Molly Ivins: Taxpayers' Fannies on the line

Working for Change

Failure looms for inadequately regulated mortgage giants

"You know, when a bleeding heart liberal like me has to sit around lecturing a Republican administration on fiscal responsibility, we're in a sorry pass. I watch the entire corporate and financial structure of this country running around raising money like crazy for the re-election of George W. Bush, and I am reminded once more that capitalism will destroy itself if you let it..."

Joel McNally: Primarily, it's the media

The Media has a theme.

Madison Capital Times

"A Dean supporter who was in Iowa told me she'd been thrilled by how her candidate had pumped up the spirits of the crowd after his disappointing finish there. The next day when she saw how the media were playing the story, she cried.

She said she realized it didn't matter what had really happened. All that mattered was what the media made of it..."

Nick Cohen: Beware smoking Guns

Guardian/UK

"The reason why many think that Tony Blair remains one leak away from resignation lies in what is known and supposed about the legal advice he received just before the war. Gun's lawyers were determined to get their hands on it. They were going to argue that when she saw a copy of the American memo at GCHQ she made it public because publicity would make the attempt to get a second resolution specifically authorising war harder when Chile, Mexico and the other swing states on the UN Security Council realised what the Americans and British were up to. She believed that without a second resolution the war would be illegal..."

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: The Junk Science of George W. Bush

Alternet

"Today, flat-earthers within the Bush Administration - aided by right-wing allies who have produced assorted hired guns and conservative think tanks to further their goals - are engaged in a campaign to suppress science that is arguably unmatched in the Western world since the Inquisition. Sometimes, rather than suppress good science, they simply order up their own. Meanwhile, the Bush White House is purging, censoring, and blacklisting scientists and engineers whose work threatens the profits of the Administration's corporate paymasters or challenges the ideological underpinnings of their radical anti-environmental agenda. Indeed, so extreme is this campaign that more than sixty scientists, including Nobel laureates and medical experts, released a statement on February 18 that accuses the Bush Administration of deliberately distorting scientific fact "for partisan political ends..."

Maureen Dowd: Sorry, Right Number

New York Times

"The White House seems more worried about the public's finding out how much it knew and how little it did before 9/11 than it does about identifying and fixing security weaknesses..."

Thomas Oliphant: Edwards makes issue of poverty personal

Boston Globe

"CHATTING AFTER a campaign appearance the other day, John Edwards tried to get across a fairly simple point: It is not that John Kerry doesn't give two hoots about the poverty that afflicts 35 million Americans (of course he does), it is that John Edwards does and has demonstrated it in the presidential campaign.

"It's an issue of long-term dimensions that the country has to get serious about today," he said. "I thought it was important to bring it before a crowd of largely affluent students (Pomona College) because this is a cause that has to engage the next generation as well as mine..."

Richard Blow: Crusader-in-Chief

tompaine.com

"The 2004 election should be about some serious issues: national security, Iraq, the economy. But on all of those issues, President Bush is on the defensive. And so he is attempting to define the terms of the election differently. He's losing the argument over the Iraq war, so the president is starting a culture war..."

Editorial: The U.S. Is Brewing Up a Disaster for the Kurds

Again.

Los Angeles Times

"The plan of L. Paul Bremer III, the U.S. civilian administrator, will not fly, except perhaps in Arab Iraq. The reason is that Iraq is not one nation but at least two. Some Arabs on the U.S.-appointed Governing Council are making a deal with the Coalition Provisional Authority. Nothing surprising about that, but the deal would be at the expense of the Kurds and of Iraq's other nation, the semiautonomous region of Kurdistan. It would sacrifice secular principles, women's rights and meaningful federalism, so Americans should pay close attention to what is being done in their name..."

Paul Krugman: The Trade Tightrope

New York Times

"Addressing those fears isn't protectionist. On the contrary, it's an essential part of any realistic political strategy in support of world trade. That's why the Nelson Report, a strongly free-trade newsletter on international affairs, recently had kind words for John Kerry. It suggested that he is basically a free trader who understands that "without some kind of political safety valve, Congress may yet be stampeded into protectionism, which benefits no one..."

Editorial: Scalia Took Trip Set Up by Lawyer in Two Cases

Los Angeles Times

"Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was the guest of a Kansas law school two years ago and went pheasant hunting on a trip arranged by the school's dean, all within weeks of hearing two cases in which the dean was a lead attorney... Scalia later sided with Kansas in both cases."

Briget Gibson: The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves

Liberal Slant

" On February 9, 2004, the Bush administration released the Economic Report of the President which was interpreted by economists to state that there would be 2.6 million jobs created in the calendar year of 2004. The following day, the President's Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) said that the economists had misinterpreted the report and that there would actually be a creation of 3.8 million new jobs. The 3.8 million new jobs promised number equates to approximately 317,000 new jobs that need to be created each and every month. Despite great expectations by the Bush administration, the total jobs created for the last SIX months of 2003 was 366,000. However, the net job LOSS for 2003 was 53,000, bringing the total number of jobs lost since January 2001 to 2.2 million..."

John Feffer: Who's A Terrorist?

tompaine.com

"People in the business of conflict resolution routinely intervene in bloody, horrific wars and, by talking to all sides involved, try to guide the actors toward a more peaceful conclusion. Sounds like noble work, right? Not always, according to the USA PATRIOT Act. It all depends on whether the peace professionals are talking with terrorists, and "terrorism" is very much in the eye of the (U.S.) beholder..."

Editorial: Fonda, Kerry and Photo Fakery

It may take years but there will be a payback.

Washington Post

"...I've spent a lot of time answering questions about this in the past couple of weeks, and this time, as far as I can tell, the Internet has come as close as it gets to a correction. If you use a search engine to look for my Kerry picture now, you'll find the hoax explanations before you see the photo itself. So what do I do now about the conspiratorial Web site that's trying to convince its readers that my original picture was the hoax -- that Fonda really was at that podium with Kerry, and somebody edited "Hanoi Jane" out? All I can do is pull Roll 68 out of the file cabinet again. It's my visual record, my unretouched truth."

Max Cleland: Patriot and Citizen

Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"You might remember the story: My Republican opponent, who is now a U.S. senator, aired a political attack ad that showed my face alongside Bin Laden and Saddam simply because I voted against President Bush's version of a homeland security bill. His point was that I was weak on national security and not much of a patriot, even though I had been one of the authors of the original bill, had a seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and lost both my legs and an arm in Vietnam..."

Lest we forget

William Rivers Pitt: A NOC at Bush's Door

Her name was Valerie Plame, and she was a NOC.

NOC is a designation within the Central Intelligence Agency which means "non-official cover." It denotes an agent working under such deep cover that said agent cannot be officially associated with the American intelligence community in any way, shape or form. In order to keep covered, a NOC will work for the CIA out of a front company, which provides the illusion that the agent is just an ordinary accountant, lawyer or businessperson.

Between the CIA and the agent, a process is created to construct an identity which obscures completely the reality of the agent's true employment. The training of these NOC agents, along with the creation of the cover stories which are known as "legends" within the agency, requires millions of dollars and delicate work. It is, quite literally, a life and death issue. Little or no protection is given to an exposed NOC agent by the American government, an arrangement that is understood by all parties involved. A blown NOC can wind up dead very easily. Because of this, the cadre of NOC agents is small and elite.

Valerie Plame was a NOC working out of a front company named Brewster-Jennings & Associates. To any and all uninformed observers, she was an energy analyst who spent a good deal of time working overseas. In fact, she ran a covert international network dedicated to tracking any person, group or nation that would put weapons of mass destruction into the hands of terrorists.

That is, until the Bush administration got in the way.

The same administration, which invaded Iraq after bullyragging the American people with dire predictions of biological and chemical weapons flooding out of that nation and into the hands of al Qaeda, reached out and crushed the career of an undercover agent working to keep that exact nightmare scenario from unfolding.

The end of Valerie Plame's career came about a week after her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, took to the pages of the New York Times with an editorial that badly embarrassed George W. Bush. Bush, you will recall, stated in his 2003 State of the Union Address that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger to develop nuclear bombs. Wilson had been dispatched to Niger the previous February to determine if that charge, which had been floating around at the time, was valid. He returned after completing his investigation to inform the State Department, the National Security Council, the CIA and the office of Vice President Cheney that the uranium claims were bogus. It was later revealed that the claims were based on crudely forged documents out of Italy.

This didn't stop Bush from using the fraudulent data to terrify the American people into supporting his Iraq invasion during his 2003 Address. Ambassador Wilson replied with a July 6, 2003 editorial which categorically humiliated the administration for allowing this claim to appear in the speech. "America's foreign policy depends on the sanctity of its information," wrote Wilson. "For this reason, questioning the selective use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq is neither idle sniping nor 'revisionist history,' as Mr. Bush has suggested. The act of war is the last option of a democracy, taken when there is a grave threat to our national security. More than 200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq already. We have a duty to ensure that their sacrifice came for the right reasons."

For the record, the number of dead American soldiers in Iraq is now 547. Many thousands more have been grievously wounded. There is no accurate accounting of the number of civilians killed in Iraq, but all estimates run into the tens of thousands. No anthrax, botulinum toxin, sarin gas, mustard gas, VX gas or uranium has been found there.

A week after the Wilson editorial was published, some six journalists along with columnist Robert Novak received telephone calls from two Bush administration officials. The sum and substance of the calls: To inform the journalists that Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA agent.

It is an open question as to the ultimate purpose behind these calls. One school of thought says the calls were meant to smear Wilson by claiming he only got the Niger assignment because his wife was an agent, thus tagging him with nepotism and undermining his criticisms of the administration. The other school of thought, espoused by Wilson himself, says these administration officials deliberately annihilated the career of Wilson's wife as a warning to Wilson, and to any other insider who might come forward with data damaging to the administration officials. As the old saying goes, kill one and warn one hundred.

In the end, the result was the same. Valerie Plame's career with the CIA is over. Her network, the one that was working to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists, is destroyed. The members of that network are now in mortal peril. The front company Plame worked through, Brewster-Jennings, was exposed as well, destroying the networks of any and all agents besides Plame working from that cover. The American intelligence community is disgusted and furious.

Larry Johnson, former CIA and State Department official who was a classmate of Plame's in the CIA's training program at the Farm, said when the CIA's internal damage assessment is finished, "at the end of the day, (the harm) will be huge and some people potentially may have lost their lives."

"This is not just another leak," said former CIA officer Jim Marcinkowski, who also did CIA training with Plame. "This is an unprecedented exposing of an agent's identity. There's only one entity in the world that can identify you. That's the U.S. government. When the U.S. government does it, that's it."

A February 5 report by UPI titled 'Cheney's Staff Focus of Probe' begins as follows: "Federal law-enforcement officials said that they have developed hard evidence of possible criminal misconduct by two employees of Vice President Dick Cheney's office related to the unlawful exposure of a CIA officer's identity last year. The investigation, which is continuing, could lead to indictments, a Justice Department official said. According to these sources, John Hannah and Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, were the two Cheney employees. 'We believe that Hannah was the major player in this,' one federal law-enforcement officer said."

Lewis Libby is one of the most important people on Cheney's staff. Along with John Hannah, who served as one of Cheney's Middle East Policy advisors, Libby was deeply involved in the activities of Rumsfeld's hand-picked Pentagon group, the Office of Special Plans. This group was put together specifically to re-engineer data regarding the threat posed by Iraq so as to manufacture justification for a decision to make war that had already been made. On several occasions, Libby visited CIA headquarters at the behest of Cheney to browbeat CIA analysts into "toughening up" their assessments of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Given all the work Libby and Hannah put in to make sure Bush got his Iraq war, it is no wonder they were less than thrilled with what Ambassador Wilson had to say.

Did these men out a CIA agent and destroy a network that tracked weapons of mass destruction? We may soon know. Attorney General John Ashcroft has recused himself from the investigation. A bulldog of a U.S. Attorney named Patrick Fitzgerald is special prosecutor investigating the matter. Several members of the Bush administration have been dragged before a Grand Jury, including White House spokesman Scott McClellan, McClennan deputy Claire Buchan, former press aide Adam Levine, Republican consultant Mary Matalin, who served as a counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney, White House communications director Dan Bartlett, former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer and Cheney aide Cathie Martin.

According to a Newsday report from February 22 titled 'Panel Questions White House Aides,' during the grand jury sessions, "Press aides were confronted with internal White House documents, mainly e-mails and telephone logs, between White House aides and reporters and questioned about conversations with reporters. The logs indicate that several White House officials talked to Novak shortly before the appearance of his July 14 column. According to the New York Times, the set of documents that prosecutors repeatedly referred to in their meetings with White House aides are extensive notes compiled by I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff and national security adviser."

Further reports indicate the journalists who were called may be questioned. Fitzgerald's first act as special prosecutor was to ask White House staffers to sign a waiver which allows those journalists to speak without violating confidentiality. This would determine, immediately, which administration official violated national security, destroyed a WMD network, and endangered the life of an agent. George W. Bush has promised to cooperate with Fitzgerald's investigation, but as of this date, those waivers have not been signed.

Her name was Valerie Plame, and she was a NOC. She was keeping weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists. What was the Bush administration doing?

Culture wars and the Constitution

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo writes...

"...A couple weeks ago I said we should be on the look out for stuff like this -- not just the move on gay marriage, but the whole descent into scurrilous attacks and divisive wedge politics as the president's popularity drifts downward."

To which, I respond, if they want a fucking war, Josh, let's give it to them. Good and Hard.

Just wait

David Broder: Dean: A Milestone, Not a Millstone

"... But the pattern-breakers' followers find continuing motivation in the ongoing struggle, and so it will be, I believe, for the Dean people. Many who rallied to his cause will remain active in politics; you can see it happening in Iowa and New Hampshire, where the "Meet-Up" networks already are becoming the skeletons of campaign organizations for legislative and local candidates.

The Democratic Party and ultimately the country will be the beneficiaries of the shot in the arm that the Vermont doctor administered to and through his followers. Just wait, and you will see. "

Naked ambition unslaked

Russ Baker: Bush's Backpedaling

"The Bush administration, faced with a stinker of an economic situation, plans to run for re-election on a national defense-foreign policy plank. But how's it going to do that? Can anyone seriously trust any significant claim from this gang that definitely can't shoot straight--then insists that the goal was always to hit the wall not the target? With the administration now disowning claims about imminent threats, weapons of mass destruction and connections with Al Qaeda, it is reduced to pathetically claiming to have always supported regime change and democracy-building abroad--although Bush ran in 2000 largely on a plank opposed to such activism. In any case, the emperor's newest clothes prove transparent when contrasted with an October 2002 assertion by Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice, as reported in The Washington Times, "that America would accept the continuation of Saddam Hussein's regime if Iraq disarms." Since we now know that Iraq, under pressure from UN inspectors, had already disarmed, which part of the Powell-Rice statement makes any sense at all?..."

Corporatism strikes again

Don Henley: Music industry is killing the music

"Contrary to conventional wisdom, the root problem is not the artists, the fans or even new Internet technology. The problem is the music industry itself. It's systemic. The industry, which was once composed of hundreds of big and small record labels, is now controlled by just a handful of unregulated, multinational corporations determined to continue their mad rush toward further consolidation and merger. Sony and BMG announced their agreement to merge in November, and EMI and Time Warner may not be far behind. The industry may soon be dominated by only three multinational corporations..."

Panderers

Joel McNally: Media just love sex-ploitation

"You see, Powell and a lot of bought-off members of Congress know a thing or two about obscenity and television. A truly obscene act was Powell's attempt to reward the Bush administration's biggest media contributors by scrapping media ownership restrictions to permit a few right-wing conglomerates to control everything we hear and see..."

No where to turn

Ray McGovern: Case Closed

"The answer is embarrassingly simple. Don't you remember? It was to be a cakewalk. The vice president and others assured us that U.S. troops would be welcomed as liberators. They would be met with cut flowers, not roadside bombs. The "evil dictator" would be gone. And then who would care if it were eventually discovered that the case for war was manufactured out of whole cloth?..."

Gutter Politics: Bushies wrote the Encyclopedia

All 20 volumes with addenda.

Jim Boyd: For 'gutter politics,' look to the Bush camp

"Whereupon the Republicans unleashed their blond guided missile, Ann Coulter. Here's what she had to say this week: "Cleland lost three limbs in an accident during a routine noncombat mission where he was about to drink beer with friends. He saw a grenade on the ground and picked it up. He could have done that at Fort Dix." Coulter's version is akin to saying that John F. Kennedy was injured in World War II while taking a boat ride.

Here's what really happened: In March 1968, the Tet offensive staged by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong was winding down -- except at Khe Sanh, a Marine outpost famous for the siege it endured. An Army-Marine team was put together to relieve the Khe Sanh garrison and Cleland, an Army captain, volunteered. The combat his unit saw was heavy. At one point Cleland, the battalion signals officer, was told to set up a radio site on a hill near Khe Sanh. As he was helicoptered in with a couple of young soldiers (presumably because it was too dangerous to walk or drive), he told the pilot he was going to stay awhile because he knew some of the guys on the hill. Maybe have a beer with them, he said. As the soldiers left the helicopter, Cleland noticed a grenade on the ground. He thought he'd dropped it and leaned down to pick it up. It exploded, shredding one arm and both legs. It took a heroic effort by medics and doctors to keep him alive..."

Way big pot calling little tiny kettle

St. Petersburg Times: 'Unprincipled'? Unserious

"As it turns out, President Bush has accepted more in direct contributions from lobbyists in one year than Kerry did over 15 years, according to an analysis by Public Citizen, a nonpartisan group that promotes clean government. Among the biggest donors giving at least $100,000 each to the president's re-election effort, 53 are lobbyists. They've collected a total of $6.5-million..."

Dean's success

Madison Capital Times: Lessons from Howard Dean

"...Before 2004 is finished, Dean may yet succeed in achieving his goal of taking back the Democratic Party and transforming the nation. Officially, of course, another candidate will get the credit, but there are many Americans who will never forget the contribution that Dean made."

Nobody owned him

Molly Ivins: Life without Dean

" What was so scary about Howard Dean? Could it be because he (and some very bright young people who worked with him) found this way to raise real money in small amounts from regular people, and that just threatened the hell out of a lot of big corporate special interests? And out of an entire political establishment that is entirely too comfortable with the incestuous relationship between big money and politics? For just a moment in time, Dean was ahead of the pack -- and no one owned him. Go back and look at whom that scared..."

Corporatism's Endemic Failure

Bob Herbert: Dark Side of Free Trade

"This is happening in the middle of an economic expansion, which should tell us that the terrain has changed. In terms of job creation, it's the weakest expansion on record. The multinationals and the stock market are doing just fine. But American workers are caught in a cruel squeeze between corporations bent on extracting every last ounce of productivity from their U.S. employees and a vast new globalized work force that is eager and well able to do the jobs of American workers at a fraction of the pay..."

The few. The proud. The Chickenhawks.

Daniel Schorr: The privilege of a 'war president'

"The real issue, painful in a society that prides itself on being egalitarian, is privilege - who got to serve in the Guard's "champagne unit" as his unit was called, and who went to Vietnam, perhaps to die..."

They can't kill 'em fast enough

Washington Post: More Texas Rules

"The defender service suggested delaying the scheduling of the execution because the Supreme Court had taken up the general issue of whether people like Mr. Barraza could be killed at all. Instead, however, Ms. Wilson phoned Mr. Abbott, clarified with him that he would be paid for further work, and then asked whether he minded if she went ahead and scheduled Mr. Barraza's execution a day early..."

Media heaps praise on Dean

Now that he's safely out of the way.

St. Petersburg Times: Dean's legacy
Detroit Free Press: Defiant Dean
Minneapolis Star-Tribune: Howard Dean/He helped define Democrats
Christian Science Monitor: Dean's Campaign Contributions
New York Times: Goodbye, Candidate Dean
Chicago Tribune: Dean departs
Washington Post: Democrats Break a Taboo

Don't care? They may come for you next

Noah Leavitt: John Ashcroft's Subpoena Blitz

Targeting Lawyers, Universities, Peaceful Demonstrators, Hospitals, and Patients, All With No Connection to Terrorism

"Over the past two weeks, the Justice Department has issued two intensely controversial sets of subpoenas. The first targeted peaceful demonstrators in Iowa. The second targeted medical caregivers in Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

None of the targets of these subpoenas is alleged to have anything to do with terrorism..."

Maybe we can win the Lotto

Joyce Marcel: The destruction of the American Dream

"Financial insecurity is now spreading to the white-collar class. People who once looked down on the blue-collar class, who thought their computer training or accounting degrees would keep them safe, are shocked, shocked to see their jobs being exported. The Bush Administration thinks this is a good thing, because it cuts costs and increases the profits for corporations. Corporations are important, not people. Hence, a jobless recovery..."

Embed the monkeywrenchers

Margaret Krome: Bush thumbs nose at farmers with conservation tactics

"But there was one exciting, innovative program that Bush and the Republican leadership simply could not fight off - the Conservation Security Program. Its simple purpose is to reward farmers and ranchers who practice good conservation practices, and provide incentives to others to do likewise...

..(The U.S. Department of Agriculture) broke deadline after deadline to begin the process of articulating how the program would be administered. The Bush administration also worked with congressional Republicans to cut the budget and then, when all else failed, put an illegal funding cap on the program. "

The Truth will set you free

Or, maybe not. Why, if Bush has waged a such successful war on terra does he insist on hiding his achievements under a bushel?

Dav id Corn: Under The Bright Lights

"This was hardly surprising, given Bush's history with the panel. He first opposed creating a commission to investigate what went wrong before and on 9/11. Then, as political pressure mounted, he went along?but only after winning the right to name the head of the commission. For that slot he selected Henry Kissinger, the poster boy for government secrecy. Kissinger ended up turning down the appointment to avoid having to name the clients of his international consulting firm. (What a patriot!) Bush then anointed Thomas Kean, a former moderate Republican governor from New Jersey. And several weeks ago when the commission, which has been facing a May 2004 deadline for the completion of its work, requested two additional months, the Bush White House said no. Once again, it retreated in the face of opposition?particularly from the 9/11 family members. (Still, the House Republican leadership says it is dead-set against any extension, and the committee can only obtain extra time if Congress passes the appropriate legislation.)..."

Last refuge...

Joe Conason: Vile Ann Coulter smears a war hero

"There was a time when Republicans were the first to defend veterans and the last to attack anyone who had served, regardless of partisan affiliation. That tradition is dead, however, in part because so many of the party?s extremist leaders, who talk loudly about war, managed to avoid military service when their time came. George W. Bush, of course, served far from Vietnam in the Texas Air National Guard?s "champagne unit" at Ellington Air Force Base, apparently thanks to the intervention of his father?s powerful friends..."

Phoney "War on Terra"

Shannon McCaffrey: Suit Against Ashcroft Claims Department has Bungled War on Terror

"The federal prosecutor who won convictions in the government's first and only terrorism trial after the Sept. 11 attacks has filed a lawsuit against Attorney General John Ashcroft accusing the Justice Department of "gross mismanagement" in the war on terrorism..."

"Tell them Bush sucks!"

A LOCK on "NASCAR Dads"? Evidently not.

American Prospect: Shifting Gears

"Then Bush's motorcade drove by. One middle finger went up in the crowd, then another, and soon they were everywhere..."

They have us right where we want them

One day, the Democrats will win back the Senate. I don't know at the moment just how many votes are needed to impeach a Supreme, but this would surely constitute enough evidence to have Scalia dragged from the building.

Robert Scheer: Old MacDonald Had a Judge ...

"According to an Amherst official, Scalia -- with his waterfowl impression -- may have been trying to preempt protesters he thought were going to perform their own impromptu noises. Nevertheless, by arrogantly trying to make a joke out of his unethical behavior, Scalia has again made a mockery of the enormous responsibility the Constitution places on our highest court..."

Overhead good, healthcare bad

Paul Krugman: The Health of Nations

"Where is the money going? A lot of it goes to overhead. A recent study found that private insurance companies spend 11.7 cents of every health care dollar on administrative costs, mainly advertising and underwriting, compared with 3.6 cents for Medicare and 1.3 cents for Canada's government-run system. Also, our system is very generous to drug companies and other medical suppliers, because ? unlike other countries' systems -- it doesn't bargain for lower prices..."

Big Brother is watching

Detroit Free Press: Abortion politics has Ashcroft trampling more rights

"The staunch anti-abortion position of the Bush administration, including Attorney General John Ashcroft, is well established. But attempts by Ashcroft's Department of Justice to subpoena medical records involving a controversial abortion procedure reveal an even more frightening ideology..."

Russian Roulette with 5 full chambers

UK/Guardian: Hi-tech voting machines 'threaten' US polls

"But the vulnerabilities extended to more than computer science: Maryland's 16,000 machines all had identical locks for two sensitive mechanisms. The hackers found that they would have been able to have copies of the keys for these locks cut at a locksmith, although ultimately they found it easier simply to pick the locks. It reportedly took less than 10 seconds..."

Bush - Summer Soldier and Sunshine Patriot

Jimmy Breslin: Bush Goal Was Dodging War

Records released by the White House show that George Bush attended some drills in the Texas Air National Guard in the four months of 1972 while the air losses in Vietnam continued.

On George Bush's last paid day in the Texas Air National Guard, on April 16, 1972, the air war in Vietnam had turned furious because Richard Nixon had ordered large strikes against North Vietnam, the first since 1968. Nixon was certain that bombing would crumble North Vietnam and give him a smashing victory in the war.

Bush was on duty for 26 days from January 1 until April 16. On that last day in Texas, April 16, 1972, the front pages around the nation, which George Bush could see because he was here, far from the shooting, had a photo of Maj. Gale Albert Despiegler, just captured after being shot down over Quang Binh, North Vietnam.

Despiegler would be in the same prison with John McCain, who spent five and a half years in a Hanoi jail and was tortured. He tried suicide twice.

On April 16, the American raids on the port of Haiphong and the capital city, Hanoi, were reported from Hanoi by Agence France-Presse:

"Anti-aircraft guns fired on a formation of American F-4 fighter bombers early Sunday as the planes swept low over the North Vietnamese capital. The Hanoi radio said that American jets struck inside and outside Hanoi seven hours after the Haiphong raid. The Associated Press also reported. The radio said that 11 American planes had been downed in the raid. A Pentagon spokesman refused to comment on the reports from Hanoi."

The United States command said that escort planes had accompanied the bombers. Anti-aircraft fire was believed to have been intense and some planes may have been shot down by surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft fire, but the command's announcement said only that all B-52's "returned safely."

After that April 16, Bush went to Alabama and that pretty much ended his fighting career although he did battle cavities in a dentist's chair at Maxwell Field, Ala.

The hack flacks in the White House and the Pekinese of the press are fighting over whether Bush actually did go to the dentist and thus was on duty, or was he missing from a real drill?

His whereabouts have nothing to do with it. What matters only is that Bush was in the National Guard in Texas because he was dodging the war in Vietnam. In those days, if you were in the Guard, you were not called for Vietnam. Some people used college, or marriage, or Conscientious Objector or moving to Canada to evade. Bush used the Guard. Anybody trying that today is in great danger. The Guard units are being called up by the day. But Bush used the Guard when it gave safety. And now, shamelessly, preposterously, he sends people to get killed in Iraq. That he has no right to do so doesn't seem to enter his mind.

In Texas, George Bush might have even had a uniform on. But he was not in Vietnam. And now, today, he is a guy who ducked the war, dodged the war, reneged on any chance to go to war, and yet without even a hint of personal shame sends young people to die in a war that his record shows that he would duck.

That Bush was not near any of this is his business. Of course he had joined the National Guard so he wouldn't have to go to Vietnam. That he barely went to any National Guard drills is also his business.

What matters to all our senses is that he is a president who struts around as a war hero, who dodged Vietnam and most of the National Guard drills and who with less shame than anybody we have had maybe ever, sends your kids to a war that he ducked as if he was allowed to do it by birth.

The picture of him playing soldier suit on an aircraft carrier, the helmet under his arm like he just got back from a run over Baghdad, marks him as exceedingly dangerous. He believes he is a warrior president. He is not. He is a war dodger. Therefore, it is preposterous for George Bush to be a commander of anything. He doesn't have the right to send people to war and yet he orders them off, and almost cheerfully.

What was he doing all day in April 16, 1972 when they raided Haiphong? It was the first attack on the port city by the eight-engine B-52's that fly slower than the speed of sound and drop enormous amounts of bomb tonnage in patterns of great length. This makes the B 52's vulnerable to ground fire, particularly surface-to-air missiles. The jet fighters, smoked lightning, must fly near the B-52's to attract the fire from the ground.

A United States communique on April 15 said that four American aircraft, a Navy jet and three Air Force fighter bombers, were downed in raids against military targets around Haiphong. The Hanoi government claimed 15 planes were shot down, including a B-52. United States army headquarters reported that all B-52's returned from Haiphong.

Another United States communique said the pilot of a Navy Corsair was rescued at sea, but the two crewmen of an Air Force Force 105 Thunderchief were missing.

Whether this was part of the communique about four planes missing or was about two more losses, is unsure.

What we are sure of is that we have a commander in chief who plays soldier with other people's lives.

DNC ready to cancel rest of primaries

Why waste any more time on this democracy thing.

San Francisco Chronicle: Don't stop running

"Party insiders and pundits don't see much point in continuing the primary season. Kerry is sailing out of reach, and it's time to join hands around the party campfire, they argue. But the rest of the country, including California, should have a chance to hear from those left standing. Take your pick of local issues -- immigration, homeless policy, health care or technology -- and let's see what each candidate has to say to voters before the March 2 vote here."

Unfair to Dean, and you

John Nichols: Report agrees media unfair to Dean

"Dean does not suggest that he has run an error-free campaign. He admits to plenty of mistakes. But his complaint that he has not gotten fair coverage is echoed in a report from the Center for Media and Public Affairs. The center's study of 187 CBS, NBC and ABC evening news reports found that only 49 percent of all on-air evaluations of Dean in 2003 were positive. The other Democratic contenders collectively received 78 percent favorable coverage during the period..."

And it's an ugly picture

Paul Krugman: The Real Man

"The issue here goes beyond using the Government Printing Office to publish campaign brochures. In this budget, as in almost everything it does, the Bush administration tries to blur the line between reverence for the office of president and reverence for the person who currently holds that office..."

Lost jobs and burdensome taxes - get used to it

The Mercury News: Now it's an onshore job threat

"It's tough enough that technology workers in Silicon Valley have to compete with lower-paid rivals offshore. What's not as well known, and in some ways more insidious, is the fact that workers here are also forced to compete with lower-paid rivals right here.

The competition comes from foreign workers who are brought to the United States under the L-1 visa, a relative of the H1-B visa. Reports suggest that misuse and abuse of the L-1 visa have become rampant in recent years. It's time for Congress to fix it..."

Cathy N. Davidson: Economy Sails Away From Workers

" The American economy and its tax system have been punishing the American worker for years and there's no end in sight."

Sham Commission

John Dean: President Bush's New Iraq Commission Won't Be Investigating the Key WMD Issue-How the Executive Order Fatally Limits Their Agenda

" Bush's magic appears to have worked again. His commission is a sham, and simply ignores the very reason he was pressured to create it. Yet it seems no one is complaining -- or at least, no one who could force the commencement of an legitimate investigation..."

Drip, drip, drip

Richard Blow: Truth And Consequences

"In Iraq, Bush has scored points by framing the debate as a matter of proving a negative: Prove that Saddam Hussein didn't have WMDs. But on this issue, Bush has to prove an affirmative?that he did show up for National Guard duty from May 1972 through April 1973. If John Kerry or his surrogates want to keep this issue alive, they should put the burden of proof on the president with lines like, "I call on President Bush to prove that he did not shirk his National Guard duty." If Bush could, he would have done so by now..."

Broken Promise

John C. Bonifaz: John Kerry's Broken Promise on the War

"Senator Kerry broke that promise he made to the American people. In the crucial days after the president withdrew his efforts to gain United Nations support for his war and before the president launched his invasion, Senator Kerry remained silent. The president had, indeed, failed to build an international coalition, and yet the senator did not speak out..."

Fool me once...

Chicago Sun-Times: Bush playing us for fools on WMD

"Pretty slick. On the basis of past performance, it will probably work. The administration has delayed and stonewalled the commission investigating the World Trade Center attack, and no one seems to question what they're trying to cover up. Now they blame the ''intelligence community'' for failure to provide accurate information about Iraq and ducking responsibility for their own deception of the American people. No one gets the chance to ask whether Vice President Dick Cheney and his staff chewed out CIA analysts because of their failures to find the kind of evidence that the administration wanted..."

Retribution

Molly Ivins: Under the Gun - British citizen faces two years in prison for blowing whistle on illegal U.N. spying

" You've never seen anything as pathetically deformed as the British press's efforts to report what its own government is up to when it looks as though the Official Secrets Act might come into play. The Hutton report was an investigation into Dr. Kelly's suicide that politely exempted Tony Blair's administration from all blame (this was achieved by failing to ask a number or pertinent questions). The day before Lord Hutton was to present his report, its contents were leaked to a pro-Blair newspaper, setting off a great chorus of cries for an inquiry to investigate the leak of the report of the inquiry to investigate the leak of the ... etc. The thing would have leaked as a matter of course in Washington. It's not as though any damage was done like, say, just for example, exposing a CIA agent who worked abroad without diplomatic cover..."

Judicial Misconduct Part 392

The media is getting their ducks in a row.

Daniel Schorr: Sharing a duckblind vs. blind justice

"A lower court ordered Mr. Cheney to release the records. The administration appealed to the Supreme Court, which announced on Dec. 15 that it would hear the case. Three weeks later, on Jan. 5, Justice Antonin Scalia and several others flew down to southern Louisiana with the vice president on his official plane, Air Force Two, for a few days of duck hunting..."

Chicago Tribune: If it walks like a duck...

" Having exercised bad judgment, Scalia now should let his eight colleagues decide Cheney's case. Thus far, though, the feisty Scalia has refused. Tuesday, speaking at Amherst College in Massachusetts, he reiterated his comments to the L.A. Times and concluded cheekily: "That's all I'm going to say for now. Quack, quack..."

Scortched Earth against their own side

Washington Post: Kerry Fundraiser Helped Finance Anti-Dean Ads

By Jim VandeHei

Former senator Robert G. Torricelli (D-N.J.), who is raising money for Democratic presidential front-runner John F. Kerry, contributed $50,000 to a secretive group that ran hard-hitting television ads against Howard Dean in December, a new Federal Election Commission filing shows.

Torricelli, who was formally rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee two years ago for his relationship with a top political contributor to his campaigns, last week attended a fundraising meeting with the presidential front-runner.

In November of last year, Torricelli transferred $50,000 from his Senate campaign to Americans for Jobs & Healthcare, a little-known group that this winter ran more than $500,000 in ads against Dean, then the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. The ads sharply criticized Dean's support of gun rights, free trade and slowing Medicare's growth when he was governor of Vermont. The most controversial ad raised the image of Osama bin Laden and questioned Dean's foreign policy experience.

Kerry went on to win the Iowa caucuses. Torricelli's role in financing the ads was first reported by the Web site PoliticsNJ.com. David Jones, executive director of the group, last night released the entire list of contributors, which showed that the "stop Dean" effort had support from donors to rivals of the former Vermont governor, especially Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.) and Kerry.

Several unions then aligned with Gephardt pitched in, as did one of retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark's top fundraisers, Alan Patricof. Bernard Schwartz, chairman of Loral Corp., gave $15,000. Slim-Fast Foods tycoon S. Daniel Abraham contributed $100,000 to the effort after giving Dean $2,000 earlier in the campaign. Another small donor to the group had also contributed to Dean.

"Our goal was to point out where Howard Dean stood on the issues and point out that he had no foreign policy experience," Jones said. "Clearly those goals were accomplished."

Jones said the group spent less than $15,000 on the bin Laden ad. He said it is unclear whether the group will run any more ads this election cycle.

At the time the ads were running, the group refused to reveal its donors, though a few labor unions acknowledged helping to fund the effort. The group's spokesman was Robert Gibbs, who had left the Kerry campaign shortly before. Gibbs no longer works for the organization.

Chad Clanton, a Kerry spokesman, said the senator from Massachusetts and his staff have had no contact with the group and were unaware of Torricelli's involvement. "I am told no one knew anything about it," Clanton said.

Jones, the group's leader, was a longtime political adviser to Gephardt, who dropped out of the race after losing Iowa and endorsed Kerry last week. Torricelli yesterday referred phone calls to Jones, who said he solicited the money from the former New Jersey senator. Jones said there was never any coordination with any of the presidential candidates.

A top Democratic strategist said the group was widely viewed as a shadow campaign for Gephardt and Kerry, who shared a goal then of derailing Dean.

Kerry's affiliation with Torricelli -- and now his indirect link to Americans for Jobs & Healthcare -- could cause political problems for the front-runner, Democrats said. Kerry has made his fight against special interests a centerpiece of his campaign, and Republicans and Democrats are highlighting Torricelli's involvement in the Kerry campaign to undercut that message.

Dean communications director Tricia Enright circulated news of the Torricelli contribution with the attached message: "This is unbelievable. The torch, the king of the special interests." Torricelli's nickname is "Torch." The Republican National Committee last night sent around its own e-mail titled "Sen. John Kerry hypocrisy." In it, the RNC states: "Disgraced Ex-Senator Bob Torricelli Raising Money For Cash And Kerry."

The Senate Ethics Committee sent a letter to Torricelli in July 2002 that "severely admonished" him for accepting improper gifts from donor David Chang. A federal grand jury investigated the matter; Torricelli was never charged.

Groups such as Americans for Jobs, known in Washington parlance as 527s, are the subject of the latest campaign finance controversy because Republicans are accusing Democrats of using them to circumvent the federal ban on unlimited "soft money" donations from corporations, unions and wealthy individuals.

Now corporations, unions and individuals can contribute as much as they want to such groups, which are prohibited from coordinating with candidates and from running ads in the days leading up a primary and general elections. In truth, both parties are planning 527s to hammer each other with ads and mailings funded by the same soft money reformers had hoped to purge from the system.

The Republican Budget Menace

Coming soon to a State very near you.

San Mareo County Times: Budget a lesson in accounting tricks

"The 2004-05 budget that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger unveiled last month continues the state's march toward the misleading federal system. While maintaining the fiction of general and special funds, the budget moves money around with impunity -- including raids on special funds and local government treasuries -- to bring income and outgo into theoretical balance..."

The entire four years must be revised

International Herald Tribune: Bush's economic revisionism

"This would make for a stirring tale of a president responding firmly to a national emergency, if only the president's supposed stimulus plan had been just that. It wasn't. His ambitious back-loaded tax cuts were unveiled during the last campaign, in the heady days of 1999, when the federal government was projected to amass trillions in surpluses in the next decade. Members of the Bush team drew up the tax cuts essentially as a rebate to the affluent for the excess money they said Washington had been taking. They stuck to the game plan even after it was clear that the rosy revenue projections would not hold up in the face of a wilting stock market..."

History is written by the victors

Guess who that ain't.

Molly Ivins: Time to draw a line against the rewriting of history

"Just for the record, since the record is in considerable peril. These are Orwellian days, my friends, as the Bush administration attempts to either shove the history of the second Gulf War down the memory hole or to rewrite it entirely. Keeping a firm grip on actual historical fact, all of it easily within our imperfect memories, is not that easy amid the swirling storms of misinformation, misremembering and misstatement. But since the war itself stands as a monument to what happens when we let ourselves get stampeded by a chorus of disinformation, let's draw the line right now..."

Iraq threat: No basis in reality

Harley Sorensen: The WMD Inspector No One Heeded

"In September 2002, Time magazine asked Ritter whose Iraq policy was worse, Bill Clinton's or George W. Bush's. Ritter's response:

"Bush, because of its ramifications. It threatens a war that probably lacks any basis in law or substantive fact. It has a real chance of putting thousands of American lives at risk and seeks to dictate American will on the world..."

Connections in high places

Jane Mayer: What Did the Vice-President Do for Halliburton?

"Vice-President Dick Cheney is well known for his discretion, but his official White House biography, as posted on his Web site, may exceed even his own stringent standards. It traces the sixty-three years from his birth, in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1941, through college and graduate school, and describes his increasingly powerful jobs in Washington. Yet one chapter of Cheney?s life is missing. The record notes that he has been a ?businessman? but fails to mention the five extraordinarily lucrative years that he spent, immediately before becoming Vice-President, as chief executive of Halliburton, the world?s largest oil-and-gas-services company. The conglomerate, which is based in Houston, is now the biggest private contractor for American forces in Iraq; it has received contracts worth some eleven billion dollars for its work there..."

Scoobie Davis says

"Joe Conason has the good(s) on Ted Sampley, the bottom-feeder behind Vietnam Veterans Against Kerry. Attention bloggers: if you link to this story, please mention Sampley's name and Vietnam Vets Against Kerry so that it increases the likelihood that a site linking to this story pops up when people use a search engine for Sampley's name and organization."

Visit Scoobie Davis for more discussion.

Still gullible?

Dave Zweifel: In a tight spot on Iraq, Bushies just lie

"Don't look now, but you're about to see this administration pull another fast one on an all too gullible American public..."

Populist economics

Alternet: A Progressive's Guide to Populist Economics

"The boom of the '90s was bound to end sometime, but the Bush administration took a bad situation and made it much worse by cutting taxes, loosening regulation over corporations, imposing destructive protectionist measures and spending freely on foreign wars..."

On War

Mary Mitchell: Trust fades as war cry rings too hollow

"President Bush's appearance on "Meet the Press" on Sunday was the last straw. For months, I've been hoping that the cache of weapons would actually turn up. For months, I've suffered cruel jokes about me trusting a Bush. And for months, I've watched the rationale for the war on Iraq shift from one that I could digest to one that makes me want to throw up..."

Robert Scheer: War as an Excuse for Everything

"...Now that top weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei ? who both told the world before the invasion that Saddam Hussein was a defanged viper ? have been vindicated by Bush's handpicked arms inspectors, it is embarrassing to witness the president prattling on in defense of the indefensible. Perhaps it would be less painful for all of us if the CIA could plant some WMD, of which the U.S. possesses a glorious excess, in Iraq as a kindly, face-saving afterthought for the baffled leader of the free world."

Tin Soldier

Richard Cohen: From Guardsman . . .

"...I have no shame about my service, but I know it for what it was -- hardly the Charge of the Light Brigade. When Bush attempts to drape the flag of today's Guard over the one he was in so long ago, when he warns his critics to remember that "there are a lot of really fine people who have served in the National Guard and who are serving in the National Guard today in Iraq," then he is doing now what he was doing then: hiding behind the ones who were really doing the fighting. It's about time he grew up."

Dismal

Paul Krugman: Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

"Taking a longer view, the payroll numbers tell a dismal story. Since the recovery officially began in November 2001, employment has actually fallen by half a percent, while the working-age population has increased about 2.4 percent. By this measure, jobs are becoming ever scarcer..."

Premature

John Farmer: Polls show Kerry ahead, but pay them no heed

"So far, so good. But to extrapolate from that good news to polls that make Kerry the favorite over Bush is premature in the extreme and probably dead wrong. Polls are valid only for the moment they're taken; they're snapshots, not long-range looks into the future. For that, your better guides are the oddsmakers in Las Vegas and Ladbroke's in London. They live or die by the accuracy of long-range wagers. And they make Bush the odds-on choice..."

We deserve the TRUTH

We deserve answers even if he drops out.

Boston Globe: A cloud over Cheney

"THE JUSTICE Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission, French prosecutors, and the Nigerian government are all investigating allegations that a Halliburton subsidiary paid millions of dollars in bribes to Nigerian officials during the 1990s, when Vice President Dick Cheney was the Halliburton CEO. If such payments were made and Cheney approved them, he could be guilty of violating the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. If the payments were made and he did not know about them, he could not have been a hands-on leader of his conglomerate. The nation, in any case, deserves answers before it votes in November if, as President Bush has indicated, he retains Cheney as his running mate..."

Posted by fightingdem at 11:26 AM

Blood Remains On the Hands

Blood Remains On the Hands

by Jimmy Breslin

The least blood, a small squirt when removing a needle, two drops, that's all, no more than two drops, and suddenly it is everywhere. It remains after all. Wipe and it returns. Look about and it is in two and three places. Wipe those places and the blood does not go away. Two drops appear as a needle comes out and then it is endless.

Blood from the body of a baby bombed to death in Baghdad, blood by the pint, running onto the street as fast as a swift river, has magic in its pure infant cells. Of course you cannot scrub the street clean because the blood from the baby already has covered the street and is in the air.

Blood from a bombed baby in Baghdad goes over the wide choking sands and it crosses mountains and then great land masses and then suddenly, over a channel, it is in Westminster, in London, and people look at the sidewalk and wonder where these large blood spots came from, and the officer on duty in front of 10 Downing Street looks at the door handle and worries, how did this get here without me seeing this and having it cleaned? He has a servant rush to the door with cloth and polish and he wipes the blood and polishes the door handles and then walks off and the guard happens to glance at the door handle and the blood is back, smeared bright new red over the polished handle.

The baby's blood is off to rush over the ocean, a strange red cloud poised to rain and it floats over the green of the Washington parks and goes down a sloping street to the State Department, where as a man opens a car door for Colin Powell he suddenly notices blood on the door handle and he quickly unfurls a handkerchief and wipes the handle and Powell gets in and the car goes off and the man who held the door is left in the driveway and he sees the red that is still on Powell's door handle.

When he leaves the car, Powell does not notice the door handle as he touches it himself. The blood red cloud goes over the river to the Pentagon and it suddenly pours on the car that takes Rumsfeld to an appearance, and this time the blood is left on the door handles of both sides. A sergeant wipes. The blood is there when Rumsfeld gets home.

The red cloud then comes down on the White House lawn and it does more than sprinkle, it splashes the helicopter of the president and he strolls out with his wife, his dog and his chesty walk and slight smirk and the wife at his side is smiling, for it is the end of the week and we are good, decent Christian people, God bless us and God bless everybody, and as they are about to get into the helicopter, an Air Force officer rushes up in alarm and says, please, just give us a moment, and he has three people scrubbing so quickly to clean the blood from the helicopter and then Bush and his wife get aboard and they fly off to Camp David, for where else would you go on a weekend, and as they have neglected to have two men hanging out of the windows and inspecting the sides of the craft in midair, nobody can see the blood back on the helicopter.

As they get off at at Camp David, Bush's hand brushes against baby blood on the plane, as does his wife's.

At this hour in London, Blair arises in the middle of his long night and goes to the bathroom to try and wash this blood off. He couldn't do it before he went to bed.

In Washington, Rumsfeld stares at the red splotches on both his hands and Colin Powell calls out that there must be something wrong with the soap because it does not get the blood off his hands.

At Camp David, Bush notices blood on his right hand and he goes to the bathroom to wash it off and he holds his hands under the water and rubs them with a bar of soap and then puts them under the water and he takes them out and holds them out to dry with a towel. He glances at his hands and sees the blood of the dead baby is bright on his fingers. He mutters and washes the hands again.

He will do it again. Again this year and then next year and through all the years because the blood remains forever on the hands.

Every bit of it

Randolph T. Holhut: For Bush, a bogus probe of a bogus war

"So the Bush administration is going to launch a big investigation into why the intelligence that they used to justify an invasion of Iraq turned out to be totally wrong.

I think they should save our money. Everyone knows why the pre-invasion intelligence was totally wrong.

Because virtually every bit of it was a lie..."

Those messy facts

Alternet: Claim vs. Fact

"FACT: KAY ACTUALLY SAID WMD HAD BEEN DESTROYED AFTER 1991. David Kay didn't say we haven't found the stockpiles of chemical weapons because they are destroyed, hidden or transported to another country. Kay said that they were never produced and hadn't been produced since 1991. As he said, "Multiple sources with varied access and reliability have told ISG that Iraq did not have a large, ongoing, centrally controlled CW program after 1991. Information found to date suggests that Iraq's large-scale capability to develop, produce and fill new CW munitions was reduced -- if not entirely destroyed -- during Operations Desert Storm and Desert Fox, 13 years of U.N. sanctions and U.N. inspections..."

Very very bad technology

Mercury-News: Touch-screen jitters

"Consultants hired by the state of Maryland had more fun than kids with bubble wrap punching holes in the security protections of Diebold Election Systems' electronic voting machines.

One computer scientist physically picked the locks protecting memory cards of a touch-screen machine in a matter of seconds. Another hacked into the system remotely by exploiting known defects in the software; Diebold had failed to install the software fixes that Microsoft had sent last fall..."

Cheney a liability?

Not the power behind the throne. Not Uncle Dick.

Jim Lobe: The Day Cheney was Rocked to the Core

"According to recent polls, Cheney's approval ratings, hovering around 20 percent, are already far below Bush's, which have themselves sunk below 50 percent for the first time in his presidency. Even Halliburton, whose public image has become so tarnished that it has launched a controversial television ad campaign to boost its image, last week listed Cheney's association to the company as a "risk factor" for its shareholders..."

Not to worry

Robert B. Reich: The Balloon Clause

"Still, I want you to concentrate on a very practical question. Who's going to lend the government that 521 billion dollars? In point of fact, it's going to be the foreigners and the wealthy Americans who buy treasury bonds. And of course, eventually, we?you and I and our children?will have to pay that money back. There was a time not long ago in American history when the nation's richest citizens helped finance the government by paying a high percentage of their incomes in taxes. Under President Dwight Eisenhower, for example, the highest marginal tax rate was 90 percent. Now, America's richest citizens finance our government primarily by lending it money..."

Countdown to the day we can impeach this S.O.B

Madison Capital Times: Scalia should recuse himself

"Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has never displayed much regard for judicial ethics. For instance, he cast a decisive vote in the 2000 Florida recount case of Bush v. Gore, arguably the most important decision in the court's recent history, despite the fact that his sons were working for law firms associated with the campaign of George W. Bush.

After Scalia's support from the bench allowed him to assume the presidency, Bush appointed one of the justice's sons to a high-level position in the U.S. Department of Labor..."

Putting in the fix one brick at a time

Anthony J. Sebok: A Recent Illinois Supreme Court Decision May Have Nationwide Importance For Consumer Litigation, And Thus May Limit The Plaintiffs' Bar's Power

" A recent decision from the Illinois Supreme Court illustrates how much power the members of the plaintiffs' bar could have, if only the courts would give it to them -- but also refuses to give them that power. In Shannon v. Boise Cascade Corp., the Illinois Supreme Court issued a decision that restricts the reach of consumer litigation and thus, in certain ways, hamstrings the plaintiffs' bar..."

Nuke WMD builder get Bush pass

Boston Globe: Pakistan's nuclear loopholes

"The administration fears that a showdown with Musharraf over Pakistan's relations with North Korea might jeopardize his help in combating Al Qaeda. But there is little doubt that North Korea did get its uranium enrichment technology from Pakistan. When the administration accused Pyongyang of violating its 1994 nuclear freeze pledge by conducting the uranium program, it leaked two internal reports documenting the Islamabad-Pyongyang connection..."

The Possible

Jon Carroll: Thank Howard Dean for Leading His Party Out of the Darkness

"Like a lot of people, I was grateful when Howard Dean started sounding off about the war in Iraq. It was easy to hear him because almost every other politician had been bullied by the administration into silence.

He said the magic words, and yet lightning did not strike him down. People did not shun him as a traitor. No one knew who the hell Howard Dean was -- I'm still not sure, to be candid -- but they were really happy that someone was breaking the silence.

Imagine: an elected Democrat who said out loud that Sept. 11, 2001, did not justify all excesses, did not explain all malign or stupid decisions. An elected Democrat who gave other elected Democrats permission to find their courage. Even better: an elected Democrat who demonstrated that Bush-bashing might be a noble and necessary occupation..."

Quelle Suprise

Ray McGovern: Still Smoke And Mirrors

"In other words, the purpose of the estimate was not to inform an (already reached) decision on whether war was necessary. Rather, it was to enlist intelligence in the campaign to deceive Congress into thinking that Iraq posed such a threat that the legislative branch?s prerogative must be surrendered to the president, and?not incidentally?to make so persuasive a case to the nation that those who dared vote against the president would be highly vulnerable in the mid-term election of 2002. That worked, too..."

Dawn of the Dead

Washington Post: Energy Voodoo

"LIKE A ZOMBIE rising from the dead, the energy bill, defeated last year in the Senate, may live to be voted on another day. Last week Senate Energy Committee Chairman Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) announced that he intends to offer a stripped-down version of the legislation as an amendment to a larger bill. The aim, at the moment, is to add it to the huge highway funding and transportation bill wending its way through Congress. If that doesn't work, "we'll attach it to anything with legs," a committee spokesman says..."

Let the boycotts begin

Alternet: The 10 Worst Corporations of 2003

"2003 was not a year of garden variety corporate wrongdoing. No, the sheer variety, reach and intricacy of corporate schemes, scandal and crimes were spellbinding. Not an easy year to pick the 10 worst companies, for sure.

But Multinational Monitor magazine cannot be deterred by such complications. And so, here follows, in alphabetical order, our list for Multinational Monitor of the 10 worst corporations of 2003..."

Our ally or Bush's

Christian Science Monitor: A Pardoned Proliferator

"Selling nuclear-weapons technology on the black market should be a crime against humanity. But not in Pakistan, where first it can get you rich and then, after you're caught by foreigners, a slap on the wrist and a presidential pardon..."

Hand count rates Dean higher in NH?

Hmmmmm, I wonder what this is all about?

Kerry Beat Dean in New Hampshire by Only 1.5% When Computers Weren't Doing the Counting

Support the troops - Bizarro World version

W. David Jenkins III: Supporting the Troops - Bush Style

" Somewhere tonight, a mother weeps while her husband cradles her warmly in his arms while he fights back his own tears. Right now, this minute - they are the loneliest and saddest people on the face of this earth as they deal with the loss of a son or daughter. And sadder still, almost nobody will ever know who they are.

On December 30, The New York Times published the story of Sgt. Jeremy Feldbusch on their front page. Sgt. Feldbusch is a 24-year-old man from Pennsylvania who lost his eyesight after being wounded in Iraq. His is one of over two thousand stories of the unsung wounded returning home after having their lives forever changed. And the stories of these brave young soldiers and the rage and bitterness they feel are being hidden and subsequently ignored.

The media blackout - perpetuated by their corporate owners at the quiet encouragement by Bush Co. - is one of the greatest disservices to the veterans of the Bush Invasion..."

Reality is what Bush says it is

Paul Krugman: Get Me Rewrite!

"Can all these awkward facts be whited out of the historical record? Probably. Almost surely, President Bush's handpicked "independent" commission won't investigate the Office of Special Plans. Like Lord Hutton in Britain -- who chose to disregard Mr. Jones's testimony -- it will brush aside evidence that intelligence professionals were pressured. It will focus only on intelligence mistakes, not on the fact that the experts, while wrong, weren't nearly wrong enough to satisfy their political masters. (Among those mentioned as possible members of the commission is James Woolsey, who wrote one of the blurbs for Ms. Mylroie's book.)..."

Trouble in Paradise

I'm having trouble posting and editing today. Hopefully this will work itself out soon. I can't even be sure this will make it. So if weird posts show up you know what's happening (even if I don't).

Porn/Not Porn

A mild message criticizing Bush regarding government policies was banned, so look what they gave you instead.

Derrick Z. Jackson: The winner: hypocrisy

"With such pomposity about controlling controversy, it was fitting that the Super Bowl halftime show erectiled out of control. The same network that decided that we could not have our mood ruined by thoughts of mortgaging our children's future gave us instead a crotch-grabbing, butt-humping, breast-baring extravaganza that perfectly fixed the nation in a cultural moment. Questioning the president is taboo. Near porn is not..."

Stop calling it the "appearance of impropriety"

It is full-blown improper and un-ethical.

Los Angeles Times: Scalia's Blind Eye

"Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia didn't just casually meet up with Vice President Dick Cheney for a few days of male bonding and duck shooting in Louisiana last month on a hunting trip. The judge was the vice president's official guest. Yet Scalia still declines to recuse himself from a case before the court involving Cheney. This is a serious ethical issue that Scalia clearly wants to minimize. That cannot be done because the more that is known about the January trip, the worse it looks. The appearance of impropriety is something that ought to concern all members of the nation's highest court..."

Too far

Philadelphia Inquirer: Ashcroft and the Patriot Act

"If anything, Congress has read the nation correctly in seeking to rework antiterrorism powers. The Patriot Act went too far - witness the more than 240 state and local governments on record condemning it, plus the recent federal court ruling that one section abridges key free-speech rights..."

Dean dead?

Don't count on it.

Not drinking the Kerry Kool-aid

From a poster on the DFA blog. I don't have a direct link and am getting this third hand. And, before I get fragged for being beastly to "the great white hope" against Bush, if he can't take the heat from us, how will he stand up to the white hot flame of the Bushistas.

Kerry Releases Statement on why he is "More Electable"

Today, voters want someone who can win, and "John has proven over and over again" that he is willing to stand up and "support the winning side." The Kerry campaign announced today the Senator is the only Democratic candidate who has structured his entire political career around "getting elected." From his early childhood days as a helper on the family Chameleon Ranch, to marrying a billionaire to bankroll him, John "has learned that a man with true integrity does what is popular."

When it is needed, Senator Kerry can be the Justin Timberlake of the Senate. He can rip off the veneer of the lobbyists and expose their mound of special interest money. But like Janet Jackson, he can feign outrage, and with dignity he will be able to state that a `wallet malfunction' made him become the all time leader in accepting special interest money.

Senator Kerry believes that his "special quality" can appeal to 100% of the voters, half of the time. The campaign proudly points to Kerry's 50/50 stance on the Iraq war. Kerry voted for the war and "had the courage and foresight" to stand by silently during the invasion of Iraq. Kerry showed that he won't "be held hostage to his convictions" and delivered a speech "condemning Bush's actions" once the polling data showed that the speech would be popular.

According to a campaign spokesman, the fact that John can not be tied down to any major accomplishments in his 19 years in the Senate is a testament to his candidate's drive. "Over and over again during these 19 years, the temptation to take a stand has been there, but John has always been able to resist this temptation." John has worked tirelessly to insure that he would not be dragged down by becoming known as `pro-this' or `pro-that.'

Senator Kerry has put in long hours and spent many sleepless nights waiting for the latest polling results. He is only beginning to reap to the benefits of this dedication. We believe that John's unwavering effort to win, allows him to claim the title of "most electable."

Best and brightest

George McGovern: A Campaign Fiasco That Wasn't

" I have endorsed retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark for the Democratic nomination. If my opposition to the Vietnam War made some think I was unfit for the presidency, I give you Wes Clark, a four-star general who was a twice-wounded hero of the Vietnam War and supreme commander of the Kosovo intervention, which saved thousands from a genocidal ethnic cleansing.

If you can't go for Clark, I give you John Kerry, also a hero in Vietnam, an excellent senator and a strong leader who would be a good president. Sen. John Edwards also is a bright light in our party. And we all know that Howard Dean has courageously blazed the way for Democrats these past two years..."

The worst administration in the history of America

Robert Kuttner: Endgame for the president?

"Even as Bush proposes making his 10-year tax cuts permanent, the budget projects only over the next five years. Deficits, of course, dramatically increase after year five. Even in the fifth year (FY 2009), the budget leaves out about $160 billion in costs that the administration favors and is expected to propose in future budgets, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Bush's Medicare cost estimate was off by hundreds of billions..."

Bad things are going to happen. Still

James Carroll: The awful truth about Iraq

"Such is the climate of chaos that the Bush aggression has created that there is no clear way forward, and bad things are going to happen in Iraq - no matter what Washington does now. Such unhappy news can sink the politician who dares admit it. Better to advance the conventional wisdom that, however mistaken the origins of this conflict, there is no choice now but to "see it through" - if only to "support the troops." Bush critics suggest that coalition forces need to be more fully "internationalized," but otherwise most seem to accept an open-ended US occupation of Iraq. We broke it; we have to fix it. For the sake of "credibility," or even "honor," we must "stay the course," even if the US presence itself causes the chaos..."

No good man left standing

John Nichols: Dean treated badly by most media

"Traveling with Dean in South Carolina this week, I saw him earn thunderous applause from voters who said they appreciated his anti-war, anti-establishment message. When I asked if they would support him, however, these same Democrats quietly admitted they would probably vote for Kerry or Edwards - candidates who just weeks ago were dismissed as losers but are now regularly referred to as "electable" by the media pack..."

In a better world

Molly Ivins: The 'everybody was wrong' excuse

"...Whereas, in the United States, we know there was an Office of Special Projects set up in the Pentagon before the war precisely to embellish intelligence reports, if not with known falsities -- always a bad practice -- at least by "sexing up" what was known and blowing up some very dubious claims. Anyone for a commission of inquiry?"

It ain't illegal if they've gutted the law

Christian Science Monitor: Charity That's Anything But

"But the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy wants to change this dubious practice. It has asked the IRS to remove the tax-exempt status of a charity set up by House majority leader Tom DeLay who's using the nonprofit to channel access to himself and other GOP leaders..."

The November bugaboo

Los Angeles Times: As Smoke Clears, the Kurds Stand Firm

Sunday's massacre won't derail their quest for a secular, pluralistic society, but a wrongheaded U.S. policy might.

"The handling of Kirkuk is part of a pattern by which the Bush administration is deferring Iraq's most volatile issues until after the U.S. elections in November. But as with the decision not to hold Iraqi elections until 2005, the failure to act on Kirkuk may backfire. Any spark could ignite the Kirkuk tinderbox..."

Posted by fightingdem at 8:23 AM

Doesn't matter

Everything. I repeat, everything is subsumed to Bush's election chances in 2004 (please note, I didn't say re-election). Why did 3000+ die on 9/11? Can we find out what went wrong and protect our citizens in the future? Who else, now that we know Saddam wasn't involved, was helping Al-Queda? Doesn't matter. Move along now. Nothing to see.

Bill Berkowitz: Bush to 9/11 families: 'enough already'

GOP leaders not interested in extending deadline for independent commission's investigation of 9/11 attack

"After months of stalling on even having a commission, then appointing Henry Kissinger to head it (and having to withdraw that appointment), the administration threw every conceivable road block in the commission's path, including the withholding of significant documents. Despite the growing consensus among commission members that they need more time, the president and his congressional allies want to move on and shut the investigation down. The administration appears to be concerned that an ongoing investigation would bleed into the election season and hurt the president's re-election chances..."

Live the fantasy

Paul Krugman: Another Bogus Budget

"Well, whaddya know. Even as the Republican leadership strong-armed the Medicare drug bill through Congress, the administration was sitting on estimates showing that the plan would cost at least $134 billion more than it let on. But let's not make too much of the incident. After all, it's not as if our leaders make a habit of faking their budget projections. Oh, wait.

The budget released yesterday, which projects a $521 billion deficit for fiscal 2004, is no more credible than its predecessors. When the administration promises much lower deficits in future years, remember this: two years ago it projected a fiscal 2004 deficit of only $14 billion. What's new this time is that the administration has decided to pay lip service to conservative complaints about runaway spending..."

Washington Post: Bogus Budgeting

"THE BUSH administration's 2005 budget is a masterpiece of disingenuous blame-shifting, dishonest budgeting and irresponsible governing. The administration mildly terms the $521 billion deficit forecast this year "a legitimate subject of concern," but asserts that it has the problem well in hand: The deficit, it assures the country, will be cut in half by 2009. This isn't credible -- and even if it were, it wouldn't be an adequate answer to a problem far more serious than this administration acknowledges..."

Bush's immoral posture

Robert Scheer: The Lies That Bind Us to Iraq

"The central sickness of human history is the notion that the ends justify the means, and it has disastrously gripped political movements from left to right and from the secular to the religious. It is axiomatic that immoral means will inevitably corrupt the noblest of ends, as has been displayed from the fatal hubris of the Roman Empire down through the genocidal policies of the last century's nationalists, communists and colonialists and on through the suicide bombers of today.

Yet this profoundly immoral posture has been embraced by President Bush in justifying his preemptive war against Iraq, even when the much-touted Iraqi threat proved at best to be based on inexcusable ignorance and at worst to be impeachable fraud. The undemocratic means employed by Bush -- misinforming the public, Congress and the United Nations -- are now somehow to be justified by the ends of "building democracy" in Iraq. This is a daunting challenge that the American people never signed on for and which seems as elusive a goal today as a year ago..."

Stonewall

Those terms are, of course, that no damaging information about this Administration should see the light of day. At some point, even the Republicans in Congress will get tired of the stench. Just how many more people will have to die before this happens is open to question.

Minneapolis Star-Tribune: WMD inquiry/But on the president's terms

"...Two serious intelligence failures have now occurred during the Bush administration; the first was the failure to get wind of, and thus perhaps prevent, the attacks of 9/11. The second was the gross exaggeration of the threat posed by Iraq. The two failures may be linked -- too much focus on Iraq, too little on Al-Qaida from Day 1 of this administration. They almost certainly have as much to do with how the Bush administration used the intelligence it was presented as with how that intelligence was gathered and analyzed. Bush should not now be allowed to take those issues off the table in the run-up to his bid for reelection. He should rethink his commission's mandate, and Congress should do its own investigation -- in a timely manner."

This isn't a fantasy

Thom Hartmann: The Ice Age Cometh

"In quick summary, if enough cold, fresh water coming from the melting polar ice caps and the melting glaciers of Greenland flows into the northern Atlantic, it will shut down the Gulf Stream, which keeps Europe and northeastern North America warm. The worst-case scenario would be a full-blown return of the last ice age ? in a period as short as 2 to 3 years from its onset ? and the mid-case scenario would be a period like the "little ice age" of a few centuries ago that disrupted worldwide weather patterns leading to extremely harsh winters, droughts, worldwide desertification, crop failures, and wars around the world..."

Undermining the Constitution

Robert Kuttner: America