They're wasting time, wasting money and wasting lives by posturing instead of working on the issues that need resolving. Though I believe they've managed to focus long enough to give themselves a pay raise…

And they won't stop ignoring your issues in favor of their personal (power) ones if you don't make them pay.

September 16, 2004

WASHINGTON — You don't have to turn on the TV to see campaign ads these days. You can watch Congress.

stolen from Josh Marshall

Soros lodges formal complaint against Hastert before the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.

Paul Glastris posting at Political Animal pointed up this anti-Bush ad campaign site…that's a link to the site, and you should NOT skip the Flash intro.

The ad they want to air is on the sidebar.

They get a donation tomorrow morning.

Fair Shot almost gets it:

The central insights of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove (and, I suspect, most of the right wing machine) into the manipulation of the political process are twofold:

Act as if there are no facts. There are simply things that people say or believe, and other things that other people say or believe.
Act as if there is no causation. There are simply things that people do and other things that happen. There is no connection.

These central insights can be combined in interesting ways. For example, there are things that we say people do, and things that we say people believe. (The "some people say" canard beloved of Fox and George Bush himself) Or, there are things that we do, and then things that we say happen (tax cuts for the rich generating jobs). But the essence is that there is no reality, no facts, no causation. Therefore, there's no shame in being caught in a lie nor any reluctance to persist in the same lie. To paraphrase Jack L. Chalker: "No break rule. No rule for Republicans break."

The Patriot Act has not gone away. And even when it does you can count on bits being snuck into unrelated legislation so it would be a good idea to get paranoid about the part of it that annoys you the most.

The Campaign for Reader Privacy focuses on the ability to secretly subpoena your library and book purchasing activity.

AN INFORMAL POLL

If you have not considered the issue of reader privacy, or are a fence sitter, we suggest you ask yourself, your friends, or a few random customers the following:

• Are you aware that the Federal Government has the right to make bookstores and libraries tell them what you read?
• If you believed the government would learn what you were buying, are you more likely or less likely, to buy books in the following subjects:
  • Firearms & Second Amendment rights
  • Depression, anxiety and personal medical issues
  • Addiction & recovery
  • Abortion, pro-choice or pro-life issues
  • Sexuality

And last:

• As credit card transactions can be traced, do you believe your privacy is "better protected" if you pay cash?

The answers will get you off the fence.

While the right is feeling all triumphant about it's victory over CBS and Dan Rather I thought I'd mention a few more rational views of what the blogging community can be.

Douglass Rushkoff does a little navel-gazing

What made the early Internet so very threatening to the mainstream media was not just the new opinions being expressed, but the fact that people were spending hours of their lives doing something that didn't involve production or consumption in the traditional market sense. Families with Internet connections were watching an average of nine hours less commercial programming each week.

The threat of rave culture was that it was an alternative economy. The kids were no longer going to the mob-run nightclubs, the police weren't getting their cut, and the liquor distributors weren't making any money. Those of us involved in rave - or at least many of us - didn't realize that's why they were such a threat.

Lester Spence has an article up on Africana on the utility of Bushisms as well as a follow-up at Vision Circle which basically asks, why vote for the village idiot just because he's already President?

Okay, but read it to find out what he's actually basically asking.

I can't emphasize how important it is to make sure everyone understands this final attempt to reestablish feudalism for what it is.

In the past nearly three years of economic recovery, the distribution of economic growth has become more skewed than at any other time in modern memory. Currently, 47 percent of growth is flowing to corporate profits, by far the largest share than that in any of the other eight post-World War II recoveries. Fifteen percent goes to wages and salaries, the smallest share of economic growth in more than 50 years. To make matters worse, the share of compensation that is devoted to health and pension benefits is far larger during this recovery than in any other, representing a further squeeze on the wages and salaries of ordinary Americans. In 2004, take-home pay as a share of the economy dropped to its lowest level since 1929, when the government started keeping records. [P6: emphasis added]

Sharon Says He Will Not Follow Road Map
By KARIN LAUB
Associated Press Writer

4:27 AM PDT, September 15, 2004

JERUSALEM — Israel will not follow the U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan and could remain in much of the West Bank for a long time after it withdraws from the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in a newspaper interview published Wednesday.

Sharon's comments were his most detailed yet on his long-term vision for the region. Palestinian officials said the remarks confirmed their fears that Israel plans to draw its own borders and keep a large chunk of the West Bank, rather than negotiate a peace deal with the Palestinians as the road map envisions.

In violence Wednesday, 11 Palestinians were killed in clashes with Israeli troops in two West Bank towns. Among the dead were at least seven fugitives and an 11-year-old girl, Palestinian hospital officials said. [P6: What has this got to do with the story at hand?]

It will take more than some superscript to do it, though.

The $50,000 Question
By Brian Faler
Wednesday, September 15, 2004; Page A11

Got proof that President Bush fulfilled his National Guard duties? It could be worth $50,000.

Texans for Truth, a Democratic "527" organization that has attacked the president's service record, is offering a reward to anyone who can prove that Bush performed his duties in the Air National Guard between May 1972 and May 1973.

You "Fontgate" guys are hilarious.

You really think you've taken down CBS (when you get a couple hundred grand for an ad I'll consider the possibility).

You sit in your echo chamber thinking you've deconstructed the whole affair…amazingly and impressively, as fast as all the SBV lies were deconstructed. And to much the same effect.

A Response to Russia

THE BOLDNESS of Vladimir Putin's assault on Russian democracy in the past few days ought to have been galvanizing to a U.S. president who has made the defense of freedom the rhetorical centerpiece of his foreign policy. Instead, the abrupt announcement by the Russian president that he intended to combat terrorism by abolishing elections for governors, and eliminating local elections for individual members of parliament, has been greeted with confused, contradictory and timid murmurings from the State Department and the White House. Distressed Russian politicians described Mr. Putin's act as "a constitutional coup d'itat" and "a step toward dictatorship." Yet not until yesterday did Secretary of State Colin L. Powell speak out, and then only to understate the obvious: Russia, he observed, "is pulling back on some of the democratic reforms."

Research Measures Emotional Toll of 9/11
Depression Among Major Residuals
By Susan Levine
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 15, 2004; Page A23

Researchers studying the emotional aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the Pentagon reported yesterday that depression and post-traumatic stress remained significant two years later in an office of military and civilian employees who lost two dozen of their colleagues.

The degree of continuing psychological upheaval was greatest among those who were injured that horrific morning, when a commandeered American Airlines plane was crashed into the Pentagon's western flank, killing 184 people on the flight and on the ground.

Voters in D.C. Say Yes to Barry -- Again

Disgruntled voters ousted three veteran members of the D.C. Council yesterday, voting by overwhelming margins to replace the incumbents with two fresh new faces and a familiar old one.

…In each race, the challengers gained ground by contending that entrenched incumbents had failed to ensure that average families got their share of the city's expanding economic pie. Barry, in particular, accused the council and Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) of focusing too much attention on rebuilding downtown and too little on helping the city's downtrodden.

The victories of Barry, Brown and Gray could have enormous implications for the direction of economic development in the city. All three called for greater emphasis on affordable housing and new development for neighborhoods. And all three say they oppose raising taxes to build a Major League Baseball stadium, a priority for Williams and for baseball officials, who are on the verge of deciding whether to move the Montreal Expos to the Washington region.

Quote of note:

the campaign's official estimate of proposed new spending includes only a handful of specific priorities Bush mentioned in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention -- not such budget-busters as the revamping of Social Security, space exploration, and most of his health-care plan.

The Social Security proposal alone would require vast new federal spending in the short term, since Bush has promised not to cut benefits for workers who are nearing retirement age. And none of the president's projections account for the costs of the continuing military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Price tag called high for Bush's proposals

Quote of note:

The problem of distrust of official instructions was particularly acute among African-Americans, who make up a large percentage of the population in major urban areas likely to be targeted or affected by a terrorist attack, the study found.

About 68 percent of blacks expressed grave concerns about whether they would agree to receive a smallpox vaccine during an outbreak once they learned they would have to sign a waiver notifying them that the vaccine is considered ''investigative," or not fully tested. By comparison, 48 percent of the general population expressed concerns.

David Bositis, a specialist in African-American politics who worked on the project, said emergency health officials should reach out to trusted black elected officials and church leaders ahead of time to enlist their support in order to save more lives should an emergency arise.

The biggest issue won't be resolved until he retires.

Quote of note:

'The United States government has acknowledged that it violated the rights of the reporters and their employers by requiring the erasure of their tape recordings of Justice Scalia's speech," Van Slyke said. ''We feel this is certainly an appropriate concession.

''What remains before the court are constitutional issues, and the question of whether the United States will be enjoined from taking similar actions in the future," Van Slyke said.

What remains before the court is the actual substance of the issue.

Anyway…
Marshals faulted for asking reporters to erase Scalia speech

Oliver Willis:

On The Black Vote

J.C. Watts, doing his duty for the GOP (Alan Keyes is otherwise engaged) issued these words about The Media Fund's new ad campaign focusing on turning out the black vote.

"John Kerry has no record with the black community"

Then again, neither does J.C. Watts.

If just linking it works you ought to be quite amused.

It's the only explanation:

Only those with big bladders need apply for the White House beat. For the past year, the 20 or so correspondents toiling in the basement of the press room in the West Wing have been fighting to keep their toilet. "We've been using that toilet since Jimmy Carter was president," said Associated Press Radio correspondent Mark Smith. But after some trouble with the commode last year, the General Services Administration announced it was flushing the troublesome fixture.

Correspondents took their case to White House press secretary Scott McClellan, threatening: "We could also hold it -- but I think you'll agree we're cranky enough as it is." The GSA said it would cost $500,000 to fix the toilet -- earning it a place alongside the $400 hammer and the $600 toilet seat. McClellan would not dirty his hands in this plumbing dispute. The GSA then announced it had poured concrete into the "sewer ejectors," making the WC permanently unusable. As of yesterday, the toilet and sink were gone, replaced with a chair and a mirror.

Opposing DNA Reform

YOU WOULDN'T think that what's left of Sen. Patrick J. Leahy's Innocence Protection Act could spark much controversy. A few years ago, when Mr. Leahy started pushing legislation to encourage post-conviction DNA testing at the state and federal level and improve the woeful quality of counsel in death penalty cases, the measure had real teeth. Now, however, compromise upon compromise has left the Innocence Protection Act, which has been merged with a bipartisan package with President Bush's initiative to reduce the backlog of physical evidence awaiting DNA testing, a shadow of its former self. The House passed the DNA legislation by a lopsided vote, 357 to 67, last year.

Dementia and the Voter
Research Raises Ethical, Constitutional Questions
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 14, 2004; Page A01

Florida neurologist Marc Swerdloff was taken aback when one of his patients with advanced dementia voted in the 2000 presidential election. The man thought it was 1942 and Franklin D. Roosevelt was president. The patient's wife revealed that she had escorted her husband into the booth.

"I said 'Did he pick?' and she said 'No, I picked for him,' " Swerdloff said. "I felt bad. She essentially voted twice" in the Florida election, which gave George W. Bush a 537-vote victory and the White House.

As swing states with large elderly populations such as Florida gear up for another presidential election, a sleeper issue has been gaining attention on medical, legal and political radar screens: Many people with advanced dementia appear to be voting in elections -- including through absentee ballot.

Quote of note:

Perhaps this is an "elitist" question, or naive, or simple misguided. Maybe I need to read far more detailed statistical sociopolitical theory, which is about as much fun as having all your skin scraped off with a cheese grater. But I simply know of no one anywhere in my world, from family to friends to family friends to remote acquaintances to the guy who sells me my socks, who is undecided about this election.

Who The Hell Is "Undecided"?
And why do so many election polls leave you angry and stupefied and drunk?
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, September 10, 2004

Polls are the genital warts of election year. They are the swarming gnats in your Jell-O salad, the dead escalator in your shopping mall, the sour milk in your coffee.

I was in the U.S. Army. Joined when I was 17.

Got an honorable discharge under general conditions. After six months.

The official reason was "unfit for military duty."

What we learned about l'il Georgie from those controversial CBS memos.

I know you have RSS readers if you're interested, but I just posted New technology and old line organizations you-know-where.

Tom Toles wonders if Bush is still avoiding his physicals.

Ben Sargent shows the new decorations created for the War on Terror.

Doonesbury gives the definitive explanation of the color coded Terror Warning System.

Jeff Danziger shows Bush working hard at reducing the unemployment rate.

And finally, Tony Auth is SO on point I have to post this inexact replica because I want it here forever.

via Blah3

Too bad this woman is in a Right-to-Work state. In any civilized state, she'd own the goddam company after she sued her scumbag boss - who fired her for having a Kerry sticker on her car.

"We were going back to work from break, and my manager told me that Phil said to remove the sticker off my car or I was fired," she said. "I told him that Phil couldn't tell me who to vote for. He said, 'Go tell him.' "

She went to Gaddis' office, knocked on the door and entered on his orders.

"Phil and another man who works there were there," she said. "I asked him if he said to remove the sticker and he said, 'Yes, I did.' I told him he couldn't tell me who to vote for. When I told him that, he told me, 'I own this place.' I told him he still couldn't tell me who to vote for."

Space probes feel cosmic tug of bizarre forces
Robin McKie, science editor
Sunday September 12, 2004
The Observer

Something strange is tugging at America's oldest spacecraft. As the Pioneer 10 and 11 probes head towards distant stars, scientists have discovered that the craft - launched more than 30 years ago - appear to be in the grip of a mysterious force that is holding them back as they sweep out of the solar system.
Some researchers say unseen 'dark matter' may permeate the universe and that this is affecting the Pioneers' passage. Others say flaws in our understanding of the laws of gravity best explain the crafts' wayward behaviour.

As a result, scientists are to press a European Space Agency (Esa) meeting, called Cosmic Visions, in Paris this week for backing for a mission that would follow the Pioneers and pinpoint the cause of their erratic movements.

You have to back-track in the most embarrassing way.
Quote of note:

The acknowledgement, made after the hearing, comes a year after the agency suppressed the conclusions of its own drug-safety analyst, Dr. Andrew Mosholder, who first found a link between the drugs and suicide in teenagers and children. Agency officials wrote in internal memorandums that Dr. Mosholder's analysis was unreliable, and they hired researchers at Columbia University to re-analyze the same data. That study recently reached conclusions nearly identical to Dr. Mosholder's.

And on global warming, Bush has had to reverse

White House cites human role in global warming
Policy reversal on climate change denied by Administration

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Warmer temperatures in North America since 1950 were probably caused in part by human activity, the Bush administration said in a report that appeared to contradict the White House position there was no clear scientific proof on the causes of global warming.

his reversal of his campaign promise

ENVIRONMENTAL REVERSAL

An Outsider's Grim Prognosis for Pension Agency
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

It has been a struggle for some, but most big companies are coming up with enough cash to keep their pension funds legally sound, after three years of extraordinary losses. Not so their government backstop. Slowly but surely, the federal agency that insures pensions is running out of money.

An independent analysis of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, made available to The New York Times, suggests that the agency will go broke in 2020 if current financial conditions persist. Even if things improve, so that fewer pension funds fail than in recent years, the agency is still expected to run out of money by 2023.

Quote of note:

While DNA has two strands - the famous double helix - RNA is usually single-stranded. If cells sense double-stranded RNA, they act to destroy it and any other RNA with the same sequence. Some researchers conjecture that this RNA interference mechanism might have evolved as a defense against viruses, which sometimes create double-stranded RNA.

Scientists can harness this mechanism to prevent any gene in the body from being used to make a protein, effectively shutting off the gene. They synthesize a short string of double-stranded RNA that corresponds to part of the messenger RNA carrying the protein recipe. Rather than creating the protein, the cell destroys the messenger.

The process is straightforward enough that drugs using this mechanism are being readied for clinical trials only three years after RNAi was reported to work in the cells of mammals. "It has had a remarkably fast transition to the clinic," said Andrew Z. Fire, a professor at Stanford who was a co-discoverer of an animal form of RNAi in a worm around 1998.

Then I saw the same ol' crap in the story, as is appropriate since it's part of a review of Bush's record. You know, the last four years that the RNC pretended never existed.

In a recent interview, Michael O. Leavitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, summed up the Bush administration's philosophy. "There is no environmental progress without economic prosperity," Mr. Leavitt said. "Once our competitiveness erodes, our capacity to make environmental gains is gone. There is nothing that promotes pollution like poverty."

What nonsense. This is the same excuse they made for actually forbidding the release of product safety information on cars

Bid to Decriminalize Prostitution in Berkeley
By CAROLYN MARSHALL

BERKELEY, Calif., Sept. 13 - San Pablo Avenue was once the thriving, racy final stretch of the nation's first highway between New York and San Francisco, a center for jazz halls, gambling houses and brothels.

Today it is an unremarkable thoroughfare, littered along isolated stretches here with used drug needles and liquor bottles, a place where prostitutes entice customers from gritty curbsides. San Pablo is also at the heart of a bid to decriminalize sex for sale in California.

That campaign, the brainchild of a former prostitute, Robyn Few, seeks to gain ground through an initiative on the November ballot in Berkeley to direct the city police to treat prostitution as their lowest priority. Known as the Angel Initiative, for Angel Lopez, a San Francisco prostitute murdered in 1993, it also instructs city officials to lobby the State Legislature to decriminalize prostitution.

I'd have gone to bed already but for this. And I'd post this at The Niggerati Network but I get more traffic here and would REALLY like as many folks as possible to see this mini-rant.

Black leaders with no regard for the facts vilify GOP

Mon Sep 13, 9:28 AM ET
By Alphonso Jackson

While speaking before the Congressional Black Caucus on Saturday night, John Kerry made the baseless, inflammatory claim that the Republican Party would try to suppress black votes in the coming election. Kerry is white, and he was applauded for his words.

Kerry was probably technically incorrect. It won't be the Republican Party, it will be people who happen to be Republican, much like the SBVs weren't representing the Bush campaign they just happen to have positions with that campaign.

What I said.

By Richard Reeves

WASHINGTON -- I have thought for a long time that communism would have collapsed in the 1970s rather than at the end of the 1980s if the United States had not chosen to go to war in Vietnam. We squandered years of moral, political, financial and military capital in jungles and rice paddies we could not name, much less "conquer" or "liberate."

Because of that, a couple of sentences in the current issue of The Atlantic Monthly seem etched in stone more than slapped on paper. James Fallows, the magazine's national editor, in an article titled "Bush's Lost Year," writes of spending the past two years with military, intelligence and diplomatic personnel at the "working level of America's anti-terrorism efforts." Most are Republicans, he says; many supported the decision to invade Iraq (news - web sites) in March 2003. Next he writes:

DOMESTIC DECEIT
Sun Sep 12, 8:05 PM ET

By Randy Cohen

Our longtime housekeeper (a foreign-born legal resident) has grown her business, hiring a Mexican woman (here illegally) to clean houses. Of the $80 I pay the housekeeper, between $10 and $15 goes to the woman who actually cleans. She speaks no English and probably couldn't have gotten the job on her own. If we offered her $60 directly, she'd be paid more fairly and we'd save $20, but our original housekeeper would lose. Should we do it? -- Steven Kane, Los Angeles

Randy Cohen
"Grown her business" -- yes, much like Pharaoh grew his pyramid-building operation. By subcontracting her work at $2 to $3 an hour (assuming five hours to clean a house), your housekeeper has breached ethics, the minimum-wage law and ordinary human decency. For you to benefit from this exploitation is thoroughly discreditable. [P6: emphasis added—-as well as questions about what this position implies about Americans in general, who benefit from prison labor, under-paid agricultural workers, etc.] You must provide the actual worker a fair wage. Talk to her with the help of a translator and seek a way to pay her directly without imperiling her other jobs. You might also consider calling the cops to shut down the sweatshop your longtime housekeeper is running.

Quote of note

Mr. Sullivan wrote in his Tax Notes report that the sharp rise in profits taken in tax havens like Bermuda had no relationship to economic activity there. American companies took $25.2 billion in profits in Bermuda in 2002, yet total revenues there were only $34.3 billion, according to Commerce Department data. Many companies try to lower their taxes by setting up foreign subsidiaries and using internal lending so profits are taken primarily in tax havens and costs are incurred in high-tax countries.

Fifty-eight percent of offshore profits are now taken in tax havens, and that is "a seismic shift in international taxation," Mr. Sullivan said, because "subsidiaries of U.S. corporations now generate profits mainly in tax havens rather than in locations in which they conduct most of their business."

Yahoo! has pictures of this…yahoo.

LONDON (AFP) - A fathers' rights activist dressed up as Batman staged a protest from a balcony at the queen's residence, Buckingham Palace in central London.

A Fathers 4 Justice campaigner dressed as the comic book and cinema hero breached palace security by protesting from a balcony at Buckingham Palace, an AFP photographer witnessed Monday.

"The guy is called Jason Hatch," a spokeswoman for Fathers 4 Justice said.

"He is dressed as Batman. He is on one of the balconies, which I believe is the gallery balcony," she told AFP.

"He has been up there since 12 o'clock (1100 GMT). We don't know how long he plans on spending up there. He wants equal rights for parenting," she said.

Quote of note:

The fascinating thing about the Gidone Busch case is that having a black judge who's sensitive to such issues seems to have worked for a white victim. Which shows that diversity cuts both ways.

Diversity on the bench helps ensure justice
Sheryl McCarthy
September 13, 2004

He was a skinny Jewish man who was gunned down by five police officers outside his Brooklyn apartment.

Gidone Busch was mentally disturbed and was wielding a hammer, and the police said they were merely defending themselves when they pumped 12 bullets into him in August 1999.

But Busch's shooting shocked many New Yorkers, who saw no reason why the police couldn't have subdued him peacefully.

And don't bitch at me. Morgan Stanley, about as serious about making money as it's possible to be, pokes all holes in Greenspan and the Soft Patchers.

Quote of note:

But the most fascinating insight of all into business attitudes may be the $38.7 billion spike in corporate stock buyback announcements that occurred in July -- the strongest such surge in 20 years and fully four times the average monthly pace of the past year. This, perhaps more than anything, puts Corporate America’s cards squarely on the table. Awash in newfound earnings and cash flow, companies would rather buy their own shares than embark on growth oriented strategies of hiring, boosting compensation, and adding to productive capacity.

Oops. Another quote of note, how silly of me to forget:

Yeah, probably…

Quote of note:

Black soldiers are a particular target. 'To have Negroes occupying us is a particular humiliation,' Abu Mujahed said, echoing the profound racism prevalent in much of the Middle East. 'Sometimes we aborted a mission because there were no Negroes.'

'Why I turned against America'

…Early one morning this week, when the police have yet to set up too many checkpoints, Abu Mujahed will strap a mortar underneath a car, drive to a friend's in central Baghdad and bury the weapon in his garden. In the evening he will return with the rest of his group, sleep for a few hours and then take the weapon from its hiding place. He will calculate the range using the American military's own maps and satellite pictures -- bought in a bazaar -- and fire a few rounds at a military base or the US Embassy or at the Iraqi Prime Minister's office. Then Abu Mujahed will shower, change and, by 10am, be at his desk in one of the major ministries.

Defeat Bush: The Guide
by Robert Christgau & Ben Reiter
September 10th, 2004 7:40 PM

If George Bush is to be defeated this year, he'll be defeated on the ground. He'll be defeated because we want it more than they want it. He'll be defeated because we swallow our fantasies of a candidate who doesn't exist and recognize that John Kerry is a manifestly superior positive choice. And he'll be defeated not just because we vote for Kerry, but because we urge cynics and undecideds to vote for him too. This work will not be easy or neat—new campaign finance rules make figuring out where to help a job in itself. But no one is overqualified for it. Don't think blue-staters like us can't make the difference in swing states.

Bush Tax Policy Revealed!
What the Bushies really think about tax reform

By Timothy Noah

At the Republican Convention, President Bush pledgedthat, if elected to a second term, he would create a tax system that is "simpler, fairer," and "pro-growth." He wasn't very specific. It's widely presumed Dubya wants to substitute the current progressive tax system with a flat tax, but all the White House will say is that Bush will appoint a bipartisan panel to make revenue-neutral recommendations to the Treasury secretary. Either Bush is stonewalling or he really has no idea what, if anything, he wants to do to change the tax system. Asked last weekend by an Ohio voter whether he supports a flat tax, Bush assumed the stance that he was just too darned open-minded to say.

Quote of note:

Provocatively, the phrase 'fucking crazies' will be quoted on the jacket of the book, according to a source at the publisher. 'We were surprised to receive calls from the offices of Jack Straw and Colin Powell within 24 hours of each other,' the source said.

Colin Powell in four-letter neo-con 'crazies' row
Martin Bright
Sunday September 12, 2004

The Observer

A furious row has broken out over claims in a new book by BBC broadcaster James Naughtie that US Secretary of State Colin Powell described neo-conservatives in the Bush administration as 'fucking crazies' during the build-up to war in Iraq.
Powell's extraordinary outburst is alleged to have taken place during a telephone conversation with Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. The two became close friends during the intense negotiations in the summer of 2002 to build an international coalition for intervention via the United Nations. The 'crazies' are said to be Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz.

Seeking Method in the Madness of Abu Ghraib
Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Sep 10 (IPS) - âÇ ”The American political system has never been as sick as it is today,” says Belgian philosopher Lieven De Cauter, in a wide-ranging interview where he discusses his theories about the ”state of exception” in the context of the Bush administration's ”war on terror”.

De Cauter's ideas are especially timely in light of the continuing revelations of abuse of detainees by U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the launch of ”military commissions” against accused members of al Qaeda and the Taliban at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which human rights groups have charged lack fair trial protections.

Three Years On, War on Terrorism Looks Like a Loser
Analysis by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Sep 10 (IPS) - Three years after al Qaeda-commandeered planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers in New York and the Pentagon, the leaked ruminations of Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld seem more pertinent than ever.

”Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror,” he wrote in a memo to his top staff 11 months ago. ”Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?”

If that is how success in the Bush administration's ”war on terrorism” is to be measured, then Rumsfeld would have to conclude that he is failing badly.

Quote of note:

Rhonda and Ruett Foster still have Evan's soccer trophy. Rhonda talks freely about her son, about a poem he wrote, the sports he liked. But last week, telling the story of his horrific murder yet again, there was anger in her voice.

"For our president to follow the NRA instead of the majority of America," she said quietly, "shows that he doesn't care about the lives of our children. Letting this ban expire means more of these weapons will be available. It's outrageous."

Blood on the NRA's Hands
September 13, 2004

Perhaps you remember Evan Foster. The 7-year-old was murdered in an Inglewood park in December 1997, just after he picked up his soccer trophy. Three of the 75 rounds fired from a gang member's assault rifle drilled into his head. The federal assault weapons ban was already in effect, and if you asked the National Rifle Assn. and its acolytes in Congress about Evan's murder, they would eagerly tell you that this law, which lawmakers have shamefully let expire today, would not have saved the child.

Too Good to Disbelieve
September 13, 2004

The renowned Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction at Indiana University did not issue a fascinating research report the other day showing that the individual IQs of married couples plummet dramatically as soon as they have a child. The nonexistent study of 400 couples purports to document that new parents always become dumber upon their little darling's arrival.

So sure was the respected Kinsey Institute about not conducting this study that it placed a pretty clear disclaimer on its website: "The Kinsey Institute is NOT involved in a study about IQ; we have no reason to believe that IQ changes after childbirth."

I mentioned I was interviewed for two documentaries that I'll never see (because the folks producing them are from Australia and New Zealand) at the RNC protests. The interview at the UPJ march, for a documentary on the effects terrorism have had on everyday folks went approximately like this:

Interviewer: Do you think Bush has made America is safer?
Me: No. It can't be done the way he's trying to do it. We have SO much border to cover it's not even possible to seal it off. You can't prevent people from entering the country illegally, so what you have to do is not make them want to hurt you. That is where the Bush administration fails so badly.

Interviewer: How did 9/11 make you feel?
Me: Honestly, I knew which of my people were in Manhattan. Once I found out they were all okay, I had no problems. See, the odds of getting caught in a terrorist attack is less that that of being struck by lightning.

Preventive War: A Failed Doctrine

If facts mattered in American politics, the Bush-Cheney ticket would not be basing its re-election campaign on the fear-mongering contention that the surest defense against future terrorist attacks lies in the badly discredited doctrine of preventive war. Vice President Dick Cheney took this argument to a disgraceful low last week when he implied that electing John Kerry and returning to traditional American foreign policy values would invite a devastating new strike.

So far, the preventive war doctrine has had one real test: the invasion of Iraq. Mr. Bush terrified millions of Americans into believing that forcibly changing the regime in Baghdad was the only way to keep Iraq's supposed stockpiles of unconventional weapons out of the hands of Al Qaeda. Then it turned out that there were no stockpiles and no operational links between Saddam Hussein's regime and Al Qaeda's anti-American terrorism. Meanwhile, America's longstanding defensive alliances were weakened and the bulk of America's ground combat troops tied down in Iraq for what now appears to be many years to come. If that is making this country safer, it is hard to see how. The real lesson is that America dangerously erodes its military and diplomatic defenses when it charges off unwisely after hypothetical enemies.

Rumsfeld Mixes Up U.S. Foes Saddam and Bin Laden
Fri Sep 10, 2004 03:44 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld mixed up al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein twice in a speech on Friday about the war against terrorism.
Critics accuse the Bush administration of having concentrated on going after Saddam at the expense of the hunt for bin Laden whose al Qaeda network carried out the Sept. 11 attacks.

Saddam is imprisoned after being captured by U.S. forces in Iraq, while bin Laden has not been found.

Genocide

THE MORAL ORDER we inhabit fell into focus on Thursday, and it was an awful moment. In an act without precedent since the U.N. Genocide Convention was adopted in 1948, a government accused a sitting counterpart of genocide -- a genocide, moreover, that even now is continuing. And yet the accused government may not pay a price for committing this worst of all humanitarian crimes, because there is a limit to how much powerful nations care.

I was looking for an article I'd seen but wasn't sure if I'd blogged, so instead of searching the sit eor the Internet, I searched my RSS feeds. First time I used Feed Demon's search function.

Tremendous.

Given that I have feeds to like everything I'm interested in, this is as useful as Google.

Feed Demon actually has several other functions I'm never bothered with. Maybe I should reconsider that.

Quote of note:

The statement added that several investigations so far "have determined that no responsible official of the Department of Defense approved any program that could conceivably have authorized or condoned the abuses seen at Abu Ghraib."

That is essentially the same reaction issued by the Pentagon when Mr. Hersh first reported, in May, that Mr. Rumsfeld, with White House approval, established a secret program under which commandos would capture and interrogate suspected terrorists with few if any constraints, and that eventually that program's reach extended into the Abu Ghraib prison.

You will note that even Rumsfeld has admitted he issued orders that could be construed as war crimes. He says they aren't because the terrorists have done so much worse.

Quote of note:

AND what of the researchers' own objectivity? …Mr. Hassett was an adviser to Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, during his bid for the presidency in 2000, and a co-author of "Dow 36,000," a wildly bullish analysis of the stock market's prospects.

Mr. Lott's research supporting gun ownership as a crime deterrent has also come under criticism. He acknowledged that he assumed a pseudonym - Mary Rosh- to write his own praise and defend his positions in online debate on that subject from 2000 through January 2003.

…"To even base a story on Lott's work at this point in time is to demonstrate a pronounced bias toward right-wing hacks," said Brad DeLong, a liberal-leaning economist at the University of California at Berkeley.

Do Newspapers Make Good News Look Bad?

There are no treaties forbidding nuclear research. And I don't think there's a line of research that will NOT lead to knowledge sufficient to make weapons grade fissionable material.

By Amir Paivar
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran Sunday rejected European demands it abandon sensitive nuclear activities but reiterated its readiness to provide assurances that its atomic ambitions are entirely peaceful.

Western diplomats say Britain, France and Germany have demanded Iran halt all parts of the atomic fuel cycle, particularly uranium enrichment, that can be used to make bombs.

The European Union trio have proposed a draft resolution for a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) starting in Vienna Monday which gives Iran until November to dispel doubts about its nuclear program.

Israel's Sharon Accuses Far-Right of Inciting War
Sun Sep 12, 2004 09:07 AM ET

By Matthew Tostevin
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon accused far-rightists Sunday of trying to incite civil war over his plan to withdraw from the occupied Gaza Strip and called for measures to curb such groups.

Settler leaders themselves warned last week that quitting Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and a fragment of the West Bank could spark civil war, though polls show the plan is backed by most Israelis.

Hard-liners have urged security forces to disobey orders to remove settlements from land that Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war, under the plan designed for "disengagement" from years of conflict with the Palestinians.

How do you "promote democracy" without dealing in politics?

By Laith Abou-Ragheb
DUBAI (Reuters) - A senior U.S. official appointed to a controversial multi-million dollar project to promote democracy in Arab countries insists he will not meddle in the politics of the region.

The Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), conceived two years ago by President Bush in response to the Sept. 11 attacks and the rise of Islamic militancy, has been met with skepticism by Arab governments wary of U.S. interference.

Along with Washington's broader plan for reform in the Middle East, still being fine-tuned after heavy Arab criticism, MEPI has been undermined by instability in Iraq, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, and Israeli-Palestinian violence.