A community

Orlando Sentinel: The people connection: Dean 'walks' a mile in Lawton's shoes

" Campaigns are all about making connections.

Howard Dean, former governor of a small rural state, has connected with supporters of his campaign for president in a manner oddly reminiscent of the way Lawton Chiles, onetime governor of a major metropolitan state, once connected..."

The people connection: Dean 'walks' a mile in Lawton's shoes

by Mark Silva

August 31, 2003, Orlando Sentinel

Campaigns are all about making connections.

Howard Dean, former governor of a small rural state, has connected with supporters of his campaign for president in a manner oddly reminiscent of the way Lawton Chiles, onetime governor of a major metropolitan state, once connected.

This isn't the only connection Dean has with Florida, the pivotal state that made George W. Bush president in 2000, and the state that Bush's chief political adviser calls "ground zero" in the president's bid for re-election in '04.

As a teenager, Dean spent an eye-opening summer in Florida.

The wealthy stock-trader's son from East Hampton, N.Y., shipped off for field work in Belle Glade during one summer break from prep school. A schoolmate's father owned a cattle ranch along Lake Okeechobee and offered the kids work as ranch hands. Dean, whose middle name is Brush, cleared plenty of it.

He lived above the ranch manager's office. He learned Spanish from farmworkers who weren't going home to the Hamptons that fall:

"We had the greatest Spanish-speaking-only parties of anybody in Belle Glade."

Dean, who went on to become governor of Vermont, moves easily through crowds. He is attracting huge ones with a humbly financed presidential campaign, which suggests that small pocket change might well add up to big political change.

Near midnight Tuesday, Dean stood before several thousand people amassed outside the New York Public Library for the closing rally of a four-day, cross-country tour. With a baseball bat pictured on his campaign Web site, he had issued an Internet-anchored network of supporters a challenge: Match, with many small donors in a few days, $1 million that Bush had raised at $2,000-a-head in one day. Dean was here, Louisville Slugger in hand, to announce he had batted $1,003,620.

The average donation, he told a cheering crowd, was $51.

"The way we're going to beat George Bush," Dean said, "is to take those $2,000 checks he has and match them with $50 from ordinary citizens."

This is the same appeal that the late "Walkin' Lawton" made at the start of a 1,000-mile trek across Florida in his first bid for U.S. Senate in 1970. Chiles was asking for just $10 -- indeed, limiting donations to that. At the height of his legendary career, he upped the ante to $100. In 40 years, he never lost an election.

Chiles sought something else at the climax of his career, becoming governor. He spoke of restoring a lost sense of "community" in Florida.

Dean is making the same appeal today, calling for a renewed sense of community nationwide, and making it with the technological equivalent of the 1,000-mile walk. He has built a following with a mushrooming e-mail list, claiming 330,000 names in his address book, with a goal of 1 million by year's end.

The Dean campaign has become the runaway No. 1 subject at MeetUp .com, a Web site that connects ostensible strangers to talk about what they have in common.

Rick Klau, a young software salesman in suburban Chicago, says he has discovered his own community in his campaign for Dean. He hadn't met many of his neighbors since moving to Naperville three years ago. Since holding "Meet-Ups" for Dean, he has met dozens. He played host to 12 people in April, 50 in August, and he's not sure what to expect at the next one.

Chiles, of course, was onto something when he set out to connect with people.

Dean is onto something, too.

Tough guys II

The current Administration's meme is that America must "hang tough" with their failed and continuing to fail efforts in Iraq. Of course, it's always extremely easy for chickenhawks to hang tough when the blood that's spilled is not their own.

Daniel Schorr: Foreign policy on the fall runway

"...There are already signs that the administration is concerned about a demand to pull out, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told the veterans in St. Louis, "We must remain patient. When Americans begin a noble cause, we finish it..."

Body count

"...If this keeps up, the U.S. will be a land of a few very rich CEOs and a lot of unemployed workers. That may sound fine to the CEOs who go for the big bucks. But the CEO buccaneers might want to consider this caution: When there are no more American workers to lay off in the name of corporate "efficiency," it will no longer be possible for swashbuckling corporatists to foster the fantasies they now use to justify excessive pay hikes."

Not my friend

Some Democrats, who don't really pay too close attention to these things, think that because Bush and McCain detest each other this makes McCain a noble, principled alternative to Bush. We should always consider the corollary, "The enemy of my enemy, is not necessarily my friend." As McCain, who fully supports Bush's Iraq war, both philosophically and in practice is championing Bush's failed efforts. Why would a war hero abandon troops in the field to support this insanity? Yes, John, "we must win, but we can't win with the massively incompetent Bush regime in office. How many time must this guy drop the ball before you wake up.

John McCain: Why We Must Win

Karl Rove's master plan

Spread confusion and chaos and slip any kind of crackpot law when nobody is looking.

L.A. Times: Prop. 54 Could Undermine Racial Gains

"...It would seem a contradiction. Californians elect the first Mexican American governor in modern times and also approve an ostensibly conservative Proposition 54, which would prohibit the state from recognizing racial and ethnic categories. But the Mexicanization of California makes both political events possible..."

Tough guys

It's jut incredible the number of really bad ideas foisted upon this country by right-wing reactionaries. Since they refuse to accept any reality-based testing to see if their experiments in social planning actually work, we are left hold the bag or the bill for their obsessions.

Boston Globe: Unfree in America

"...Attorney General John Ashcroft's policies would only make the problem worse. Last month he directed all US attorneys to notify him whenever a federal judge imposes a criminal sentence for less time than recommended under federal guidelines, a move that would chill judicial discretion. That directive has been opposed by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Reagan appointee known for his tough anticrime stance. Sanctions for lawbreakers should vary according to the crime. A one-size-fits-all approach to fighting crime is no deterrent and is costly for society, as lawmakers in Washington and in state capitals should recognize. And locking up a greater percentage of citizens than any other nation is not a milestone of American pride..."

Destroying the Democratic base destroys U.S. strength

U.S. future needs blue-collar might

" At regular intervals since the Great Depression of the 1930s, Americans have been beset by doubts about the future of manufacturing. From the despair about growth and fear of "overinvestment" after the Depression to the panic about the Japanese challenge of the 1970s and 1980s and now to the almost subconscious dread about rising competition from China and India, the ability to provide good jobs and steady returns from this sector has come into question.

In the wake of the current, 37-month-long downturn in jobs and loss of international market share, the doubts have taken on political salience as well..."

What solid south?

What's sweet about this is that Dean get's it and the rest of the party hasn't caught on yet. Dean's ready to take the fight to Texas and the South. Jobs, jobs, jobs. Make it a mantra.

Bush's Southern Problem

"...Indeed, Gore proved to be so competitive on Election Day that the television networks couldn't declare the winner in many southern states for hours after the polls closed. At the very least, Gore tied Florida, ended up winning forty-five percent of the vote in Virginia, Louisiana and Arkansas, and secured only slightly weaker finishes in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina. Only in George W. Bush's homestate of Texas did Gore pull under forty percent of the vote..."

Deeper

Do you know anybody like this? The more events prove them wrong, the more they continue behaving the same to prove you wrong. When it involves the deaths of thousands and the loss of billions, it's known as insanity. (thanks atrios)

Chicago Tribune: U.S. failures in Iraq set stage for deeper trouble

"... Yet such clear developments are causing barely a ripple of hesitation in the war planners' "intentions to reconfigure" the Middle East at any cost (to us). Even as story after story emerges from Iraq of the failures of their postwar planning, they forge ahead in the same mode..."

And a few dollars more

And this guy should be made Secretary of the Treaury

Paul Krugman: Fistfuls of Dollars

"...Still, even the government of a superpower can't simultaneously offer tax cuts equal to 15 percent of revenue, provide all its retirees with prescription drugs and single-handedly take on the world's evildoers --single-handedly because we've alienated our allies. In fact, given the size of our budget deficit, it's not clear that we can afford to do even one of these things. Someday, when the grown-ups are back in charge, they'll have quite a mess to clean up."

Fistfuls of Dollars

By PAUL KRUGMAN

t's all coming true. Before the war, hawks insisted that Iraq was a breeding ground for terrorism. It wasn't then, but it is now. Meanwhile, administration apologists blamed terrorists, not tax cuts, for record budget deficits. In fact, before the war terrorism-related spending was relatively small ? less than $40 billion in fiscal 2002. But the costs of a "bring 'em on" foreign policy are now looming large indeed.

The direct military cost of the occupation is $4 billion a month, and there's no end in sight. But that's only part of the bill.

This week Paul Bremer suddenly admitted that Iraq would need "several tens of billions" in aid next year. That remark was probably aimed not at the public but at his masters in Washington; he apparently needed to get their attention.

It's no mystery why. The Coalition Provisional Authority, which has been operating partly on seized Iraqi assets, is about to run out of money. Initial optimism about replenishing the authority's funds with oil revenue has vanished: even if sabotage and looting subside, the dilapidated state of the industry means that for several years much of its earnings will have to be reinvested in repair work.

At a deeper level, the wobbling credibility of the occupation undermines that occupation's financing. American officials still hope to raise money by selling off state-owned enterprises to foreign investors, though they have backed off on proposals to sell power plants and other utilities. But after the bombing of U.N. headquarters, who will buy? Officials have also floated the idea of pledging future oil revenues in return for loans, but it's far from clear whether an occupying power has the right to make such deals, let alone whether they would be honored by whoever is running Iraq a few years from now.

So Mr. Bremer was telling his masters that they can no longer fake it: he needs money, now.

The biggest cost of the Iraq venture, however, may not be Mr. Bremer's problem; it may not even come in Iraq. Our commitment of large forces there creates the need for a bigger military, even as it degrades the effectiveness of our existing forces.

These days it's hard to find a military expert not reporting to Donald Rumsfeld who thinks we have enough soldiers in Iraq. But to those who say, "Send in more troops," the answer is, "What troops?"

Gen. Eric Shinseki, then the Army's chief of staff, prophetically warned that the postwar occupation would require more soldiers than the war itself. In his farewell address he made a broader point, that if we're going to do this sort of thing, we need a bigger military: "Beware the 12-division strategy for a 10-division Army."

The rule of thumb, according to military experts, is that except during crises, only one brigade in three should be deployed abroad. Yet today 21 of the Army's 33 combat brigades are deployed overseas, 16 of them in Iraq. This puts enormous stress on the troops, who find that they have only brief periods of rest and retraining between the times spent in harm's way. For example, most of a brigade of the 82nd Airborne that is about to go to Iraq returned from Afghanistan only six months ago.

So unless we can somehow extricate ourselves from Iraq quickly, or persuade other countries to bear a lot more of the burden, we need a considerably bigger military. And that means spending a lot more money.

For now, the administration is in denial. "There will be no retreat," President Bush says ? Churchillian words, but where are the resources to back them up?

Mr. Rumsfeld won't admit that we need more troops in Iraq or anywhere else. We could use help from other countries, but it's doubtful whether the administration will accept the kind of meaningful power-sharing that might lead to a new Security Council resolution on Iraq, which might in turn bring in allied forces.

Still, even the government of a superpower can't simultaneously offer tax cuts equal to 15 percent of revenue, provide all its retirees with prescription drugs and single-handedly take on the world's evildoers ? single-handedly because we've alienated our allies. In fact, given the size of our budget deficit, it's not clear that we can afford to do even one of these things. Someday, when the grown-ups are back in charge, they'll have quite a mess to clean up.

False statements to Congress

Of course, Lying to Congress is par for the course for the Republicans going back to Reagan. I'm surprised they don't make it a constitutional amendment.

If the Democrats don't make John Dean Attorney General when their turn comes, I wll be real disappointed

John Dean: GAO's Final Energy Task Force Report Reveals that the Vice President Made A False Statement to Congress

"...Then this August's Report was issued. It was not the thorough, comprehensive Report GAO wanted it to be. (Indeed, GAO's Comptroller General has stressed that "the Vice President's persistent denial of access to" records "precluded GAO from fully achieving our objectives and substantially limited our analysis.") But it is enough to shock, and disturb, the reader.

The Report shows that Cheney's claim to Congress, in the August 2, 2001 letter, that responsive documents were provided to GAO, was plainly false..."

Who says Elvis is dead?

If you change the definition of environment to industrial processes you are technically not anti-environment.

Bush Administration: Carbon Dioxide Not a Pollutant

"Refusing to call greenhouse-gas emissions a pollutant is like refusing to say that smoking causes lung cancer," responded Melissa Carey, a climate policy specialist for Environmental Defense, a New York-based environmental group. "The Earth is round. Elvis is dead. Climate change is happening..."

But deficits are good for us

After decades of warring against big government, the Republicans strategy has been, since Reagan, to spend the national treasure (of future generations) like hookers with stolen credit cards. This forces the Democrats to come in and clean up their mess, taking the heat for "fiscal conservatism" and higher taxes. The next Democratic Administration will be no different. Except if the Democrats are smart enough to only raise taxes on the rich, only confiscate wealth transfers through estates (see William Gates, Sr., Wealth and Our Commonwealth : Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes) and target budget reductions on traditional Republican pork-barrel. Oh, going after the massive fraudulent contracts given out by Bush to his corporate buddies in Iraq will help too.

Washington Post: Deficit Delusions

"NEXT YEAR'S DEFICIT is on course toward an ugly milestone -- nearly half a trillion dollars -- but that's not the bad news. The bad news, as a report from the Congressional Budget Office makes clear, is that budget deficits -- big ones -- are here to stay under the Bush administration's economic plan. The administration would have everyone stop worrying because, it assures us, spending discipline and robust economic growth will cut the deficit in half by 2008. But a close look at the CBO estimates shows that the more likely picture is annual deficits around $400 billion for the next decade, piling on more than $4 trillion in debt through 2013..."

Notice to theocrats, be careful of what you ask for...

You just might get it

Baltimore Sun: Ready for next step: Commandment enforcement

"... After all, these are not the Ten Suggestions we're talking about. They're the Ten Commandments. As one Moore supporter put it, "These are God's laws." America was colonized by people who came here precisely so they could live pious lives in complete conformity with biblical mandates, and we have strayed shamefully far from that purpose.

If we're going to be true to that history and to the spirit of the Decalogue, it's not enough to post these injunctions in a public place and invite passersby to read them. The state can ill afford to stop at merely displaying the Ten Commandments. It needs to begin enforcing them with all the powers at its disposal..."

Domestic terrorists among us

When the history of 9/11 and it's aftermath are written, we will find that foreign terrorists have done less damage to the American people than that done by domestic crackpots and anti-government fanatics in the reactionary right.

Robert Reich: Time Bomb Ticks Beneath the Economy

"The Congressional Budget Office reported this week that the federal budget is completely out of control. Even if spending doesn't grow as a share of the national economy, the green eyeshades at the budget office forecast $400-billion deficits as far as the eye can see..."

First Amendment

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

Detroit Free Press: Carve First Amendment in some stone

"The United States is not a Christian nation. It seems sensible to begin there, since it's the crux of the dispute.

Yes, the men who invented the nation were mostly Christians. Yes, too, Christianity is the nation's majority religion.

But the point is, this is not a theocracy, not a nation where the rulings of holy men carry official weight. The Framers made that impossible when they wrote a First Amendment forbidding the government from endorsing any religion..."

Don't call it a quagmire! It's not! It's not!

It's a BRILLIANT display of our masterful Fearless Leader. Anyone who say otherwise is a Traitor and Democrat.

Chicago Sun-Times: U.S. sinking in Iraq quagmire

"...One recalls what Sen. George Aiken said of Vietnam: The best strategy would be to claim victory and go home. The present administration has proven itself very skilled at spinning reality so that truth becomes invisible. Does anyone remember ''compassionate'' conservatism? Or ''no nation building''? Or more recently, the president's claim that his energy bill would solve the problem of the nation's erratic electric grid? Everyone knows, don't they, that Alaskan petroleum is just what the grid needs? The spinmasters could fool the majority of the American people into believing that defeat was really victory. Having been clever enough to steal an election, the administration may well be able to pull off an imaginary victory in Iraq. What's the point in being a Teflon president unless you can do that? So far, most Americans still dismiss criticism of the administration's Iraq policy as ''politics"...''

Cutting government to fight terror

Maybe we can outsource our federal workforce to the Indians where most of our high-paying tech jobs have gone in the last few years. That's it, then we can put Halliburton in charge. Works for me.

Boston Globe: A Bush slap for workers

"PRESIDENT BUSH has pulled a Labor Day surprise on federal workers, announcing in a letter to vacationing congressional leaders that he is using his authority to cut the size of the pay raise most workers were to receive next year. He blamed the move on the cost of fighting terrorism, but he could as easily have blamed his fiscally irresponsible tax cuts for the rich. This is the second time Bush has limited pay raises for the civilian federal work force while rewarding his political supporters. Two years ago he reinstituted a cash bonus program for 2,100 political appointees at federal agencies, a system that the Clinton administration abolished because it promoted favoritism. It is a pattern with Bush: reward those who are already well off and squeeze the rank-and-file...."

Feeling entitled?

Search your own soul.

The Era of Entitlement: What Alabama Judge Roy Moore, File "Sharers," and the Catholic Church Have in Common

"This is the Age of Entitlement. I do not mean entitlement only in the sense of the belief that one is entitled to a government handout. I also mean entitlement in the simpler sense of the belief that one deserves to get exactly what one wants - regardless of the law and despite the public good.

Four examples drawn from recent legal controversies illustrate this point. In each, the law made clear what the right thing to do was. But in each, the culprit insisted on doing something else - something they insisted that, illegal or not, they were entitled to do..."

Bungling boneheaded blunderers

Michael Tomasky: Ineptitude Redefined

"...But there's another argument about this administration, and about the Republican Party in general, that needs to be made, because this argument can alter presumptions about the two parties that have existed for at least a generation and can change the way the parties are seen well into the future. And it is this: The Republicans are total incompetents.

Republicans, at least since the 1980 election, have gotten lots of mileage out of billing themselves as the party of competence. They knew how to deal with the Russkies. They understood a budget. They knew how to crack down on the crooks and hoodlums. They understood the bottom line, and they knew what was right for America. The Democrats, meanwhile, were supposedly more interested in their dainty little social-engineering schemes than in success. Lots of people bought all of this, and of course there was a little bit of truth to it -- then. But the labels stuck hard. Democrats still have to take dramatic steps to prove their competence while Republicans are presumed -- by the mainstream media, anyway -- to possess it until they demonstrate otherwise.

Well, guess what? They've demonstrated otherwise. No one -- no one -- can name a single front on which today's Republicans have shown even the simplest competence. They don't know how to manage an economy. They sure don't know how to balance a budget. They have no idea how to create jobs (though they do have a pretty strong sense of how to make them disappear). Their domestic-security measures have consisted of the usual emphasis on show over substance, first stealing a Democratic idea (the Department of Homeland Security) and then underfunding the result in some crucial respects -- a mistake for which I pray we never pay a price..."

Ineptitude Redefined
Stereotype holds that the GOP is the party of sober competence. But the opposite is true.
By Michael Tomasky
Web Exclusive: 8.27.03

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Yesterday, Aug. 26, was a day that should live in political infamy for this administration. On that date a U.S. soldier was killed in a roadside bombing, becoming the 139th GI death since May 1. More soldiers have now been killed since the "end" of the war than during it. And, by the way, this soldier's death was the 71st since our fearless leader taunted the Iraqis with his now-famous phrase, "Bring 'em on."

I could make this into another column about this administration's mendacity; Lord knows there's fodder aplenty. But that point has been made. People are used to hearing liberals talk about how evil the administration is, and those who agree already agree while those who don't probably won't be persuaded.

But there's another argument about this administration, and about the Republican Party in general, that needs to be made, because this argument can alter presumptions about the two parties that have existed for at least a generation and can change the way the parties are seen well into the future. And it is this: The Republicans are total incompetents.

Republicans, at least since the 1980 election, have gotten lots of mileage out of billing themselves as the party of competence. They knew how to deal with the Russkies. They understood a budget. They knew how to crack down on the crooks and hoodlums. They understood the bottom line, and they knew what was right for America. The Democrats, meanwhile, were supposedly more interested in their dainty little social-engineering schemes than in success. Lots of people bought all of this, and of course there was a little bit of truth to it -- then. But the labels stuck hard. Democrats still have to take dramatic steps to prove their competence while Republicans are presumed -- by the mainstream media, anyway -- to possess it until they demonstrate otherwise.

Well, guess what? They've demonstrated otherwise. No one -- no one -- can name a single front on which today's Republicans have shown even the simplest competence. They don't know how to manage an economy. They sure don't know how to balance a budget. They have no idea how to create jobs (though they do have a pretty strong sense of how to make them disappear). Their domestic-security measures have consisted of the usual emphasis on show over substance, first stealing a Democratic idea (the Department of Homeland Security) and then underfunding the result in some crucial respects -- a mistake for which I pray we never pay a price.

They don't understand the Bill of Rights, and their shills in the media obviously don't understand the relationship between the First Amendment and trademark law, as Blah-Blah O'Reilly's laughable lawsuit against the great Al Franken shows. They've done nothing to protect the air we breathe and the water we drink, and have, if anything, done damage to those resources. They've done nothing for the minorities Mr. Compassionate Conservative was supposedly courting in 2000, his speeches to the NAACP and the like transcribed by a tremulous media.

And now, it turns out, they don't know how to do the one thing they've spent 50 years convincing Americans that they and only they know how to do: fight a war. The war in Afghanistan is hardly won (did you notice the firefight the other day that left 14 dead?). And the war in Iraq is a fiasco that is fast becoming a huge political problem, worrying middle-of-the-road voters (who have figured out now that maybe alienating the rest of the world wasn't such a great idea after all) and exposing ideological fissures on the right (go read William Kristol and Robert Kagan's editorial in the current Weekly Standard, where they call for more troop strength and take several amusing implicit swipes as Donald Rumsfeld).

The Republicans don't know how to run a country. The party has become so inflamed by its ideological ardor that it no longer has the basic ability to do what a political party in a democracy does: advocate a view of the world, yes, but balance interests and constituencies in such a way as to show at least some regard for the common good. In Dwight Eisenhower's GOP, or Richard Nixon's (Watergate aside, of course), or even Ronald Reagan's and certainly Bush Senior's, there was always a sense that the Republicans, however conservative they may have been at heart, understood and respected the limits of putting ideology above all else.

To today's Republican Party there is no common good. Instead, there is a severe ideology that recognizes only what's good for the party, not for the nation. This conflation of party with state ought to sound familiar, and, indeed, today's GOP is dramatically like the Soviet Communist Party in this respect. Writing for TAP Online yesterday, Jason Vest quoted an administration official as having remarked that American soldiers would be greeted with a "deluge" of "rose water and flowers" in Iraq. This sounds like nothing so much as the party apparatchiks who praised the "liberation" of Finland in 1940.

And, of course, there are wealthy interests who keep the party alive financially and who must be rewarded on all possible fronts. This, actually, is the one service Republicans do perform competently. They make damn sure of that.

Believe me, I have nothing against calling them dangerous and evil and so on. But the Democrats, who have been showing quite a bit of gumption lately, could do worse than to start bandying about the "I" word. After all, they have a track record of overseeing a vast economic expansion, creating 21 million jobs, increasing every investor's portfolio, and having left office with the United States liked and admired around the world instead of hated. (By the way, we are no longer, I suspect, feared.)

When voters recognize that one party knows how to get things done and the other party does not, they tend to gravitate toward the former even if they don't particularly agree with everything it stands for. Lots of people have voted Republican in the last few elections, and certainly in 2000, because even though they weren't nearly as right wing as the zealots now in power, they felt that the Republicans would do a better job of looking after their money and leaving the world a safer place for their kids. Voters surely can see that the Grand Incompetence Party is doing neither of those things. The Democrats just need to drill it into them.

Malfeasance and Nonfeasance Government

San Francisco Chronicle: Post-Sept. 11 credibility gap

"...According to a report issued by the office of the EPA inspector general, the agency changed the original draft, issued reassuring statements, deleted cautionary warnings and suppressed information about the danger of indoor pollution. Instead of telling the truth, EPA officials failed to tell people suffering from asthma and respiratory diseases that they were especially vulnerable to the dust and contaminants in the air that settled on the ground, carpets and furniture. They also neglected to inform the public that asbestos had reached a level that was harmful to ordinary people..."

Prevent forest fires? Just strip-mine the forest

Selling Out Our Forests

"...The best way to avoid catastrophic fires is by trimming undergrowth and clearing debris, combined with natural burns of the kind that have sustained healthy forests in past millennia. Those procedures, guided by science and surgically precise forestry, can return forests to near their equilibrium condition, in which only minimal further intervention would be needed. The worst way to create healthy forests, on the other hand, is to thin trees via increased logging, as proposed by the Bush administration..."

Theocracy vs. Democracy

Ellen Goodman: The chief justice doth protest too much

"...Whenever I write about the wall separating church and state, someone dares me to find it in the Bill of Rights. Indeed, the Constitution says the government cannot establish religion and must protect the freedom to practice any religion or, indeed, no religion.

We've had bitter fights over when the state is endorsing religion. Prayer in the schools? Creches in front of the library? We've had people who believe that government-enforced neutrality is really hostility. Jerry Falwell calls it "religious genocide."

But these days we Americans look at ourselves in the global light of places like Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan. Our breed of democracy does more than let the majority rule. It also protects the minority -- the Zoroastrian, Zen Buddhist, Hindu, Atheist, Muslim -- and lets us live together.

A protester carrying a 10-foot cross in front of the courthouse said, "Maybe they can move the monument, but they can't take it out of our hearts." But that, of course, is where it belongs..."

and this...

New York Times: Chief Justice Roy Moore's Last Stand

"...While Alabama's legal system was rising to the challenge, key federal officials were ducking their own responsibilities. The House of Representatives passed a lawless bill to prevent federal funds from being used to enforce the court order to remove the Ten Commandments monument. Attorney General John Ashcroft, whose duty it is to uphold the Constitution and federal power, was silent in the face of Chief Justice Moore's assault on the Constitution. Mr. Ashcroft is touring the country to assure the American people that the USA Patriot Act does not deprive them of their constitutional rights. He would have more credibility if he stood up for the Constitution when it was attacked by demagogues like Chief Justice Moore."

Stupid is as stupid does

Molly Ivins: Knowledge is a virtue

"...And therein lies our thesis for the day: Politics as showbiz versus what actually happens to real people's lives as a result of stupid public policies. When 200,000 poor children get knocked off a federal health insurance program because a state decides it can't afford the one-fifth co-pay, what happens? In fact, children rarely die, because when they are finally horribly ill and burning up with fever, their parents take them to an emergency room, where they receive excellent care at a very high cost to the rest of us. In the meantime, their teeth aren't attended, and their hearing and eyesight are never checked. As a result, many of them try to function in school with tooth pain or without being able to see or hear clearly. Those little kids aren't celebrities, but they're just as real as Arnold Schwarzenegger. They have bangs and bright eyes and dreams.

When a state does something really dumb, like pass a three-strikes law, people wind up doing life for minor crimes -- so minor it's mind-boggling -- stealing a sandwich, pilfering a mop. What they usually need is treatment for alcoholism or addiction so they can become productive members of society. Instead, they rot behind bars at a cost to the taxpayers of $40,000 a year per head, draining the state of resources to improve the schools and teach all those bright little ones who would take California into the next generation of high tech..."

Use your noggin

Molly Ivins - Creators Syndicate

08.26.03 - AUSTIN -- One problem I have with Arnold Schwarzenegger is that he looks like a condom stuffed with walnuts. I realize that is superficial, shallow and unbecoming to a semi-serious-minded liberal like myself, but there it is. The other is that he doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to public policy.

And therein lies our thesis for the day: Politics as showbiz versus what actually happens to real people's lives as a result of stupid public policies. When 200,000 poor children get knocked off a federal health insurance program because a state decides it can't afford the one-fifth co-pay, what happens? In fact, children rarely die, because when they are finally horribly ill and burning up with fever, their parents take them to an emergency room, where they receive excellent care at a very high cost to the rest of us. In the meantime, their teeth aren't attended, and their hearing and eyesight are never checked. As a result, many of them try to function in school with tooth pain or without being able to see or hear clearly. Those little kids aren't celebrities, but they're just as real as Arnold Schwarzenegger. They have bangs and bright eyes and dreams.

When a state does something really dumb, like pass a three-strikes law, people wind up doing life for minor crimes -- so minor it's mind-boggling -- stealing a sandwich, pilfering a mop. What they usually need is treatment for alcoholism or addiction so they can become productive members of society. Instead, they rot behind bars at a cost to the taxpayers of $40,000 a year per head, draining the state of resources to improve the schools and teach all those bright little ones who would take California into the next generation of high tech.

Arnold Schwarzenegger's top adviser is, of all people, former California governor Pete Wilson, the man who caused the mess Gray Davis got the blame for. "Blackout Pete" is the guy who made utility deregulation the centerpiece of his administration. Wilson said deregulation would mean lower prices, a new age of better, cheaper, more reliable energy. The magic of the marketplace would inevitably lead to lower prices. You can look it up.

Instead, deregulation opened the market to gaming by crooked enterprises like Enron (how could they resist?), and they milked $45 billion out of California's economy before the Bush administration finally, finally, at long, long last allowed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to slap on price controls.

During those rolling blackouts, people's ventilators went out, dialysis machines stopped, old people who needed air conditioning were left to swelter and people's lives were at stake. This is not showbiz. You can't fix it with a quick script change.

When the Republicans in Congress, led by the increasingly out-of-control Tom DeLay, announced they would not vote for money to fix the electric grid because (gasp! shudder!) it is a Democratic bill, he did not increase the odds of drilling in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge (which has nothing to do with blackouts), he merely insured there will be more blackouts. While politicians play dumb politician games, real people suffer. Real people's lives are changed, and not for the better.

This sort of "Oh, hell, anybody can run the country, you don't have to know anything" attitude is beyond ludicrous. I'm sorry, but Jesse Ventura, whom I thoroughly enjoy as a personality, was a disaster as governor of Minnesota. A few elementary basics, like understanding the school aid formula, having some idea how to set fair insurance rates, what home health care providers need and a few hundred other subjects are a minimum requirement. Sure, you can surround some attractive political personality with top-notch aides, experts, advisers and bureaucrats, and many a dim bulb in executive office has been pulled through by just such a team. But it helps, honest, if you have a leader who has knowledge, understanding and vision. I grant you, they're in short supply, but "Hasta la vista, baby" doesn't sound that good when people's lives are on the line.

I realize Gray Davis was supposed to be Mr. Experience, Mr. Detail -- and didn't he make a fine mess out of things? Yes, he did. He panicked during the energy crisis (brought about by Wilson), groveled at the feet of Southern California Edison (which wrote the electricity de-reg bill in California), begged for power to keep lights on and overpaid billions for it. Too true. But use your noggin, is that really an argument in favor of putting somebody who knows nothing in charge?

As far as I know, Mr. Schwarzenegger is as qualified as any other citizen to run for public office. So why doesn't he start with the school board or the country commissioner's office and learn something about what?s involved first?

Mob-ocracy

Tyranny of the mob rules in California

"...Tragically, California has adopted another, far less successful form of democracy, a kind of "mob-ocracy" with the tyranny of transient majorities in never-ending elections and initiatives. The recall (successful or not) will inevitably lead to other recalls; already various groups have made clear that, should a Republican be elected to replace Gray Davis, there will be a near-instantaneous effort to recall that replacement..."

We got them right where they want us

Maureen Dowd: The Jihad All-Stars

"...By doing their high-risk, audacious sociological and political makeover in Iraq, Bush officials and neocons hoped to drain the terrorist swamp in the long run. But in the short run, they have created new terrorist-breeding swamps full of angry young Arabs who see America the same way Muslims saw Westerners in the Crusades: as Christian expansionist imperialists motivated by piety and greed.

Just because the unholy alliance of Saddam loyalists, foreign fighters and Islamic terrorists has turned Iraq into a scary shooting gallery for our troops doesn't mean Americans at home are any safer. Since when did terrorists see terror as an either-or proposition?

"Bring 'em on" sounded like a tinny, reckless boast the first time the president said it. It doesn't sound any better when Mr. Bush says it louder with a chorus. "

Under the "incompetence is radiant" catagory

Trudy Rubin can't understand why Bush isn't spending any money rebuilding Iraq. All the Iraqis need to do is form a corporation and start donating hard and soft money to the Bush re-elect and various Republicans. That will open up the money floodgates.

Bush's post-war dithering mystifies even key supporters

"...What makes this reticence so strange is the administration's frequent comparison of rebuilding Iraq to the postwar reconstruction of Germany under the Marshall Plan. But, as Rachel Bronson of the Council on Foreign Relations points out, the Marshall Plan poured $79 billion in current dollars into Europe between 1948-52, most of it in the first two years.

Yet in Iraq, key refineries and electric plants are still halted for want of spare parts. "It is simply unconscionable that debilitating power shortages persist in Iraq, turning Iraqi public opinion against the United States," writes Kristol. "This is one of those problems that can be solved with enough money. And yet the money has not been made available. This is just the most disturbing example of a general pattern..."

And One Day Pigs Will Fly

Los Angeles Times: And One Day Pigs Will Fly

"Oh, what a paradise California would be - if it weren't for Gov. Gray Davis..."

And One Day Pigs Will Fly

by Peter H. King

August 27, 2003

Oh, what a paradise California would be ? if it weren't for Gov. Gray Davis.

If it weren't for Davis, L.A.'s freeways would run uncluttered and wide-open every commute. Silicon Valley would be booming still, filled with free-spending techies in those cute company logo shirts.

If it weren't for Davis, there would be no raisin glut in the San Joaquin Valley. Lumberjacks would tread lightly through the redwoods, whistling kindly greetings to the spotted owls and tree-sitters. Crime would be down. The surf, and the Nasdaq, would be up, always up.

Remember how wonderful everything was just four years and eight months ago? There might have been an occasional earthquake or riot. And maybe some public schools couldn't afford textbooks. OK, California had a few challenges, some opportunities. Still, before Davis, the state was a bustling utopia. Listen to members of the pack running to replace Davis as governor. They'll tell you.

If it weren't for Davis, there would have been no energy crisis. The utilities and energy companies would have dotted the landscape with shiny new plants ? all powered by the wind, sun and native grasses, of course. And they would have built these plants even though, in the new world of semi-deregulated electricity, there happened to be little financial incentive to do so. They're good guys, the energy firms. Just check out their ads. Or talk to their defense lawyers.

If it weren't for Davis, businesses would be lined up at Laughlin, Nev., waiting to take advantage of California's Mississippi-level taxes and Manhattan-style luxury. Everybody would have plenty of money to spend on the good things. A fine, lightly taxed vehicle. A new house in Sundown Orchards.

Better still, the hard-working people who clean those lightly taxed vehicles at the carwash, who cut the suburban lawns ? they'd all carry the appropriate documents, speak several languages fluently and never need any state assistance.

Now it might be said, if one happened to be in a contrarian frame of mind, that much of what ails California stems not from anything Davis has done but from the slumping economy. As Palo Alto economist Stephen Levy notes: "Governors and legislators cannot control economic cycles. Pete Wilson was not responsible for the aerospace recession of the early '90s and Gray Davis is not responsible for today's tech recession."

In that vein, it also might be pointed out that workers' comp abuses and illegal immigration are issues that pop up predictably on the political radar whenever the economy goes south ? just as public fretting about sprawl always increases during flush times and water policy makes headlines only in a drought. Maybe workers avoid injury in a boom. Perhaps illegal immigrants cross the border only in a recession, when there is little work to be had.

It might be said that the mess in Sacramento ? and it truly is a mess ? predates the governorship of Gray Davis. The last quarter of a century, from Prop. 13 forward, has been a tragicomedy of fed-up voters stripping away power from state and local governments alike. Through one blunt-edged initiative after another, they have battered down the so-called decision makers, restricting how funds can be raised and distributed.

And so it has come to pass that when Sacramento officials carve the pie, they in truth have only a couple of pieces to divide ? and it can get really ugly really fast. Of course, if Gray Davis is terminated, that will change.

Take Davis out of the picture and Democrats and Republicans in Sacramento would get along so well that budgets would pass like clockwork. Taxes would be cut, but never programs. Benefits would be raised, but never taxes.

With Davis gone, lobbyists at once would realize the folly of government by special interest. They'd devote their days to repairing poor children's bicycles and rescuing beached whales. It'd be just like the good old days we've heard so much about. You bet.

Already, a Hot Campaign

Seattle Weekly: Already, a Hot Campaign

"ANYONE TAKING the political temperature of the Northwest over the past couple of weeks, as President Bush slid through the region, would have to conclude that, all of a sudden, it's very hot out there. And angry. And that much of that heat and anger isn't coming from the usual anti-Bush crowd of radicals and anarchists. It's coming from the middle class..."

Hee-hee

Ashcroft agrees to 'Queer Eye' makeover

"...After it became clear that Ashcroft was just scaring everybody on the Patriot Act tour, Karl had to sit him down and say, "John, it's time to fluff you up," one White House aide said..."

Failing to bring security or peace

The "fog of War" has lifted only to reveal the "veil of Deceit".

War Issue Threatens Bush in New Hampshire

"... It's been presumed that the antiwar sentiment animating these early months of the presidential campaign is a conceit of the loony left. The caricature distorts the truth of the debate before the war. And it ignores growing voter angst not over Bush's decision to go to war, but over the ill-managed occupation that has followed.

The failure to secure the peace, or the safety of American troops, or even water and electrical lines, has people in this state, site of the first presidential primary, unnerved..."

Which ten commandments?

Just which commandments are the 10 Commandments?

"...You've got your Jewish Ten Commandments, your Catholic Ten Commandments, your Lutheran Ten Commandments, your Charlton Heston Ten Commandments, your King James Bible Ten Commandments, your New Revised Standard Version Ten Commandments, and they don't all agree as to which commandment is which -- or what they really mean....

or my favorite...

"...For example, the First Commandment that "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" indicates that it was OK to have gods other than Yahweh, so long as Yahweh was No. 1.

Monotheism came later..."

Just which commandments are the 10 Commandments?

by Don Lattin, Chronicle Religion Writer

Let's say the Supreme Court of the United States allows the chief justice of the great state of Alabama to keep his 2-ton monument to the Ten Commandments in his office building in Montgomery.

Next question:

Which Ten Commandments?

You've got your Jewish Ten Commandments, your Catholic Ten Commandments, your Lutheran Ten Commandments, your Charlton Heston Ten Commandments, your King James Bible Ten Commandments, your New Revised Standard Version Ten Commandments, and they don't all agree as to which commandment is which -- or what they really mean.

Even the Bible contains two versions, one in Exodus 20:1-17 and a slightly different one in Deuteronomy 5:6-21.

There are, of course, various English translations of those ancient Hebrew texts.

Further complicating the commandments are the fact that neither Exodus nor Deuteronomy neatly number the no-nos from one to 10.

By some counts, there are actually Twenty-Nine Commandments, not Ten Commandments.

For example, the Alabama monument to "the laws of nature and of nature's God," uses the "thou shalt" of the King James Bible rather than the "you shall" of the New Revised Standard Version.

The monument in Montgomery slashes its version of the Tenth Commandment down to a mere four words:

Thou Shalt Not Covet.

What King James really says is a bit more specific:

"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's."

Is that six commandments, one commandment, two commandments or the Tenth Commandment?

Different denominations use various numbering systems because they differ on what to include in the First and Tenth Commandments.

The Tenth Commandment for Jews and most Protestants is the entire "thou shalt not covet" passage. But Catholics and Lutherans list two "thou shalt not covet" commandments: one against coveting your neighbor's wife and one against coveting your neighbor's property, including his ass.

Then there is the question of what the commandments were meant to mean.

For example, the First Commandment that "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" indicates that it was OK to have gods other than Yahweh, so long as Yahweh was No. 1.

Monotheism came later.

"Thou shalt not commit adultery" is either commandment six or seven and originally only forbade sex with a married woman.

Married men were free to have sex with other females. That's because establishing paternity, not maintaining sexual purity, was the reason for that commandment.

Then there are the commandments in the next chapter of Exodus, which allow fathers to sell their daughters into slavery (21:7) and say that "whoever curses his father or his mother shall be put to death" (21:17).

Neither of those commandments is included among the Ten Commandments currently residing under the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court building.

The falling asteroids of doubt

UK/Guardian: Bush may yet fall victim to the electors' revenge">

"It's hard to imagine the aftermath of this unfinished conflict displacing Tony Blair. Hutton's forensic inquiry is unlikely to come to a verdict that shatters his credibility. His reputation is already damaged. We will look with more wariness on his outrageous insistence that his moral vision of the world coincides with the British national interest. But, if only because of the arrangement of British politics, with its me-too Tory warriors and an opposition leader of pitiful irrelevance, Blair's success in an election he's determined to fight looks assured.

Cruz, not a choice but an imperative

Robert Scheer: Arrogant Arnold or Capable Cruz?

"...Bustamante has the training, experience and track record required to work with the Legislature to produce a budget come January. Contrast this with the GOP's muscleman, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who admits he finds the budget process baffling and doesn't plan to pull in his financial experts to study it until after the election ? a couple of months before a new one is due. As the Democratic state Senate Leader John Burton (D-San Francisco) told me over the weekend, "I hope those will not be the same trusted accountants responsible for the debacle of Enron and so many other companies..."

Choke on this

Paul Krugman: Dust and Deception

"Last week a quietly scathing report by the inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency confirmed what some have long suspected: in the aftermath of the World Trade Center's collapse, the agency systematically misled New Yorkers about the risks the resulting air pollution posed to their health. And it did so under pressure from the White House.

The Bush administration has misled the public on many issues, from the budget outlook to the Iraqi threat. But this particular deception seems, at first sight, not just callous but gratuitous. It's only when you look back at budget politics in 2001 that you see the method in the administration's mendacity.

A draft E.P.A. report released last December conceded that 9/11 had led to huge emissions of pollutants. In particular, releases of dioxins ? which are carcinogens and can also damage the nervous system and cause birth defects ? created "likely the highest ambient concentrations that have ever been reported," up to 1,500 times normal levels. But the report concluded that because the outdoor air cleared after a couple of months, little harm had been done...."

Dust and Deception

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Last week a quietly scathing report by the inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency confirmed what some have long suspected: in the aftermath of the World Trade Center's collapse, the agency systematically misled New Yorkers about the risks the resulting air pollution posed to their health. And it did so under pressure from the White House.

The Bush administration has misled the public on many issues, from the budget outlook to the Iraqi threat. But this particular deception seems, at first sight, not just callous but gratuitous. It's only when you look back at budget politics in 2001 that you see the method in the administration's mendacity.

A draft E.P.A. report released last December conceded that 9/11 had led to huge emissions of pollutants. In particular, releases of dioxins ? which are carcinogens and can also damage the nervous system and cause birth defects ? created "likely the highest ambient concentrations that have ever been reported," up to 1,500 times normal levels. But the report concluded that because the outdoor air cleared after a couple of months, little harm had been done.

In fact, the main danger comes from toxic dust that seeped into buildings and remains in carpets, furniture and air ducts. According to a recent report in Salon, businesses that did environmental assessments of their own premises found alarming levels not just of dioxins but also of asbestos and other dangerous pollutants. So the most shocking revelation from the new report is that under White House direction, the E.P.A. suppressed warnings about indoor pollution. Scattered evidence suggests that as a result, hundreds of cleaning workers and thousands of residents may be suffering chronic health problems.

Why was crucial information withheld from the public? The report mentions "the desire to reopen Wall Street and national security concerns." Maybe ? though the national security benefits of failing to remove toxic dust escape me. I suspect that there was another reason: budget politics.

Immediately after 9/11 there was a great national outpouring of sympathy for New York, and a natural inclination to provide generous help. President Bush quickly promised $20 billion, and everyone expected the federal government to assume the burden of additional security. Yet hard-line Republicans never wanted to help the stricken city. Indeed, according to an article by Michael Tomasky in New York magazine, Senators Phil Gramm and Don Nickles attempted to slash aid to New York within hours of Mr. Bush's promise.

Matters were patched up sufficiently so Mr. Bush could make his triumphant appearance at ground zero the next day. But then the backtracking began. By February 2002, only a fraction of the promised funds had been allocated ? and Mitch Daniels, the White House budget director, accused New York's lawmakers of playing "money-grubbing games."

Why this stinginess? A source told Mr. Tomasky that "Gramm just doesn't like spending money. And Nickles . . . he's just anti-New York." That sums it up: even after 9/11, hard-line conservatives opposed any spending, no matter how justified, that wasn't on weapons or farm subsidies, while some people from America's "red states" just hate big-city folk.

What does all this have to do with toxic dust? Think how much harder it would have been to stiff New York if the public had understood the extent to which Lower Manhattan had become a hazardous waste site. I can't prove that was what administration officials were thinking, but otherwise their efforts to play down the risks seem incomprehensible.

In the end, New York seems to have gotten its $20 billion ? barely. As for the additional help everyone expected: don't get me started. There wasn't a penny of federal aid for "first responders" ? like those firefighters and police officers who cheered Mr. Bush at ground zero ? until a few months ago, and much of it went to sparsely populated states. The federal government spends much more protecting the average resident of Wyoming from terrorists than it spends protecting the average resident of New York City.

All in all, the people running Washington, while eager to invoke 9/11 on behalf of whatever they feel like doing, have treated the city that bore the brunt of the actual attack very shabbily. In September 2004 the Republicans will hold their nominating convention in New York. Will New Yorkers take the occasion to remind them about how the city was lied to and shortchanged?

Criminal behavior

Cheney Stifled Energy Probe, GAO Investigators Say"

"Congressional investigators said on Monday that Vice President Dick Cheney had stymied their investigation into his energy task force by refusing to turn over key documents.

The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said it was impossible to tell how much energy companies or industry groups may have influenced the task force's 2001 report because the administration withheld important records.

"The extent to which submissions from any of these stakeholders were solicited, influenced policy deliberations or were incorporated into the final report is not something that we can determine based on the limited information at our disposal," the GAO said..."

Action Figures for Imbeciles

Action Figures For Imbeciles-It's the G.W. Bush "aviator" doll, just in time to degrade every notion of heroism, ever

"Country's in shambles and economy's gutted and schools are shot and Iraq's a violent bloody mess and joblessness is rampant and it's a proud time indeed to be an American, and hence you might be asking yourself, what, pray what, can I give the hardcore lockstep pseudo-Christian homophobic Republican on my gift list?

What can you give the one who just loves bogus wars and BushCo's lies and thinks SUVs are way bitchin' and believes every bile-filled opinion crammed down their throats via Fox News and Hannity/Coulter/Limbaugh et al., hates them damnable gays and libs and environmentalists and has one hand over his heart while the other gropes the cat? ..."

Corpornography

Greg Palast: Black-out at the (New York) Times

" I guess the lights never went back on at the Times. That's the only acceptable explanation for the loving Lewinsky The Paper of Record gave to the power industry on the front page of its Sunday edition.

Over 20-some column inches, we are told that "experts say" that the reason the lights went out over one fourth our continent ten days ago was that the electric industry, most particularly, transmission lines, "remained regulated." The answer to our woes, the Times informs us, is more deregulation -- except for the visionary rules contained in the President's energy bill. In the editorial posing as a news story, the Times lectures us that the president's proposals would have been law, and saved us from the power outage, "but politics have stymied their progress..."

Ideology trumps reality

Joe Conason: Regulation-Haters Spreading More Lies

"We don't yet know the precise cause of the blackout, and perhaps we never will. But we now can say with certainty what we may only have suspected before: The people running our government and our energy industry believe that Americans are fools, because otherwise they wouldn?t dare to conduct politics and business as they do.

For many years, the conservative cant promoted by the energy corporations is that deregulation can relieve any shortages, reduce rising pressure on prices, deliver decent service to everyone, and secure the national energy supply in times of crisis. This might be termed the "Texas ideology," which is well represented in Washington not only by the usual lobbyists, but at the highest fulcrums of power. Politicians from Houston run both the White House and the Congress-and their notion of the best way to produce and market energy was symbolized, until not so long ago, by their friends, neighbors and contributors at Enron..."

Crisis Management the wrong way

Bush uses crises to push preset agenda

"HERE IS a prediction: Soon, maybe by the time you read this, the Bush administration will argue that the Great Blackout of '03 demonstrates the need for more energy deregulation and privatization, a beloved administration theme.

We can already hear the first bleats of this contention from certain sectors.

Why is this foreseeable? Because it follows a pattern of behavior by the Bush White House to use crisis and panic to promote predetermined actions no matter the threat, situation or need..."

Unprepared

Bob Herbert: Ready or Not

"...Extensive steps have been taken to prevent the use of airliners in another Sept. 11-type attack. But Dr. Redlener noted that there is a wide range of potential acts of terror that front-line emergency organizations, hospitals and the public health system may have to cope with. "We need to be prepared for things like car bombs, or a terrorist attack on a nuclear power facility. We need to be prepared for the release of a chemical or biological agent in a public place ? a train station, an airport, a sports arena. We need to be prepared for sabotage of major infrastructural systems ? bridges, for example, and transportation and communications facilities.

"The health care system has to be ready to respond effectively to any of these emergencies. And right now it's not..."

Weapons of Mass Delusion

"Some 1,500 American investigators are scouring the Iraqi countryside for evidence of weapons of mass destruction that has so far eluded them. Known as the Iraq Survey Group and operating under the supervision of a former United Nations weapons inspector, David Kay, they are searching mostly for documents that will help them assemble a clear, if somewhat circumstantial, case that Iraq had or intended to have programs to produce prohibited weapons.

It is a daunting task. And according to many Iraqi scientists and officials I have spoken to, it is not being done very well..."

Straight Speaking Howard Dean

Defining Dean

"...He speaks rapidly, as advertised, sometimes answering before a question is complete, seeming not to weigh his words with overly political caution -- his trademark distinction from the programmed Washington politicians running against him. Yet at times he speaks openly of the political calculations. Some positions seem aimed at the partisan primary audience, others to shore up his general-election credentials. Unlike Bush, he says, he would "stand up to the Saudis." But also unlike Bush, he would have talked long ago with Kim Jong Il. Whether there is a coherent worldview or a work in progress will be interesting to watch..."

Defining Dean

By Fred Hiatt

Washington Post: Monday, August 25, 2003; Page A17

Howard Dean seemed to be having a grand time, and who could blame him? As he jogged to the podium Saturday evening, a roar rose out of the large (the campaign claimed 4,000) and spirited crowd. Music thumped, navy-blue Dean placards pumped skyward, partisan spirits and late-summer sunshine suffused the Falls Church park. As the former Vermont governor brought his presidential campaign to the Washington suburbs, any rivals for the Democratic nomination hoping that he would soon implode -- through inexperience, or overconfidence or the weight of his supposed liberalism -- wouldn't have found much encouragement.

That last charge -- that he can't win because he's too liberal or dovish -- is obviously one he's giving thought to. "I don't even consider myself a dove," he told me and my colleague Ruth Marcus during a conversation before the rally. It's "not possible" to fix him on the liberal-conservative scale, he said. "Where I am on the political spectrum is a convenient way to avoid talking about issues."

It's true that he opposed the war in Iraq, he says, but he supported the 1991 Gulf War and the Bush campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan. More interesting, at a time when many politicians are shuddering at President Bush's ambitions to remake the Middle East -- conservatives, because they are skeptical of such grand reshaping ambitions; liberals, because they see resources being diverted from social causes at home -- Dean sounds if anything more committed than Condoleezza Rice to bringing democracy to Iraq.

"Now that we're there, we're stuck," he said. Bush took an "enormous risk" that through war the United States could replace Saddam Hussein and the "small danger" he presented to the United States with something better and safer. The gamble was "foolish" and "wrong." But whoever will be elected in 2004 has to live with it. "We have no choice. It's a matter of national security. If we leave and we don't get a democracy in Iraq, the result is very significant danger to the United States."

And "bringing democracy to Iraq is not a two-year proposition. Having elections alone doesn't guarantee democracy. You've got to have institutions and the rule of law, and in a country that hasn't had that in 3,000 years, it's unlikely to suddenly develop by having elections and getting the heck out." Dean would impose a "hybrid" constitution, "American with Iraqi, Arab characteristics. Iraqis have to play a major role in drafting this, but the Americans have to have the final say." Women's rights must be guaranteed at all levels.

Dean is almost as sweeping about Afghanistan, where "losing the peace is not an option" and "pulling out early would be a disaster." Five times the current level of troops are needed, he said. "Imagine making deals with warlords to promote democracy. What are these people thinking?"

If all this sounds like a recipe for a larger, even more imperial military, Dean says no; it's a recipe for better involving NATO and the United Nations. He would rebuild American diplomacy and recommit to multilateralism; in a nice bit of jujitsu on a Bush campaign 2000 theme, Dean says he would "restore honor and dignity to the United States' reputation around the world."

One multilateral institution that might not fare so well in a Dean administration, though, is the World Trade Organization. In what would be a radical departure, China and other countries could get trade deals with the United States only if they adopted "the same labor laws and labor standards and environmental standards" as the United States. Whether or not that demand was consistent with WTO rules? "That's right." With no concession to their relative level of development? "Why should there be? They have the right to have a middle class same as everyone else."

Dean says, "We've tried it" -- NAFTA, WTO -- "for 10 years, and has it succeeded? No. . . . What's the purpose of trade? If it's to create jobs, we haven't done that in America."

He speaks rapidly, as advertised, sometimes answering before a question is complete, seeming not to weigh his words with overly political caution -- his trademark distinction from the programmed Washington politicians running against him. Yet at times he speaks openly of the political calculations. Some positions seem aimed at the partisan primary audience, others to shore up his general-election credentials. Unlike Bush, he says, he would "stand up to the Saudis." But also unlike Bush, he would have talked long ago with Kim Jong Il. Whether there is a coherent worldview or a work in progress will be interesting to watch.

He allows that former treasury secretary Robert Rubin told him: "I can't sell you on Wall Street if this is your position" on trade. But the former governor apparently can live with that. "I said, 'Bob, tell me what your solution is.' He said, 'I'll have to get back to you.' I haven't heard from him."

With that, he adjusts his tie and heads out to his rally, the largest thus far of his campaign.

fredhiatt@washpost.com

Jimmy Breslin

Jimmy Breslin: The Air Is Thick With Lies

"... They lied. They lied because the administration did not want people not going to work. They lied the first week and they lied the week after that and they have lied every day of the past two years to the people of this city.

Christine Whitman was the EPA head until recently. I wasn't disturbed that her education was a jump horse school, but I thought she was better than standing up and doing what she was told by George Bush's White House, telling lies to a public who had to breathe this air. Turns out she isn't much of a human being.

The EPA has just admitted that they lied for all this time..."

The Air Is Thick With Lies
Jimmy Breslin

August 24, 2003

I was a few hundred yards up on Liberty Street when the Two Tower of the World Trade Center blew. I put my nose inside my shirt and ran through smoke that turned day into night. In the smoke were computers, asbestos, pulverized glass, human bodies, lead. I got on another street and One Tower blew up. Again, the air was black with a pulverized 110-story building.

I did not feel well for two months. I never said anything because I was too embarrassed. A couple of thousand had died. So many others were scorched and broken and maimed. I had no right to open my mouth, I thought. Besides, from the first day, the government's Environmental Protection Agency had announced that air was remarkably clean. Work on. Breathe on. You're fine.

They lied. They lied because the administration did not want people not going to work. They lied the first week and they lied the week after that and they have lied every day of the past two years to the people of this city.

Christine Whitman was the EPA head until recently. I wasn't disturbed that her education was a jump horse school, but I thought she was better than standing up and doing what she was told by George Bush's White House, telling lies to a public who had to breathe this air. Turns out she isn't much of a human being.

The EPA has just admitted that they lied for all this time.

Now what are we supposed to do? By now I feel better physically because I have adjusted to feeling lousy. I'm not going near a doctor. Once I read what was in that air, and in it for all those days I spent around there, I didn't want to know anything more. Don't scare me. My friend Dan Collins, whose office is on Broadway, only yards up from the site, said he has not taken a good breath for two years. "They tell me it's good and I know it's bad," he said.

This lying with the lives of the people of the nation is not solely the habit of Bush and his crew, although it is more widespread and being done in so many cases by so many of their people that it looks like a generation of liars.

This war with Iraq started with the full government standing right up and looking you in the eye and openly lying about why we had to invade Iraq immediately. Bush said the Iraqis had weapons of mass destruction. Why, they were starting to make nuclear bombs. He had a statement about this in his State of the Union speech. When it was shown to be a lie, Bush had people like Condoleezza Rice say, Why are you so worried about 26 words in a speech? That the 26 words were about nuclear weapons seemed beyond her. Out in the streets, you can scare people with only three words: "Stick 'em up."

I sit here in New York and I don't believe one single solitary word of what the government says. Can you believe anything Bush says? Only if you're a rank sucker. Then you put that Rumsfeld on and he grimaces and tells you the first thing he thinks of, and here is Powell, who I thought would be our first black national candidate and he's as bad as the rest of them.

What I would like to do is sit here and type in anger only about Bush and his vile people. The trouble is in my memory there is a corrupted past of people I favored.

There was the day in 1962 when John F. Kennedy was in Cleveland on some sort of appearance and a courier from Washington brought him photos taken of Russian missile sites in Cuba. Kennedy canceled the stop and flew back to Washington. His press people announced that he had a severe cold. This was reported to the country.

Kennedy was rushing back to begin secret meetings about the chances of whether the country was going to go into a nuclear war with Russia over the missiles.

Talk worked. We're here. But only one person complained about the false report of Kennedy's cold. That was David Wise and he worked on a newspaper I was on. He said that it was a dangerous precedent to lie to the nation for any reason.

At the time, I thought it a minor complaint about an enormous occurrence. I didn't have the wisdom to understand that once government gets away with lying, it becomes virtually impossible to dislodge the habit from any of them. I don't know what other lies Kennedy told, but it couldn't have been his last and he had our lives in his hands.

It was only in August of 1964 when Robert McNamara, the defense secretary who presented himself as being a person of unparalleled brilliance, told Lyndon Johnson that a North Vietnamese PT boat had attacked the American destroyers Turner Joy and the Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin, off Haiphong, east of Hanoi. On a night of confusion, McNamara persuaded Johnson that it was an actual attack. Johnson acted. He put the country into a war right there.

The attack on the destroyers never happened. McNamara lied. And the lie grew, and anybody who took the time to build evidence of this was attacked. "This is a just war," Johnson said.

The war blew up 58,000 of our young.

And now we have this administration welding their lies together on two matters: the air you breathe and the war they insist is good for us. We've just dealt with 40 years of lying and death. It is getting worse. "We're winning in Iraq," your poor president says.

Looking forwards

Time for Dems to rally behind Bustamante

"...But I can't just look backward. Elections have to be about the future. What if the recall succeeds? After casting my no vote for Gray Davis, I can't just walk out of the polling place and take a chance on getting stuck with Arnold Schwarzenegger. I need an insurance policy. I want to make sure that the most qualified person succeeds him. And, looking at the field of 134 candidates, there's no doubt that most qualified person is Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante..."

Judge Moore no Martin Luther King

The Controversy Over Alabama's Ten Commandments Statue, And the Nature of Justified Civil Disobedience

"...n this column, I will argue, however, that there is a big difference between Dr. Martin Luther King's saying that he thought that the segregationist laws of Alabama were "wrong," and the Chief Justice of Alabama's saying that the federal court's interpretation of the U.S. Constitution was wrong - for three main reasons..."

No higher purpose

Local Media Rules

"...Among these small businesses -- most notably -- are local newspapers, local radio stations and local television affiliates. These local media don't want to be taken over and bossed around by big media conglomerates whose headquarters may be hundreds or thousands of miles away. They want their independence. And they've let their members of Congress know exactly how they feel. Most other local businesses agree. When they choose to advertise, they'd rather deal with their local media, not some giant corporation..."

Lying Liars every action now doubtful

Intelligence Agencies in a Swamp of Doubt

"...Are we to believe that the intelligence community withheld critical findings from senior defense officials and from the U.S. Congress, or that the Clinton administration was fully informed of these findings but decided not to disclose them? Is it plausible to assume that such devastating judgments (even as the Clinton administration undertook major efforts to fashion a nuclear accord with North Korea) would not have leaked for a full decade?

Alternatively, are these recent claims attributable to sloppy language or to a selective rendering of the language of earlier estimates? Or has the intelligence community permitted a misrepresentation of the record?

These questions demand answers. Nothing less than the integrity of the U.S. intelligence process is at stake..."

Obtuse and loving it

The Empire never remembers

"Here in the United States, government and media coverage of Tuesday's deadly bomb attack on the converted hotel serving as the U.N.'s headquarters was both predictable and oblivious. The attack, we've learned, was an escalation in resistance efforts to show that the Americans cannot provide security in Iraq. It is an anarchy strategy, a terror attack designed to frighten both aid agencies and the Americans. Who, of course, will not be dissuaded; indeed, our resolve is only strengthened. And so on.

This reading is either misleading or flatly wrong on at least three important counts. Anarchy has already been the norm in Iraq for at least four months; the attack was not random terror (albeit it featured plenty of what the Pentagon dismisses as "collateral damage"); and the U.N. is not, in Iraq, simply an aid agency.,,"

White House told EPA to lie

Truth, truth? We don' need no stinkin' truth!

EPA Misled Public on 9/11 Pollution

"In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, the White House instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to give the public misleading information, telling New Yorkers it was safe to breathe when reliable information on air quality was not available.

That finding is included in a report released Friday by the Office of the Inspector General of the EPA. It noted that some of the agency's news releases in the weeks after the attack were softened before being released to the public: Reassuring information was added, while cautionary information was deleted.

"When the EPA made a September 18 announcement that the air was 'safe' to breathe, it did not have sufficient data and analyses to make such a blanket statement," the report says. "Furthermore, the White House Council on Environmental Quality influenced . . . the information that EPA communicated to the public through its early press releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones..."

Anti-tax free-basing

GOP's raw meat tactics

"...Once politicians start free-basing demagoguery on taxes, it can start an incredibly swift downward spiral. One morning, they wake up with their schools and communities in ruins. They always thought they could stop any time they wanted..."

Bush's Science Fiction

Science fiction

"...U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.) this month released a report giving troubling examples of how political interference with science has led to "misleading statements by the President, inaccurate responses to Congress, altered Web sites, suppressed agency reports, erroneous international communications, and the gagging of scientists...."

The Internet will set you free

Net gains

"TIME WAS, we thought that a conclusive demonstration that the emperor had no clothes would be sufficient to overturn his reign. No leader could take power without media support; no ruler could keep his throne without the cooperation of the press. But the consolidation of media in recent years -- a series of intermarriages consecrated by the FCC -- has created a panic among tube-feeding activists like myself. Increasingly, the opportunity to define the "truth" has been concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. What's more, the new Media Hyperbarons are corporations of such colossal wealth and power that they are guaranteed to support the status quo that gave rise to them.

Luckily, expression has a new ally -- the Internet. In recent years, the discussion groups and mailing lists that populate the net make it possible for anyone to publish anything and present it to anyone who owns a computer....

Nader's fools

Fooled once by Ralph Nader

"...Green voters should not let him do it again. Ideological purists who voted their conscience got George W. Bush. There's no clearer case for pragmatism, not dogmatism, in politics. Sen. Hubert Humphrey, disappointed in the scope of a civil-rights bill, once told a colleague that years in office had taught him that "you never turn your back on a crumb." In other words, you take what you can get because you can't always get what you want. Compromise is the stuff of politics.

Nader's chief complaint, that there is no difference between Washington "Republicrats," has become an abject farce. Yet he has repeated that canard, despite such plain repudiations as Bush's radical judicial nominees, the Patriot Act, the entire environmental agenda and a deficit economy that would be funny if it didn't threaten Medicare and Social Security. I wonder how Nader counsels himself, knowing that by luring lefty Democrats in Florida away from the party he cost Gore the election...

Sharon danger to U.S. Troops

Sharon is now a danger to US troops and hopes in Iraq

"The crisis of American power that has been building since the Twin Towers attacks is close to a point of no return. The bombs which brought havoc to Baghdad and Jerusalem this week and the likely collapse of the ceasefire in the Holy Land illustrate how unsteady is the American hand in the Middle East. Great enterprises demand great qualities. While the US has certainly not yet failed in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Holy Land, and has some achievements, ultimate success depends on it showing a new determination and clarity..."

Shameful treatment of our soldiers - BY BUSH!

Another reason Bush will lose in 2004. Many of our soldiers will have returned or will file absentee ballots in the election.

The shameful, shabby treatment of our soldiers

"...By the end of the first week of combat, they were down to one MRE (meals, ready to eat) ration a day and were reduced to begging food from passing Army convoys.

The day before the fall of Baghdad, one of the 2/23's companies found itself in a firefight against Iraqi forces. The Marines had no armored vehicles or heavy weapons. Without air support or artillery and armed with only their M-16s, the Marines fought off hundreds of Iraqis until they ran out of ammo and were forced to withdraw. Twelve Marines were wounded in that battle, some seriously.

Marines are used to doing the impossible with next to nothing. But when this nation is spending more than $400 billion a year on its military, the tale of the 2/23rd is shocking. No matter where your feelings lie regarding the current situation in Iraq, you have to ask this question - how can we send our men and women into a hostile situation without the resources to do the job?

The Bush administration, which so eagerly sent our soldiers off to battle in Iraq but did next to nothing to prepare for what happened afterwards - should be ashamed of what is happening to our troops..."

Wesley Clark

Whatever qualities Clark has, and many of them are admirable, he would be more useful to the country as Secretary of Defense in a Democratic administration, than as a leader of a party. Without a strong party behind him and in Congress, he simply cannot deal with the problems facing this country effectively. Of course, the same can be said of Dean, but the Dean candidacy is energizing the base, and will go a long way to returning the party to Congress.

Four-star general for president?

"...Will the former supreme commander of NATO forces run for president? I suspect that this is for him a strategic issue and that he is conducting a feasibility study, or, perhaps, a reconnaissance. Can he, starting late, raise enough money before the primaries to make him look electable? Do people respond to a soldier- intellectual? I imagine Clark will run only if he thinks he has a chance."

Independent Intelligence

Intelligence Veterans Challenge Colleagues to Speak Out

"...What do intelligence analysts do when their professional ethic?to tell the truth without fear or favor?is prostituted for political expedience? Usually, they hold their peace, as we?ve already noted was the case in Germany in 1939 before the invasion of Poland. The good news is that some intelligence officials are now able to recognize a higher duty?particularly when the issue involves war and peace. Clearly, some BND officials are fed up with the abuse of intelligence they have witnessed?and especially the trifling with the intelligence that they have shared with the US from their own sources. At least one such official appears to have seen it as a patriotic duty to expose what appears to be a deliberate distortion.

This is a hopeful sign. There are indications that British intelligence officials, too, are beginning to see more distinctly their obligation to speak truth to power, especially in light of the treatment their government accorded Ministry of Defense biologist Dr. David Kelly, who became despondent to the point of suicide..."

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Corporate welfate

Molly Ivins: Wake up and smell the clean energy

"...When in the midst of a Blame Typhoon, with charges and counter-charges being hurled in all directions, I find it most useful to consult those two polar stars of utter wrongheadedness, Tom DeLay and The Wall Street Journal's editorial page.

Both good for a chuckle, and both perfect weathervanes for the wrong direction. When in doubt: Disagree with DeLay, and you'll be OK.

The Journal, in addition to meretricious arguments, vast leaps over relevant stretches of fact and history, and an awesome ability to bend any reality to its preconceived ideological ends, also offers that touch of je ne sais quoi, that ludicrous dogmatism that never fails to charm. .."

Wake up and smell the clean energy

Molly Ivins - Creators Syndicate

08.21.03 - AUSTIN, Texas -- When in the midst of a Blame Typhoon, with charges and counter-charges being hurled in all directions, I find it most useful to consult those two polar stars of utter wrongheadedness, Tom DeLay and The Wall Street Journal's editorial page.

Both good for a chuckle, and both perfect weathervanes for the wrong direction. When in doubt: Disagree with DeLay, and you'll be OK.

The Journal, in addition to meretricious arguments, vast leaps over relevant stretches of fact and history, and an awesome ability to bend any reality to its preconceived ideological ends, also offers that touch of je ne sais quoi, that ludicrous dogmatism that never fails to charm.

A column about energy politics by George Mellon in Tuesday's Journal contained just the right mix of irrelevant argument (he's very upset that a bunch of nervous nellies want to shut down the Indian Point nuclear plant, as though this has anything to do with the frail, undercapitalized transmission grid that caused the blackout last week), expedient forgetfulness (uh, actually, OPEC had quite a bit to do with the gasoline crunch of the 1970s) and perfectly delightful nuttiness. "Millions of Naderites are trying to peddle windmill farms, even though these inefficient H.G. Wells monsters are already destroying the scenic beauty of places like Palm Springs and the Dutch coast." (Scenic beauties of the Dutch coast?)

When Mellon goes on the aesthetic offensive against unsightly windmills -- as compared to the ever-so-sightly coal-fired plants, oil refineries and nuclear power catastrophes-in-waiting -- we must snap to attention. Mellon may be interested to know that in Austin we can purchase "green energy" from the windmill farm near Fort Stockton in West Texas for 2.85 per kilowatt hour, and that cost is guaranteed not to increase for the next 8 years. Regular old electricity from Austin Energy, a municipally owned company, is now undergoing a three-step price increase that will move its fuel charge from 1.774 cents to 2.796 by the end of this coming January.

Mellon works for our most respected financial newspaper: If the Journal could get a 10-year, fixed price energy contract at 2.85 per kilowatt hour, would the Journal take it? Did the price of energy in the East just spike from $100 to over $1,000 per megawatt hour, or did the Journal misreport that?

As for the aesthetics of windmills, most people find them fascinating to watch. Cars pull over by the highway in West Texas so the kids can watch the things go round and round. The only trouble with the wind farm out by Palm Springs is that the fools built it in a bird flyway, which could easily have been avoided.

Clean, cheap, endless energy -- no radioactive waste, no air pollution, no strip mining, no oil spills and no gas pipeline explosions. Yet the Bush administration wants to spend billions subsidizing coal, oil, gas and nuclear power, and leave both wind and solar technology -- with all their advantages, including cost -- unsubsidized and unhelped. Now, is that a stupid policy or what?

Every energy source in this country has been vastly subsidized, including hydropower by government-built dams. If wind power were subsidized at a fraction of what we already spend with tax breaks, loopholes and outright corporate welfare for polluting and destructive energy sources, it would already be the cheapest, not to mention the cleanest, energy source available. This is not pie-in-sky Naderism (whatever that is), this is right now, 2.85 cents per kilowatt hour. In New York City, the price for power generation charged by ConEd hovers around 10 cents per kilowatt hour. Eat it.

And why do we have such dumb, damaging, self-destructive energy policies? Do you think it has anything to do with corporate campaign contributions? Do you think it has any connection to the fact that Dick Cheney wrote the National Energy Plan??? (In secret, with the advice of oil, gas and coal executives and lobbyists.) A couple of Ken Lay's suggestions in his famous memo to Cheney were incorporated word-for-word in the Cheney plan.

As for the always-egregious Tom DeLay, the Exterminator, two years ago he blocked a program of loan guarantees for upgrades to the transmission system. Said he of the Democratic proposal, "It's pure demagoguery." The first thing he did when the lights went out was to blame the Democrats, of course.

Now, according to The New York Times, the Republicans are refusing again to pass stand-alone transmission-grid improvements. They insist on including the rest of the Cheney rip-and-run plan, including drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge and other economically marginal and environmentally disastrous schemes.

They are on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of economics, the wrong side of technology, the wrong side of progress and the wrong side of the environment. These free-market fundamentalists are the people who regularly remind us that being in the buggy-whip business after the automobile was invented was a no-hoper.

Guys, better, cleaner, cheaper sources of power are now available. Get your heads out of the sand and your asses in gear -- join the 21st century. This is not "Naderite" romanticism, you dumb schmucks -- it's already making money.

Sweet obituary

Even the obits are going against Bush

"...Memorials in her honor can be made to any organization working for the removal of President Bush," reads Baron's obituary in today's editions of The Capital Times..."

Fuzzy math and fantasies

Paul Krugman: Conan the Deceiver

"The key moment in Arnold Schwarzenegger's Wednesday press conference came when the bodybuilder who would be governor brushed aside questions with the declaration, "The public doesn't care about figures." This was "fuzzy math" on steroids ? Mr. Schwarzenegger was, in effect, asserting that his celebrity gives him the right to fake his way through the election. Will he be allowed to get away with it?..."

Conan the Deceiver

By PAUL KRUGMAN

The key moment in Arnold Schwarzenegger's Wednesday press conference came when the bodybuilder who would be governor brushed aside questions with the declaration, "The public doesn't care about figures." This was "fuzzy math" on steroids ? Mr. Schwarzenegger was, in effect, asserting that his celebrity gives him the right to fake his way through the election. Will he be allowed to get away with it?

Reporters were trying to press Mr. Schwarzenegger for the specifics so obviously missing from his budget plans. But while he hasn't said much about what he proposes to do, the candidate has nonetheless already managed to say a number of things that his advisers must know are true lies.

Even Mr. Schwarzenegger's description of the state economy is pure fantasy. He claims that the state is bleeding jobs because of its "hostile environment" toward business, and that California residents groan under an oppressive tax burden: "From the time they get up in the morning and flush the toilet, they're taxed."

One look at the numbers tells you that his story is fiction. Since the mid-1990's California has added jobs considerably faster than the nation as a whole. And while the state has been hit hard by the technology slump, it has done no worse than other parts of the country. A recent study found that California's tech sector had actually weathered the slump better than its counterpart in Texas. Meanwhile, California isn't a high-tax state: through the 1990's, state and local taxes as a share of personal income more or less matched the national average, and with the recent plunge in revenue they're now probably below average.

What is true is that California's taxes are highly inequitable: thanks to Proposition 13, some people pay ridiculously low property taxes. Warren Buffett, supposedly acting as Mr. Schwarze