an international authority on image analysis. Currently he's engrossed in analyzing digital photos of Saturn's moon Titan, determining its shape, whether it contains craters or canyons...

Nelson stresses that he's not certain what lies beneath the president's jacket. He offers, though, 'that it could be some type of electronic device -- it's consistent with the appearance of an electronic device worn in that manner.' The image of lines coursing up and down the president's back, Nelson adds, is 'consistent with a wire or a tube.'"

Full story here.

Eminem's Mosh

2004-10-31T11:00:00.000-08:00

Eminem's new video deals with politics and the war in Iraq. The ascendence of corporate interests over the public interest can be stopped by one powerful weapon: the right to vote. "Mosh" can be viewed here.

The Guardian reports:

The video is Eminem's most directly political work. It comes as other stars, from Bruce Springsteen to Leonardo DiCaprio, take to the stump - almost exclusively for Mr Kerry.

The video was first aired on MTV on Wednesday and immediately went to the top of the channel's "hot video" charts.

In it, the rapper leads a crowd of hooded people, including a mother with an eviction notice and a soldier given orders to return to Iraq, in a march to storm a government building. Once inside, the mob remove their hoods and stand in an orderly queue to vote.

Eminem, now wearing a smart suit and red tie, declaims in a style reminiscent of Martin Luther King:

"In these closing statements, if they should argue, let us beg to differ, as we set aside our differences, and assemble our own army, to disarm this weapon of mass destruction that we call our president, for the present."

The video was made by the Guerrilla News Network, a small independent company that has produced other music videos as well as a documentary about the dangers of depleted uranium in Iraq after the US-led invasion...

The climax to the video comes as the crowd faces riot police. As images of Mr Bush and Osama bin Laden flicker on a giant screen, the rapper sings: "No more blood for oil, we got our own battles to fight on our soil/No more psychological warfare to trick us to think that we ain't loyal/If we don't serve our own country we're patronising a hero/Look in his eyes, it's all lies, the stars and stripes/They've been swiped, washed out and wiped, And replaced with his own face."

The video ends with a black screen and the words "Vote November 2".

Down to the Wire

2004-10-31T10:44:00.000-08:00

Collating a variety of polls, Slate has come to the conclusion that if the election were held today, John Kerry would pull in 272 electoral votes and George W. Bush would land 266. The Slate electoral map shows Kerry gaining momentum in Wisconsin and maintaining Hawaii. You can mull over their analysis here.

Britain's First Lady lambasts Bush over human rights record

2004-10-31T01:39:00.000-08:00

The Scotsman reports:

Cherie Blair has criticised the policies of the US President George W Bush, attacking his stance on terrorist prisoners and gay rights.

The Prime Minister’s wife was condemned by supporters of the US President, after a speech to Harvard law students which contained a stinging rebuke to Bush, while on a lecture tour of the United States.

She attacked the manner in which the White House has dealt with the human rights of UK citizens detained at the US-run Camp X-Ray prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Blair said the decision by the US Supreme Court, fiercely opposed by Bush’s government, to give legal protection to two of the Britons detained at the camp was "profoundly important" and a "significant victory for human rights and the international rule of law".

She took a sideswipe at Bush’s record on gay rights, condemning the arrest of a homosexual couple in the President’s home state of Texas, for defying a ban on gay sex. The US Supreme Court’s decision to throw out the law, which had been backed by Bush, was a "model of judicial reasoning".

AP: Presidential race is a virtual tie

2004-10-31T01:30:00.000-08:00

The Associated Press reportes:

"President Bush and Sen. John Kerry are virtually tied in the Electoral College count, fighting over eight to 10 states so close and unpredictable that anything is possible Tuesday night.

After months campaigning and a half-billion dollars spent on attack ads, Bush and Kerry are still at the whim of unexpected events such as Osama bin Laden's sudden emergence on Friday, a videotape appearance that sent both candidates scrambling to pledge victory in the fight against terrorism.

'Under normal circumstances, undecided voters break against the incumbent this late in an election. However, these are not normal circumstances. This is a time of war,' said Michigan pollster Steve Mitchell."

Film noir, or a bankrupt presidency

2004-10-31T01:21:00.001-08:00

"As George Will has pointed out, our war in Iraq has now lasted longer than America's involvement in World War I. The span from 9/11 to Election Day 2004 is only three months shy of the 41 months separating the attack on Pearl Harbor from V-E day. And still the storyline doesn't compute. Mr. Bush, having not brought back his original bad guy dead or alive, is now fond of saying that 'three-quarters of Al Qaeda leaders have been brought to justice.' Even if true, is he telling us the war on terror is three-quarters over? Al Qaeda is, by our government's own account, in 60 countries. Last time I looked we're only at war in two.

The administration tries to finesse such narrative disconnects by creating a noir mood of 'perpetual fear' - to borrow Philip Roth's totemic phrase from 'The Plot Against America' - in line with what it sees as a perpetual war. But is perpetual war any more coherent a plot line? Mr. Bush calls himself 'a war president' any chance he gets, yet he must be the first war president in history to respond to every setback with a call for new tax cuts. There isn't a person in the world, including our enemies, who doesn't know that we have fewer troops than we need, now or in perpetuity, and that we're too broke to spring for more."

-Frank Rich, New York Times

Washington Post columnist says: Impeach George W. Bush on Tuesday

2004-10-31T01:21:00.000-08:00

"Say what you will about Bill Clinton, no one died in the White House pantry.

The same cannot be said in the larger sense about George Bush. Well over 1,000 Americans and countless more Iraqis have died because the president insisted on going to war. I know I should grieve for the Iraqi dead as much as I do the Americans, but I simply don't. It is the Americans -- those names I read almost every day, the hometowns, the lives I conjure up for them, the hideous moments of death -- who would make up every one of my articles of impeachment.

My peripatetic colleague Dana Milbank recently reported on a poll showing that 72 percent of Bush's supporters believe Iraq did in fact possess weapons of mass destruction and that 75 percent believed Hussein gave al Qaeda "substantial support." These beliefs are false, in contradiction of the facts, and even Bush, when pressed, has admitted that. But these beliefs did not arise out of nowhere. They are a direct consequence of the administration's repeated lies -- lies of commission, such as Cheney's statements, and lies of omission, the appalling failure to correct wrongly held views.

Not since the Spanish-American War has the United States gone off to war so casually, so half-cocked and so ineptly. The sinking of the Maine, the casus belli for that dustup, has been replaced by missing weapons of mass destruction, and the Hearst and Pulitzer presses are now talk radio and Fox News Channel. Everything has changed. Nothing has changed. Still, though, we mourn the dead, look away from the wounded and maimed, and wonder what it was all about. We embarked, truly and regrettably, on a crusade...

If he were the CEO of some big company, the board would offer him a golden parachute -- and force him to jump. But in government, it's the people who make those decisions. We get our chance on Tuesday.

Impeach Bush.

-Richard Cohen, "Impeach Bush

Homeland Security Unit stalled by budget shortfall

2004-10-31T01:17:00.000-08:00

"A key unit of the Department of Homeland Security has slipped into a state of financial turmoil that could endanger its ability to investigate terrorists, pay informants and perform wiretaps, some department employees and officials say.

All hiring and transfers at the department's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division have been banned for two months, as have almost all training, purchases of supplies and equipment, and maintenance of vehicles. Top department officials say they are committed to protecting ICE's ability to perform investigations, but agents in the field say ICE's budget shortfall of perhaps $500 million may soon threaten its national security work."

Full story here.

The Economist endorses John Kerry

2004-10-31T01:07:00.000-08:00

The Economist, no left-wing vehicle, has endorsed John Kerry for president.

Among other things, the magazine notes:

"Today, Guantánamo Bay offers constant evidence of America's hypocrisy, evidence that is disturbing for those who sympathise with it, cause-affirming for those who hate it. This administration, which claims to be fighting for justice, the rule of law and liberty, is incarcerating hundreds of people, whether innocent or guilty, without trial or access to legal representation. The White House's proposed remedy, namely military tribunals, merely compounds the problem."

The Economist comes to this conclusion:

"Mr Bush's credibility has been considerably undermined not just by Guantánamo but also by two big things: by the sheer incompetence and hubristic thinking evident in the way in which his team set about the rebuilding of Iraq, once Saddam Hussein's regime had been toppled; and by the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, which strengthened the suspicion that the mistreatment or even torture of prisoners was being condoned...

John Kerry says the war was a mistake, which is unfortunate if he is to be commander-in-chief of the soldiers charged with fighting it. But his plan for the next phase in Iraq is identical to Mr Bush's, which speaks well of his judgment. He has been forthright about the need to win in Iraq, rather than simply to get out, and will stand a chance of making a fresh start in the Israel-Palestine conflict and (though with even greater difficulty) with Iran. After three necessarily tumultuous and transformative years, this is a time for consolidation, for discipline and for repairing America's moral and practical authority. Furthermore, as Mr Bush has often said, there is a need in life for accountability. He has refused to impose it himself, and so voters should, in our view, impose it on him, given a viable alternative. John Kerry, for all the doubts about him, would be in a better position to carry on with America's great tasks."

Bush administration passed up chance to nail Zarqawi in 2002

2004-10-30T23:58:00.000-07:00

From The New Republic:

"Abu Musab Al Zarqawi isn't just a Jordanian jihadist adept at slaughtering Iraqis and American troops. In the hands of President Bush, he has become a shorthand rebuttal to John Kerry's argument that the Iraq war has been a diversion from the fight against Al Qaeda: 'If Zarqawi and his associates were not busy fighting American forces in Iraq, does my opponent think they would be peaceful citizens of the world? Does he think they'd be opening a small business somewhere?'

But Zarqawi should really be a metaphor for something else: gross cynicism about national security. As The Wall Street Journal reported this week, American officials had identified Zarqawi as a critical terrorist target in spring 2002. By June of that year, Pentagon officials had drawn up options for a strike against Zarqawi's base in Iraqi Kurdistan--only to get no response from the White House for nine months, at which point they were told to delay an attack until the war began...

National Security Council spokesman Jim Wilkinson told the Journal, 'Because there was never any real-time, actionable intelligence that placed Zarqawi at [his camp], action taken against the facility would have been ineffective.' Too bad the uniformed military doesn't agree. Retired General John Keane, then the Army's vice chief of staff, claims that Zarqawi's base was 'one of the best targets we ever had.' By the time American forces eventually struck, Zarqawi and his fighters had fled. It's hard to imagine what could be more cynical than Bush using Zarqawi's presence in Iraq to bolster his case for reelection after letting the terrorist go free in the interest of presenting an uncomplicated (and invalid) case for invading Iraq. But, if Bush is reelected, we'll probably find out. "

No retreat, no surrender

2004-10-29T21:38:00.000-07:00

Photo courtesy of AP

"Facing crowds flowing five blocks deep, rocker Bruce Springsteen offered a passionate, and often poetic, pitch Thursday for the election of John F. Kerry, a fellow guitar-playing Democrat.

As he softly strummed his acoustic guitar on a picturesque autumn day here, Springsteen brought 80,000 Wisconsinites to an emotional crescendo with a lyrical call for social fairness, altruism and a Tuesday defeat of President Bush. It was vintage Springsteen, from the heart and distinctly heartland in its simplicity and touch.

'I believe the essential ideas of American identity are what's at stake on November 2,' he said, as red and yellow leaves sprinkled from the tree branches. Health care. Decent wages. Helping the homeless. 'A sane and responsible foreign policy,' the rocker said. 'Paul Wellstone, a great Minnesota senator, said the future is for the passionate. . . . The future is now, and it's time to let your passions loose.'

It was one of the most remarkable scenes of the campaign season, as college kids and old folks, disabled people and local luminaries crammed a straight stretch of West Washington Avenue ending at the steps of the state Capitol in the distance..."

-Jim VandeHei, Washington Post

Full story here.

Bush's campaign admits it doctored campaign ad, filled background with soldiers

2004-10-29T06:28:00.000-07:00

Reuters News Service reports:

"President Bush 's campaign acknowledged on Thursday that a television ad depicting soldiers listening to Bush speak had been doctored so that some of the faces of the soldiers appear more than once.

Released five days before Election Day, the ad was called, 'Whatever It Takes' and had been touted by Bush advisers as a personal message from the president talking about the war on terror.

It depicts Bush talking of his meetings with family members of fallen soldiers and saying the 'hardest decision' he faced was the one to send soldiers into battle.

It then shows clips of people apparently listening to the president, including a crowd of soldiers. But some of the faces appear more than once in the image, which flashes across the screen as Bush vows to 'never relent in defending America, whatever it takes."'

Full story here.

FBI launches criminal investigation of Halliburton contracts

2004-10-29T06:26:00.000-07:00

The Associated Press reports:

"The FBI has begun investigating whether the U.S. Defence Department improperly awarded no-bid contracts to Halliburton Co., seeking an interview with a top army contracting officer and collecting documents from several government offices.

The line of inquiry expands an earlier FBI investigation into whether Halliburton overcharged taxpayers for fuel in Iraq and it elevates to a criminal matter the election-year question of whether the U.S. administration showed favouritism to Vice-President Dick Cheney's former company."

Full story here.

Videotape shows G.I.'s at weapons cache after fall of Saddam

2004-10-28T19:27:00.000-07:00

Republicans and Pentagon officials have been all over the TV screens this week contending that a highly controversial cache of high-powered explosives was no longer at Al Qaqaa when American troops entered Baghdad. A videotape contradicts them.

The New York Times reports:

"A videotape made by a television crew with American troops when they opened bunkers at a sprawling Iraqi munitions complex south of Baghdad shows a huge supply of explosives still there nine days after the fall of Saddam Hussein, apparently including some sealed earlier by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The tape, broadcast on Wednesday night by the ABC affiliate in Minneapolis, appeared to confirm a warning given earlier this month to the agency by Iraqi officials, who said that hundreds of tons of high-grade explosives, powerful enough to bring down buildings or detonate nuclear weapons, had vanished from the site after the invasion of Iraq.

The question of whether the material was removed by Mr. Hussein's forces in the days before the invasion, or looted later because it was unguarded, has become a heated dispute on the campaign trail, with Senator John Kerry accusing President Bush of incompetence, and Mr. Bush saying it is unclear when the material disappeared and rejecting what he calls Mr. Kerry's "wild charges."

Weapons experts familiar with the work of the international inspectors in Iraq say the videotape appears identical to photographs that the inspectors took of the explosives, which were put under seal before the war. One frame shows what the experts say is a seal, with narrow wires that would have to be broken if anyone entered through the main door of the bunker."

Full story here.

Leading Republican: for health security, John Kerry has the better plan

2004-10-28T19:02:00.000-07:00

Former Sen. David Durenberger writes in the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

The presidential candidates are debating whether Iraq or the economy is headed in the right direction, but no one can dispute that the health care trend line is going in the wrong direction.

With 5 million more uninsured Americans, bringing the total to 45 million (including a 12 percent increase in uninsured Minnesotans in the last year), family insurance premiums up more than $3,500 (including a 59 percent jump in Minnesota), prescription drug costs up over 70 percent, and businesses struggling to afford health care and stay competitive, there can be no doubt that we need to change our policy course.

Regardless of how voters view the candidates on all other issues, it is clear that the future of health care costs for Minnesotans has already been determined by President Bush's record of accomplishment. As a Republican, with some experience, I sincerely regret having to say the record over the last four years and the prescription for reform the president is proposing give me little confidence that this most challenging of all domestic priorities will be adequately addressed over the next four years.

His Medicare Modernization Act enhances access to prescription drugs for low-income, high-need seniors. It authorizes demonstrations to identify quality of care and chronic care management. But it all comes at a price neither taxpayers nor Medicare beneficiaries will be able to afford.

Drug companies have inflated prices from which "discounts" are derived and the Republican Congress has protected the drug companies from the price competition that Medicare applies to doctors, hospitals, and home health, dialysis and other care providers. President Bush and the GOP Congress have placed the future of Medicare in the hands of America's big health insurance plans and, again, protected them from the reality of competition with a guarantee of up to 123 percent higher payments than traditional Medicare.

The costs of all this will be borne not by those who profit most from health insurance or services, but by seniors and disabled Minnesotans whose Medicare premiums were increased 14 percent this year and will be 17 percent next year. With a budget deficit of more than $400 billion a year, that Medicare premium can only rise faster in the future. Plus, those of us working past age 64 will pay up to 80 percent of the costs to us of a Medicare program we have funded out of family income for the last 38 years.

President Bush's embrace of Health Savings Accounts would make little dent in the uninsured or in overall cost growth, but they would cut benefits and shift costs to workers. His Association Health Plans -- which are designed to pool certain businesses together and permit them to avoid most state consumer protection insurance laws -- would simply attract businesses with younger, healthier workers at the expense of others. His underfunded individual tax credits to be used in the fatally flawed and discriminatory individual market would -- like his other approaches -- undermine and weaken employer-based coverage and make it even more difficult to find insurance coverage for the least healthy among us.

The president constantly refers to Sen. John Kerry's health reform proposals as "big government." Not true. As one deeply involved in developing alternatives to President Bill Clinton's reform proposals, I must say that what Kerry proposes today for coverage expansion is in line with what mainstream Republican senators like Jack Danforth, John Chafee and I, working with Democrats like Bill Bradley, John Breaux and Kent Conrad, tried to accomplish in 1994.

Indeed, the Kerry plan appears designed to be responsive to those most in need -- people forced out of health care coverage by premium cost increases -- without being disruptive.

By providing employers and health plans with financial relief from catastrophic expenses, it should stabilize and make more affordable the employer-based insurance market. It opens up programs like the Congress' own Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan (FEHBP) and the Children's Health Insurance Program, and provides new private health insurance options -- not mandates -- for the uninsured.

By providing extra tax breaks for vulnerable groups like 55-to-64-year-olds, workers in between jobs, and small businesses, it ensures that health care is made even more affordable.

While far from perfect, it both builds on and learns from the past and takes us in a long-overdue new direction.

In this election people are making decisions on the basis of the candidates' stands on many issues. I have access to all of the health care I need through both FEHBP and Medicare. Like many Republicans, though, I believe our national goal is access for all, not just some.

For people who cannot afford the health insurance they need, for people whose access to care is threatened, the issue of which presidential candidate is most likely to come to their aid is their most important national security issue. It is the national security position on which President Bush and Sen. Kerry differ most and the one on which Kerry has the clearer vision for restoring security to all Americans.

David Durenberger, who was a U.S. senator from 1978 to 1995, is chair of the National Institute of Health Policy at the University of St. Thomas College of Business.

The Bush police state

2004-10-27T23:13:00.000-07:00

"If this were a dictatorship it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
-George W. Bush

The Washington Post reports:

"As Bush has traveled the United States during this political campaign, the Secret Service and local police have often handled public protest by quickly arresting or removing demonstrators, free-speech advocates say. In addition, access to Bush's events has been unusually tightly controlled and people who do not support Bush's reelection have been removed.

Although it's impossible to precisely measure the tactics in comparison with previous campaigns, civil liberties advocates and other experts say the treatment of dissenters is harsher this year. Several dozen protest-related arrests have been reported in recent months, in addition to the 1,800 made outside the Republican National Convention in New York, and the American Civil Liberties Union says that scores of other people have been evicted or denied entry to Bush campaign events...

Alex Vitale, a sociology professor at Brooklyn College who studies police behavior at political protests, argues that the United States has not seen such tactics during protests since the Vietnam War era.

'This seems to be on a new level from what we've seen from past administrations,' Vitale said. 'It's clear that some of these security zones are not based on legitimate security concerns. They are based on the idea of the president not seeing someone who disagrees with him, which basically undermines the whole idea of the First Amendment.'

Tickets to Bush events, distributed by the Republican Party, go only to those who volunteer or donate to the party or, in some cases, sign an endorsement of the GOP ticket and provide names and addresses. Party workers police the crowds for signs of Kerry supporters, who are frequently evicted...

The Kerry campaign says it does not limit attendance based on political views, a point Kerry has made frequently when confronted by hecklers on the campaign trail. 'We don't base entry to our events on political affiliation,' said Kerry spokesman Phil Singer...

In September, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq was arrested at a rally for first lady Laura Bush in Hamilton Township, N.J.; she was wearing a T-shirt that said 'President Bush you killed my son.' The charges were later dropped.

Full story here.

Dick Cheney: Mad scientist or simple monster?

2004-10-27T23:05:00.000-07:00

"Dick Cheney peaked too soon. We've still got a few days left until Halloween.

It was scary enough when we thought the vice president had created his own reality for spin purposes. But if he actually believes that Iraq is "a remarkable success story,'' it's downright spooky. He's already got his persona for Sunday: he's the mad scientist in the haunted mansion, fiddling with test tubes to force the world to conform to his twisted vision.

After 9/11, Mr. Cheney swirled his big black cape and hunkered down in his undisclosed dungeon, reading books about smallpox and plague and worst-case terrorist scenarios. His ghoulish imagination ran wild, and he dragged the untested president and jittery country into his house of horrors, painting a gory picture of how Iraq could let fearsome munitions fall into the hands of evildoers.

He yanked America into war to preclude that chilling bloodbath. But in a spine-tingling switch, the administration's misbegotten invasion of Iraq has let fearsome munitions fall into the hands of evildoers. It's also forged the links between Al Qaeda and the Sunni Baathists that Mr. Cheney and his crazy-eyed Igors at the Pentagon had fantasized about to justify their hunger to remake the Middle East."

-Maureen Dowd

Trying to make a difference

2004-10-27T22:59:00.000-07:00

Cindy Sheehan writes on CommonDreams.org:

"I flew into Florida on October 19th not knowing what to expect or what I would find here. I have found a rich dichotomy of ideas and political theologies. I have been called names and praised as a brave patriot. I have had people look at the picture of my son, Spc. Casey Sheehan, KIA, Sadr City, Baghdad, age 24, and weep for my pain and for the tragedy of my sons death. On the other hand I have had people smirk for the shamefulness of me being out here campaigning against a President who they think is strong on terror and is pro-life. These people who smirk also won't look at Casey's picture. They don't want to put a face on this senseless war that they support.

My brave, honest, and sweet son was sent to an unjust war by a cowardly, lying, draft-dodger. Casey didn't have to go to Iraq, he re-enlisted and he told me 'Mom, I can't let my buddies go over there without me. This is what we train for, I'll be okay. The sooner I get there the sooner I'll be home.' Well my gentle and kind boy came home 2 short weeks after arriving in Iraq in a flag draped coffin.

Mr. Bush lied to the world, the country, my family and my son. He told us that Saddam was an imminent threat to the United State with his vast stockpile of nuclear weapons. He lied to us and told us that there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden. He lied to my son when he told him that he would be welcomed to Baghdad as a conquering hero with flowers and chocolates. Casey was welcomed there with bullets and rpg's.

Republicans here in Florida will invariably tell me that my son 'volunteered' to go to this war. They never (with one exception: 10-year-old Tanner in Pensacola) express any kind of sympathy or compassion. They are correct in the fact that my son did enlist and re-enlist in the Army. He loved being a soldier and he loved his buddies. He was a good soldier and he volunteered for the dangerous mission that he was killed on. He was a trusting person who trusted his Commander-in-Chief to use his troops with great care: to only send them in harm's way if there was a clear and present danger to our country. This Commander-in-Chief has misused and abused his position of authority to put our troops in a preemptive war that had no basis in reality. Bush exploited Casey's sense of duty and honor and sent him to a war that is the beginning of middle-eastern domination and huge profiteering from Bush's cronies. Yesterday, I was protesting at a rally where Dick Cheney said that 'Iraq has been a remarkable success story.' It sure has been for Halliburton, Chiron, Exxon, Osama Bin Laden, Moqtada al-Sadr, Ayad Allawi, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Israel. I guess he doesn't have to elaborate on what kind of successes he was talking about.

I came to Florida to help to try and make a difference in this election. I have been up and down the state doing interviews in every available medium and protests and peace marches in every city I have stayed in. I came out from California to follow up on a commercial that I did for RealVoices.org and that was run nationally in swing states by MoveOn.org. I have left my home and family to try and make the world a better place like Casey did. I can't face another four years of this man who has devastated our world and my family. If I don't get out and do everything possible, I wouldn't be able to look myself, or my other three children, in the face..."

Full story here.

Iraq ranks 148th in the world in press freedom

2004-10-27T22:47:00.000-07:00

Scott Peterson writes in the Christian Science Monitor:

Forty-four journalists have been killed in Iraq since March 2003, making the country the deadliest in the world for the profession, according to a report by Reporters Without Borders released Tuesday. Overall, the country ranked 148th in the world for press freedom.

For Iraqis, it's been a tough transformation after decades of control under Saddam Hussein.

Back then, the word "journalist" hardly applied to members of the media here. Their daily diet was Saddam Hussein, again and again.

"It's a big jump from four newspapers - each one a copy of the other, designed in the office of Saddam Hussein - to 120 papers," says Zuhair al-Jizary, a novelist and editor of Al-Mada newspaper, who lived outside Iraq for more than 20 years.

"The language has completely changed. Now we have complete freedom of the press," he says. "I can criticize the US, and every day I criticize their behavior and military operations without hesitation."

"But I can't trust that this freedom will carry on for a long time," says Jizary, noting pressure from security officials and the interior ministry. "These people have no common language with the press, hide the facts, and limit [news] sources."

Beside getting short shrift from officials in Iraq, local journalists and photographers - while at least able to get to the scene of an attack - find they are frequently prevented from working by Iraqi police or US forces.

Full story here.

Republicans critical of get-out-the-vote campaign

2004-10-27T22:41:00.000-07:00

The Associated Press reported earlier today:

"Republicans are criticizing a Wisconsin get-out-the-vote campaign involving public school students, saying Democrats are exploiting the students for political gain.

Young people in the program organized by the Wisconsin Citizen Action Fund take time from regular classes to go door to door in minority neighborhoods and areas with historically low voter turnout, urging people to cast ballots.

The students, ranging in age from 11 to 18, also use phone banks to call homes and urge people to vote.

Chris Lato, spokesman for the state Republican Party, called the program 'a disgraceful use of taxpayer money.'"

The Milwaukee public school get-out-the-vote campaign was cancelled tonight.

More reliable than the Swift Boat Veterans... Wolfpacks for Truth

2004-10-25T22:39:00.000-07:00

Wolfpacks for Truth... clearly some people have a lot of time on their hands.

380 tons of high-power explosives left unguarded, now missing

2004-10-25T22:26:00.000-07:00

"The White House acknowledged Monday that nearly 380 tons of powerful explosives are missing from a weapons facility that American forces failed to guard following the U.S. invasion of Iraq, raising fears that the weapons could be given to terrorists or used for attacks against troops in Iraq.

U.S. officials say the explosives -- which are powerful enough to detonate a nuclear bomb -- may have been looted from one of Saddam Hussein's bomb-making plants when U.S. military forces were working to pacify Baghdad and other restive cities .

The White House officials downplayed the significance of the missing explosives. Coming eight days before a hotly contested presidential election, the disclosure reverberated through the political campaign, with Democratic nominee Sen. John F. Kerry calling it one of President Bush's 'great blunders' in Iraq...

Iraqi officials reported to the International Atomic Energy Agency -- the U.N. monitoring group -- earlier this month that the explosives were looted after April 9, 2003, when U.S. forces entered Baghdad. IAEA officials verified the explosives were still at the site and under seal in January 2003, the last time the inspectors were there.

The IAEA had been monitoring the material -- known as HMX and RDX -- as part of the U.N. inspections program following the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

The agency had issued numerous warnings about the explosives falling into the wrong hands, before and after the U.S. invasion. Pentagon officials said that while U.S. troops searched the facility on several occasions during and after the invasion, the facility was not high on U.S. commanders' list of key sites to guard because survey teams found no nuclear or biological weapons at Al Qaqaa, a collection of 87 buildings and underground bunkers 30 miles south of Baghdad.

Asked if U.S. troops were ever ordered to guard the facility, where Saddam built conventional warheads and where the IAEA dismantled parts of his nuclear program after the Gulf War, one Defense official responded, 'Not that I'm aware of.'"

- Los Angeles Times

Full story here.

Bush relatives support John Kerry for president

2004-10-25T18:10:00.000-07:00

Gersh Kuntzman writes in a web article for Newsweek.com:

"George W. Bush should not be re-elected because he lied to the American people, has presided over record deficits, has removed scores of environmental regulations and is incapable of rethinking his positions even when confronted by new information.

But for once, don’t take it from me. Take it from his second cousin. 'He’s guided by an extreme narrow-mindedness and an inability to consider the full depth of an issue,' says Chris House, whose grandmother, Mary House, was a sister of the president’s grandfather, Prescott Bush. That makes him the president’s second cousin twice removed—although he’ll settle for removing the president just once. 'He may be a relative of mine, but nowhere in my side of the family do you see that sense of entitlement that he has,' says House, who lives in Olympia, Wash. 'He just projects this feeling that this job belongs to him and that he can do whatever he wants.'

House is one of six members of his branch of the family that set up a Web site—bushrelativesforkerry.com—to help spread the news that not everyone in the Bush clan supports the president."

Full story here.

Army to face new investigation related to Halliburton deals

2004-10-24T23:47:00.000-07:00

From the Associated Press:

"The Army has agreed to a Pentagon investigation into claims by a top contracting official that a Halliburton subsidiary unfairly won no-bid contracts worth billions of dollars for work in Iraq and the Balkans, according to Army documents obtained Sunday.

The complaint alleges that the award of contracts to KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary, without competition to restore Iraq's oil industry and to supply and feed U.S. troops in the Balkans puts at risk 'the integrity of the federal contracting program as it relates to a major defense contractor.'

It also asks protection from retaliation for the whistle-blower, Bunnatine Greenhouse, chief contracting officer of the Army Corps of Engineers.

The Iraq contract with Halliburton has been a focus of the presidential campaign because of Vice President Dick Cheney's past ties to the company. Cheney was chief executive officer of Halliburton and continues to receive deferred compensation from the company...

The Iraq contract was awarded in February 2003, less than a month before the invasion, under a clause specifying no-bid contracts in cases of 'compelling emergency.' The complaint said Greenhouse objected to the five-year term, asking why the certainty that the emergency would continue for five years. "

Full story here.

Recasting Wilderness as Open for Business

2004-10-24T23:36:00.000-07:00

"The sculpted buttes of Wild Horse Mesa, the vast escarpment of the Book Cliffs and the soaring ramparts of Upper Desolation Canyon near here have become a prime battleground in the Bush administration's campaign to curb wilderness protection throughout the country.

In 1999, the federal government acknowledged the unique character of the area, where 150 million years of the earth's geologic history unfolds and the forces of nature continue to shape the rugged landscape. The Bureau of Land Management put more than 440,000 acres off-limits to industrial development.

The protection was short-lived.

Within four years, the area was opened to oil and gas exploration. Under the Bush administration, 2.6 million acres of Utah land that had been shielded from development was suddenly open for business.

The actions were part of a sweeping policy shift by Secretary of Interior Gale A. Norton with implications far beyond Utah. Not only does the new policy cancel protection of the Utah land, it withholds the interim safeguards traditionally applied to areas with wilderness potential until Congress decides whether to make them part of the national wilderness system.

But what most distinguishes the administration's position is its claim that under applicable law the Interior Department is barred — forever — from identifying and protecting wild land the way it has for nearly 30 years..."

Story continues here.

Karl Rove: America's Mullah

2004-10-24T23:26:00.000-07:00

Photo of Rove and Bush courtesy of the AP

Karl Rove, George W. Bush's top political operative, has guided Bush to election victories in Texas and the 2000 presidential race.

Neal Gabler writes in the Los Angeles Times:

"There is no dissent in the Rove White House without reprisal.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki was retired after he disagreed with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's transformation of the Army and then testified that invading Iraq would require a U.S. deployment of 200,000 soldiers.

Chief Medicare actuary Richard Foster was threatened with termination if he revealed before the vote that the administration had seriously misrepresented the cost of its proposed prescription drug plan to get it through Congress.

Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill was peremptorily fired for questioning the wisdom of the administration's tax cuts, and former U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer III felt compelled to recant his statement that there were insufficient troops in Iraq...

Bush entered office promising to be a 'uniter, not a divider.' But Rovism is not about uniting. What Rove quickly grasped is that it's easier and more efficacious to exploit the cultural and social divide than to look for common ground. No recent administration has as eagerly played wedge issues — gay marriage, abortion, stem cell research, faith-based initiatives — to keep the nation roiling, in the pure Rovian belief that the president's conservative supporters will always be angrier and more energized than his opponents. Division, then, is not a side effect of policy; in Rovism, it is the purpose of policy...

Unwavering discipline, demonization of foes, disdain for reality and a personal sense of infallibility based on faith are the stuff of a theocracy — the president as pope or mullah and policy as religious warfare.

Boiled down, Rovism is government by jihadis in the grip of unshakable self-righteousness — ironically the force the administration says it is fighting. It imposes rather than proposes.

Rovism surreptitiously and profoundly changes our form of government, a government that has been, since its founding by children of the Enlightenment, open, accommodating, moderate and generally reasonable."

The Washington Post endorses John Kerry

2004-10-24T23:20:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post endorsed John Kerry on Sunday.

Here are some excerpts from the Post editorial:

"In Iraq, we do not fault Mr. Bush for believing, as President Clinton before him believed, that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. We supported the war and believed that the Iraqi dictator posed a challenge that had to be faced; we continue to believe that the U.S. mission to promote a representative government in Iraq has a chance to leave the United States safer and the Iraqis far better off than they were under their murderous dictator.

We do, however, fault Mr. Bush for exaggerating to the public the intelligence given him privately and for alienating allies unnecessarily. Above all, we fault him for ignoring advice to better prepare for postwar reconstruction. The damage caused by that willful indifference is incalculable. There is no guarantee that Iraq would be more peaceful today if U.S. forces had prevented postwar looting, secured arms depots, welcomed international involvement and transferred authority to Iraqis more quickly. But the chances of success would have been higher. Yet the administration repeatedly rebuffed advice to commit sufficient troops. Its disregard for the Geneva Conventions led to a prison-torture scandal in both Iraq and Afghanistan that has diminished for years, if not decades, the United States' image and influence abroad. In much of the world, in fact, U.S. prestige is at a historic low, partly because of the president's high-handed approach to allies on issues ranging far beyond Iraq.

These failings have a common source in Mr. Bush's cocksureness, his failure to seek advice from anyone outside a narrow circle and his unwillingness to expect the unexpected or adapt to new facts. These are dangerous traits in any president but especially in a wartime leader. They are matched by his failure to admit his errors or to hold senior officials accountable for theirs...

On many other issues, Mr. Kerry has the better approach. He has a workable plan to provide health insurance to more Americans; the 45 million uninsured represent a shameful abdication that appears not to have concerned Mr. Bush one whit. Where Mr. Bush ignored the dangers of climate change and favored industry at the expense of clean air and water, Mr. Kerry is a longtime and thoughtful champion of environmental protection. Mr. Bush played politics with the Constitution, as Mr. Kerry would not, by endorsing an amendment to ban gay marriage. Mr. Kerry has pledged to follow the Geneva Conventions abroad and respect civil liberties at home. A Kerry judiciary -- and the next president is likely to make a significant mark on the Supreme Court -- would be more hospitable to civil rights, abortion rights and the right to privacy.

None of these issues would bring us to vote for Mr. Kerry if he were less likely than Mr. Bush to keep the nation safe. But we believe the challenger is well equipped to guide the country in a time of danger. Mr. Kerry brings a résumé that unarguably has prepared him for high office. He understood early on the dangers of non-state actors such as al Qaeda. To pave the way for restored relations with Vietnam in the 1990s, he took on the thankless and politically risky task of convincing relatives that no American prisoners remained in Southeast Asia. While he wrongly opposed the first Persian Gulf War, he supported the use of American force in Bosnia and Kosovo. "

The full piece can be read here.

Karzai is clear winner in Afghan election

2004-10-24T23:17:00.000-07:00

From today's Washington Post

"President Hamid Karzai has won a majority of votes in Afghanistan's election, clinching a five-year term and becoming the country's first democratically elected president, according to preliminary results released Sunday.

With 94.3 percent of the votes counted, Karzai was winning 55.3 percent, or 4.2 million, of the votes cast, enough to avoid a runoff, the Joint Electoral Management Body reported. Any showing of less than 50 percent would have required a runoff between the top two vote-getters, according to the Afghan constitution. Even if all the votes that are currently uncounted went to his rivals, Karzai would still win a majority. An official announcement may be made later this week...

Tallying the votes from the Oct. 9 election has been a painstakingly slow process, as election officials said workers needed to become accustomed to the new experience of examining ballots, discerning voter intentions and counting the estimated 8 million votes cast...

The elections body had initially set Oct. 30 as the target date for finishing the vote count and announcing a decision.

While the election was relatively peaceful, despite vows by remnants of the ousted Taliban rulers to disrupt it, the counting was marred Saturday by a suicide bombing on a busy shop-lined street in Kabul that is typically frequented by foreigners. An attacker dressed as a beggar and wearing a string of six grenades detonated the explosives just after 3 p.m., killing himself, a 12-year-old Afghan girl and an American woman, identified as a 23-year-old translator and former Army reservist who lives in Uzbekistan and was visiting Kabul. Apparently three of the grenades exploded, Afghan and foreign officials said.

A purported Taliban spokesman asserted responsibility for the attack in a satellite telephone interview with Reuters in Kabul. Three Icelandic members of the International Security Assistance Force on patrol in the capital were injured in the attack, two slightly and one more seriously. The injuries were reported not to be life-threatening."

Full story here.

Nixon's EPA chief: George W. Bush is at war against the environment

2004-10-24T22:51:00.001-07:00

"We’re at war in Iraq. They tell us we’re at war against terrorism. I’d say that George W. Bush has declared war on the environment. And I think that people ought to stand up and be counted in opposition to that...

I grew up a Republican. You know, you sort of inherit these things. My great-grandfather was a Republican member of Congress during the Civil War. I certainly have always felt the Republican Party stood for conservative values.

The first National Park, Yellowstone, was created in 1872. Now that was a Republican year, right after the Civil War. General Grant, then the president, was the person you have to give credit to for Yellowstone. You can go back to Teddy Roosevelt and say he Roosevelt was a great conservationist. He created our National Forest and our national wildlife refuges and he took a strong interest in conservation. You get to Richard Nixon and you get a fantastic blooming of environmental interest and initiatives on the part of the administration. The EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, was a creature of Richard Nixon. The Clean Air Act of 1972, the Clean Air Act of 1970, ocean dumping controls, clean drinking water, the Noise Control Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, you name it.

So, during the Nixon administration and the Ford administration we accomplished a great deal. I was never officially part of the administration of George H.W. Bush – Bush the First. We were good personal friends and our families were friends. He asked me for advice on the environment; he asked me to explain the environment to him, although that wasn’t exactly an easy thing to do in a short while, but we sat down and talked in Florida for an hour or so. He really wanted to know. He entered the presidency with the intention of being a good environmental president. He sponsored the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990, and that’s the law under which we live today. He had a very good environmental record, and his heart was very much in the right place on the issue.

I feel George W.’s heart is in the wrong place on this issue. Calling something the Clean Air Act, the Healthy Forest Act when what you’re really doing is opening up the forest to logging. It’s almost an ideological antagonism. And there’s no understanding, I feel, of the importance of this issue. It’s addressed from the standpoint of, 'What is such-and-such a regulation going to do to a particular industry that is a pretty good contributor to our campaign cause.' And I think that’s what’s motivated its approach to environmental matters. "

-Russell Train, head of the Environmental Protection Agency under Richard Nixon

Full story here.

Relative cost

2004-10-24T20:17:00.000-07:00

"The vice president is right that Mr. Kerry can't compete in the arena of power hunting. When Mr. Kerry goes, only the birds are in danger. When Mr. Cheney and his pal Antonin Scalia go duck hunting together, the Constitution is in danger."
-Maureen Dowd

Top U.S. contracting official calls for investigation over Halliburton deals

2004-10-24T20:08:00.000-07:00

"The top civilian contracting official for the Army Corps of Engineers, charging that the Army granted the Halliburton Company large contracts for work in Iraq and the Balkans without following rules designed to ensure competition and fair prices to the government, has called for a high-level investigation of what she described as threats to the 'integrity of the federal contracting program.'

The official, Bunnatine H. Greenhouse, said that in at least one case she witnessed, Army officials inappropriately allowed representatives of Halliburton to sit in as they discussed the terms of a contract the company was set to receive.

The contracts to Halliburton, a Houston-based conglomerate headed by Dick Cheney before he became vice president, have stirred controversy and charges of favoritism because some were granted on an emergency basis, without competitive bidding. The company's operations in Iraq, involving work for more than $10 billion, have also been dogged by charges of overbilling and waste and have been an issue in the presidential campaign.

The Pentagon has asserted that, as the invasion of Iraq began, Halliburton was the only company able to provide services with the required speed and secrecy. But Pentagon auditors later questioned the company's billing practices and found examples of reckless spending or unjustified charges."

Full story here.

Conservative columnist: Why I Can't Vote For Bush

2004-10-24T16:45:00.000-07:00

"'[T]he Bush administration's free-spending fiscal record only hints at its larger rejection of conservative principles. The more fundamental betrayal arises from the administration's central focus: an ill-defined 'war on terror' that has no determinable endpoint and that is used to justify an unprecedented expansion of executive power. To make matters worse, this administration shows little inclination to demand accountability from those who serve within it. In turn, the Republican Congress--ignoring its 1994 vow to 'restore the bonds of trust between the people and their elected representatives'--appears disinclined to check the powers of the executive. Together, these factors endanger the long-term health of the republic..

The dangers of this new, unlimited power were plain to see at a tough congressional hearing in June. Attorney General John Ashcroft squared off against the Senate Judiciary Committee as it looked into whether Ashcroft's office provided legal cover to the Department of Defense on issues involving torture. The Wall Street Journal and other papers ran stories based on a heavily redacted 100-page memo, dated March 6, 2003. Written by a Defense Department working group, the memo seemed to outline ways to justify the use of aggressive interrogation techniques on detainees at Guantanamo without running afoul of international treaties forbidding torture...

In essence, the authors of the Defense Department memo were arguing that, in wartime, getting around inconvenient laws is 'inherent in the president.' The memo's existence raised the possibility that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were, in fact, an extension of official policy.

At the hearing, Ashcroft denied that President Bush approved of torture. But, in refusing Democratic senators' demands to turn either the full memo or similar ones written by the Justice Department over to the Judiciary Committee, he said, 'We are at war. And for us to begin to discuss all the legal ramifications of the war is not in our best interest and it has never been in times of war.' Ashcroft was essentially asserting that Congress--whose oversight powers give it authority to demand accountability from the executive--should not be allowed to inquire about the quality of legal advice being given to the president. This, even though the apparent result of that advice "trickled down" to the abuse of prisoners in Guantanamo, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

If the answer to every legitimate congressional inquiry concerning presidential powers is that 'we are at war' and that legislative questions concerning executive behavior are inappropriate, it becomes impossible for Congress to fulfill its constitutional mandate as a co-equal branch of government. At what point do the American people ask the obvious: What sort of war is this and exactly how long should a president have virtually indeterminate powers to wage it?"

-New York Post columnist Robert George, "Why I Can't Vote For Bush"

Full story here.

Running out of gas

2004-10-24T16:30:00.000-07:00

"George W. Bush and John Kerry probably differ more on energy policy than on any major issue except abortion, yet news organizations have said barely a word about their positions. Energy policy ought to be a limelight issue this election year. Congress has not passed an energy bill in more than a decade. Oil consumption and oil imports continue to rise. Natural gas prices are high and supplies are tight. Average fuel efficiency of new cars is the lowest in 15 years. The United States continues to supplicate to Persian Gulf dictators for petroleum. And greenhouse gases from fossil-fuel use continue to accumulate...

If elected president, Kerry might be the nation's first executive since Jimmy Carter to offer meaningful reform in energy policy. Today, Carter is remembered as a well-meaning bumbler, but his energy decisions had historic impact. Carter deregulated oil and natural gas while imposing a big increase in vehicle MPG. These actions converted the oil and gas shortages of the 1970s into the surpluses of the 1980s, and cracked the Oil Producing and Exporting Countries (opec) 'price maintenance' monopoly...

In four years, Bush has done nothing to change America's craving for Gulf oil. Bush has opposed significant strengthening of MPG standards for vehicles, continued to hold SUVs and the misnamed 'light' pickups to lower MPG strictures than regular cars, continued to exempt some altogether, and enacted a tax break for those who buy the heaviest SUVs...

Official overall mileage of new U.S. vehicles rose from about 14 MPG in the late '70s to a peak of 22 MPG in 1987 and has since declined to 21 MPG... Weaning ourselves from Gulf oil or combating the greenhouse effect only seems impossible today because we have not yet tried to face these challenges. With a wise and forward-looking energy policy, we can preserve our comfortable lifestyle and protect the climate. But nothing will happen until genuine changes in energy policy are made. Western society is living in a pleasant interregnum, during which fossil energy is cheap and artificial global warming has so far done no harm. Neither condition is likely to last. John Kerry proposes to act while there is yet time; George W. Bush proposes to leave the problems for someone else."

-Gregg Easterbrook, The New Republic

Full story here.

The buck stops where?

2004-10-21T23:30:00.000-07:00

Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick was sentenced to eight years of prison today for conspiracy, dereliction of duty, maltreatment of detainees, assault and committing an indecent act–all charges stemming from his guard service at Abu Ghraib prison.

Meanwhile, those higher in the chain of command (e.g. Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush) have largely escaped scrutiny. Read the classified Pentagon draft report sanctioning torture here.

Using homosexuality as a campaign weapon could backfire for Republicans

2004-10-20T23:13:00.000-07:00

From the desk of Frank Rich:

The deployment of homosexuality as a nasty campaign weapon has long been second nature to Mr. Rove. In the must-read article "Karl Rove in a Corner" in the November issue of The Atlantic, the journalist Joshua Green exhaustively researches the tightest campaigns of Mr. Rove's career and exhumes the pattern. As Mr. Green reminds us, George W. Bush's 1994 gubernatorial race against Ann Richards "featured a rumor" that Governor Richards was a lesbian. Gay whispers have also swirled around Rove adversaries like a rival Republican campaign consultant in the 1980's and a 1994 Alabama judicial candidate who was branded a "homosexual pedophile."

None of these rumors were, in fact, true, but Mary Cheney is unambiguously and unapologetically gay. For a campaign that wants to pander to the fringe, that makes her presence in the Bush-Cheney family a problem - just how big a problem can be seen by its disingenuously hysterical reaction to Mr. Kerry's use of the L word. But Mary Cheney isn't the only problem for Mr. Rove as he plays this game. The Republican establishment is rife with gay people - just ask anyone in proximity to its convention in New York - and the campaign doesn't want the four million [evangelical votes it is seeking] to know about them, either. But in this election season, actual outing has begun to creep onto the Internet, where the names of closeted Republican congressmen and aides who support anti-gay policies are a Google search away. Some named so far - one of whom dropped out of his re-election campaign in August - hail from districts where some of those four million live.

Sooner or later this untenable level of hypocrisy is going to lead to a civil war within the Republican party. But this hypocrisy is not just about homosexuality - it's about all sexuality, as befits a party that calls for the elimination of Roe v. Wade and the suppression of candid sex education that might prevent teenage pregnancy and AIDS alike. Should Bill O'Reilly-Andrea Mackris tapes exist, as many believe they do, we will learn graphically where the right's most popular cultural defender of G-rated values stands not only on lesbianism but also on extramarital sex, sexual tourism in Asia and masturbation -which all figure in the complainant's detailed description of her alleged conversations with her boss. But anyone who fears that Mr. O'Reilly has completely abandoned his political faith need not worry. According to Ms. Mackris's account, the one time this would-be Lothario succeeded in luring her to his hotel room alone it was not by offering to show her his etchings, or even Spectravision, but a televised news conference by President Bush.

Full story here.

Lynne Cheney's lost masterpiece

2004-10-20T22:40:00.000-07:00

Shortly after her husband became a vice-presidential candidate, Lynne Cheney sent word to her publisher not to reprint her romantic masterpieces. But excerpts can be found here.

Stomp the vote

2004-10-20T22:12:00.000-07:00

More allegations have come to light against Sproul & Associates, the Arizona-based consultants hired by the Republican party to conduct a voter registration drive.

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

"Sproul & Associates, a consulting firm based in Chandler, Ariz., hired to conduct the drive by the Republican National Committee, employed several hundred canvassers throughout the state to register new voters. Some workers yesterday said they were told to avoid registering Democrats or anyone who indicated support for Democratic nominee John F. Kerry.

'We were told that if they wanted to register Democrat, there was no way we were to register them to vote,' said Michele Tharp, of Meadville, who said she was sent out to canvass door-to-door and outside businesses in Meadville, Crawford County. 'We were only to register Republicans.'"

Full story here.

Bush on eve of invasion: on top of the world

2004-10-20T21:52:00.000-07:00

"The founder of the U.S. Christian Coalition said Tuesday he told President George W. Bush before the invasion of Iraq that he should prepare Americans for the likelihood of casualties, but the president told him, 'We're not going to have any casualties.'

Pat Robertson, an ardent Bush supporter, said he had that conversation with the president in Nashville, Tennessee, before the March 2003 invasion U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. He described Bush in the meeting as 'the most self-assured man I've ever met in my life.'

'You remember Mark Twain said, 'He looks like a contented Christian with four aces.' I mean he was just sitting there like, 'I'm on top of the world,'' Robertson said on the CNN show, "Paula Zahn Now.'

'And I warned him about this war. I had deep misgivings about this war, deep misgivings. And I was trying to say, 'Mr. President, you had better prepare the American people for casualties.''

Robertson said the president then told him, "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties.'

Full story here.

Back to the Mainstream

2004-10-19T20:31:00.000-07:00

"As son of a Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, it is automatically expected by many that I am a Republican. For 50 years, through the election of 2000, I was. With the current administration’s decision to invade Iraq unilaterally, however, I changed my voter registration to independent, and barring some utterly unforeseen development, I intend to vote for the Democratic Presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry.

The fact is that today’s 'Republican' Party is one with which I am totally unfamiliar. To me, the word 'Republican' has always been synonymous with the word 'responsibility,' which has meant limiting our governmental obligations to those we can afford in human and financial terms. Today’s whopping budget deficit of some $440 billion does not meet that criterion.

Responsibility used to be observed in foreign affairs. That has meant respect for others. America, though recognized as the leader of the community of nations, has always acted as a part of it, not as a maverick separate from that community and at times insulting towards it. Leadership involves setting a direction and building consensus, not viewing other countries as practically devoid of significance. Recent developments indicate that the current Republican Party leadership has confused confident leadership with hubris and arrogance."

-John Eisenhower, author and former ambassador

...

Come Back to the Mainstream is a group of Republican former Governors, Senators, and public officials. They are calling for a return to common sense in government. They would like the president and Congress to:

"Stop weakening environmental law - and once again protect our air, water and public lands as Teddy Roosevelt and other great Republican leaders intended;

Restore fiscal responsibility - with "pay-as-you-go" budget discipline to end record deficits that jeopardize economic growth;

Put the health of millions first - and clear the way for embryonic stem cell research;

Appoint mainstream federal judges - and respect the Constitution;

Make America safer - and protect cities and towns, still vulnerable three years after 9/11, by securing chemical and nuclear plants and shipping containers;

Rebuild our alliances – with real partnerships and restore America’s standing in the world."

Democrats signing up more new voters

2004-10-18T23:17:00.000-07:00

"The Democrats appear to be gaining the upper hand in the battle to sign up new voters in the all-important swing states, an Associated Press analysis suggests.

The AP analysis of the most up-to-date figures from across the country found that, in every state where complete data is available, the Democrats have registered more new voters than Republicans. They have the edge in Arizona, Iowa, New Mexico, Nevada and New Hampshire.

Only in Florida is the story different. Registration tallies from more than half the counties show that the Republicans and the Democrats are virtually tied in the race to increase their share of voters in the state that decided the presidential election four years ago. In those counties, the Republicans have signed up just a few thousand more."

Full story here.

Dirty tricks return to Florida

2004-10-18T23:06:00.000-07:00

The Guardian reports:

Gordon Sasser first got the feeling that something strange was going on when the telephone pierced the silence of a weekday afternoon at his house on the swampy fringes of Tallahassee, northern Florida.

An automated voice had some surprising news: did he know that he could now cast his presidential vote by phone, and could do so right now, using the keypad? Mr Sasser's suspicion that somebody was trying to trick him into thinking he was casting a vote - presumably so that he wouldn't cast a real one - was far from unique.

James Scruggs, another Tallahassee resident, remembers a similar unease about the young woman who phoned him at home, insistently offering to collect his absentee ballot to ensure its safe delivery.

Then there was the elderly woman who called the local elections office last week to register her husband for an absentee vote. According to office staff, as she hung up she made a point of thanking them: she wouldn't have thought to get in touch about her husband, she said, if it hadn't been for their helpful call the night before, when someone had taken her own details, assuring her that she was now registered and would receive a ballot.

But the elections office makes no such calls.

"It's Alice in Wonderland here now," sighed Ion Sancho, elections supervisor for Leon County, which includes Tallahassee, Florida's capital. "Up is down, and down is up ... My feeling is that someone has essentially conned her into believing that she's going to be voting."

Mr Sancho is a longstanding thorn in the side of Florida's governor, Jeb Bush, who presides from a building across the street. But even he seems astonished by the reports reaching his office these days.

"I've been an elections supervisor for 16 years now, and nobody has ever called me with this kind of activity occurring," he said.

Story continues here.

Vladimir Putin endorses George W. Bush

2004-10-18T23:00:00.000-07:00

Britain's Guardian newspaper reports today that Vladimir Putin, Russia's most notorious KGB bureaucrat turned tyrant, has endorsed George W. Bush for president. The two have many goals in common. Promoting human rights is not among them.

George W. Bush betrayed the strongest principles of the Republican party

2004-10-18T22:45:00.000-07:00

The following statement was written by former Michigan Gov. William G. Milliken:

"As a lifelong Republican, I have had mounting concern watching this year's presidential campaign.
I have always been proud to be a Republican. My Republican Party is a broad-based party, that seeks to bring a wide spectrum of people under its umbrella and that seeks to protect and provide opportunity for the most vulnerable among us.
Sadly, that is not the Republican Party that I see at the national level today.
My Republican Party has always been a party that stood for fiscal responsibility. Today, under George W. Bush, we have the largest deficit in the history of our country - a deficit that jeopardizes economic growth that is so desperately needed in a nation that has lost 2.6 million jobs since he took office.
To make matters even worse, this president inherited a surplus, but squandered it with huge tax cuts structured primarily to benefit the wealthy and powerful.
My Republican Party is the party of Michigan Sen. Arthur H. Vandenberg who helped forge a bipartisan foreign policy that served this nation well and produced strong alliances across the globe. This president has, in a highly partisan, unilateral way rushed us into a tragic and unnecessary war that has cost the lives of more than 1,000 of our young men and women. In this arrogant rush to war, he has alienated this nation from much of the world.
What's worse, the basic premises upon which we were taken to war proved to be false. Now, we find ourselves in the midst of an occupation that was largely unplanned and has become a disaster from which we cannot easily extricate ourselves.
My Republican Party is the party of Theodore Roosevelt, who fought to preserve our natural resources and environment. This president has pursued policies that will cause irreparable damage to our environmental laws that protect the air we breathe, the water we drink and the public lands we share with future generations.
My Republican Party is the party of Lincoln, who freed an enslaved people. This president fought in the courts to strike down policies designed to provide opportunity and access to our own University of Michigan for minority students.
My Republican Party is the party of Eisenhower, who warned us to beware of the dangers of a military-industrial complex. This president has pursued policies skewed to favor large corporations in the defense and oil industry and has gone so far as to let those industries help write government policies.
My Republican Party is a party that respects and works with the men and women of the law enforcement community who put their lives on the line for us every day. This president ignored the pleas of law enforcement agencies across America and failed to lift a finger to renew the assault weapons ban that they strongly supported as an essential safeguard for public safety.
My Republican Party is a party that values the pursuit of knowledge. But this president stands in the way of meaningful embryonic stem-cell research that holds so much promise for those who suffer from diabetes, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, spinal cord injuries and other conditions.
My Republican Party is the party of Gerald R. Ford, Michigan's only president, who reached across partisan lines to become a unifying force during a time of great turmoil in our nation's history. This president has pursued policies pandering to the extreme right wing across a wide variety of issues and has exacerbated the polarization and the strident, uncivil tone of much of what passes for political discourse in this country today.
Women's rights, civil liberties, the separation of church and state, the funding of family planning efforts world-wide - all have suffered grievously under this president and his administration.
The truth is that President George W. Bush does not speak for me or for many other moderate Republicans on a very broad cross section of issues.
Sen. John Kerry, on the other hand, has put forth a coherent, responsible platform of progressive initiatives that I believe would serve this country well. He wants to balance the budget, step up environmental protection efforts, rebuild our international relationships, support stem-cell research, protect choice and pursue a number of other progressive initiatives that moderates from both parties can support.
As a result, despite my long record of active involvement in the Republican Party, and my intention still to stay in the Republican Party, when I cast my ballot November 2, I will be voting for John Kerry for President."

The Oregonian endorses John Kerry

2004-10-18T22:24:00.000-07:00

"Even so, on the international front, Kerry understands something that Bush does not: Our nation's experience shows that strong international alliances are vital to erecting a bulwark against aggression, tyranny and terrorism.

The president's destructive rhetoric during the campaign reflects the administration's recklessness in this area. This nation's role as the world's only military superpower does not grant it the unquestioned right to lead. Other nations will follow a United States they respect and admire. They will resist a United States they fear.

Foreign leaders may well understand that their long-term interests lie in sticking with the United States. But Bush has made it politically impossible for them to do so. Kerry has some chance of rebuilding the international alliances that Bush and his people have shattered.

Kerry also has demonstrated, through his personal heroism in Vietnam and his positions in this campaign, that he is strong, aggressive and thoughtful enough to perform well as commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces.

A long record of public service shows that he possesses a deep, nuanced understanding of the central domestic issues of our time.

Kerry is likely to select strong Cabinet secretaries, and he may even listen to them when they disagree with his inner circle. During the Bush administration, there has been little evidence that solid Cabinet choices like Secretary of State Colin Powell are able to get their views heard on critical issues at critical times.

We believe the top choices in a Kerry administration also would be more vigorous in pursuing both the letter and spirit of the nation's environmental protection laws. A Kerry attorney general might have a more coherent and defensible view of citizens' civil liberties and constitutional rights than John Ashcroft, Bush's attorney general."

And so on.

On Oct. 10, the Portland Oregonian endorsed John Kerry.

Granny D: still shaking things up

2004-10-18T22:07:00.000-07:00

"The Democratic candidate for US Senate has no political experience and so little money that her campaign cannot afford lawn signs.

But at age 94, Doris 'Granny D' Haddock does have an agenda -- ridding Washington of the influence of big-buck political contributors.

'Can a candidate win without taking a dollar from special interests?' she recently asked a small gathering at the University of New Hampshire. Her eyes narrowed and her voice grew determined: 'Watch me.'

Haddock is best known for walking across America four years ago to support campaign-finance reform. That 3,225-mile jaunt won her praise from Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and President Jimmy Carter."

Story continues here.

Blacks, Hispanics hit harder by recession

2004-10-18T15:42:00.000-07:00

From the Associated Press:

"The enormous wealth gap between white families and blacks and Hispanics grew larger after the most recent recession, a private analysis of government data finds.

White households had a median net worth of greater than $88,000 in 2002, 11 times more than Hispanics and more than 14 times that of blacks, the Pew Hispanic Center said in a study being released Monday...

Greater wealth means a greater ability to weather a job loss, emergency home repairs, illness and other unexpected costs, as well as being able to save for retirement or a child's college tuition."

Full story here.

Ralph Nader's former running mate endorses John Kerry

2004-10-18T01:39:00.000-07:00

Winona LaDuke, who ran for vice-president in 1996 and 2000 on the Green Party ticket, has endorsed John Kerry for president this year.

LaDuke writes in Indian Country Today:

"I love this land, and I know that we need to make drastic changes in Washington if we are going to protect our land and our communities. I am committed to transforming the American democracy so that it is reflective of the diversity of this country. I believe in a multi-party system and a multi-racial democracy. I believe there are many opinions, not simply two, that merit a hearing on any issue. I believe we should be working harder to increase the numbers of people of color, women, and Native people elected to office because we are this country and we are what America looks like. I'm voting my conscience on Nov. 2; I'm voting for John Kerry."

Howard Dean: bring independent and local family ownership back into broadcast media

2004-10-18T01:32:00.000-07:00

"Last week, communications giant Sinclair Broadcasting announced that they would require all 62 of their television affiliates to pre-empt regularly scheduled programs and air a film that casts Sen. John Kerry in a very unfavorable and false light. Many of these stations, affiliates of ABC, CBS, NBC and UPN, are in battleground states like Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa and Michigan. This essentially becomes free advertising for the Bush-Cheney campaign in some very important and influential states during this election season.

This is not the first time Sinclair Broadcasting stations were required to do something that advanced the right-wing agenda. Last spring, Sinclair refused to allow any of its ABC affiliates to carry a Nightline episode that honored soldiers who had been killed in Iraq. The episode was a way to memorialize and remember the soldiers that gave their lives fighting for our country. But at the time, the executives at Sinclair Broadcasting unilaterally decided that the program 'appears to be motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq.'

This election cycle, executives of Sinclair Broadcasting have contributed tens of thousands of dollars in political contributions, 97 percent of which have gone to Republican candidates. Their vice president for corporate relations and their spokesperson, Mark Hyman, is also a conservative commentator for Sinclair Broadcasting. Every day a one-to-two minute report by Hyman is distributed to stations that promotes the agenda of the Republican Party...

Kowtowing to large corporations, like Sinclair Broadcasting, is President Bush's specialty. And, behavior like this will only continue to grow by other media conglomerates if President Bush is re-elected. He is clearly more interested in doing the bidding of big corporations than he is in jobs and health care for ordinary Americans.

The media needs to be re-regulated and corporate ownership of media outlets needs to be limited in favor of independent and local family ownerships. But, we can make a difference today. If you live in a city with a Sinclair Broadcasting station, I encourage you to consider calling companies that advertise on that station. This is already working in some cities, like Madison, Wis. - a restaurant that was advertising on the local Sinclair Broadcasting station received numerous complaints and decided to pull their advertising.

Since the public owns the airways, Sinclair Broadcasting and other big corporations ought to be required to act in a way which supports democracy, not attacks it. Sinclair Broadcasting has violated the fundamental responsibilities they are accountable for in a democratic society. If the president will not do his job to rein in corporate power, we will have to stand up for American democracy ourselves."

-former Gov. Howard Dean, "Take Our Airwaves Back"

Court: Sept. 11 "cannot be the day liberty perished in this country"

2004-10-18T01:25:00.000-07:00

From the Associated Press:

A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously Friday that protesters may not be required to pass through metal detectors when they gather next month for a rally against a U.S. training academy for Latin American soldiers.

Authorities began using the metal detectors at the annual School of the Americas protest after the 2001 terrorist attacks, but the court found that practice to be unconstitutional.

"We cannot simply suspend or restrict civil liberties until the War on Terror is over, because the War on Terror is unlikely ever to be truly over," Judge Gerald Tjoflat wrote for the panel. "Sept. 11, 2001, already a day of immeasurable tragedy, cannot be the day liberty perished in this country."

City officials in Columbus, Ga., contended the searches are needed because of the elevated risk of terrorism, but the court threw out that argument, saying it would "eviscerate the Fourth Amendment."

"In the absence of some reason to believe that international terrorists would target or infiltrate this protest, there is no basis for using Sept. 11 as an excuse for searching the protesters," the court said.

Story continues here.

Three teachers evicted from Bush event for wearing "Protect Our Civil Liberties" t-shirts

2004-10-18T01:04:00.000-07:00

We chose this phrase specifically because we didn't think it would be offensive or degrading or obscene," said Tania Tong, 34, a special education teacher.

Three schoolteachers were evicted from a Bush event and threatened with arrest Oct. 14 for wearing "Protect Our Civil Liberties" t-shirts, the Progressive reports.

"The U.S. Constitution was not available on site for comment, but expressed in a written statement support for “the freedom of speech” and “of the press” among other civil liberties," a Democratic news release said, according to Bend.com.

Bend.com reported:

Thursday’s actions in Oregon set a new standard even for Bush/Cheney – removing and threatening with arrest citizens who in no way disrupt an event and wear clothing that expresses non-disruptive party-neutral viewpoints such as “Protect Our Civil Liberties.”

When Vice President Dick Cheney visited Eugene, Oregon on Sept. 17, a 54-Year old woman named Perry Patterson was charged with criminal trespass for blurting the word "No" when Cheney said that George W. Bush has made the world safer.

One day before, Sue Niederer, 55, the mother of a slain American soldier in Iraq was cuffed and arrested for criminal trespass when she interrupted a Laura Bush speech in New Jersey. Both women had tickets to the event.

Here is a partial account of what transpired in Oregon Thursday, as told to the Progressive:

The campaign officials said they could go in if they could guarantee they would not make a scene, [Tania] Tong says. "We assured them that we did not come with any intention of being disorderly, so they said fine and said they respected our differing opinions," she recalls.

At that point, the three teachers assumed they were in, and that they could take their seats and listen to the President.

No such luck.

"As we were walking over to sit down, a woman grabbed me by the arm from the back and grabbed my shirt," Tong says. "She said she would have to look under my shirt for offensive language. I told her she wouldn't find any there. She still looked. Then we walked about two more steps and a man came up and asked to see our IDs again and then made a comment abut my sister living in Ashland. But he gave us our IDs back, and we proceeded to sit down."

Campaign officials did not leave the three alone, however. They followed them to their seats, and when Janet Voorhies got up to go to the bathroom, she was tailed, Tong and [Candice] Julian say.

When Voorhies did not return promptly, they became concerned and got up to see what was going on.

"A guy had Janet by the elbow and was leading her away," says Julian.

"And he said to us, 'Give us your tickets.' "

"We said, 'Why?' And I put the ticket behind my back, and one of the guys who had been following us ripped it out of my hands."

Seeing what happened to her sister's ticket, Tong put hers down her pants, she says.

Campaign officials then told all three women to leave.

"They said it was a private event, for invited guests," Tong recalls.

"We said we were invited because we were given tickets.

"One said, 'You don't have tickets anymore.'

Full story here.

The Star Tribune endorses John Kerry for president

2004-10-17T23:16:00.000-07:00

"Long steeped in U.S. foreign policy, Kerry understands that safeguarding Americans and pursuing national interests require strong alliances and deft diplomacy -- that the exercise of military power by itself does little but breed resentment. He knows that an indispensable part of the United States' power to lead in the world derives from its status as a beacon of freedom, morality and justice. Kerry recognizes that to prevail in the struggle against terrorism, America must return to the moral high ground rather than unilaterally pursue a perverted, narrow vision of its national interest.

At home Kerry would roll back Bush's tax cuts to the nation's wealthiest taxpayers, now the chief cause of massive federal deficits, and work to shore up the middle class. He has presented a sound plan for affordable health care, while shunning GOP efforts to privatize pieces of Medicare and Social Security. He would reverse Bush's devious dismantling of environmental protections, and he would preserve the safety net that protects America's most vulnerable citizens...

Bush has governed with mendacity and secrecy at home as well, undermining the democratic imperatives of accountability, transparency and openness. Just as his reasons for war in Iraq have shifted repeatedly, his rationale for tax cuts has changed to suit his convenience: In 2000, candidate Bush said his tax package was designed to return a big surplus to taxpayers; later, with the government running massive budget deficits, he said the very same tax cuts were designed to give the economy short-term stimulus and rebuild government revenues.

As recently as last week, Bush claimed that middle-class families are receiving the bulk of tax relief under his fiscal policies, even though a widely published nonpartisan analysis shows that two-thirds of the tax relief this year went to the top 20 percent of households."

-Minneapolis Star Tribune editorial, "John Kerry: The right choice for president"

The New York Times endorses John Kerry

2004-10-17T01:01:00.000-07:00
The New York Times endorsed John Kerry today.

"Senator John Kerry goes toward the election with a base that is built more on opposition to George W. Bush than loyalty to his own candidacy. But over the last year we have come to know Mr. Kerry as more than just an alternative to the status quo. We like what we've seen. He has qualities that could be the basis for a great chief executive, not just a modest improvement on the incumbent.

We have been impressed with Mr. Kerry's wide knowledge and clear thinking - something that became more apparent once he was reined in by that two-minute debate light. He is blessedly willing to re-evaluate decisions when conditions change. And while Mr. Kerry's service in Vietnam was first over-promoted and then over-pilloried, his entire life has been devoted to public service, from the war to a series of elected offices. He strikes us, above all, as a man with a strong moral core."

The New York Times editorial board then goes on to castigate President Bush for...
1) "ideological, activist" judicial nominations
2) censorship of government websites
3) shutdown of new stem cell research
4) underfunding No Child Left Behind
5) systematically weakening "the entire spectrum of environmental issues"
6) failing to secure America's ports against terrorism
7) a "Nixonian obsession with secrecy"
8) imprisoning American citizens without access to an attorney
9) disregard for international law
10) "misrepresentations" to the American people, and
11) "inept management."
Among other things.

The New York Times writes:

"Mr. Ashcroft appeared on TV time and again to announce sensational arrests of people who turned out to be either innocent, harmless braggarts or extremely low-level sympathizers of Osama bin Laden who, while perhaps wishing to do something terrible, lacked the means. The Justice Department cannot claim one major successful terrorism prosecution, and has squandered much of the trust and patience the American people freely gave in 2001. Other nations, perceiving that the vast bulk of the prisoners held for so long at Guantánamo Bay came from the same line of ineffectual incompetents or unlucky innocents, and seeing the awful photographs from the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, were shocked that the nation that was supposed to be setting the world standard for human rights could behave that way."

The international outrage over the American invasion is now joined by a sense of disdain for the incompetence of the effort. Moderate Arab leaders who have attempted to introduce a modicum of democracy are tainted by their connection to an administration that is now radioactive in the Muslim world. Heads of rogue states, including Iran and North Korea, have been taught decisively that the best protection against a pre-emptive American strike is to acquire nuclear weapons themselves. "

Another four years under Bush would create far more damage, the Times contends.

"We have specific fears about what would happen in a second Bush term, particularly regarding the Supreme Court. The record so far gives us plenty of cause for worry. Thanks to Mr. Bush, Jay Bybee, the author of an infamous Justice Department memo justifying the use of torture as an interrogation technique, is now a federal appeals court judge. Another Bush selection, J. Leon Holmes, a federal judge in Arkansas, has written that wives must be subordinate to their husbands and compared abortion rights activists to Nazis...

The Bush White House has always given us the worst aspects of the American right without any of the advantages. We get the radical goals but not the efficient management. The Department of Education's handling of the No Child Left Behind Act has been heavily politicized and inept. The Department of Homeland Security is famous for its useless alerts and its inability to distribute antiterrorism aid according to actual threats. Without providing enough troops to properly secure Iraq, the administration has managed to so strain the resources of our armed forces that the nation is unprepared to respond to a crisis anywhere else in the world. "

By contrast, the Times writes:

"Mr. Kerry has the capacity to do far, far better. He has a willingness - sorely missing in Washington these days - to reach across the aisle. We are relieved that he is a strong defender of civil rights, that he would remove unnecessary restrictions on stem cell research and that he understands the concept of separation of church and state. We appreciate his sensible plan to provide health coverage for most of the people who currently do without.

Mr. Kerry has an aggressive and in some cases innovative package of ideas about energy, aimed at addressing global warming and oil dependency. He is a longtime advocate of deficit reduction. In the Senate, he worked with John McCain in restoring relations between the United States and Vietnam, and led investigations of the way the international financial system has been gamed to permit the laundering of drug and terror money. He has always understood that America's appropriate role in world affairs is as leader of a willing community of nations, not in my-way-or-the-highway domination. "

The full editorial can be viewed here.

Flu vaccine shortage was long in the making

2004-10-16T23:10:00.000-07:00
During the recent presidential debates, George W. Bush took pride in separating the health care crisis in the United States from the socialized medicine in Canada and Europe. He even incorrectly identified the troubled Chiron company as a British outfit (Chiron is based in California). Now, the U.S. is begging foreign suppliers for extra flu vaccines.

A 79-year-old California woman died Thursday waiting in line to get a flu shot. She had been waiting in line four hours when she fainted and suffered head injuries.

Well, the flu problem couldn't be helped, right? Wrong.

As the New York Times reports:

"[P]ublic health experts have long cautioned against the country's dependence on a few vaccine makers, and yet this has become standard practice. There are now only two major manufacturers for the nation's supply of flu vaccine, and at least a half-dozen other vaccines are made by single suppliers. Britain, by contrast, has spread its order for flu vaccines among five suppliers, precisely to avoid the kind of predicament America now faces."

The full Times story can be viewed here.

James Baker's conflict of interest in Iraq: $2 billion

2004-10-16T22:28:00.000-07:00
In a special investigation this week, The Nation reports that James Baker is double-dealing in Iraq. On Dec. 5, 2003, George W. Bush appointed the former Secretary of State as his envoy on Iraq's national debt. Baker also happens to be a senior counselor and equity partner in the Carlyle Group, where he holds an estimated $180 million stake.

So?

Here's where the conflict of interest comes in–and it's a whopper. The Carlyle Group, according to private documents obtained by The Nation, is seeking to obtain control of $57 billion of unpaid Iraqi debt owed to Kuwait. In return, the Carlyle Group (along with a consortium of partners) is asking the Kuwaiti government for an up-front investment of $2 billion.

Naomi Klein writes:
In a letter dated August 6, 2004, the consortium informed Kuwait's foreign ministry that the country's unpaid debts from Iraq "are in imminent jeopardy." World opinion is turning in favor of debt forgiveness, another letter warned, as evidenced by "President Bush's appointment... of former Secretary of State James Baker as his envoy to negotiate Iraqi debt relief." The consortium's proposal spells out the threat: Not only is Kuwait unlikely to see any of its $30 billion from Iraq in sovereign debt, but the $27 billion in war reparations that Iraq owes to Kuwait from Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion "may well be a casualty of this U.S. [debt relief] effort."

In the face of this threat, the consortium offers its services. Its roster of former high-level US and European politicians have "personal rapport with the stakeholders in the anticipated negotiations" and are able to "reach key decision-makers in the United Nations and in key capitals," the proposal states. If Kuwait agrees to transfer the debts to the consortium's foundation, the consortium will use these personal connections to persuade world leaders that Iraq must "maximize" its debt payments to Kuwait, which would be able to collect the money after ten to fifteen years. And the more the consortium gets Iraq to pay during that period, the more Kuwait collects, with the consortium taking a 5 percent commission or more.

The goal of maximizing Iraq's debt payments directly contradicts the US foreign policy aim of drastically reducing Iraq's debt burden."

A cynic might contend Baker is endangering Iraq's future for the sake of enriching his own pocket. Klein notes:

Iraq is the most heavily indebted country in the world, owing roughly $200 billion in sovereign debts and in reparations from Saddam's wars. If Iraq were forced to pay even a quarter of these claims, its debt would still be more than double its annual GDP, severely undermining its capacity to pay for reconstruction or to address the humanitarian needs of its war-ravaged citizens. "This debt endangers Iraq's long-term prospects for political health and economic prosperity," President Bush said when he appointed Baker last December... Bush assured reporters that "Jim Baker is a man of high integrity.... We're fortunate he decided to take time out of what is an active life...to step forward and serve America"...

The day before Baker's appointment was announced, John Harris, managing director and chief financial officer of Carlyle, submitted a signed statement to White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales. "Carlyle does not have any investment in Iraqi public or private debt," he wrote....

On January 21, 2004, James Baker's dual lives converged. That morning Baker flew to Kuwait as George Bush's debt envoy. He met with Kuwait's prime minister, its foreign minister and several other top officials with the stated goal of asking them to forgive Iraq's debts in the name of regional peace and prosperity. Baker's colleagues in the consortium chose that very same day to hand-deliver their proposal to Foreign Minister Mohammad Sabah Al-Salem Al-Sabah--the same man Baker was meeting...

In the eighteen months since the US invasion, Iraq has paid out a staggering $1.8 billion in reparations--substantially more than the battered country's 2004 health and education budgets combined, and more than the United States has so far managed to spend in Iraq on reconstruction.

Most of the payments have gone to Kuwait, a country that is about to post its sixth consecutive budget surplus, where citizens have an average purchasing power of $19,000 a year. Iraqis, by contrast, are living on an average of just over $2 a day, with most of the population dependent on food rations for basic nutrition

Klein's story can be read in full here.

The Carlyle/International Strategy Group documents can be viewed here.

Francophobia (see also: Xenophobia)

2004-10-16T01:42:00.000-07:00
A typical evening on Fox News tonight. In between tape of old Bill O'Reilly interviews, Tony Snow asked two white men in suits about Franco-American relations. The white men in suits said France had been our enemy since the dawn of the Republic. Tony Snow said, "And then there was the French and Indian War." No one from France was interviewed. Bill O'Reilly himself was "on assignment" tonight, or so it was reported.

The men in suits were National Review reporter John J. Miller and professor Mark Molesky, authors of Our Oldest Enemy: A History of America's Disastrous Relationship With France.

Here is what Library Journal Reviews has to say about Our Oldest Enemy:

"This shallow work rests on a parsimonious use of the extensive literature on Franco-American relations. For example, the chapter on World War I and its aftermath includes 42 footnotes, 16 of which refer to the same source. The authors ignore such definitive works as Henry Blumenthal's extensive two-volume survey of Franco-American relations and significant studies from the French perspective such as Jean-Baptiste Duroselle's France and the United States from the Beginnings to the Present (o.p.). This polemical work will rest comfortably only on public library shelves that include the works of such pamphleteers as Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Michael Moore, and Al Franken."

Here is what CNBC host Larry Kudlow has to say about the book:

"It's just a terrific, terrific book, lots of facts and figures. Your point is you can go back 300 years, before the Revolutionary War, during, after, the Civil War, the First World War, the Cold War; France was never truly an American ally."

Bush's tactics: tired and old

2004-10-16T01:20:00.000-07:00
"In President Bush's worldview, everything is "post-9/11" except his campaign tactics. When it comes to the tired, shopworn ways in which he's attacking John Kerry, the president is, as Dick Cheney likes to say, in a 'pre-9/11 mindset."'

The debates altered the campaign in Kerry's favor because Bush could no longer run and hide from his own record and cast Kerry as a cardboard character. The debates showcased Kerry as presidentially consistent. Bush kept changing his act. He scowled in the first debate. He practically shouted in the second. He pasted a strange smile over the scowl in the third.

And Bush's new message is so old that it is as if he ran across a tattered catalogue for Republican political consultants from the 1980s or early '90s and ordered up a pre-owned campaign plan. You could imagine the text: "Falling behind your Democrat opponent? Don't know what to say? Just call him liberal, liberal, liberal...

Kerry is trying to expand choice by allowing people to buy into the health plan that covers federal employees. He'd offer subsidies to low-income working people who now have no insurance -- and thus no choice at all. And he would make it easier for employers to provide coverage by having the federal government cover a large share of catastrophic costs, thus cutting the price of private insurance.

But Bush showed that he cared far more about caricaturing Kerry's plan than solving the problems of the uninsured. "

-Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, Jr., writing about the third presidential debate

Drug makers threaten to reduce shipments to Canada

2004-10-16T01:02:00.000-07:00
The New York Times reports today that drug makers are threatening to reduce shipments to Canada if the United States begins importing drugs. U.S. consumers pay higher prices for pharmaceuticals than anyone else in the world, and large drug companies are not anxious to give up this profit source.

Eduardo Porter writes:
Drug makers like Pfizer say they would reduce their shipments of drugs to distributors in Canada and other countries that re-export to the United States. "We are not going to supply drugs to diverters, in Canada or elsewhere," said Hank McKinnell, chairman and chief executive of Pfizer.

And Canadian health officials, fearing shortages and higher prices of their own, would probably clamp down on their own pharmacists and distributors to keep their drugs from leaking into the United States. Canadian patient-advocacy groups have already complained about shortages from the exports to the United States that already occur, even though they violate American law...

"Is it sensible for the United States to have price controls?" asked Jean O. Lanjouw, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley. "It is a real question. But we don't discuss the real questions"...

For all the shortcomings, the Kerry campaign argues that drug imports should be given a chance. "If the impact is so negligible, why are the drug companies fighting it so much?" said Sarah Bianchi, Senator Kerry's policy director. Even if the overall bulk of imports were not that large, she added, "they would apply some pressure on the drug industry and make them revisit their pricing policies."

And some of the drug companies' defensive tactics could be barred by law. The Senate legislation, for example, would bar pharmaceutical companies from denying supplies to distributors and pharmacies that export to the United States...

Currently, Pfizer charges an American wholesaler an average of $2.07 for a 10-milligram pill, and some 15 percent less to an H.M.O. In Canada, by contrast, the health care system run by Ontario's provincial government will reimburse only 1.60 Canadian dollars (about $1.28) for the same pill - the same price as in 1997...

Such policies have kept Canada's prescription drug prices 30 to 80 percent cheaper than in the United States.

Because most other industrial countries maintain some kind of price controls on prescription drugs, the United States has a similar drug price gap with the rest of the world. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that average prices for patented drugs in 25 other top industrialized nations were 35 percent to 55 percent lower than in the United States.

Gay-baiting (aka the latest Republican diversion)

2004-10-16T01:01:00.000-07:00
Here's what Timothy Noah has to say on the subject:
Dick and Lynne Cheney claim to be outraged that John Kerry mentioned their daughter Mary's sexual orientation (she's gay) in the Oct. 13 debate. Immediately after the debate, Lynne said it was a "cheap and tawdry political trick." Her outrage was spontaneous, and therefore probably sincere. But the vice president, who spoke at the same press availability, glided past the subject and instead expostulated on the "whale of a job" the president had done and Kerry's poor record on defense. That suggests to me that Cheney wasn't outraged at all. (When John Edwards had mentioned Mary in the much nastier vice presidential debate, Cheney had thanked him "for the kind words he said about my family and our daughter.") The morning after the debate, Jodi Wilgoren reported that three undecided Iowans—all member of the same family—had thought it "unfair" for Kerry to mention that Mary Cheney was gay. Knowing now that outrage had tested well in a focus group, Cheney chimed in early that afternoon that he was "a pretty angry father," and said it showed that Kerry will "say and do anything in order to get elected"...

The [Wall Street] Journal, preposterously, accused Kerry of "outing" Mary Cheney, even though, when asked about gay marriage at an August campaign rally in Iowa, the vice president had said, "Lynne and I have a gay daughter, so it's an issue that our family is very familiar with." It was hardly the first time either Cheney had acknowledged Mary's sexual orientation in public. It's been common knowledge for years...

I won't dispute that Kerry was using Mary Cheney to score a political point. But the political point was an entirely legitimate one, aimed, I believe, not at fundamentalists but at swing voters with libertarian leanings. Listen, Kerry was saying. This guy knows gay people, just like you and I do. So he must know that homosexuality isn't a "lifestyle choice." He must know that, and yet he pretends not to know it to score points with the religious right. How cynical can you get?

Sinclair losing advertisers over anti-Kerry film

2004-10-15T23:28:00.000-07:00
As reported earlier, Sinclair Broadcast Corp. has ordered its 62 television stations to show an anti-Kerry film a week before the election. Today, the Portland Press Herald reported that three Maine companies have withdrawn advertising from WGME, Sinclair's Portland affiliate.

Bill O'Reilly's legal troubles

2004-10-15T22:52:00.000-07:00
Andrea Mackris has filed a sexual harassment suit against Fox News host and children's author Bill O'Reilly. Court documents can be viewed here.

El Salvador: Dick Cheney's model democracy

2004-10-15T07:48:00.000-07:00
"Brushing off Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards' gloomy take on conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan, Vice President Dick Cheney insisted: 'Freedom is the best antidote to terror.'

Cheney explained: 'Twenty years ago we had a similar situation in El Salvador. ... And we held free elections. ... And as the terrorists would come in and shoot up polling places, as soon as they left, the voters would come back and get in line and would not be denied the right to vote. And today El Salvador's a whale of a lot better because we held free elections.'

In the early 1980s, the United States provided the government of El Salvador more than $350 million in aid and trained hundreds of Salvadoran officers to suppress a guerilla insurgency rooted in rural poverty and militarism. After a democratic election in 1984, the government fell into the clutches of a series of military regimes, and the country into a prolonged civil war. As Cheney pointed out, more than 75,000 people were killed, and countless more tortured and forced into exile before the 1992 peace accords. In 1993, a United Nations Truth Commission revealed that government security forces and paramilitaries acting on their behalf committed 85 percent of the atrocities. Declassified U.S. intelligence confirms this.

Today in El Salvador, the government comes from the same ARENA party (though with different leadership) that organized the death squads of the early-1980s; the murder rate is the highest in Latin America; more than half of the country lives in poverty; GDP has barely recovered to pre-war levels; a drug trade run by paramilitary forces and transnational street gangs is flourishing; and the military, an institution with a horrific human rights record, still exercises enormous influence. And yet, the government in San Salvador remains loyal to Washington; El Salvador is a member of the "Coalition of the Willing."

-Everand Meade, San Diego Union-Tribune

Voter Suppression

2004-10-14T22:10:00.000-07:00
Paul Krugman writes:

"Ohio's secretary of state, a Republican, tried to use an archaic rule about paper quality to invalidate thousands of new, heavily Democratic registrations.

That attempt failed. But in Wisconsin, a Republican county executive insists that this year, when everyone expects a record turnout, Milwaukee will receive fewer ballots than it got in 2000 or 2002 - a recipe for chaos at polling places serving urban, mainly Democratic voters...

Florida's secretary of state recently ruled that voter registrations would be deemed incomplete if those registering failed to check a box affirming their citizenship, even if they had signed an oath saying the same thing elsewhere on the form...

Whose applications get rejected? A Washington Post examination of rejected applications in Duval County found three times as many were from Democrats, compared with Republicans. It also found a strong tilt toward rejection of blacks' registrations.

The case of Florida's felon list - used by state officials, as in 2000, to try to wrongly disenfranchise thousands of blacks - has been widely reported. Less widely reported has been overwhelming evidence that the errors were deliberate.

In an article coming next week in Harper's, Greg Palast, who originally reported the story of the 2000 felon list, reveals that few of those wrongly purged from the voting rolls in 2000 are back on the voter lists. State officials have imposed Kafkaesque hurdles for voters trying to get back on the rolls. Depending on the county, those attempting to get their votes back have been required to seek clemency for crimes committed by others, or to go through quasi-judicial proceedings to prove that they are not felons with similar names."

Additional voter suppression techniques are reported here

Republican-affiliated group under investigation for voter fraud in Oregon, Nevada

2004-10-14T21:43:00.000-07:00
The Oregon attorney general's office has opened a criminal investigation into possible voter fraud by employees of a Republican contractor. A Sproul & Associates canvasser told TV reporters he had been instructed to register only Republicans and he might destroy Democratic registration forms, Newsday reports.

Meanwhile, a similar investigation is being conducted in Nevada.

CBS writes:

"Acccording to KLAS-TV, a former employee claimed hundreds, if not thousands, of Democratic registration forms were destroyed by a Sproul & Associates group called Voters Outreach of America.

The former employee first told local Nevada reporters that he had personally witnessed his boss shredding eight to ten voter registration forms, according to Steve George, a spokesman for the Nevada Secretary of State."

Bush Sr. doesn't like his business dealings being investigated

2004-10-14T21:34:00.000-07:00
George H.W. Bush told a Maine TV station today Michael Moore is a "total ass slimeball."

In Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore had the audicity to bring to the public's attention miscellaneous trivia such as: On the morning of Sept. 11, George H.W. Bush was a meeting for the Carlyle Group, a private investment firm that also included the bin Laden family among its investors.

Fact-checking the debates 3.0

2004-10-14T21:08:00.000-07:00
From the Associated Press:

"Kerry accurately quoted Bush as saying he does not think much about Osama bin Laden and is not all that concerned about him. The president protested: 'I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations.

But in March 2002, Bush indeed said: 'I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run.' He described the terrorist leader as 'marginalized,' and said, 'I just don't spend that much time on him.'"

WATE in Knoxville reports:

"Verbal volleys flew between President Bush and John Kerry during their final debate Wednesday night. However, in making their attacks, the facts seemed to be the real casualties.

The first misstatement of the evening came in the president's first response. 'I signed the Homeland Security bill to better align our assets and resources,' Bush said. 'My opponent voted against it.'

That's wrong. Sen. Kerry voted yes on final passage of the Homeland Security Act of 2002...

Kerry also told the president, 'Five hundred thousand kids lost after-school programs because of your budget.' Wrong. Although the president proposed cutting $400 million from after school funding, Congress didn't go along so no children lost their programs."

John Kerry said George W. Bush hadn't met with the Congressional Black Caucus during his term in office. In fact, Bush met with the caucus in the first two weeks of his administration. More recently, Bush has turned down six invitations to meet with the caucus.

The AP writes:

"The last presidential debate highlighted words President Bush forgot he had spoken, a meeting John Kerry thought never happened, but did, and a refusal on both sides to back off questionable statements that have practically become classics through repetition.

Kerry claimed once more that Bush has lost 1.6 million jobs, about twice as many as have actually disappeared. The persistent discrepancy comes from his not saying that the losses he speaks of are in the private sector, and are mitigated by job gains in public service. He let go of another regular misstatement, however, this time using an accurate figure on the cost of the Iraq war.

Bush again declared of his opponent, 'He voted to increase taxes 98 times,' which should not be taken at all to mean Kerry has voted for that many tax increases. Independent analysis has found the list of 98 includes multiple votes for single measures and votes that set targets without having any effect on the tax code."

Also:
-Kerry said he had a plan to "insure all Americans." In fact, most estimates put the number of additional Americans he would insure at about 25-27 million. The number of uninsured Americans has risen to 45 million under Bush. Independent analysts have estimated that Bush's "health care plan," if implemented, would only bring health insurance to 7 million more Americans.
-Bush sought to take credit for creating the Department of Homeland Security. In fact, Bush had originally opposed created a homeland security department. As the AP put it, "President Bush overlooked a flip-flop of his own when he boasted yesterday about launching the Homeland Security Department: He was against it before he was for it."

Soldiers speak out against the war

2004-10-14T20:48:00.000-07:00
In its current issue, Mother Jones profiles war dissenters in the military.

Here is a preview:
When Hoffman arrived in Kuwait in February 2003, his unit’s highest-ranking enlisted man laid out the mission in stark terms. “You’re not going to make Iraq safe for democracy,” the sergeant said. “You are going for one reason alone: oil. But you’re still going to go, because you signed a contract. And you’re going to go to bring your friends home.” Hoffman, who had his own doubts about the war, was relieved—he’d never expected to hear such a candid assessment from a superior. But it was only when he had been in Iraq for several months that the full meaning of the sergeant’s words began to sink in...

In a 2003 Gallup Poll, nearly one-fifth of the soldiers surveyed said they felt the situation in Iraq had not been worth going to war over. In another poll, in Pennsylvania last August, 54 percent of households with a member in the military said the war was the “wrong thing to do”; in the population as a whole, only 48 percent felt that way. Doubts about the war have contributed to the decline of troop morale over the past year—and may, some experts say, be a factor in the 40 percent increase in Army suicide rates in Iraq in the past year. “That’s the most basic tool a soldier needs on the battlefield—a reason to be there,” says Paul Rieckhoff, a platoon leader in the New York National Guard and former JPMorgan banker who served in Iraq...

Staff Sergeant Jimmy Massey may be the most unlikely of the soldiers who have come out against the war. A Marine since 1992, he has been a recruiter, infantry instructor, and combat platoon leader. He went to Iraq primed to fight. “9/11 pissed me off,” he says. “I was ready to go kill a raghead.”

Shortly after Massey arrived in Iraq, his unit was ordered to man roadblocks. To stop cars, the Marines would raise their hands. If the drivers kept going, Massey says, “we would just light ’em up. I didn’t find out until later on, after talking to an Iraqi, that when you put your hand up in the air, it means ‘Hello.’” He estimates that his men killed 30 civilians in one 48-hour period...

Sergeant John Bruhns is sharply critical of soldiers who go AWOL. “I feel that if you are against the war, you should be man enough to stay put and fight for what you believe in,” he says. But he also doesn’t believe in making a secret of his opinions about the war. “I’m very proud of my military service,” he tells me from his post with the Army’s 1st Armored Division in Fort Riley, Kansas. “But I am disheartened and personally hurt, after seeing two people lose their limbs and a 19-year-old girl die and three guys lose their vision, to learn that the reason I went to Iraq never existed. And I believe that by being over there for a year, I have earned the right to have an opinion.”

Bruhns returned in February from a one-year deployment in Iraq. He is due to complete his Army service next March, but his unit may be “stop-lossed”—their terms extended beyond their discharge dates to meet the Pentagon’s desperate need for troops. Critics have called this a backdoor draft, a way to force a volunteer military into involuntarily serving long stints in an unpopular war. A California National Guard member has filed a lawsuit challenging the policy, and Bruhns has considered joining the case.

“I’m really a patriotic soldier,” the 27-year-old infantryman tells me; he addresses me as “sir” and stops periodically to answer the squawk of his walkie-talkie. He signed up as a full-time soldier in early 2002, after serving five years in the Marine Corps Reserve. “I was really upset about what happened on 9/11,” he recalls, “and I really wanted to serve. I lost a buddy of mine in the World Trade Center. I believe what we did in Afghanistan was right.”

But what he saw in Iraq, Bruhns says, left him disappointed. “We were fighting all the time. The only peace is what we kept with guns. A lot of stuff that we heard on the news—that we were fighting leftover loyalists, Ba’ath Party holdovers—wasn’t true. When I arrested people on raids, many of them were poor people. They weren’t in with the Ba’ath Party. The people of Iraq were attacking us as a reaction to what the majority of them felt—that they were being occupied.”

Full story here.

Congress looking at raising debt ceiling; $7.4 trillion debt not enough to pay Bush Administration bills

2004-10-14T20:30:00.000-07:00
It's a high price to pay to obtain tax cuts for the wealthy and 1,074 dead American soldiers in Iraq.

CNN reported today that Congress will have to raise the debt ceiling again to make room for a soaring national debt.

Noted during the Lou Dobbs show:

"Congress has already raised the debt ceiling twice during the Bush Administration shattering all previous records."

The Associated Press reports:
Treasury Secretary John Snow announced Thursday that the government has begun using various accounting procedures to avoid hitting the $7.4 trillion national debt limit.

Snow made the announcement in a letter to Congress, which has not passed legislation needed to boost the government's borrowing authority, which now stands at a statutory limit of $7.4 trillion.

"Given current projections, it is imperative that the Congress take action to increase the debt limit by mid-November," when "all of our previously used prudent and legal actions to avoid breaching the statutory debt limit will be exhausted," Snow wrote in the letter to House and Senate leaders of both parties.

Democrats used Snow's announcement to attack the Bush administration's record budget deficits, which will force Congress to increase the debt ceiling for the third time in three years...

"This is the burden Republican policies are passing onto next generations, and there is no plan or prospect for confronting it," said Rep. John Spratt of South Carolina, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee.

Congress is expected to come back in a special session after the Nov. 2 elections to deal with the debt limit and pass a massive spending bill to keep the government running.

Republican leaders did not want to take up the debt issue before the election and open themselves up to Democratic attacks about the record federal budget deficits run up during President Bush's first term in office.

Full story here.

Remember, this is a president who entered office with a SURPLUS.

U.S. refuses to join U.N. pact on women's rights

2004-10-14T20:21:00.000-07:00
The Associated Press reports:

"The United States has refused to join 85 other heads of state and government in signing a statement that endorsed a 10-year-old U.N. plan to ensure every woman's right to education, health care and choice about having children.

President Bush's administration withheld its signature because the statement included a reference to 'sexual rights.'"

Full coverage here.

Sad But True

2004-10-13T23:53:00.000-07:00
Americans are now paying an average of almost $2/gallon at the pump and above $2.50/gallon in some locations.

Jay Leno: "I feel bad for President Bush. The oil companies are his only economic success story and he can't even brag about it."

FactCheck: Bush supporters are wrong on recession, Medicare

2004-10-13T01:37:00.000-07:00
The claims in a new pro-Bush ad are wrong, according to FactCheck.org (the website recommended by Dick Cheney during the vice-presidential debate).

FactCheck writes:

"The ad by the pro-Bush group Progress for America Voter Fund claims the economy was already in a recession when Bush took office, but the National Bureau of Economic Research (which dates business cycles) says the recession actually began in March 2001, after Bush took office in January....

To be sure, the rate of economic growth had slowed significantly at the time Bush took office, as the longest boom in US history drew to a close. Real Gross Domestic Product, a general indicator of economic performance, grew an an unimpressive annual rate of 2.1 percent in the final quarter of 2000, after actually contracting by half a percentage point in the previous quarter. But employment was still growing when Bush was sworn in, and the economy actually added 113,000 payroll jobs between January and March 2001, before starting to decline in April....

The ad also misleads when it says Bush's tax cuts 'helped . . . create nearly 2 million jobs.' It is true that the economy has re-gained 1.9 million jobs since the very bottom of the job slump in August of 2003, as we reported when Bush used this number during the second presidential debate. But according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that still leaves the Bush administration with a loss of 585,000 jobs...

The facts also get stretched when the ad claims '41 million seniors now have access to lower cost prescriptions (emphasis added).' Bush's new prescription drug benefit will cover seniors on Medicare for an extra premium of about $35 a month, but not until 2006. Even the currently available drug discount cards have been used much less than expected. Current enrollment is less than 5 million.

Full analysis here.

Behind Locked Doors

2004-10-13T01:30:00.000-07:00
Read the military's own reports on what went on inside the Abu Ghraib prison. Click here..

Fact-checking the debates 2.0

2004-10-11T23:14:00.000-07:00
Before Wednesday's debate even begins, you can easily predict which lies George Bush will use. Here are a few outlined by Paul Krugman in the New York Times:

Unemployment
Mr. Bush will boast about the decline in the unemployment rate from its June 2003 peak. But the employed fraction of the population didn't rise at all; unemployment declined only because some of those without jobs stopped actively looking for work, and therefore dropped out of the unemployment statistics. The labor force participation rate - the fraction of the population either working or actively looking for work - has fallen sharply under Mr. Bush; if it had stayed at its January 2001 level, the official unemployment rate would be 7.4 percent.

The deficit
Mr. Bush will claim that the recession and 9/11 caused record budget deficits. Congressional Budget Office estimates show that tax cuts caused about two-thirds of the 2004 deficit.

The tax cuts
Mr. Bush will claim that Senator John Kerry opposed "middle class" tax cuts. But budget office numbers show that most of Mr. Bush's tax cuts went to the best-off 10 percent of families, and more than a third went to the top 1 percent, whose average income is more than $1 million.

-Paul Krugman, "Checking the Facts, in Advance"

James Watson, DNA pioneer, defends stem cell research

2004-10-11T23:09:00.000-07:00
"Nobel laureate James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, on Monday defended stem cell research, saying researchers must be able to search for ways to improve quality of life despite the field's uncertainties.

'I think there's a perception that scientists are more interested in science than society, that scientists are less moral than religious people,' the 76-year-old Watson said at the opening of a Berlin exhibit on his life and books. 'I think that's completely wrong.'

'To what extent research on stem cells will improve the quality of human life, I don't know, but we should be allowed to try,' he told reporters at the Berlin Medical History Museum at the Charite Medical School."

-Matt Surman, Associated Press

Read more here.

A majority of Americans, Australians, Brits, and Italians agree: Bush's Iraq policy has actually increased the threat of terrorism

2004-10-11T23:05:00.000-07:00
More than two-thirds of the people living in Australia, Britain and Italy — three countries allied with the United States in the Iraq war — believe the war has increased the threat of terrorism.

Leaders of those countries — prime ministers Tony Blair of Britain and John Howard of Australia and Premier Silvio Berlusconi of Italy — all get low marks from their people for their handling of the war on terrorism, an Associated Press-Ipsos poll shows.

More than half of those in the United States, 52 percent, believe the Iraq war has increased the threat of terrorism, while three in 10 in the United States think it has decreased the threat — a view promoted by President Bush.

-Will Lester, Associated Press

Read more here.

Working, but not making enough to pay the bills

2004-10-11T23:01:00.000-07:00
"One in every five U.S. jobs pays less than a poverty-level wage for a family of four, according to a study by the nonpartisan Working Poor Families Project.

The result of so many low-paying jobs is that nearly 39 million Americans, including 20 million children, are members of 'low-income working families' — with barely enough money to cover basic needs like housing, groceries and child care, the study found."

-Genaro Armas, Associated Press

Read more here.

Christopher Reeve dies, "Superman" star lobbied for stem cell research

2004-10-10T23:57:00.000-07:00

"It is painful to contemplate where we might be today if embryonic stem cell research had been allowed to go forward with full support of the government," Christopher Reeve (1952-2004), speaking in 2003.

Who is John Kerry? The prosecutor we need.

2004-10-10T13:57:00.000-07:00
From Matt Bai's near-book-length profile of John Kerry for the New York Times Magazine:
As New York and Washington were under attack on Sept. 11, 2001, a film crew happened to come upon John Kerry leaving the Capitol. The brief moment of footage, included in a BBC documentary called ''Clear the Skies,'' tells us something, perhaps, about Kerry in a crisis. The camera captures Congressional aides and visitors, clearly distraught and holding onto one another, streaming down the back steps of the Capitol building in near panic, following the bellowed instructions of anxious police. Off to one side of the screen, there is Kerry, alone, his long legs carrying him calmly down the steps, his neck craning toward the sky, as if he were watching a gathering rainstorm. His face and demeanor appear unworried...

''I remember looking up at the sky as I walked down the steps,'' Kerry told me recently, when I asked him about the film clip. He said that he and other members of the Senate's Democratic leadership had just watched on television as the second plane hit the World Trade Center, and shortly after that they heard the sonic boom of an explosion and saw, through a large window, the black smoke rise from the Pentagon. ''We'd had some warning that there was some airplane in the sky. And I remember seeing a great big plane -- I think it was a 747 or something -- up there, but it wasn't moving in a way that, you know, I was particularly concerned. I remember feeling a rage, a huge anger, and I remember turning to somebody and saying, 'This is war.' I said, 'This is an act of war'''...

[W]hen you listen carefully to what Bush and Kerry say, it becomes clear that the differences between them are more profound than the matter of who can be more effective in achieving the same ends. Bush casts the war on terror as a vast struggle that is likely to go on indefinitely, or at least as long as radical Islam commands fealty in regions of the world. In a rare moment of either candor or carelessness, or perhaps both, Bush told Matt Lauer on the ''Today'' show in August that he didn't think the United States could actually triumph in the war on terror in the foreseeable future. ''I don't think you can win it,'' he said -- a statement that he and his aides tried to disown but that had the ring of sincerity to it. He and other members of his administration have said that Americans should expect to be attacked again, and that the constant shadow of danger that hangs over major cities like New York and Washington is the cost of freedom. In his rhetoric, Bush suggests that terrorism for this generation of Americans is and should be an overwhelming and frightening reality.

When I asked Kerry what it would take for Americans to feel safe again, he displayed a much less apocalyptic worldview. ''We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance,'' Kerry said. ''As a former law-enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise. It isn't threatening people's lives every day, and fundamentally, it's something that you continue to fight, but it's not threatening the fabric of your life"...

In 1988, Kerry successfully proposed an amendment that forced the Treasury Department to negotiate so-called Kerry Agreements with foreign countries. Under these agreements, foreign governments had to promise to keep a close watch on their banks for potential money laundering or they risked losing their access to U.S. markets. Other measures Kerry tried to pass throughout the 90's, virtually all of them blocked by Republican senators on the banking committee, would end up, in the wake of 9/11, in the USA Patriot Act; among other things, these measures subject banks to fines or loss of license if they don't take steps to verify the identities of their customers and to avoid being used for money laundering...

By singling out three states in particular- Iraq, North Korea and Iran -- as an ''axis of evil,'' and by invading Iraq on the premise that it did (or at least might) sponsor terrorism, Bush cemented the idea that his war on terror is a war against those states that, in the president's words, are not with us but against us. Many of Bush's advisers spent their careers steeped in cold-war strategy, and their foreign policy is deeply rooted in the idea that states are the only consequential actors on the world stage, and that they can -- and should -- be forced to exercise control over the violent groups that take root within their borders.

Kerry's view, on the other hand, suggests that it is the very premise of civilized states, rather than any one ideology, that is under attack. And no one state, acting alone, can possibly have much impact on the threat, because terrorists will always be able to move around, shelter their money and connect in cyberspace; there are no capitals for a superpower like the United States to bomb, no ambassadors to recall, no economies to sanction. The U.S. military searches for bin Laden, the Russians hunt for the Chechen terrorist Shamil Basayev and the Israelis fire missiles at Hamas bomb makers; in Kerry's world, these disparate terrorist elements make up a loosely affiliated network of diabolical villains, more connected to one another by tactics and ideology than they are to any one state sponsor. The conflict, in Kerry's formulation, pits the forces of order versus the forces of chaos, and only a unified community of nations can ensure that order prevails...

Kerry's view, that the 21st century will be defined by the organized world's struggle against agents of chaos and lawlessness, might be the beginning of a compelling vision. The idea that America and its allies, sharing resources and using the latest technologies, could track the movements of terrorists, seize their bank accounts and carry out targeted military strikes to eliminate them, seems more optimistic and more practical than the notion that the conventional armies of the United States will inevitably have to punish or even invade every Islamic country that might abet radicalism.

Full story here.

White House alienating allies all across Europe

2004-10-10T13:34:00.000-07:00
The Associated Press reports:

"From Britain to the Baltics, many sense a sea change in sentiment toward an America they once admired — largely linked to what they call an arrogant contempt of others after 9-11...

Like many Europeans who see the American chief executive as reshaping their world, [Cedric] Judicis wishes he could vote.

'To us, America was always the gold standard,' he said. 'It made mistakes, but it always meant well. We were like pupils who admired the master.'

Judicis has made six trips to the United States and, unlike some others, he is eager to go back.

'But America is different now,' he said. 'It rules by force, not by the weight of respect. There's a sense of 'do what I say and not what I do.' It was always so open. Now it seems to us totalitarian.'

Jillie Faraday, a British filmmaker based in Paris, still loves to visit American friends. She knows the society well, avoiding generalities that often lead its critics astray.

Still, she excoriates the Bush administration because of Iraq. 'Can't they see that they're just making more terrorists, more bitterness, more frustration?' she asked.

And she thinks a Republican cabal is conning an apathetic, foolish mainstream. She is outraged, for instance, at the new electronic voting system in Florida which leaves no paper record.

'If they tried to do that in anywhere in Europe, people would riot in the streets," she said. "Americans are fed propaganda, and they say it's democracy.'"

Full story here

George W. Bush: guilty of human rights violations, disregard for international law

2004-10-09T22:56:00.000-07:00
The American Prospect has devoted its current edition to human rights abuses under the Bush Administration. Fifteen essays were published in the issue and I recommend reading every one of them. A few choice excerpts are offered below.

From "The Road to Abu Ghraib" by Anthony Lewis:
At its Guantanamo Bay prison camp for alleged terrorists, the United States has renounced its treaty obligations under the Third Geneva Convention. The convention requires that people held as prisoners of conflict be offered individualized hearings before a competent tribunal to determine whether they are rightly held or, as they may argue, were taken mistakenly. President Bush swept that commitment aside by finding that all the prisoners at Guantanamo were “unlawful combatants,” a term not found in the Geneva Conventions. Then his administration argued that the prisoners could not go to U.S. courts to test their detention -- until the Supreme Court rejected that position... Attorney General Ashcroft ordered legal proceedings in the cases of alien detainees held in secret. Families were not told where the detainees were... In our system, freedom depends on commitment to the supremacy of law. Without that commitment, government lawyers can write memoranda justifying torture. Abu Ghraib can happen.

From "A Lawless State" by John Shattuck:
In the Bush war on terrorism, Washington has shown a reckless disregard for basic principles of international human-rights law like the Geneva Conventions, the Convention Against Torture, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It has created a climate of lawlessness in which foreign detainees in U.S. custody overseas have been brutally abused, thousands of foreign citizens are held as “enemy combatants” indefinitely without being accorded the status of prisoners of war, and repressive regimes around the world get a green light to crack down on political dissidents and religious and ethnic minorities in the name of fighting terrorism. The result has been a drastic increase in the number of people convinced that America is their enemy and stepped-up recruiting by terrorist groups throughout the Muslim world and beyond... The United States is squandering one of its greatest assets: its commitment to human rights and the rule of law... In the Middle East, local reformers on the ground report that they no longer dare use the words “democracy” and “human rights” in their own communities. On the Arab street, these terms are now synonymous with U.S. military occupation, high civilian casualties, and the abuse of prisoners.

From "Rights in an Insecure World" by Deborah Pearlstein:
The PATRIOT Act became an important first example: It allows the FBI to secretly access Americans’ personal information (library, medical, telephone, and financial records, among other things) without needing to show to an independent authority (like a judge) that the target is particularly suspected of terrorist activity. Yet the September 11 commission’s report and other studies done since the attacks suggest that our primary intelligence failure on September 10 was not having too little information; our problem was failing to understand, analyze, and disseminate the significant quantity of information we had... After September 11, hundreds of foreign nationals in the United States were wrongly detained, unfairly deported, and subject to mistreatment and abuse under government programs, from special registration requirements to voluntary interviews to the detention of those seeking political asylum from a list of predominantly Arab and Muslim countries. Yet an April 2003 Government Accounting Office report on the effects of these interviews revealed that none of the information gathered from the interviews had yet been analyzed for intelligence, and there were “no specific plans” to do so.

From "Inalienable Rights" by Alison Parker:
Immediately after 9-11, the U.S. government questioned thousands of noncitizens of Arab and south Asian descent who were selected for no reason other than their ethnic or religious backgrounds. A full 752 were arrested for routine immigration violations. While none was ever charged with terrorism, the government gave them the slanderous moniker of being of “special interest” to the terrorism investigation...

8-year-old Brazilian Joso Herbert became the adopted son of an American family in 1987. Two months after his graduation from high school in 1997, he sold 7.5 ounces of marijuana to a police informant. Because he was a first-time offender, he was sentenced to probation and community service. But then he was deported to Brazil -- a place where he knows no one and where he no longer understands the language.

From "On America's Double Standard" by Harold Hongju Koh:
Over the past two centuries, the United States has become party not just to a few treaties but to a global network of closely interconnected treaties enmeshed in multiple frameworks of international institutions. Unilateral administration decisions to bend or break one treaty commitment thus rarely end the matter; rather, they usually trigger vicious cycles of treaty violation. Repeated insistence on a double standard creates the damaging impression of a United States contemptuous of both its treaty obligations and its treaty partners, even as America tries to mobilize those same partners to help it solve problems it simply cannot solve alone -- most obviously, the war against global terrorism, but also the postwar construction of Iraq, the Middle East crisis, and the renewed nuclear militarization of North Korea...

In Bosnia, the United States famously “went in heavy” after the Dayton Accords, supporting the entry of 60,000 NATO peacekeepers, including some 20,000 Americans. But in Afghanistan, a significantly larger geographical area, the United States has committed fewer troops to peacekeeping and called for only a small fraction of the international peacekeepers that were sent to Bosnia. The predictable result: While Hamid Karzai nominally acts as president of Afghanistan, outside of Kabul, much of the country remains under the de facto control of warlords and drug lords. Yet instead of making the additional financial commitments necessary to secure Afghanistan and promote serious nation building, the administration initially allocated zero dollars in its 2004 budget for Afghan reconstruction (until embarrassed congressional staffers finally wrote in a paltry line item of $300 million to cover the oversight). To date, U.S. and other international donors have advanced less than half the sums they originally pledged for Afghan reconstruction.

Enough of this hypocrisy. If subscribing to basic human decency is what John Kerry calls a "global test," then I'm all for it.

Marines voice frustration at war management

2004-10-09T22:44:00.000-07:00
Here's what members of a Marine unit stationed in Iraq had to say during interviews with the Washington Post:

"'I feel we're going to be here for years and years and years,' said Lance Cpl. Edward Elston, 22, of Hackettstown, N.J. 'I don't think anything is going to get better; I think it's going to get a lot worse. It's going to be like a Palestinian-type deal. We're going to stop being a policing presence and then start being an occupying presence. . . . We're always going to be here. We're never going to leave'...

'Every day you read the articles in the States where it's like, 'Oh, it's getting better and better,'' said Lance Cpl. Jonathan Snyder, 22, of Gettysburg, Pa. 'But when you're here, you know it's worse every day.'

Pfc. Kyle Maio, 19, of Bucks County, Pa., said he thought government officials were reticent to speak candidly because of the upcoming U.S. elections. 'Stuff's going on here but they won't flat-out say it," he said. "They can't get into it.'

Full story here.

Sinclair Broadcast Group orders its affiliates to preempt regular programming for anti-Kerry film

2004-10-09T20:52:00.000-07:00
The conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group, whose television outlets reach nearly a quarter of the nation's homes, is ordering its affiliates to preempt regular programming just days before the election to run a film attacking John Kerry, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Follow this chain.

The film, "Stolen Honor," was made by Washington Times reporter Carlton Sherwood, whose previous work includes the book Inquisition which seeks to vindicate cult leader (and Washington Times owner) Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

Inquisition was published by right-wing organ Regnery Publishing. Regnery publishes high-class fare such as Dangerous Diplomacy: How the State Department Undermines America's Security, a book of Antonin Scalia's dissenting opinions, and God, Guns & Rock and Roll by Ted Nugent.

As for Sinclear, here's a bit of its background:

Last April, Sinclair ordered seven of its affiliates not to air Ted Koppell's roll call of the military dead in Iraq.

The LA Times writes: "Even before the 'Nightline' controversy, Sinclair drew criticism because of the combination of its highly centralized news operations, which often include conservative commentary, and its almost exclusively Republican political giving. In the 2004 political cycle, Sinclair executives have given nearly $68,000 in political contributions, 97% to Republicans, ranking it 12th among top radio and TV station group contributors, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a campaign finance watchdog group."

If you live in a city with a Sinclair affiliate, I strongly encourage you to call and complain to the station and their advertisers.

A moment of irony

2004-10-09T20:20:00.000-07:00
I was watching the campaign rallies on C-Span today. John Kerry's rally in Ohio concluded with two of his theme songs, Bruce Springsteen's "No Surrender" and U2's "Beautiful Day." Then the programming shifted to Bush's rally. The first words out of the president's mouth? "What a beautiful day."

"Freedom is on the march," the president said. I hope he's right.

For me, "freedom is on the march"-as manifested in the leadership of the United States-means the following: a diverse and robust free press, open government proceedings, fair trials, a strong example for the world, tact, diplomacy, wisdom, humility, honesty, accountability, security without paranoia, and health care for all Americans.

Regime change begins at home.

Reality Check

2004-10-09T20:14:00.000-07:00
"The president’s real trouble is less with Kerry than with reality. In the week between the first and second debates, a CIA-appointed investigator concluded that Iraq had dismantled its WMD programs in 1991, Paul Bremer revealed that he had complained to the White House about the shortage of troops in Iraq, the New York Times reported that the administration knowingly covered up the misgivings of our intelligence establishment during the run-up to the war, the job creation figures were underwhelming, and Tom DeLay was reprimanded three times by the bipartisan House Ethics Committee. Kerry took Bush to task on Iraq and job loss, and on the domestic issues that first came into play during this debate: the president’s preferring the drug industry over American patients, the lack of funding for Bush’s own Leave No Child Behind program.

The attack by Bush and Cheney on Kerry’s allegedly 'big government' health care plan is a mark of the nervousness that has come over the president and his consultants. Kerry unveiled his plan, with all its particulars, fully 18 months ago in a speech in Des Moines. During those 18 months, neither health care experts nor the media -- nor all but a handful of Republicans, nor anyone in the president’s campaign, until just recently -- have characterized the plan as big government,” for the simple reason that its not. Its major component is to have the government assume the costs now borne by employers for catastrophic illness that cost more than $50,000. It also extends the coverage of children and the poor under existing programs...

Kerry had several lines of attack on domestic issues he did not embark upon Friday, though he could be saving them for the final debate on Wednesday. The fact that by independent estimates, Kerry’s health care proposal would cover about 27 million currently uninsured Americans, and Bush’s would cover no more than 6 million, has yet to be mentioned. The fact that Bush’s proposed new spending comes to $3 trillion -- nearly a trillion more than Kerry’s -- has yet to be raised..."

-Harold Meyerson, The American Prospect

Full story here.

Cheney opened Halliburton office in Tehran in 2000, federal investigation ongoing

2004-10-09T20:00:00.000-07:00
The Associated Press is now reporting on the story previously secluded to the alternative press (and featured earlier on this website): Dick Cheney's secret trade with Iran and other terrorist regimes during the 1990's.

Matt Kelley writes:

"Vice President Dick Cheney, who has called Iran 'the world's leading exporter of terror,' pushed to lift U.S. trade sanctions against Tehran while chairman of Halliburton Co. in the 1990s. And his company's offshore subsidiaries also expanded business in Iran...

Halliburton's foreign subsidiaries did about $65 million in business with Iran last year, company documents say. A federal grand jury is investigating whether Halliburton or its executives deliberately violated the U.S. ban on trade with Iran...

While he headed the Houston-based oil services and construction company, Cheney strongly criticized sanctions against countries like Iran and Libya. President Clinton cut off all U.S. trade with Iran in 1995 because of Tehran's support for terrorism...

Much of Halliburton's business with Iran comes through Halliburton Products & Services Ltd., a subsidiary incorporated in the Cayman Islands and based in the United Arab Emirates. Halliburton Products & Services opened a Tehran office in early 2000, before Cheney left Halliburton to become Bush's running mate."

Heard on the radio

2004-10-09T19:47:00.000-07:00
"The only thing the Bushies have to fear is the end of fear in-of-itself."