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"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin
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How Bush really feels about you.
"If there were such a thing as Intelligent Design, we wouldn't have George W. Bush."
Christy Marx
MY POV archives: previous rants
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Satire has never served a better purpose. Go see.
Before they cart us off to the camps.
"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969)
34th President of the USA
a Republican, in a letter written to his brother
on November 8, 1954
"...The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone...."
Benito Mussolini
"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country... Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."
Abraham Lincoln
November 12, 1864
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided man."
Martin Luther King Jr., 1963
"CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility."
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries."
James Madison
(1751-1836)
4th President of the United States
"Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings."
Heinrich Heine
Almansor, 1823
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind
and won't change the subject."
Sir Winston Churchill
(1874-1965)
Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian
The Democratic Underground
Lileks.com
White House
"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a
farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to
come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want
war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That
is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who
determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people
along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a
parliament, or a communist dictatorship.
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the
leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being
attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing
the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
Hermann Goering, Nazi Reichsmarschall
"Authoritarian societies inevitably crumble because they silence the
critics who could save them from errors of blind hubris. Dissent is not a luxury to be indulged in the best of times, but rather an obligation of free people, particularly when the very notion of dissent is unpopular."
Robert Scheer
"FASCISM: a system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership together with belligerent nationalism."
American Heritage Dictionary
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Cowardice asks the question - is it safe?
Expediency asks the question - is it politic?
Vanity asks the question - is it popular?
But conscience asks the question - is it right?
And there comes a time when one must take a position that is
neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it
because it is right.
Dr. Martin Luther King
"My life is my message."
Gandhi
 Posted: 29 Sept. 2005
Tyson Foods Under Fire After Segregation Scandal is Revealed
US Poultry Giant Under Fire After Segregation Scandal is Revealed
by Andrew Buncombe
A group of black workers is suing the world's largest poultry meat producer, accusing it of tolerating a racist workplace where African Americans were routinely abused and a "whites only" sign was pinned to the lavatory door.
Tyson Foods is accused by 13 workers of maintaining a segregated system in a break area at one of its plants in Ashland, Alabama, that was "reminiscent of the Jim Crow era".
In addition to the posting of the "whites only" sign, the workers allege that the lavatory was padlocked and only white workers were given a key, that workers hung a noose in one of the recreation rooms and annotated a picture of monkeys with the names of black staff. When the workers complained, they say the plant manager told them the facilities had been locked because they were "nasty, dirty [and] behaved like children".
READ THE REST.
Bush ally faces criminal charge
DeLay says he is the subject of a witch-hunt
The Republican majority leader in the US House of Representatives Tom DeLay has been indicted with criminal conspiracy by a grand jury in Texas.
The charge relates to a campaign finance scheme in which two of Mr DeLay's associates also stand accused.
Mr DeLay, the second-highest ranking member of the house, said he would step down temporarily to answer the charges.
He is a key fundraiser for President George W Bush and is seen as wielding immense political influence.
White House Spokesman Scott McClellan said that Mr Bush still considered Tom DeLay "a good ally, a leader who we have worked closely with to get things done for the American people".
His indictment - which carries a possible two year sentence - could make life difficult for the president, says the BBC's Oliver Conway in Washington.
READ THE REST.
IRAQ -- REUTERS: U.S. MISTREATMENT OF JOURNALISTS IN IRAQ IMPACTING COVERAGE: In advance of today's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Reuters Global Managing Editor David Schlesinger urged Sen. John Warner (R-VA) to investigate the mistreatment of journalists in Iraq by U.S. forces. Since March 2003, 66 journalists and media workers have been killed there, and Reuters is concerned about the "sizeable and rapidly increasing number of journalists detained by U.S. forces" [For an extreme example, see the case of CBS cameraman Abdul Amir Younes Hussein]. Schlesinger asked Warner, the committee chairman, to press Rumsfeld about the issue at today's hearing. "By limiting the ability of the media to fully and independently cover the events in Iraq, the U.S. forces are unduly preventing U.S. citizens from receiving information...and undermining the very freedoms the U.S. says it is seeking to foster every day that it commits U.S. lives and U.S. dollars," he said in a letter.
Posted: 27 Sept. 2005
Rebuild the Gulf with fair share taxes, not slashed services
Congressional Republicans have proposed to offset Katrina with nearly a trillion dollars in cuts from vital national services, like health care for the poor and elderly, student loans, Amtrak, and eliminating all funds for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. These cuts are almost five times the cost of rebuilding, which could be paid for entirely by ending Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy. This is divisive politics at its worst and we can do better. Let's show Congress that this destructive proposal will not fly by gathering 250,000 signatures on this petition this week.
Sign the petition!
Bill Would Permit DNA Collection From All Those Arrested
By Jonathan Krim
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Suspects arrested or detained by federal authorities could be forced to provide samples of their DNA that would be recorded in a central database under a provision of a Senate bill to expand government collection of personal data.
The controversial measure was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee last week and is supported by the White House, but has not gone to the floor for a vote. It goes beyond current law, which allows federal authorities to collect and record samples of DNA only from those convicted of crimes. The data are stored in an FBI-maintained national registry that law enforcement officials use to aid investigations, by comparing DNA from criminals with evidence found at crime scenes
"DNA is not like fingerprinting," said Jesselyn McCurdy, a legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "It contains genetic information and information about diseases." She added that the ACLU questions whether it is constitutional to put data from those who have not been convicted into a database of convicted criminals.
The provision, co-sponsored by Kyl and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), does not require the government to automatically remove the DNA data of people who are never convicted. Instead, those arrested or detained would have to petition to have their information removed from the database after their cases were resolved.
READ THE REST.
Disappearing Antiwar Protests
Media shrug off mass movement against war
9/27/05
Hundreds of thousands of Americans around the country protested the Iraq War on the weekend of September 24-25, with the largest demonstration bringing between 100,000 and 300,000 to Washington, D.C. on Saturday.
But if you relied on television for your news, you'd hardly know the protests happened at all. According to the Nexis news database, the only mention on the network newscasts that Saturday came on the NBC Nightly News, where the massive march received all of 87 words. (ABC World News Tonight transcripts were not available for September 24, possibly due to pre-emption by college football.)
Cable coverage wasn't much better. CNN, for example, made only passing references to the weekend protests. CNN anchor Aaron Brown offered an interesting explanation (9/24/05):
"There was a huge 100,000 people in Washington protesting the war in Iraq today, and I sometimes today feel like I've heard from all 100,000 upset that they did not get any coverage, and it's true they didn't get any coverage. Many of them see conspiracy. I assure you there is none, but it's just the national story today and the national conversation today is the hurricane that put millions and millions of people at risk, and it's just kind of an accident of bad timing, and I know that won't satisfy anyone but that's the truth of it."
To hear Brown tell it, a 24-hour cable news channel is somehow unable to cover more than one story at a time-- and the "national conversation" is something that CNN just listens in on, rather than helping to determine through its coverage choices.
The following day (9/25/05), the network's Sunday morning shows had an opportunity to at least reflect on the significance of the anti-war movement. With a panel consisting of three New York Times columnists, Tim Russert mentioned the march briefly in one question to Maureen Dowd-- which ended up being about how the antiwar movement might affect Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential chances.
On ABC's This Week, host George Stephanopoulos observed, "We've seen polls across the board suggesting that we're bogged down now in Iraq and now you have this growing protest movement. Do you believe that we're reaching a tipping point in public opinion?" That question was put to pro-war Republican Sen. John McCain, who responded by inaccurately claiming: "Most polls I see, that most Americans believe still that we have to stay the course.... I certainly understand the dissatisfaction of the American people but I think most of them still want to stay the course and we have to."
A recent CBS/New York Times poll (9/9-13/05) found 52 percent support for leaving Iraq "as soon as possible." A similar Gallup poll (9/16-18) found that 33 percent of the public want some troops withdrawn, with another 30 percent wanting all the troops withdrawn. Only 34 percent wanted to maintain or increase troop levels--positions that could be described as wanting to "stay the course." Stephanopoulos, however, failed to challenge McCain's false claim.
(An L.A. Times recap of the protests--9/25/05-- included a misleading reference to the Gallup poll, reporting that while the war is seen as a "mistake" by 59 percent of respondents, "There remains, however, widespread disagreement about the best solution. The same poll showed that 30 percent of Americans favored a total troop withdrawal, though 26 percent favored maintaining the current level." By leaving out the 33 percent of those polled who wanted to decrease troop numbers, the paper gave a misleading impression of closely divided opinion.)
On Fox News Sunday (9/25/05), panelist Juan Williams was rebuked by his colleagues when he noted that public opinion had turned in favor of pulling out of Iraq. Fellow Fox panelist and NPR reporter Mara Liasson responded, "Oh, I don't think that's true," a sentiment echoed by Fox panelist Brit Hume. When Williams brought up the Saudi foreign minister's statement that foreign troops were not helping to stabilize Iraq, panelist William Kristol retorted: "So now the American left is with the House of Saud." (That was, if anything, a more complimentary take on the protesters than was found in Fox's news reporting, when White House correspondent Jim Angle-- 9/26/05-- referred to them as "disparate groups united by their hatred of President Bush, in particular, and U.S. policies in general.")
Another feature of the protest coverage was a tendency to treat a tiny group of pro-war hecklers as somehow equivalent to the massive anti-war gathering. NBC's Today show (9/25/05) had a report that gave a sentence to each: "Opponents and supporters of the war marched in cities across the nation on Saturday. In the nation's capital an estimated 100,000 war protestors marched near the White House. A few hundreds supporters of the war lined the route in a counterdemonstration."
Reports on NBC Nightly News and CBS Sunday Morning were similarly "balanced," and a September 26 USA Today report gave nearly equal space to the counter-demonstrators and their concerns, though the paper reported that their pro-war rally attracted just 400 participants (that is, less than half of 1 percent of the number of antiwar marchers).
In a headline that summed up the absurdity of this type of coverage, the Washington Post reported (9/25/05): "Smaller but Spirited Crowd Protests Antiwar March; More Than 200 Say They Represent Majority." Perhaps this "crowd" felt that way because they've grown accustomed to a media system that so frequently echoes their views, while keeping antiwar voices--representing the actual majority opinion--off the radar.
JON CARROLL
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
It would help, of course, if the idiot press would not go chasing after every whiff of a scandal-like odor. Ooh, Teresa Heinz Kerry has a temper. Ooh, Jenna Bush may have gotten drunk. Ooh, someone saw Rick Santorum in a gay bar. Ooh, Russ Feingold is getting a divorce. Are we running a country or a hair salon? I mean no disrespect to hair salons.
The right-wing attack machine knows no shame. It will slime war veterans like John Kerry. It will slime badly injured war veterans like Max Cleland. It'll slime grieving mothers like Cindy Sheehan. It's not a fight the Democrats can win; it's not a fight that any decent person could win. Solution: Get out of the fight. Takes two to have a shouting match.
READ THE REST.
Bush asks Americans to avoid unnecessary car trips and save energy
President Bush yesterday called on Americans to drive less and conserve gas. "We can all pitch in," he said. Of course, "all" is relative: Though the president directed federal agencies to reduce energy use, Republican congressional leaders were meeting even as he spoke to push for more energy-industry subsidies and weaker environmental laws governing fuel production and distribution. This has activists gearing up for a fight. Republican leaders are "racing faster than a hurricane to smash through alleged environmental barriers before anyone realizes what they are up to," said Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch. Still, the unfamiliar call to sacrifice from Bush points out how much Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have rattled confidence in domestic oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico. Today, Bush is on his seventh tour of the Gulf Coast since Katrina hit; no word yet on whether he's scaled back the size of his fuel-intensive motorcade, which typically consists of more than a dozen SUVs, vans, and limos.
Chinese consider legalizing domestic trade in tiger parts
China may soon drop its domestic trade ban on tigers and goods made from tiger parts, which has been in place since 1993. Though the change under consideration would only allow trade based on farm-bred, captive tigers, wildlife campaigners worry that it would push up demand and encourage illegal poaching of wild animals. Nearly every part of a tiger is thought to have some medicinal value in traditional Chinese medicine; that belief drives a lucrative black market that threatens to wipe out what's left of the world's estimated 5,000 wild tigers. International trade in tiger products is already banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species treaty, but that's not enough, say activists -- China's domestic ban is essential. "Make no bones about it," said the World Wildlife Fund's Callum Rankine. If China lifts the ban, "this could be the end for tigers."
straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, 27 Sep 2005
"House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said yesterday that Republicans have done so well in cutting spending that he declared an 'ongoing victory,' and said there is simply no fat left to cut in the federal budget."
-- Washington Times, 9/14/05
VERSUS
"House Majority Leader Tom DeLay says the government could slash billions of dollars in 'wasteful spending' to help pay for hurricane recovery."
-- Houston Chronicle, 9/26/05
KATRINA -- YOU'RE STILL PAYING MIKE BROWN'S SALARY: Mike Brown may have resigned earlier this month as FEMA director amid intense public criticism, but taxpayers are still paying his salary. Brown remains on the FEMA payroll as a consultant so that the agency can receive a "proper download of his experience." The Department of Homeland Security is already spinning the story; spokesman Russ Knocke says that "Brown is continuing to work at the Federal Emergency Management Agency at full pay, with his Sept. 12 resignation not taking effect for two more weeks." Whatever happened to Brown's promise on the day he resigned? "[I]t is important that I leave now to avoid further distraction from the ongoing mission of FEMA"
ETHICS -- WHITE HOUSE MAY HAVE TORPEDOED ABRAMOFF CORRUPTION PROBE: In November 2002, the U.S. attorney in Guam, Frederick A. Black, notified Justice Department officials that he was opening an investigation into Jack Abramoff's lobbying activities with Guam judges. Days later, Black was demoted and barred from pursuing public corruption cases, ending his investigation. The Justice Department's Inspector General and the FBI are looking into Black's demotion to determine whether Abramoff's close ties to the Bush administration may have influenced Justice Department officials, including Attorney General John Ashcroft, in any way. "What this starts to suggest is that Abramoff's ability to corrupt the system was far more pervasive, certainly than we knew at the time," said Rep. George Miller (D-CA).
IRAQ -- REPORT SAYS CONSTITUTION COULD WORSEN INSURGENCY: The International Crisis Group (ICG) issued a report Monday saying that the hurried constitutional process in Iraq could strengthen the insurgency and possibly lead to the country's break-up. "The constitution is likely to fuel rather than dampen insurgency," Robert Malley of ICG said. "A compact based on compromise and broad consent could have been a first step in a healing process. Instead it is proving yet another step in a process of depressing decline." The report concludes, "Only a strong U.S.-led initiative to assuage Sunni Arab concerns can now stop Iraq's violent break-up." Iraqis will vote on the constitutional referendum on October 15.
ENVIRO -- HOUSE VOTES THIS WEEK TO GUT ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT: Last June, the New York Times reported that the landmark Endangered Species Act was facing "the most intense efforts ever by the White House, Congress, landowners and industry to limit its reach," prompting fears of "a wholesale evisceration" of the law. The bill has been enormously successful, "keeping more than 99 percent of listed species from extinction," including the bald eagle. Yet Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) has introduced a bill "that would essentially replace the 1973 act with something far friendlier to mining, lumber and other big extraction interests that find the original act annoying." Take action now -- tell your representative to protect the Endangered Species Act.
Posted: 24 Sept. 2005
Blackwater Down
Jeremy Scahill
The men from Blackwater USA arrived in New Orleans right after Katrina hit. The company known for its private security work guarding senior US diplomats in Iraq beat the federal government and most aid organizations to the scene in another devastated Gulf. About 150 heavily armed Blackwater troops dressed in full battle gear spread out into the chaos of New Orleans. Officially, the company boasted of its forces "join[ing] the hurricane relief effort." But its men on the ground told a different story.
Some patrolled the streets in SUVs with tinted windows and the Blackwater logo splashed on the back; others sped around the French Quarter in an unmarked car with no license plates. They congregated on the corner of St. James and Bourbon in front of a bar called 711, where Blackwater was establishing a makeshift headquarters. From the balcony above the bar, several Blackwater guys cleared out what had apparently been someone's apartment. They threw mattresses, clothes, shoes and other household items from the balcony to the street below. They draped an American flag from the balcony's railing. More than a dozen troops from the 82nd Airborne Division stood in formation on the street watching the action.
One might ask, given the enormous presence in New Orleans of National Guard, US Army, US Border Patrol, local police from around the country and practically every other government agency with badges, why private security companies are needed, particularly to guard federal projects. "It strikes me...that that may not be the best use of money," said Illinois Senator Barack Obama.
Blackwater's success in procuring federal contracts could well be explained by major-league contributions and family connections to the GOP. According to election records, Blackwater's CEO and co-founder, billionaire Erik Prince, has given tens of thousands to Republicans, including more than $80,000 to the Republican National Committee the month before Bush's victory in 2000. This past June, he gave $2,100 to Senator Rick Santorum's re-election campaign. He has also given to House majority leader Tom DeLay and a slew of other Republican candidates, including Bush/Cheney in 2004. As a young man, Prince interned with President George H.W. Bush, though he complained at the time that he "saw a lot of things I didn't agree with--homosexual groups being invited in, the budget agreement, the Clean Air Act, those kind of bills. I think the Administration has been indifferent to a lot of conservative concerns."
Prince, a staunch right-wing Christian, comes from a powerful Michigan Republican family, and his father, Edgar, was a close friend of former Republican presidential candidate and antichoice leader Gary Bauer. In 1988 the elder Prince helped Bauer start the Family Research Council. Erik Prince's sister, Betsy, once chaired the Michigan Republican Party and is married to Dick DeVos, whose father, billionaire Richard DeVos, is co-founder of the major Republican benefactor Amway. Dick DeVos is also a big-time contributor to the Republican Party and will likely be the GOP candidate for Michigan governor in 2006. Another Blackwater founder, president Gary Jackson, is also a major contributor to Republican campaigns.
READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE.
Posted: 23 Sept. 2005
Message: I Care About the Black Folks
By FRANK RICH
ONCE Toto parts the curtain, the Wizard of Oz can never be the wizard again. He is forever Professor Marvel, blowhard and snake-oil salesman. Hurricane Katrina, which is likely to endure in the American psyche as long as L. Frank Baum's mythic tornado, has similarly unmasked George W. Bush.
The worst storm in our history proved perfect for exposing this president because in one big blast it illuminated all his failings: the rampant cronyism, the empty sloganeering of "compassionate conservatism," the lack of concern for the "underprivileged" his mother condescended to at the Astrodome, the reckless lack of planning for all government operations except tax cuts, the use of spin and photo-ops to camouflage failure and to substitute for action.
In the chaos unleashed by Katrina, these plot strands coalesced into a single tragic epic played out in real time on television. The narrative is just too powerful to be undone now by the administration's desperate recycling of its greatest hits: a return Sunshine Boys tour by the surrogate empathizers Clinton and Bush I, another round of prayers at the Washington National Cathedral, another ludicrously overhyped prime-time address flecked with speechwriters' "poetry" and framed by a picturesque backdrop. Reruns never eclipse a riveting new show.
Nor can the president's acceptance of "responsibility" for the disaster dislodge what came before. Mr. Bush didn't cough up his modified-limited mea culpa until he'd seen his whole administration flash before his eyes. His admission that some of the buck may stop with him (about a dime's worth, in Truman dollars) came two weeks after the levees burst and five years after he promised to usher in a new post-Clinton "culture of responsibility." It came only after the plan to heap all the blame on the indeed blameworthy local Democrats failed to lift Mr. Bush's own record-low poll numbers. It came only after America's highest-rated TV news anchor, Brian Williams, started talking about Katrina the way Walter Cronkite once did about Vietnam.
Taking responsibility, as opposed to paying lip service to doing so, is not in this administration's gene pool. It was particularly shameful that Laura Bush was sent among the storm's dispossessed to try to scapegoat the news media for her husband's ineptitude. When she complained of seeing "a lot of the same footage over and over that isn't necessarily representative of what really happened," the first lady sounded just like Donald Rumsfeld shirking responsibility for the looting of Baghdad. The defense secretary, too, griped about seeing the same picture "over and over" on television (a looter with a vase) to hide the reality that the Pentagon had no plan to secure Iraq, a catastrophic failure being paid for in Iraqi and American blood to this day.
This White House doesn't hate all pictures, of course. It loves those by Karl Rove's Imagineers, from the spectacularly lighted Statue of Liberty backdrop of Mr. Bush's first 9/11 anniversary speech to his "Top Gun" stunt to Thursday's laughably stagy stride across the lawn to his lectern in Jackson Square. (Message: I am a leader, not that vacationing slacker who first surveyed the hurricane damage from my presidential jet.)
The most odious image-mongering, however, has been Mr. Bush's repeated deployment of African-Americans as dress extras to advertise his "compassion." In 2000, the Republican convention filled the stage with break dancers and gospel singers, trying to dispel the memory of Mr. Bush's craven appearance at Bob Jones University when it forbade interracial dating. (The few blacks in the convention hall itself were positioned near celebrities so they'd show up in TV shots.) In 2004, the Bush-Cheney campaign Web site had a page titled "Compassion" devoted mainly to photos of the president with black people, Colin Powell included.
Some of these poses are re-enacted in the "Hurricane Relief" photo gallery currently on display on the White House Web site. But this time the old magic isn't working. The "compassion" photos are outweighed by the cinéma vérité of poor people screaming for their lives. The government effort to keep body recovery efforts in New Orleans as invisible as the coffins from Iraq was abandoned when challenged in court by CNN.
But even now the administration's priority of image over substance is embedded like a cancer in the Katrina relief process. Brazenly enough, Mr. Rove has been officially put in charge of the reconstruction effort. The two top deputies at FEMA remaining after Michael Brown's departure, one of them a former local TV newsman, are not disaster relief specialists but experts in P.R., which they'd practiced as advance men for various Bush campaigns. Thus The Salt Lake Tribune discovered a week after the hurricane that some 1,000 firefighters from Utah and elsewhere were sent not to the Gulf Coast but to Atlanta, to be trained as "community relations officers for FEMA" rather than used as emergency workers to rescue the dying in New Orleans. When 50 of them were finally dispatched to Louisiana, the paper reported, their first assignment was "to stand beside President Bush" as he toured devastated areas.
READ THE REST.
EPA proposes fewer toxics reporting requirements for industrial facilities
Industrial plants would report their chemical releases every other year instead of annually under a policy change proposed by the U.S. EPA. The agency also indicated it wants to raise the threshold for reporting the release of certain chemicals from 500 to 5,000 pounds. Both are major changes to the Toxics Release Inventory, an almost two-decades-old data-gathering and reporting program created under the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act. EPA claims the weakened rules will help the agency improve the "quality, clarity, usefulness, and accessibility" of the information it supplies to the public. But Sean Moulton of non-profit watchdog OMB Watch says the changes would "gut the program." An environmental manager at a Louisville, Ky., chemical plant estimates that reduced reporting will save him just 16 hours of work a year.
straight to the source: The Boston Globe, Associated Press, John Heilprin, 22 Sep 2005
Bush’s Job Outsourced to India - Entire World Reacts Ecstatically
Congress today announced that the office of President of the United States of America would be outsourced to overseas interests. The move will save not only a significant portion of the President’s $400, 000.00 yearly salary, but also a record $521 billion in deficit expenditures and related overhead.
“We believe this is a wise move financially. The cost savings should be significant,” stated Congressman Thomas Reynolds (R-Wash.). Reynolds, with the aid of the Government Accountability Office, has studied outsourcing of American jobs extensively. “We cannot expect to remain competitive on the world stage with the current level of cash outlay,” Reynolds noted.
Mr. Bush received his termination via e-mail this morning. Preparations for the job move have been underway for some time. Gurvinder Singh of Indus Teleservices, Mumbai, India will assume the office of President as of September 1st. Mr. Singh was born in the United States while his Indian parents were vacationing at Niagara Falls, thus making him eligible for the position. He will receive a salary of $320 (USD) a month, but with no health coverage or other benefits.
READ THE REST.
ETHICS -- FRIST UNDER INVESTIGATION FOR INSIDER TRADING: The Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) is concerned about Senate Majority Leader Frist's curious timing of his sale of up to $10 million of his Hopsital Corporation of America (HCA) stocks and is reportedly investigating his transactions. Frist's father founded HCA and Frist's brother is a director and leading stockholder. The Senator's sale of stocks came when a "large-scale sell-off by HCA Inc. insiders was under way" and the stocks were at a 52-week peak in June; the stocks dropped 10% a month later. Not only may Frist be violating insider trading laws, but he may have an ethical conflict-of-interest with his work in the Senate on medical malpractice and health care. The Washington Post editorial staff notes that Frist's spokeswoman has not denied the Senator's involvement in insider trading, but has carefully worded that he "did not have any conversations with HCA executives about HCA stock when he was making the decision to divest."
HUMAN RIGHTS -- BUSH GIVES COUNTRIES WITH HUMAN TRAFFICKING PROBLEMS RECEIVE A FREE PASS: The State Department has identified 14 countries that have failed "to take significant actions to bring [themselves] into compliance with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking." The report released in June also notes that this designation could trigger financial sanctions. But, President Bush has decided that only three of these countries -- Myanmar, North Korea, and Cuba -- deserve a withholding of financial assistance. Sudan, for instance, has received the okay from the administration to avoid any cuts in U.S. assistance, despite the Sudanese government-backed genocide in Darfur. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, U.S. allies in the Middle East, received similar passes. The Associated Press reported, "The White House statement offered no explanation of why countries were regarded differently."
IRAQ -- PUBLIC CONTINUES TO LOSE CONFIDENCE IN HANDLING OF IRAQ WAR: A new CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll finds that less than half of the American people think the U.S. will win the war in Iraq. 55 percent of those surveyed said U.S. should speed up withdrawal plans, and only 21 percent said the U.S. definitely would win in Iraq. 22 percent said the U.S. would probably win, 20 percent said the U.S. was capable of winning but probably wouldn't, and 34 percent said the Iraq war is unwinnable. The results follow a poll from earlier this week that found only 32 percent of respondents supported Bush's handing of the war.
EDUCATION -- HOUSE APPROVES FEDERAL FUNDING FOR GROUPS THAT HIRE BASED ON RELIGION: The Associated Press reports, "In a broad update of the Head Start program, the House voted Thursday to let preschool providers consider a person's faith when hiring workers — and still be eligible for federal grants." The plan would, for example, "allow a Catholic church that provides Head Start services to employ only Catholic child-care workers, and to reject equally qualified workers of other religions." Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida blasted the idea. "Congress should not be in the business of supporting state-sponsored discrimination," Hastings said.
Posted: 22 Sept. 2005
Pombo launches new bid to rewrite Endangered Species Act
Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.) plans to fast-track legislation he introduced yesterday that would rewrite the Endangered Species Act -- much to the consternation of environmental advocates. Chair of the House Resources Committee, Pombo has long aimed to overhaul the landmark law, and with this latest version of his bill he managed to get six Democrats to join eight Republicans as cosponsors. The legislation contains several provisions long sought by property-rights advocates, including one that would eliminate current ESA requirements that critical habitat be designated for listed species. The bill would also require the feds to compensate landowners at fair market value if potential uses of their property were curtailed by efforts to protect endangered species. The legislation is a "big step backwards for endangered species conservation," says Michael Bean of Environmental Defense. Though the bill may pass the House, it's thought the Senate won't be eager to take on a divisive ESA debate this year.
straight to the source: San Francisco Chronicle, Zachary Coile, 20 Sep 2005
PRIORITIES
Progressives Can Do Better
With great fanfare, and recalling the "Gingrich Revolution" of the 1990s, House conservatives yesterday proposed a broad set of spending cuts they said would help offset the costs of the Katrina reconstruction effort. Their plan reduces the budget by $500 billion over 10 years, and does so in large part by dismantling programs that invest in middle- and working-class Americans. Progressives can do better. It's possible to cut far more unnecessary federal spending, accomplish it in half the time, and do so while upholding the principles of fiscal responsibility and concern for the common good.
THE CONSERVATIVE APPROACH: The proposal announced yesterday cuts substantial funding from several "long-standing targets of conservative scorn," like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the foreign operations budget. The largest proposed cuts are targeted at Medicaid, "the health care safety net for low-income children, elderly, disabled, pregnant women and parents." The plan cuts $225 billion by converting the federal share of certain Medicaid payments into a block grant, and $8 billion more by increasing Medicaid co-payments. Eliminating subsidized loans to graduate students slices off an additional $8.5 billion. $11 billion more is saved by passing restrictive new rules for federal retiree health care and federal pension programs.
A PROGRESSIVE APPROACH -- MORE SAVINGS IN LESS TIME: A progressive approach to trimming the budget could result in greater savings over a shorter period of time. For example, rolling back the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans would save $327 billion over five years. Cracking down on offshore tax shelters would save $65 billion over the same time period. Simply allowing Medicare recipients to purchase drugs through the mail would save $43 billion over five years. Repealing subsidies to the fossil fuel industry contained in the recent energy bill would save $8.5 billion. Shelving costly and unnecessary weapons systems would save $200 billion. Getting rid of counterproductive agricultural export subsidies would save $30 billion over the first five years along. Giving up half of the 6,371 special earmarked projects of the 2005 transportation bill would save an additional $12 billion. A progressive approach to trimming the budget could cut $688 billion in federal spending over just five years.
CORRUPTION
Top Bush Official Arrested in Corruption Probe
David Safavian, who until Friday headed the "obscure but extremely important" federal procurement office in the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), was arrested yesterday, accused by federal agents of "lying and obstructing a criminal investigation into Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff's dealings with the federal government." In his position at the OMB, Safavian set purchasing policy for the entire government, and "had recently been working on developing contracting policies for the multibillion-dollar relief effort after Hurricane Katrina." His arrest -- the "first criminal complaint filed against a government official" in the ongoing Abramoff probe -- exposes a thicket of corruption involving Abramoff, leaders of the right-wing movement like Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed, and public officials at the very highest levels of government, including House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX).
FDA APPOINTED VETERINARIAN TO HEAD OFFICE OF WOMEN'S HEALTH: The Bush administration recently attempted to appoint an "FDA veteran trained in animal husbandry who spent much of his career in the agency's Center for Veterinary Medicine" to oversee the Office of Women's Health. Animal husbandry is the agricultural practice of breeding and raising livestock. The Office of Women's Health is charged with working to "improve the health and well-being of women and girls in the United States." Three days after the Food and Drug Administration announced the appointment of Norris Alderson, the FDA press office sent out a new announcement stating another individual, Theresa Toigo, would head the office. The FDA claimed there was "no official decision" made to hire Alderson, the animal husbandrist. But a membership directory on the office's website listed him as "acting director" (the web page has since been edited).
OTHER INEXPERIENCED BUSH APPOINTEES: The Bush administration has made a number of other hiring decisions that have raised eyebrows. Jay Hallen, a 24-year old undergraduate who majored in political science and "rarely watched financial news stations and didn't follow the stock market," was chosen to rebuild the Iraq Stock Exchange. Gay Hart Gaines, "an interior decorator by training," was chosen to sit on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Board of Directors. And as the Progress Report previously noted, David Safavian, former White House procurement official who is now under arrest, came to his position with little relevant experience.
JUDICIARY -- GONZALEZ RECRUITS FBI PORN SQUAD: Taking his cues from former Attorney General John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzalez has decided to make the War on Porn "one of the top priorities" of the AG's office. In early August, the FBI's Washington Field Office sent around a job listing to recruit eight federal agents, a supervisor and support staff to take on "manufacturers and purveyors" of pornography. The squad will focus its efforts on those who produce pornography depicting consenting adults. Such porn profiteers include Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., General Motors Corp., Time Warner, and several major hotel chains. The conservative Family Research Council endorsed the move, saying it gave them "a growing sense of confidence in our new attorney general." Some FBI agents were not so pleased. As one anonymous agent put it sarcastically: "I guess this means we've won the war on terror. We must not need any more resources for espionage."
KATRINA -- ALASKA REFUSES TO GIVE UP PORK TO HELP REBUILD GULF COAST: While Sen. John McCain has raised the idea of "charitable pork" -- lawmakers giving up pet projects to help Hurricane Katrina victims -- and Montana is considering giving up the $4 million it received in a federal bill for a downtown parking garage, Alaska Rep. Don Young is proud to remain a "little oinker." Young, chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has made sure that this year's $295 billion transportation bill is "stuffed like a turkey" with projects for Alaska, including $223 million for a bridge larger than the Brooklyn Bridge and almost as long as the Golden Gate, to connect a town with 8,900 people to a town with 50 people. Another "bridge to nowhere" will cost $200 million, a project which the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce opposes. But in response to calls for giving up these pieces of pork to help efforts for Katrina reconstruction, Young has said, "They can kiss my ear!" and that he has "raised enough money to give back to them voluntarily."
IRAQ -- HALLIBURTON SERVES CONTAMINATED WATER TO TROOPS: Not only did Halliburton's KBR subsidiary serve U.S. troops in Iraq spoiled food (sometimes a year past the expiration date), but also contaminated water from Iraq's Euphrates River, containing "numerous pathogenic organisms" at nearly two times the normal contamination levels of untreated water. "[R]aw sewage is routinely dumped less than two miles from the water intake location." KBR water quality specialists reported their concerns, but were told by their superiors that their claims were "erroneous" and "corrective measures" had been taken, with no evidence anything had been done. Two whistleblowers resigned because of "unsafe water and pressure to cover it up" (one became sick from the drinking water) and another expects to be terminated soon.
PENTAGON -- ANYBODY GOT A CALCULATOR?: How much are the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan costing the United States? No one knows. That's the conclusion of a new report by the Government Accountability Office. The Washington Post reports, "The Pentagon has no accurate knowledge of the cost of military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan or the fight against terrorism, limiting Congress's ability to oversee spending." The Defense Department claims it has spent $191 billion since 9/11 to fight terrorism and conduct the two wars. The GAO investigation, however, "found many inaccuracies totaling billions of dollars." The report shows "Neither DOD nor Congress can reliably know how much the war is costing and details of how appropriated funds are being spent."
HEALTH -- MAINE REFUSES FEDERAL FUNDS FOR ABSTINENCE-ONLY EDUCATION: Maine has declined $161,000 in federal funds for an abstinence-only sex education program because it would prohibit teaching other safe-sex practices. Since 1980, the Main Department of Education has taken a comprehensive approach to sex education, which includes teaching about contraception; new restrictions on federal fundings this year would have forced the discontinuation of that method. Dr. Dora Anne Mills, Maine's public health director, says, "This money is more harmful than it is good....You can't talk about comprehensive reproductive information." Maine becomes the third state to refuse the federal funding. Yesterday the American Civil Liberties Union also began a campaign to urge officials in 18 other states to take the lead of California, Pennsylvania, and Maine and turn down the funding.
Posted: 19 Sept. 2005
The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) needs your immediate help to stop Congress and the Bush administration from seriously degrading organic standards. After 35 years of hard work, the U.S. organic community has built up a multi-billion dollar alternative to industrial agriculture, based upon strict organic standards and organic community control over modification to these standards.
Now, large corporations such as Kraft, Wal-Mart, & Dean Foods--aided and abetted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are moving to lower organic standards by allowing a Bush appointee to create a list of synthetic ingredients that would be allowed organic production. Even worse these proposed regulatory changes will reduce future public discussion and input and take away the National Organic Standards Board’s (NOSB) traditional lead jurisdiction in setting standards. What this means, in blunt terms. is that USDA bureaucrats and industry lobbyists, not consumers, will now have more control over what can go into organic foods and products. (Send a quick letter to your Congressperson online here: http://www.organicconsumers.org/sos.cfm)
Tomorrow, Tuesday, Sept. 20, acting in haste and near-total secrecy, the U.S. Senate will vote on a “rider” to the 2006 Agriculture Appropriations Bill that will reduce control over organic standards from the National Standards Board and put this control in the hands of federal bureaucrats in the USDA (remember the USDA proposal in 1997-98 that said that genetic engineering, toxic sludge, and food irradiation would be OK on organic farms, or USDA suggestions in 2004 that heretofore banned pesticides, hormones, tainted feeds, and animal drugs would be OK?).
For the past week in Washington, OCA has been urging members of the Senate not to reopen and subvert the federal statute that governs U.S. Organic standards (the Organic Food Production Act—OFPA), but rather to let the organic community and the National Organic Standards resolve our differences over issues like synthetics and animal feed internally, and then proceed to a open public comment period. Unfortunately most Senators seem to be listening to industry lobbyists more closely than to us. We need to raise our voices. (Send a quick letter to your Congressperson online here: http://www.organicconsumers.org/sos.cfm)
In the past, grassroots mobilization and mass pressure by organic consumers have been able to stop the USDA and Congress from degrading organic standards. This time Washington insiders tell us that the “fix is already in.” So we must take decisive action now. We need you to call your U.S. Senators today. We need you to sign the following petition and send it to everyone you know. We also desperately need funds to head off this attack in the weeks and months to come. Thank you for your support. Together we will take back citizen control over organic standards and preserve organic integrity.
For more information go to the SOS section on our website
Click here to donate money to OCA’s SOS—Save Organic Standards—Campaign
Call the Capital Switchboard here: 877-762-8762
Send a quick letter to your Congressperson online here:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/sos.cfm
EXCLUSIVE! * A DIEBOLD INSIDER SPEAKS!
DIEB-THROAT : 'Diebold System One of Greatest Threats Democracy Has Ever Known'
Identifies U.S. Homeland Security 'Cyber Alert' Prior to '04 Election Warning Votes Can be 'Modified Remotely' via 'Undocumented Backdoor' in Central Tabulator Software!
In exclusive stunning admissions to The BRAD BLOG some 11 months after the 2004 Presidential Election, a "Diebold Insider" is now finally speaking out for the first time about the...
In exclusive stunning admissions to The BRAD BLOG some 11 months after the 2004 Presidential Election, a "Diebold Insider" is now finally speaking out for the first time about the alarming security flaws within Diebold, Inc's electronic voting systems, software and machinery. The source is acknowledging that the company's "upper management" -- as well as "top government officials" -- were keenly aware of the "undocumented backdoor" in Diebold's main "GEM Central Tabulator" software well prior to the 2004 election. A branch of the Federal Government even posted a security warning on the Internet.
Pointing to a little-noticed "Cyber Security Alert" issued by the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the source inside Diebold -- who "for the time being" is requesting anonymity due to a continuing sensitive relationship with the company -- is charging that Diebold's technicians, including at least one of its lead programmers, knew about the security flaw and that the company instructed them to keep quiet about it.
"Diebold threatened violators with immediate dismissal," the insider, who we'll call DIEB-THROAT, explained recently to The BRAD BLOG via email. "In 2005, after one newly hired member of Diebold's technical staff pointed out the security flaw, he was criticized and isolated."
In phone interviews, DIEB-THROAT confirmed that the matters were well known within the company, but that a "culture of fear" had been developed to assure that employees, including technicians, vendors and programmers kept those issues to themselves.
The "Cyber Security Alert" from US-CERT was issued in late August of 2004 and is still available online via the US-CERT website. The alert warns that "A vulnerability exists due to an undocumented backdoor account, which could [sic: allow] a local or remote authenticated malicious user [sic: to] modify votes."
The alert, assessed to be of "MEDIUM" risk on the US-CERT security bulletin, goes on to add that there is "No workaround or patch available at time of publishing."
"Diebold's upper management was aware of access to the voter file defect before the 2004 election - but did nothing to correct it," the source explained.
A "MEDIUM" risk vulnerability cyber alert is described on the US-CERT site as: "one that will allow an intruder immediate access to a system with less than privileged access. Such vulnerability will allow the intruder the opportunity to continue the attempt to gain privileged access. An example of medium-risk vulnerability is a server configuration error that allows an intruder to capture the password file."
DIEB-THROAT claims that, though the Federal Government knew about this documented flaw, originally discovered and reported by BlackBoxVoting.org in August of 2004, they did nothing about it.
"I believe that top Government officials had an understanding with top Diebold officials to look the other way," the source explained, "because Diebold was their ace in the hole."...
But even DIEB-THROAT -- who says "we were brainwashed" by the company to believe such concerns about security were nonsense -- was surprised to learn that an arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was well aware of this flaw, and concerned enough about it to issue a public alert prior to the election last year.
"I was aware of the Diebold security flaw and had heard about the Homeland Security Cyber Alert Threat Assessment website, so I went there and 'bingo,' there it was in black and white," the source wrote. "It blew me away because it showed that DHS, headed by a Cabinet level George Bush loyalist, was very aware of the 'threat' of someone changing votes in the Diebold Central Tabulator. The question is, why wasn't something done about it before the election?"
The CEO of North Canton, Ohio-based Diebold, Inc., Walden O'Dell has been oft-quoted for his 2003 Republican fund-raiser promise to help "Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." O'Dell himself was a high-level contributor to the Bush/Cheney '04 campaign as well as many other Republican causes.
"A very serious problem...one malicious person can change the outcome of any Diebold election"
The voting company insider, who has also served as a spokesperson for the company in various capacities over recent years, admits that the "real danger" of this security vulnerability could have easily been exploited by a malicious user or an insider through remote access.
"I have seen these systems connected to phone lines dozens of times with users gaining remote access," said DIEB-THROAT. "What I think we have here is a very serious problem. Remote access using phone lines eliminates any need for a conspiracy of hundreds to alter the outcome of an election. Diebold has held onto this theory [publicly] for years, but Diebold has lied and has put national elections at risk. Remote access using this backdoor means that one malicious person can change the outcome of any Diebold election."
The ability to connect to the system remotely by phone lines and the apparent lack of interest by Diebold to correct the serious security issue in a timely manner -- or at all -- would seem to be at odds with at least one of their Press Releases touting their voting hardware and software.
In an October 31, 2003 Press Release as part of a publicity blitz to "sell" the new voting machines to the voters in the state of Maryland, Diebold Election Systems President Thomas W. Swidarski is quoted as follows in a section titled "Security Is Key":
Diebold has fine-tuned its computerized system so that it meets stringent security requirements. “We have independent verification that the Diebold voting system provides an unprecedented level of election security. This is crucial to maintaining the integrity of the entire voting process,” Swidarski added.
Attempts by The BRAD BLOG to get comment from Swidarski were passed to one of the Vice-Presidents at Diebold who has not returned our voice mail message.
We did, however, hear back from Diebold Spokesperson David Bear of the PR firm Public Strategies. He was referred to us by several different Diebold offices as "the man to discuss voting machine issues with."
Bear claimed to have never heard of the Cyber Alert issued by US-CERT and when told of it, refused to acknowledge it as anything more than "an unverified allegation."
"One of the greatest threats our democracy has ever known"
Our source expressed emphatically that future democratic elections in the United States are at stake and feels that the problem will not be corrected until Congressional action forces the company to do so.
"In my opinion Diebold's election system is one of the greatest threats our democracy has ever known, and the only way this will be exposed is with a Congressional investigation with subpoenas of not just Diebold officials but Diebold technicians."
If our experience in discussing the matter with Bear, the man Diebold referred us to for all matters concerning voting machines, is any indication, then DIEB-THROAT may be correct. Even a Cyber Alert Bulletin issued by an official arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security more than a year ago was not enough to phase Diebold. At least not enough to even inform their public spokesperson about the matter, apparently.
"I don't know anything about it," Bear claimed when we asked about the Cyber Alert, and he refused to acknowledge there were anysecurity concerns about Diebold's Voting Machines or its GEMS Central Tabulator software.
Over and over, by rote, he repeated in response to our questions: "The GEMS software has been used in hundreds of elections and there's never been a security issue."
Bear says that "Diebold machines have never lost a single vote," but beyond that could not speak to the vulnerability issue since, he said, "I don't know what vulnerability they're referencing."
We sent the link to the US-CERT Cyber Alert to Bear, but have not yet heard back from about it. He did, however, send us a copy of the well-worn Caltech/Massachusetts Institute of Technology report [PDF] analyzing the 2004 Presidential Election which, Bear pointed out in his Email, "concludes that the most improvement [in vote-counting and integrity over 2000] occurred when counties/states changed to touch screen systems."
DIEB-THROAT was taken aback, but not wholly surprised, when we shared the comments from Bear denying knowledge of the "backdoor" security vulnerability in the GEMS software and his contention that there was nothing more than "allegations."
The vulnerability, and the ability to "manipulate votes" occurs because the GEMS software uses the public Microsoft Access database software to store vote totals in a separate data file. And, as DIEB-THROAT explained, Access is "full of holes. There are so many ways to get into it."
Because GEMS uses the Access database, "you can enter and manipulate the file without even entering into GEMS," our source said in response ot Bear's denials.
"GEMS sits on top of this database and it pretty much feeds information down to the database from GEMS. It's almost like you're on the first floor of your house and all of your operating equipment is in the basement so that anything that happens on the first floor ends up downstairs. Well, downstairs has a wide open door to it. So we're dumping all the votes downstairs and that's wide open to the rest of the computer system."
"A culture of fear"
In trying to understand why the U.S. Homeland Security Department's Cyber Alert didn't force Diebold to make fixes, patches or corrections quickly available for their software prior to -- or even since -- the '04 election, DIEB-THROAT repeated over and over that Diebold was simply "not concerned about security".
"They don't have security solutions. They don't want them...They leave security policy issues up to the states. They've known about this for some time. They don't really care," the source said, comparing the security flaw to "leaving the front door at Fort Knox open." It's just "blatant sloppiness and they don't care."
The versions of the GEMS Central Tabulation software listed on the US-CERT site are 1.17.7 and 1.18 and DIEB-THROAT says the same versions of the same software are still in use by States around the country and haven't had any fixes or patches applied to correct the problem.
Diebold spokesman, Bear, was unable to confirm whether or not Diebold had updated its GEMS software in any way since the US-CERT Cyber Alert was released telling us only that "There's different versions of the software for different needs" and that he didn't know if patches, fixes or corrections were ever released by the company.
"There's always an evolution," Bear said. "Before any software can be used it's federally qualified and then certified by the states...Where different versions are running, I just don't know."
"They're still at that same version number," DIEB-THROAT said. "A lot of our customers still have it and there's not been any patch....They really don't care about this sort of thing. They really don't. People may find it hard to believe...in other words [the company says] 'we'll give you a machine to vote on and the rest is up to you."
"This is a very profit motivated company," the source continued, "they don't care what happens after the sale. Once they have the contract they've got the customer tied up pretty good."
Initially DIEB-THROAT claims to have been "brainwashed" by the pervasive "company line" at Diebold, that all of the talk about security concerns and the possibility that someone could hack the vote was the talk of "conspiracy theorists". Apparently that was -- and is still is -- "the company line." But after one of Diebold's head technicians who works out of their McKinney, Texas facility confirmed the gaping security hole in the software to our source, it was understood that these concerns were for real.
"Up until his confirmation, I had heard it through the grapevine, as rumors and such, but he confirmed it for me. The lead technician who worked on the software, who has a Phd in mathematics and so forth, was saying that 'this problem exists!'"
So why hasn't that technician, or anyone else from within the company spoken out until now?
"This is a culture of fear. Really. Only because we were good friends did [the head technician] confide in me that these were problems that needed to be fixed," DIEB-THROAT said.
"They all knew..."
In regards to possible remote access to the GEMS Central Tabulator by modem via phone lines, a way that hackers could easily and simply change the vote total information in the Access database, Diebold's official spokesman seemed to be similarly in denial even today.
When we asked Bear whether or not the Central Tabulator is still accessible via modem in their machines, he first denied that it's even possible, telling us "the Central Tabulator isn't accessable via modem."
When we pressed about whether or not there are still modem capabilities in the machines and software they sell, Bear admitted, "There is a modem capability, but it's up to a jurisdiction whether they wish to use it or not...I don't know of any jurisdiction that does that."
"Oh, boy. Such lies," DIEB-THROAT said in response. "There are several jurisdications that use [the modem capabilities] in the machines...Probably one of the most robust users of modems is Prince Georges County in Maryland. They've used it in every election. I believe they started in 2000. And Baltimore County used them in the November election in 2004. Fulton County and Dekalb County in Georgia may have used them in 2004 as well."
While we were unable to hear back in response to messages left with Election Officials at several of those offices prior to the publication of this article, a review of "Lessons Learned" after the November 2004 Election conducted by the Maryland state Board of Elections obtained by The BRAD BLOG, confirms that modems were used to access the GEMS Central Tabulator to send in information from precincts on Election Night.
We are still reviewing the complete document, but amongst the findings in the report is that "the GEMS system froze several times during heavy modem transmitting periods requiring the system to be rebooted, which generated delays and prohibited BOE from receiving polling places' transmissions."
As well, the report concludes, "Modem lines testing in polling place still problematic; need better coordination with school system."
It also says that "7% of voting units deployed failed on Election Day" and that an additional 5% "were suspect based on the number of votes captured." The BRAD BLOG hopes to have a follow-up article in the coming days which looks in more detail at the full Maryland state Board of Elections report and the alarming rate of failure for Diebold Touch-Screen voting machines.
When we asked our source if they had any evidence to show that the security flaw described by the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security was actually exploited in the 2004 election, DIEB-THROAT told us only: "I wouldn't say I have evidence that it was exploited....only that it was known. To the feds, to state officials and to Diebold. They all knew. In spite of the gap they moved forward as normal...As if it didn't exist."
KATRINA
Reconstructing on a False Foundation
From coast to coast, budget analysts, local and national editorial pages, and political newsweeklies are all trying to figure out the answer to the following equation: "Katrina + Iraq - Taxes = How Much?" How does a nation with record deficits responsibly finance "one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen"? Already, President Bush and congressional conservatives have tried to set the foundation of the debate, claiming 1) tax rollbacks are out of the question; 2) more tax cuts are needed; 3) there is "no fat left to cut in the federal budget"; and 4) spending cuts thus must come from domestic programs that help middle- and working-class Americans. In other words, it's the same ideological agenda as always: "aggressively slash taxes on the wealthy; run up huge budget deficits; then push for massive cuts in critical domestic spending under the guise of fiscal responsibility." Or as Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria termed it this weekend, "business as usual in the face of a national catastrophe." Below, we take aim at the four right-wing assumptions noted above:
STEADFASTLY OPPOSING NATIONAL SACRIFICE: There's little question whether President Bush's refusal to consider rolling back tax rates for the wealthiest Americans is based on ideology, not reality. Just three days after Katrina hit, before anyone had accurate information on reconstruction costs, Bush had already pledged "[t]here won’t have to be tax increases" during an off-camera conversation with ABC's Diane Sawyer. In the face of sky-rocketing deficits, this approach is fiscally reckless. The cost of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts "will be $225 billion this year alone and will climb to higher levels each year in the future, as more of the tax cuts enacted in 2001 take full effect." That's more each year than the total amount likely to be spent on Katrina, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).
TAX-CUT ZEALOTS NEED ADULT SUPERVISION: As they did after 9/11 and during the lead-up to the Iraq war, conservatives are using a national emergency to promote tax cuts for the most wealthy and well-off. As soon as September 1, as federal relief supplies finally began to arrive in the Gulf, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist decided to push forward with a vote to permanently repeal the estate tax on the ultra-wealthy. After an outcry, Frist backed off. Yet the tax cut zealotry continues: this weekend, Time magazine reported that Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) were trying to track down an estate tax payer who happened to die in Katrina's wake, as "something we could push back with." (That will be tough -- in 2003, the tax was paid by a whopping 709 people in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama combined.) Moreover, both the Bush administration and the bulk of conservatives in Congress continue to back tax cut extensions that would dish out $336 billion to the wealthiest one percent of Americans over the next five years. As Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) said yesterday, "We need some adult supervision of the budget process."
NO MORE FAT TO TRIM? House Majority Leader Tom DeLay last week declared an "ongoing victory" in his effort to cut spending, saying "there is no fat left to cut in the federal budget." This is patently, unequivocably false. If DeLay is looking for budget fat, he need look no further than the pork-laden transportation and energy bills he helped marshal through Congress this year. The truth is that right-wing leaders don't want to cut the fat. Sen. Tom Coburn's (R-OK) suggestion to cut unneccessary pork from the budget, for instance, "evoked an icy response, not only from Congress but from the White House as well." [For more on how to responsibly budget the Katrina reconstruction, check out American Progress' "Progressive Vision for Reconstruction of the Gulf Coast."]
DEFICITS DRIVEN BY REVENUE SHORTAGE, NOT SPENDING: Even if Katrina reconstruction costs total $200 billion, as analysts estimate, total federal spending will average 20.1 percent of GDP over the next five years. That "level of spending will be lower, as a share of the economy, than federal spending in every year from 1975 through 1996." On the other hand, total federal revenues from 2006 through 2010 are projected to average 17.2 percent of GDP, which "is lower than in any year from 1977 through 2002." In other words, as CBPP notes, "even with the large relief and recovery costs, deficits will stem more from lower-than-normal levels of tax revenue than from unusually high levels of spending."
Under the Radar
KATRINA -- SENATE COMMITTEE ATTEMPTS TO BLAME ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS FOR LEVEE FAILURES: Sen. James Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, is continuing his war against environmental groups. Last week, he proposed legislation to allow the EPA to waive all pro-environment regulations for 120 days during clean-up in the Gulf Coast. Inhofe has now asked the Justice Department to investigate the role of environmental groups in causing the flooding of New Orleans. The Justice Department sent an e-mail to various U.S. Attorneys offices reading,"Has your district defended any cases on behalf of the (U.S.) Army Corps of Engineers against claims brought by environmental groups seeking to block or otherwise impede the Corps work on the levees protecting New Orleans? If so, please describe the case and the outcome of the litigation." The Sierra Club, one of the groups targeted in the investigation, has charged that the administration "is more interested in building a case to deflect blame than actually investigating what went wrong before, during and after the crisis."
IRAQ -- $1 BILLION STOLEN FROM IRAQ'S DEFENSE MINISTRY: The Iraq Defense Ministry is the victim of one of the largest thefts in history. One billion dollars meant to buy arms from Pakistan and Poland was siphoned off, resulting in overpayment for inferior equipment such as "armoured cars...so poorly made that even a bullet from an elderly AK-47 machine-gun could penetrate their armour." The deals that resulted in lost money and inferior equipment were quick, awarded without bidding, paid up front, and signed with a Baghdad-based company, instead of directly with a foreign supplier. Officials are unclear where the money has gone, but have put out an arrest warrant for Ziyad Cattan, the defense ministry's procurement chief at the time, whose appointment was approved by Paul Bremer, then US viceroy in Iraq. Iraqi officials say that, "[t]he carefully planned theft has so weakened the army that it cannot hold Baghdad against insurgent attack without American military support...making it difficult for the US to withdraw its 135,000- strong army from Iraq."
IRAQ -- $30B LATER, ADMINISTRATION SEEKS PRIVATE DONATIONS TO FINISH IRAQ RECONSTRUCTION: In a speech before the Chaldean Chamber of Commerce, USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios unveiled a new effort to raise money through charitable donations for rebuilding efforts in Iraq. Although the Administration has already appropriated more than $30 billion in taxpayer money for Iraq reconstruction, Iraqpartnership.org tells visitors, "Now you can donate high-impact development assistance that directly improves the lives of thousands of Iraqis." Donors can choose between eight projects to fund, such as purchasing computers for Iraqi entrepreneurs and school supplies for Iraqi children. For security reasons, those who give will not know exactly where the money is going. Heads of major charitable foundations doubt the effectiveness of the administration's pitch. International Youth Foundation President William Reese said, "I don't think your average Joe is going to write a check to the U.S. government." He's right so far - as of Friday night, the website had only raised $39.
IRAQ -- AFGHAN HEROIN FUNDS IRAQI INSURGENTS. The Washington Times reports today that money from Afghan heroin is financing insurgents in Iraq. House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde recently wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about the "emerging and dangerous growth of the illicit drug trade in Iraq, especially with heroin, now originating and pouring out of nearby Afghanistan." Iraqi insurgents are using heroin money to finance attacks on U.S. troops. Despite the danger to our troops presented by the drug trade, the Pentagon has not done much to stop it because they view such efforts as "law enforcement, not war-fighting."
Posted: 18 Sept. 2005
WASHINGTON REPUBLICANS PLAY POLITICS AGAIN
Senate Republicans are playing politics with an investigation into how and why the federal government failed so miserably to respond in an adequate and timely manner to Hurricane Katrina. In a party-line vote, Senate Republicans dismissed a Democratic proposal sponsored by Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) to put aside partisan politics and appoint an independent commission to investigate the federal government's failed response to the largest natural disaster in American history. Republicans voted down a plan to appoint the independent commission just one day after Bush said, "I want to know what went right and what went wrong" with the federal government's response to Katrina. [Washington Post, 9/14/05]
The President has said he wants to find out 'what went wrong' but can we take him at his word. With our nation's security on the line, this commission deserves more than business-as-usual partisan tactics from the Republican leadership in Washington, DC.
But there is something the Bush Administration has done right - or at least right for their political cronies. Already, no-bid contracts worth at least $100 Million have been awarded to several large, politically influential companies including the Fluor Corporation, Dewberry, and C2HM Hill, major donors to the Republican Party; Bechtel, a defense contractor with political connections to the Bush Administration; and Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, the giant defense contractor once led by Cheney and a current client of Joe Albaugh. Spokesmen at FEMA have been unwilling to provide details of the decision-making process that is being used to award contracts for the hurricane-relief program, nor have they identified the agency officials who are making the procurement decisions. [Hartford Courant, 9/14/05; New York Times, 9/13/05, 9/14/05; Wall Street Journal, 10/31/05; www.tray.com]
Award-Winning Engine Powered Solely by Water
Field Testing Proves Thermal Hydraulic Engine Pumps Oil without the Need for Fuel or Electricity
Posted: 15 Sept. 2005
None Dare Call It Stolen
Ohio, the election, and America's servile press
Posted on Wednesday, September 7, 2005. What actually happened in Ohio in 2004. An excerpt from this report appeared in August 2005. The complete text appears below. Originally from August 2005. By Mark Crispin Miller.
On January 5, Representative John Conyers of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, released Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio. The report was the result of a five-week investigation by the committee’s Democrats, who reviewed thousands of complaints of fraud, malfeasance, or incompetence surrounding the election in Ohio, and further thousands of complaints that poured in by phone and email as word of the inquiry spread. The congressional researchers were assisted by volunteers in Ohio who held public hearings in Columbus, Cleveland, Toledo, and Cincinnati, and questioned more than two hundred witnesses. (Although they were invited, Republicans chose not to join in the inquiry.) [3]
Preserving Democracy describes three phases of Republican chicanery: the run-up to the election, the election itself, and the post-election cover-up. The wrongs exposed are not mere dirty tricks (though Bush/Cheney also went in heavily for those) but specific violations of the U.S. and Ohio constitutions, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1968, the National Voter Registration Act, and the Help America Vote Act. Although Conyers trod carefully when the report came out, insisting that the crimes did not affect the outcome of the race (a point he had to make, he told me, “just to get a hearing”), his report does “raise grave doubts regarding whether it can be said that the Ohio electors selected on December 13, 2004, were chosen in a manner that conforms to Ohio law, let alone Federal requirements and constitutional standards.” The report cites “massive and unprecedented voter irregularities and anomalies” throughout the state—wrongs, moreover, that were hardly random accidents. “In many cases,” the report says, “these irregularities were caused by intentional misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it involving Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio.”[4]
READ THE REST.
You Can Do Something About Gas Prices
Today Americans are feeling pain at the pump, as Hurricane Katrina sends gas prices through the roof. Next on the horizon: a looming heating oil shortage, which will drive up home heating costs to shocking new levels this winter. President Bush has presented himself as powerless to do anything, saying, "I wish I could simply wave a magic wand and lower gas prices tomorrow. I'd do that." American Progress doesn't have a magic wand either. But we do have a new plan to provide solutions which help consumers and reduce American dependence on foreign oil. The plan would reduce demand for oil, provide immediate relief for working Americans hit by skyrocketing gas and oil prices and help revolutionize the auto industry.
REIGN IN GREEDY GUZZLERS: In 2005, people who drive Hummers -- which get an average of 11 miles to the gallon -- can receive a $25,000 tax credit; more consumption-conscious drivers who drive fuel-efficient hybrids like the Prius -- which gets a whopping 60 miles to the gallon -- only receive a $2,000 tax credit. American Progress recommends fixing this backward tax code. Another recommendation: new vehicles that are below the gas mileage standards in their class should be subject to tax surcharge, while highly efficient models should get a tax rebate. The plan also includes oil savings provisions championed by Sen. Maria Cantwell.
REPACKAGED PROFITS: While working Americans struggle to fill their gas tanks and heat their homes, oil companies are raking in record profits on the back of the current crisis. According to the Boston Herald, for example, ExxonMobil is set to rack up $10 billion in profits this quarter. "That's $110 million a day, and more net income than any company has ever made in a quarter. It's also a stunning 69 percent increase over the same period a year ago and a 34 percent jump from the $7.6 billion Exxon made just last quarter." Yet in its latest energy bill, the conservative-led Congress handed Exxon and its fellow oil companies $4 billion in giant tax breaks and subsidies. American Progress charges it's time for Congress to explore taxing these oil company windfalls and using the money to support energy conservation measures.
HEALTH CARE FOR HYBRIDS: United States automakers are falling behind foreign competitors in large part due to the burdens of providing health care. (The Big 3 car companies, Ford, GM and Daimler-Chrysler, will spend $6.7 billion on retiree health care in 2005.) This is a drain on investment funds and leads to massive layoffs. American Progress teamed up with the Breakthrough Institute and the NRDC to address this growing crisis while promoting action to reduce oil consumption. The idea, which is being explored by Rep. Jay Inslee and Sen. Barack Obama, is to offer health care cost relief to car companies in exchange for developing more efficient vehicles. Investing in assistance for retiree health care costs, for example, would make it "possible to save over a million barrels of oil a day, while improving the competitiveness of U.S. business and the retirement security of American workers."
KATRINA'S NEXT HIT: Lower-income Americans are bracing for the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina -- skyrocketing heating costs this winter. According to the Energy Information Administration, natural gas prices are projected to rise more than 70 percent this winter. The Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which helps poor households pay their heating bills during the coldest months of the winter, is already underfunded and overstressed. Last year, 30 million families qualified for help, but a lack of funding meant only one out of every seven received assistance. And while energy costs have soared, under the Bush White House, funding for LIHEAP and other energy assistance programs grew only 7 percent, barely keeping up with inflation. The American Progress plan fully funds LIHEAP and provides additional assistance to low-income Americans by expanding eligibility the Earned Income Tax Credit.
NATIONAL SECURITY -- CRUCIAL REFORMS FOR DEALING WITH CRISES HAVE YET TO BE ENACTED: Former members of the 9/11 Commission will release a report detailing how the federal government has failed to enact crucial homeland security reforms that could have saved lives and improved the sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina. Some of the members' concerns center on the lacking communications capabilities of local emergency officials and the absence of a clear system of command and control for responding to a crisis. The Associated Press notes that the radio communications system for the New Orleans police and fire departments dissolved as the first responders tried to deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Louisiana state Sen. Robert Barnham said the Louisiana emergency officials were "no better off than were were [on 9/11]." "The fact that Congress has chosen not to do something about this is a national scandal that has cost lives," said former 9/11 Commission Chairman Thomas Kean.
BUDGET -- DELAY DECLARES PORK HAS BEEN ELIMINATED FROM FEDERAL BUDGET: The Washington Times reports that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) claims that conservatives have done so well in cutting spending that he declared an "ongoing victory," and that there is no fat left to cut out of the federal budget. But conservative Congressman Jeff Flake (R-AZ) said of DeLay's comments, "There's a lot of fat to trim.... I wonder if we've been serving in the same Congress." Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), a group that plans to release a list of $2 trillion in suggested spending cuts, said if Mr. DeLay wants to know where to cut, "there are plenty of places to reduce." And the Washington Times' own editorial page notes there are plenty of opportunities for the Congress to trim fat.
KATRINA -- CHERTOFF FINALLY CALLED OUT FOR HURRICANE MISMANAGEMENT: Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff -- not ousted FEMA Director Michael Brown -- had initial responsibility for mobilizing a response after Hurricane Katrina. While Brown has been criticized for his failure to act quickly, and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco for not asking for assistance right away, an August 30 memo by Chertoff shows that Chertoff had full authority to order federal agencies into action without any request from state and local officials, even before the storm hit. Full authority was not transferred to Brown until 36 hours after the storm. Knight-Ridder notes that the memo "suggests that Chertoff may have been confused about his lead role in disaster response and that of his department," which is laid out in the National Response Plan. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service also concluded that Gov. Blanco took all the necessary and timely needed to secure disaster relief from the federal government. Check out our timeline that details the slow federal response to Hurricane Katrina.
SCIENCE -- THE RIGHT SEES PENGUINS AS PARAGONS OF FAMILY VALUES: This year's popular movie "March of the Penguins," documenting the annual mating journey of emperor penguins, has been seized by the right wing as "the motion picture this summer that most passionately affirms traditional norms like monogamy, sacrifice and child rearing." Other members of the right see the journey of the penguins as a parallel to the Christian experience or "as a condemnation of gay marriage." But not all penguins uphold traditional right-wing values: Wendell and Cass, two male penguins at the New York Aquarium in Coney Island who are mating for life, are homosexual, which experts conclude is not out of the ordinary in the animal world.
IRAN -- ANOTHER SLIDE SLOW FULL OF ASSUMPTIONS, FEW FACTS: The Washington Post reports that the Bush administration has produced "an hour-long slide show that blends satellite imagery with disquieting assumptions about Iran's nuclear energy program" to convince the world that Iran will soon develop nuclear weapons. The administration presented "A History of Concealment and Deception" to more than a dozen diplomats in Vienna during the past month to make a case against Iran leading up to this week's U.N. meetings. U.S. intelligence did not vet the presentation, and one intelligence official said that they "probably would have disavowed some of it because it draws conclusions that aren't strictly supported by the facts." Foreign diplomats compared the briefing to Colin Powell's infamous Iraq speech before the U.N. Powell recently called his presentation a "blot" on his record, and former Powell aide Col. Lawrence Wilkerson dubbed it the "lowest point" of his life.
More than 100,000 citizens have petitioned the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to stop threatening public broadcasting's editorial integrity, and Common Cause and nine other reform groups wrote to the CPB board, asking it to embrace more transparency in its decision-making process. Nevertheless, Patricia de Stacy Harrison, the new president and chief executive officer of the CPB, denies there are any problems to talk about.
We disagree.
As you know, over the last several months the CPB board and its chairman, Kenneth Tomlinson, a Republican with ties to many prominent Republican political figures including Karl Rove, have been criticized for spending public money to hire consultants to monitor bias in programming like NOW and the Diane Rehm show. He did this without the notification of the full board, without public disclosure and without notifying the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) or National Public Radio (NPR). Under chairman Tomlinson's leadership, the CPB also hired two ombudsmen to review programming and gather public sentiment about program content, in an apparent attempt to position the board to influence editorial decisions, an unprecedented event in the organization's 40-plus-year history. In fact, the CPB inspector general is currently investigating the propriety of the board's recent activities. Members of Congress also are scrutinizing the CPB's actions.
In our letter last month, Common Cause and our coalition partners called on the CPB board members and Harrison to adopt a resolution that would make the CPB more transparent and accountable to the American public. In her response to our request, Harrison's asserts that the CPB has sufficient rules in place to ensure transparency and accountability.
We reject Ms. Harrison's arguments. The CPB rules she is referring to are the same rules that allowed for the breaches of trust that have repeatedly occurred under the current leadership at CPB. And we found no language in the Public Broadcasting Act, the CPB bylaws, or on the CPB website that address our concerns. Please join us in calling on Harrison to support our resolution to open up the CPB process. You can reach her office at (202)879-9662.
Thanks from the Common Cause Campaign Team to Protect Public Broadcasting.
Sincerely,
Celia Wexler, Lauren Coletta, Dawn Holian
Posted: 10 Sept. 2005
Pat Robertson's Katrina Cash
Max Blumenthal
Every cloud has a silver lining. Hurricane Katrina has devastated New Orleans, leaving thousands dead and hundreds of thousands homeless, and plunging the entire city into chaos. In the hurricane's wake, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and its director, Michael Brown, forced out of his former job at the International Arabian Horse Association, with no credentials in disaster relief, have become targets of withering criticism. Yet FEMA's relief efforts have brought considerable assistance to at least one man who stands to benefit from Hurricane Katrina perhaps more than any other individual: Pat Robertson.
With the Bush Administration's approval, Robertson's $66 million relief organization, Operation Blessing, has been prominently featured on FEMA's list of charitable groups accepting donations for hurricane relief. Dozens of media outlets, including the New York Times, CNN and the Associated Press, duly reprinted FEMA's list, unwittingly acting as agents soliciting cash for Robertson. "How in the heck did that happen?" Richard Walden, president of the disaster-relief group Operation USA, asked of Operation Blessing's inclusion on FEMA's list. "That gives Pat Robertson millions of extra dollars."
Far from the media's gaze, Robertson has used the tax-exempt, nonprofit Operation Blessing as a front for his shadowy financial schemes, while exerting his influence within the GOP to cover his tracks. In 1994 he made an emotional plea on The 700 Club for cash donations to Operation Blessing to support airlifts of refugees from the Rwandan civil war to Zaire (now Congo). Reporter Bill Sizemore of The Virginian Pilot later discovered that Operation Blessing's planes were transporting diamond-mining equipment for the African Development Corporation, a Robertson-owned venture initiated with the cooperation of Zaire's then-dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.
READ THE REST.
The picture that says it all.
Posted: 7 Sept. 2005
The following quotes were made by Republicans during the Kosovo campaign:
"You can support the troops, but not the president." - Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)
"Well, I just think it's a bad idea. What's going to happen is they're going to be over there for 10, 15, maybe 20 years." - Joe Scarborough (R-FL)
"Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life?" - Sean Hannity, Fox News, 4/6/99
"The President is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation's armed forces about how long they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy." - Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA)
"American foreign policy is now one huge big mystery. Simply put, the administration is trying to lead the world with a feel-good foreign policy." - Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)
"If we are going to commit American troops, we must be certain they have a clear mission, an achievable goal and an exit strategy." - Karen Hughes, speaking on behalf of George W Bush
"I had doubts about the bombing campaign from the beginning. . . I didn't think we had done enough in the diplomatic area." - Senator Trent Lott (R-MS)
"I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace. This administration is just learning that lesson right now. The President began this mission with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered
questions. A month later, these questions are still unanswered. There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no
contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our over-extended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today."
- Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)
And for the grand finale...
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." - Governor George W. Bush (R-TX)
Death and President Bush
by E.L Doctorow
I fault this president (George W. Bush) for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our twenty-one year olds who wanted to be what they could be.
On the eve of D-day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.
But this president does not know what death is. He hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the WMDs he can't
seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man. He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn.
He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.
But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the thousand dead young men and women who wanted to be what they could be. They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers and fathers or wives and children who will suffer to the end of their days a terribly torn fabric of familial relationships and the
inconsolable remembrance of aborted life.... They come to his desk as a political liability which is why the press is not permitted to photograph the arrival of their coffins from Iraq.
How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret and he regrets nothing. He does not regret that his reason n for going to war was, as he knew,
unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret that his bungled plan for the war's aftermath has made of his mission-accomplished a disaster. He does not regret that rather than controlling terrorism his war in Iraq has licensed it.
So he never mourns for the dead and crippled youngsters who have fought this war of his choice. He wanted to go to war and he did. He had not the mind to
perceive the costs of war, or to listen to those who knew those costs. He did not understand that you do not go to war when it is one of the options, but when
it is the only option; you go not because you want to but because you have to.
This president knew it would be difficult for Americans not to cheer the
overthrow of a foreign dictator. He knew that much.
This president and his supporters would seem to have a mind for only one thing --- to take power, to remain in power, and to use that power for the sake of themselves and their friends. A war will do that as well as anything.
You become a wartime leader. The country gets behind you. Dissent becomes inappropriate. And so he does not drop to his knees, he is not contrite, he does not sit in the church with the grieving parents wives and children.
He is the President who does not feel. He does not feel for the families of the dead; he does not feel for the thirty five million of us who live in poverty; he does not feel for the forty percent who cannot afford health insurance; he does not feel for the miners whose lungs are turning black or for the working people he has deprived of the chance to work overtime at time-and-a-half to pay their bills --- it is amazing for how many people in this country this President does not feel.
But he will dissemble feeling. He will say in all sincerity he is relieving the wealthiest one percent of the population of their tax burden for the sake of the rest of us, and that he is polluting the air we breathe for the sake of our economy, and that he is decreasing the safety regulations for coal mines to save the coal miners' jobs, and that he is depriving workers of their time-and-a- half benefits for overtime because this is actually a way to honor them by raising them into the professional class.
And this litany of lies he will versify with reverences for God and the flag and democracy, when just what he and his party are doing to our democracy is choking the life out of it.
But there is one more terribly sad thing about all of this. I remember the millions of people here and around the world who marched against the war. It was extraordinary, that spontaneously aroused over soul of alarm and protest that transcended national borders. Why did it happen? After all, this was not the only war anyone had ever seen coming. There are little wars all over the world most of the time.
But the cry of protest was the appalled understanding of millions of people that America was ceding its role as the last best hope of mankind. It was their perception that the classic archetype of democracy was morphing into a rogue nation. The greatest democratic republic in history was turning its back on the future, using its extraordinary power and standing not to advance the ideal of a concordance of civilizations but to endorse the kind of tribal combat that originated with the Neanderthals, a people, now extinct, who could imagine ensuring their survival by no other means than pre-emptive war.
The president we get is the country we get. With each president the nation is conformed spiritually. He is the artificer of our malleable national soul. He
proposes not only the laws but the kinds of lawlessness that govern our lives and invoke our responses. The people he appoints are cast in his image. The trouble they get into and get us into, is his characteristic trouble.
Finally the media amplify his character into our moral weather report. He becomes the face of our sky, the conditions that prevail: How can we sustain ourselves as the United States of America given the stupid and ineffective war making, the constitutionally insensitive lawgiving, and the monarchal economics of this president? He cannot mourn but is a figure of such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves.
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Edgar Lawrence Doctorow occupies a central position in the history of American literature. He is generally considered to be among the most talented, ambitious, and admired novelists of the second half of the twentieth century. Doctorow has received the National Book Award, two
National Book Critics Circle Awards, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, the William Dean Howell Medal of the National Humanities Medal.
Doctorow was born in New York City on January 6, 1931. After graduating with honors from Kenyon College in 1952, he did graduate work at Columbia University and served in the U.S. Army. Doctorow was senior editor for New American Library from 1959 to 1964 and then served as editor in chief at Dial Press until 1969. Since then, he has devoted his time to writing and teaching. He holds the Glucksman Chair in American Letters at New York University and over the years has taught at several institutions, including Yale University Drama School, Princeton University, Sarah Lawrence College, and the University of California, Irvine.
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