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Most of us whose bylines appear in the American media should be embarrassed to look our readers, viewers and listeners in the eye. We are being held up for ridicule by real journalists, such as Webb, from nations that once looked upon us as the epitome of truth and integrity. The ridicule is richly deserved.
Members of the American news media should be asking the question that Webb has presented. Are American journalists spineless? Or have the people who once wielded the editorial sword with such class and power caved in to the bean counters who run the media conglomerates? Either way, we have failed, and it's only going to get worse unless individual journalists begin to stand up and reclaim our place as the guardians of liberty.
This weekend's camp, with 110 attendees paying $35 each to cover meals, is the first of nine planned in several states through year's end; starting in 2004, the organizers expect to run as many as 20 Camp Wellstones each year.
...Camp Wellstone is the newest in a recent genre of intensive political workshops run by both political parties, as well as groups like Emily's List and 21st Century Democrats. A foundation based in San Francisco recently started Emerge, a nine-month training program for women who ponder running for president. The nonpartisan Center for Campaign Leadership offers two-day seminars to young people interested in public service in hopes of making campaigns more ethical and thus raising voter confidence.
Though officially nonpartisan, Camp Wellstone is unabashedly liberal, or, in its preferred parlance, "progressive." The "other" candidate in curriculum materials is always a Republican. Photos of Nixon bring snickers; of Mandela, cheers.
Mr. Wellstone is not just an inspiration, but a constant presence. After quoting extensively from his speeches and writings in the opening session, Mr. Blodgett cued up a video to let the man himself explain.
At the end of a session on how to write a campaign plan, Heather Booth, a political consultant, offered her energetic but admittedly imprecise impression, waving her arms wildly, à la Wellstone, and shouting, "Keep on organizing, keep on fighting, keep on organizing, keep on fighting — until we win!"
In addition to attending lectures from political professionals, campers confronted a series of exercises: creating, in 20 minutes, a two-minute campaign commercial for a city council slate in Charleston, W.Va.; planning a crisis press conference to respond to allegations that a candidate is a slumlord or lied about his military experience; knocking door to door to door.
Camp, which cost $20,000 to run, was divided into three tracks. The would-be candidates had 25 minutes to draft a one-minute stump speech, while future hacks drew up a $145,000 budget for a congressional campaign and those who aspired to community activism lobbied faux legislators.
The president, buoyed by the bountiful patronage of the upper classes, seems indifferent to the increasingly harsh struggles of the working classes and the poor.
As Mr. Bush moves from fund-raiser to fund-raiser, building the mother of all campaign stockpiles, states from coast to coast are reaching depths of budget desperation unseen since the Great Depression. The disconnect here is becoming surreal. On Thursday the National Governors Association let it be known that the fiscal crisis that has crippled one state after another is worsening, not getting better.
Taxes have been raised. Services have been cut. And the rainy day funds accumulated in the 1990's have been consumed. If help does not materialize soon — in the form of assistance from the federal government or a sharp turnaround in the economy — some states will fall into a fiscal abyss.
That already seems to be happening in places like California, which has been driven to its knees by a two-year $38.8 billion budget gap, and Oregon, which has seen drastic cuts in public school services and the withholding of potentially life-saving medicine from seriously ill patients.
Most states have been unable to protect even the most fundamental services from damaging budget cuts.
I used to fret about same-sex marriage. Maybe competition from responsible gays would revive opposite-sex marriage."C'mon, honey, it's time for the 'Heterosexual Humping' playoffs! Who-WEE!"
I was at ABC News during the Watergate era. Early in the investigation, veteran reporter and anchorman Howard K. Smith had a one-on-one prime-time interview with President Richard Nixon, what was called then a "special." The day after it aired, I overheard someone in the newsroom ask Mr. Smith why, in their exchange, he didn't get into the whole Watergate business with Mr. Nixon. Mr. Smith's reply, which I have never forgotten, was "Well, he is the president." (Emphasis Mr. Smith's).
Journalism is nothing if not a quest for the truth. Timidity has no place here. The Fourth Estate has played stenographer to the White House and the Pentagon long enough. Reporting is not just telling the public what the government tells you.
Shakespeare's Claudius may have been a strong king and committed to the defense of his country. But he had murdered his predecessor and then lied about it. There truly was "something rotten in the state of Denmark."
If President Bush launched a lethal war, one whose ultimate domestic and global consequences still cannot be foreseen, on the basis of evidence he either knew was false or about which he should have been judiciously skeptical, then in the words of Mr. Bush's own father, former President George H. W. Bush, "this cannot stand," and he should resign or be impeached.
However severe these unfolding climate-change impacts seem, they are - like the canary in the coal mine - just the first whispers of the holocaust that lies ahead if nothing is done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists meeting under the banner of the UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have predicted a warming during this century alone of up to six degrees Celsius, which would take the earth into dangerous uncharted waters. A few weeks ago, scientists at the UK's Hadley Centre reported that the warming might be even greater because of the complexities of the carbon cycle.
The IPCC's worst-case forecast of six degrees could prove almost unimaginably catastrophic. It took only six degrees of warming to spark the end-Permian mass extinction 251 million years ago, the worst crisis ever to hit life on earth (expertly chronicled by Michael Benton in When Life Nearly Died) which led to the deaths of 95 per cent of all species alive at the time.
Every week, the lobbyists present pass around a list of the jobs available and discuss whom to support. Santorum's responsibility is to make sure each one is filled by a loyal Republican--a senator's chief of staff, for instance, or a top White House aide, or another lobbyist whose reliability has been demonstrated. After Santorum settles on a candidate, the lobbyists present make sure it is known whom the Republican leadership favors. "The underlying theme was [to] place Republicans in key positions on K Street. Everybody taking part was a Republican and understood that that was the purpose of what we were doing," says Rod Chandler, a retired congressman and lobbyist who has participated in the Santorum meetings. "It's been a very successful effort."
If today's GOP leaders put as much energy into shaping K Street as their predecessors did into selecting judges and executive-branch nominees, it's because lobbying jobs have become the foundation of a powerful new force in Washington politics: a Republican political machine. Like the urban Democratic machines of yore, this one is built upon patronage, contracts, and one-party rule. But unlike legendary Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley, who rewarded party functionaries with jobs in the municipal bureaucracy, the GOP is building its machine outside government, among Washington's thousands of trade associations and corporate offices, their tens of thousands of employees, and the hundreds of millions of dollars in political money at their disposal.
The Senate majority leader said Sunday he supported a proposed constitutional amendment to ban homosexual marriage in the United States.What a fucking moronic asshole - or pandering whore. I can't decide which is worse. Cats and dogs sleeping together, total anarchy.... next thing you know, they're be showing condom ads on the TEE vee!
Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said the Supreme Court's decision last week on gay sex threatens to make the American home a place where criminality is condoned.
The court on Thursday threw out a Texas law that prohibited acts of sodomy between homosexuals in a private home, saying that such a prohibition violates the defendants' privacy rights under the Constitution. The ruling invalidated the Texas law and similar statutes in 12 other states.
"I have this fear that this zone of privacy that we all want protected in our own homes is gradually — or I'm concerned about the potential for it gradually being encroached upon, where criminal activity within the home would in some way be condoned," Frist told ABC's This Week.
"And I'm thinking of — whether it's prostitution or illegal commercial drug activity in the home ... to have the courts come in, in this zone of privacy, and begin to define it gives me some concern."
Asked whether he supported an amendment that would ban any marriage in the United States except a union of a man and a woman, Frist said: "I absolutely do, of course I do.
For the first time in state politics, large amounts of corporate contributions made their way into political races during 2002, helping cement a GOP takeover of the Texas House, state and federal records show.
U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, and the state's largest business group led behind-the-scenes efforts that have prompted lawsuits and investigations into whether the infusion of money was legal – which they vigorously contend it was.
"That was a sea change. The soft money game that played in Washington for years – no one had done that to any appreciable degree before this in state races," said Fred Lewis, director of the watchdog group Campaigns for People.
It is illegal for corporations or unions to donate directly to candidates in Texas, and the extensive ways corporate money became involved in the low-ballot legislative races raised the legal questions.
The expenditures have led to a grand jury inquiry into the Texas Association of Business; a citizen's criminal complaint against Texans for a Republican Majority political action committee – an offshoot of Mr. DeLay's Americans for a Republican Majority; and a series of civil lawsuits.
Directors of the committees that used corporate money said their actions represented a smart use of available resources, but were not illegal or improper.
The emergence of corporate money – whether used to produce advertisements, pay administrators or hire consultants – in 22 key House races last year helped the GOP overrun the last Democratic bastion in Texas government, campaign experts said.
An earlier analysis suggested that a Republican plan to inject market forces into Medicare could increase premiums for those who stay in traditional programs by as much as 25 percent. If that's still the case, it could help Democrats who argue that the GOP plan is risky for those who want to stay in traditional Medicare, where they can pick any doctor, rather than move to a managed care plan.
The administration's Medicare chief threatened to fire his top actuary, Rick Foster, if Foster released his calculations to Capitol Hill Democrats who requested the analysis, officials said.
The prosecutors say that Mr Bursey was not in a special “free-speech zone” that was set up for protesters half a mile from the hangar. The pro-Bush people did not need to be there because they were not protesting. Mr Bursey told the cops, defiantly, that he was under the impression that the whole of America was a free-speech zone.
Bill Nettles, Mr Bursey's lawyer, claims that the case is being driven not by the young Mr Thurmond but by higher-ups in Washington, who want a new way to stifle dissent. “This is the type of small-brained decision that could only have been made by bureaucrats inside the Beltway,” says the lanky Mr Nettles. Mr Thurmond's office declines to discuss the case. A spokesman says the office is aware of the letter from the 11 congressmen, but “unless we get a directive from Attorney-General Ashcroft's office [telling us to drop or settle the case], we shall proceed.”
Chicago Police said as many as 40 or 50 people may have been on the porch at the time of the collapse, and that there may have been beer kegs and dancing on the porch as well.
"The porches back there could probably facilitate 20 to 30 people," said one neighbor, Dr. David Guelich, an orthopedic surgeon at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where some of the victims were taken.
Please note they were dancing. This is important because, as any structural engineer will tell you, the stresses on a structure are greatly amplified by rhythmic force. That's the reason why troops never march across a bridge in formation - the bridge might collapse.
It's also a good reason not to sit in (or under) the balcony at a rock concert if it's held in one of those old, restored movie theaters. They're simply not designed to handle all those adult-sized stomping feet.
For years, drug companies have given hospitals and their doctors thousands of dollars in educational grants -- money that pays for lunchtime lectures, expensive medical books, and conference speakers. Federal prosecutors are looking into whether drug companies have been using these grants, in some cases, to try to influence doctors at leading hospitals to prescribe their medications to patients, attorneys said.
If true, such behavior would be illegal under federal anti-kickback laws and may play a role in skyrocketing prescription drug costs.
While investigators have been probing drug marketing practices broadly in the medical profession, attorneys believe prosecutors are particularly interested in teaching hospitals because they are centers of influence that train the nation's future physicians.
The investigations, most led by the US attorney in Boston, come at a time when large hospitals already are adopting stricter rules about when to accept educational grants from drug makers, money that many department chiefs have embraced to supplement budgets. Massachusetts General Hospital's department of medicine last year barred companies from buying lunches for residents during noon lectures, while Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is considering establishing a committee to review educational grants, rather than allowing physicians to decide for themselves.
He had been out of work 14 months. His unemployment benefits had long run out. His savings were gone. His retirement account was gone. Three-hundred-fifty résumés. Three responses. Zero jobs. Depression. Overeating. Thirty pounds. In 14 months, he says, he had gone from someone who would accept only a legal position, to someone who swallowed his pride and said he was willing to work for the lowly sum of $25 an hour, to someone willing to take any full-time job, to someone trying to make a skeptical woman at a temporary agency understand that a one-time lawyer would gladly take anything she had.
"I have no money, and I need food," he said that day. "So you give me anything you can."
"So you just need some cash," the woman said.
"Exactly," he said. "Cash."
"Well," the woman said, "we can do that," and soon after he had his first paying job since his layoff.
It was five days, at $8 an hour, in a distribution center. He opened boxes. He took out underwear. He sorted the underwear into piles. "I wasn't going to screw it up," he says of how diligently he did this, hoping that he would be asked back for a second week.
He wasn't.
Van Luyn's occupational fall may seem extreme, but workers here and across the country are making similar compromises to avoid joining the unemployed. The stubborn 7.3 percent unemployment rate around Grand Rapids is itself a shock for an area accustomed to the success that residents figure comes naturally from hard work and a conservative lifestyle. But unemployment rates understate the tumult and tragedies of a labor market that has forced workers to give up hours and overtime, lose pensions and health benefits, and trade down stable, well-paid jobs for uncertain, increasingly lower-paid ones.It is difficult to track such turmoil in statistics, but labor economists point to one number watched by the federal government to illustrate what they call "underemployment." Between the trough of July 2000 and this May, the last month for which statistics are available, the number of workers who say they have unwillingly taken part-time jobs because of slack work conditions or because no full-time work was available has risen nearly 47 percent, to 4.6 million from 3.1 million.
Asked his favorite Simpson, he says he likes all of them at different times for different reasons, but he likes Marge because "she's the mature one."
It now appears clear that you, in fact, attended the fundraiser for House majority Leader Tom DeLay's political action committee where Westar was rewarded with access to lawmakers in exchange for its $56,000 contribution and where quid pro quos were possibly discussed.Conyers notes the weekend fundraiser was held at a Virginia resort for two days, and that Ashcroft's presence makes it likely he was privy to those discussions. "This presents a clear conflict of interest for you and the Department and requires that you appoint a special counsel."
Start writing letters. Ask your congressman to support an independent counsel.
So here is September 11, the first time since Pearl Harbor that this system failed. It was worse than Pearl Harbor. More people were killed on September 11 than were killed at Pearl Harbor, and where were the pieces? They were scattered all around the government, just like they were before Pearl Harbor. For George Bush to go out to CIA headquarters and put his arm around George Tenet and tell the world that we have the best intelligence services in the world, this really called for some analysis, if you will.My analysis is that George Bush had no option but to keep George Tenet on as Director, because George Tenet had warned Bush repeatedly, for months and months before September 11, that something very bad was about to happen.
PITT: There was the August 6 2001 briefing…
McG: On August 6, the title of the briefing was, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US,” and that briefing had the word “Hijacking” in it. That’s all I know about it, but that’s quite enough. In September, Bush had to make a decision. Is it feasible to let go of Tenet, whose agency flubbed the dub on this one? And the answer was no, because Tenet knows too much about what Bush knew, and Bush didn’t know what to do about it. That’s the bottom line for me.
Bush was well-briefed. Before he went off to Texas to chop wood for a month like Reagan did in California, he was told all these things. He didn’t even have the presence of mind to convene his National Security Council, and say, “OK guys, we have all these reports, what are we going to do about it?” He just went off to chop wood.
PITT: Now why is that? There are people in America who believe this kind of behavior was deliberate – the administration was repeatedly warned and nothing was done about those warnings. It smacks of deliberate policy for a lot of people. This is the current World Heavyweight Champion of conspiracy theories.
McG: In this, I am an adherent of the charitable interpretation, and that comes down to gross incompetence. They just didn’t know what to do. Look at who was in charge there. You have Condoleezza Rice. She knows a lot about Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, but she has no idea about terrorism. She had this terrorism dossier that Clinton NSC director Sandy Berger left behind, and by her own admission she didn’t get to it. “It was still on my desk when September 11 happened,” she said. They didn’t take this thing seriously.
Now, you can probably fault George Tenet for not being careful about crying wolf. In other words, you cry wolf often enough and in an undifferentiated way, then that is not a real service to the President. You really have to say, “Mr. President, you know I warned you about this two months ago, but now this is really serious.” You have to grab him by the collar and say, “We’ve got to do something about this.” Tenet didn’t do that. So I attribute it not to conspiracy theories, but to lack of experience, a kind of arrogance that says, “Who cares what Sandy Berger thinks,” and just gross incompetence.
Now ‘gross incompetence’ is not a nice thing to say about a President, but he had no experience in this at all, and the people he surrounded himself with also had no experience.
All through my whole life
If another war starts
It's them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side.But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust
If fire them we're forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God's on your side.In a many dark hour
I've been thinkin' about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can't think for you
You'll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.So now as I'm leavin'
I'm weary as Hell
The confusion I'm feelin'
Ain't no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
If God's on our side
He'll stop the next war.
Levin said he has directed Democratic staff to examine the objectivity and credibility of the intelligence and its effect on Defense Department policy decisions, military planning and operations in Iraq.Gee. If only someone would release the findings of the 9/11 investigation...He said Warner refused his request to begin such an inquiry. In a letter released by Levin, Warner said the committee should wait until the Senate Intelligence Committee has completed its review, then decide how to move ahead. Both Levin and Warner are members of the intelligence panel.
Here's just one example: Here in Pennsylvania, the laws mandate how many cubic feet of fresh air must be present in a special ed classroom.
Yes, believe it or not, public school costs are driven ever higher by such unfunded mandates. The way it typically goes is, the legislature will vote to fund a new public-school law for one or two election cycles, and then the cost is passed on to the local districts. State legislators have rarely met a developer or construction company they didn't like, so they're eager to please. You, of course, pay the price. Because the politicians assume (rightly) that no one has the time or energy to figure this out - and God knows, your local press won't bother to tell you.
However, I'm telling you now. So go forth and raise a ruckus.
Since that's exactly what McGreevy is doing, I'm guessing that the Garden State isn't buying Bush's feel-good rhetoric. Which can translate to some gains for the Ds in the state legislature.
The citizen board's filing attacked the special report that Westar's directors made public in late May. The report had detailed abuses of company airplanes, funds to decorate lavish executive offices, and other activities.The citizen board's filing said the internally generated report had deflected blame away from the three directors, who should have known of problems at the company. It said that the directors also had used company planes to attend sporting events.
"It stretches the bounds of credibility that these directors' vast experiences in the world of business and corporate boards did not clue them into the fact that Westar was not playing by the rules...It simply stretches the bounds of credibility to the breaking point to call their claims of ignorance `reasonable,' " the filing said.
The ratepayer group also asked that Westar counsel or executives verify the report's accuracy on the grounds that many parties had "become somewhat gun-shy of accepting the company's word after two years of subterfusion, obfuscation and prevarication."
Plus, I have to go to a wedding tonight and I'm broke. I'm going to give the bride and groom a post-dated check, which is kind of embarrassing at my age.
Plus, I was supposed to get the formal offer for my new job yesterday and it was delayed again. Which makes me nervous, since I turned down a second interview with another job a few days ago.
Oh well. At least there's a new episode of "Sex and the City" tomorrow night. Anyone else notice that Samantha kept her bra on last week when she was banging her new neighbor?
In recent months, President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have missed no opportunity to heap richly deserved praise on the military. But talk is cheap -- and getting cheaper by the day, judging from the nickel-and-dime treatment the troops are getting lately.For example, the White House griped that various pay-and-benefits incentives added to the 2004 defense budget by Congress are wasteful -- and unnecessary -- including a modest proposal to double the $6,000 gratuity paid to families of troops who die on active duty. This comes at a time when Americans continue to die in Iraq at a rate of about one a day.
Similarly, the administration announced that on Oct. 1 it wants to roll back recent modest increases in monthly imminent-danger pay (from $225 to $150) and family-separation allowance (from $250 to $100) for troops getting shot at in combat zones.
Then there's military tax relief -- or the lack thereof. As Bush and Republican leaders in Congress preach the mantra of tax cuts, they can't seem to find time to make progress on minor tax provisions that would be a boon to military homeowners, reservists who travel long distances for training and parents deployed to combat zones, among others.
Incredibly, one of those tax provisions -- easing residency rules for service members to qualify for capital-gains exemptions when selling a home -- has been a homeless orphan in the corridors of power for more than five years now.
The chintz even extends to basic pay. While Bush's proposed 2004 defense budget would continue higher targeted raises for some ranks, he also proposed capping raises for E-1s, E-2s and O-1s at 2 percent, well below the average raise of 4.1 percent.
The Senate version of the defense bill rejects that idea, and would provide minimum 3.7 percent raises for all and higher targeted hikes for some. But the House version of the bill goes along with Bush, making this an issue still to be hashed out in upcoming negotiations.
All of which brings us to the latest indignity - Bush's $9.2 billion military construction request for 2004, which was set a full $1.5 billion below this year's budget on the expectation that Congress, as has become tradition in recent years, would add funding as it drafted the construction appropriations bill.
But Bush's tax cuts have left little elbow room in the 2004 federal budget that is taking shape, and the squeeze is on across the board.
Now, the military lies. We all know that. But in this case, his version sounds more than plausible. All that's required is to believe the reporter who wrote the original piece didn't do her job - and how hard is that to swallow?
Well now, danged if that doesn't bring us to the subject of lying and the White House. Let us set aside the vexing case of the missing weapons of mass destruction and focus on a few items closer to home. Anyone remember President Bush's 2002 State of the Union Address? No, no, not the one where he said Iraq had a nuclear weapons program. The one where he said he was going to expand AmeriCorps by 50 percent, from 50,000 up to 75,000, because giving all those young people a chance to work their way through college by doing good for the community is so noble and effective."USA Freedom Corps will expand and improve the good efforts of AmeriCorps and Senior Corps to recruit more than 200,000 new volunteers," he said.
Last week, Bush and Republicans in Congress cut AmeriCorps by 80 percent. According to Jonathan Alter in Newsweek, Congress, under pressure, restored some of it, but it still leaves Americorps with a 58 percent cut and tens of thousands of fewer participants out there teaching poor kids to read, helping old folks in nursing homes, setting up community gardens, and a thousand other good and useful tasks – many of which get the young people started on careers in that kind of work.
Alter notes that restoring AmeriCorps to its current level would take $185 million, about one-half of one percent of the president's latest tax cut for the rich. The radical Republicans in Congress, apparently egged on by a Heritage Foundation study from April 2003, have decided AmeriCorps is (gasp, shudder) a jobs program.
True consultation about nominations is in the best traditions of our republic. So it is regrettable that, with varying degrees of hubris and raw partisanship, some in this Administration have regarded consultation on just about everything as a four-letter word. The Constitution divides the appointment power between the President and the Senate and expects Senators to advise the President, not just rubber-stamp his choices. In fact, for most of the Constitutional Convention the Founders had assigned the constitutional power to appoint judges exclusively to the Senate. Toward the end of the convention, as part of the system of checks and balances, the appointment power was shared between the Senate and the President. Shortly afterward, William Maclay noted this in his famous journal: "[W]hoever attends strictly to the Constitution of the United States will readily observe that the part assigned to the Senate was an important one -- no less than that of being the great check, the regulator and corrector, or, if I may so speak, the balance of this government . . . ." The Senate's role in the process is not secondary and is not confined simply to a vote. The Constitution expressly speaks of the Senate's authority to "advise" as well as the power to "consent," which includes the power to withhold such consent.In light of this history of the advice and consent clause of the Constitution, I was especially disappointed last week to see reports suggesting that President Bush is inclined to reject our overture to employ collaboration to head off a bitter fight. The President's spokesman was way off base when he termed the idea of bipartisan consultation, quote, "a novel new approach," and when he suggested that consultation with Senators before a Supreme Court nomination would somehow violate the Constitution. That constitutional interpretation would draw an F from any high school civics teacher. Other presidents have consulted with the Senate in choosing Supreme Court nominees, with good results for the Court and for the American people.
Abbas said that at Aqaba, Bush promised to speak with Sharon about the siege on Arafat. He said nobody can speak to or pressure Sharon except the Americans.Dear God! International policy dictated by the voices in the Boy King's head...According to Abbas, immediately thereafter Bush said: "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to
focus on them."
More than 8 million workers in the United States will be ineligible for overtime pay under a plan proposed recently by the Bush administration, a research group said Thursday.The Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a liberal Washington think tank, examined a proposal by the Labor Department to change the criteria for paying overtime and found that it would cost 2.5 million salaried employees and 5.5 million hourly employees their right to overtime pay.
The proposed changes, which were first introduced in March, will be implemented by the Labor Department after a "public comment" period, which expires on Monday.
The EPI questioned the appropriateness of the Labor Department's implementing such sweeping proposals without Congressional approval.
"There is no reason to believe...that Congress has authorized the Department of Labor to dramatically reduce coverage...taking overtime protection away from millions of workers," wrote the authors of the study, Ross Eisenbrey and Jared Bernstein. "Yet that is exactly what the Department of Labor has proposed."
Under current regulations, established by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938, about 79 percent of all workers are guaranteed the right to overtime pay, or time-and-a-half for every hour worked above 40 hours in a week.
Speaking of gutted school budgets, let's talk sex. Or, rather, let's talk no sex, given how the snide sexless GOP very much wants kids to know sex is icky shameful wrong anti-Christian sin (well, hello, Mr. Ashcroft!) and hence we have BushCo's malicious and asinine little $135 million "abstinence-only-until-marriage" program for schools.Yes, it's $135 mil of your tax dollars set aside for these already Bush-reamed schools, but they get a cut only if they agree to teach the wee ones that the only -- repeat, the only -- proper approach to sexual awareness at their age is, of course, not to have it.
That's right, just shut that intense natural libido right down, kiddo. Repress it and hold it back and cram it down and defenestrate your divine sexual self because we can't have you feeling all free and open and happy, now can we? Take that, you hormonally ravaged little punks.
This bears repeating. This bears a second look, if only for the sick invidiousness. Schools get a chunk of that $135 mil only if they promise to teach the "joys" of completely abstaining from all sexual activity, and nothing else.
Are we clear? No words about condoms, no safe sex, no HIV awareness, no celebration of the body, no notions of any sort of reverence for sexuality and sensuality and respect for your partner and pleasure and love and lust and tongues and joy and discovery and human goddamn nature. God forbid.
And still we wonder why teens lash out and rebel and listen to bad rap metal and have massive amounts of sex anyway and flip off the establishment and then, through some sad, mutated cheese grater of culture, turn out to be violent flag-waving psychopatriots who drink cheap beer and smack their wives and watch way too much Fox News. Your tax dollars at work, honey.
You have to ask. Are they idiots? This is the ultimate question. These lawmakers, the GOP in particular -- are they really such vile and mean-spirited imbeciles? Or are they just wealthy and relatively heartless corporatized jerks protected by cocoons of fear-based support and warmongering and power, insulated from authentic reality and entirely devoid of soul and perspective?
No, it simply can't be. They can't be that sneering and small-minded. This is what you say to yourself. Maybe they're just misguided, money-drunk, power-sucked. Maybe it will all change for the better relatively soon. Maybe it really is just a bad and vicious joke, one that we as a nation will, with any luck, laugh off in about, oh, say a year.
Because if we don't, well, the joke is most definitely on us.
In a letter dated June 19, 2003, Christopher Silvestri, senior counsel for the network, accused Agitproperties.com of trademark infringement and ordered the company to stop selling the shirts. "Furthermore, the T-shirt 'O'Reilly Youth tee,' in addition to the infringements described herein, shows incredibly poor taste on your part, is highly offensive and clearly demonstrates your bad faith use of the Fox Copyrights and Trademarks," Silvestri wrote.The guys at Agitproperties think that's pretty funny: "Now isn't that a hoot: to be accused of 'incredibly poor taste' by a representative of the network responsible for such benchmarks of good taste such as 'Temptation Island 3,' 'Joe Millionaire' and 'Stupid Behavior Caught on Tape,'" they wrote in a press release detailing the contretemps.
"Going to the wake?"
"Oh, yeah. I want to put a stake through his heart and make sure he's really dead."
Mr. Confessore suggests that we may be heading for a replay of the McKinley era, in which the nation was governed by and for big business. I think he's actually understating his case: like Mr. DeLay, Republican leaders often talk of "revolution," and we should take them at their word.Why isn't the ongoing transformation of U.S. politics — which may well put an end to serious two-party competition — getting more attention? Most pundits, to the extent they acknowledge that anything is happening, downplay its importance. For example, last year an article in Business Week titled "The GOP's Wacky War on Dem Lobbyists" dismissed the K Street Project as "silly — and downright futile." In fact, the project is well on the way to achieving its goals.
Whatever the reason, there's a strange disconnect between most political commentary and the reality of the 2004 election. As in 2000, pundits focus mainly on images — John Kerry's furrowed brow, Mr. Bush in a flight suit — or on supposed personality traits. But it's the nexus of money and patronage that may well make the election a foregone conclusion.
BBC defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan reported last month that a senior British intelligence official had told him that the government's first dossier on Iraq's weapons programme, published last September, had been "sexed up" at Downing Street's request.In particular, the official claimed that Downing Street had asked for extra prominence to be given to the suggestion Iraq could launch a chemical or biological strike within 45 minutes of an order.
During his grilling by members of the Commons foreign affairs select committee on Wednesday, Mr Campbell insisted intelligence agencies made the 45 minute reference and said claims he had hyped it up were a "lie".
But Labour MP Brian Donohoe, who was persuaded not to vote against the war, said the attack on the BBC was a "diversion" from the main issue.
Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, the driving force behind the effort to recall Gov. Gray Davis, was prosecuted with his brother in San Jose in 1980 for allegedly faking the theft of Issa's Mercedes Benz sedan and selling it to a car dealer for $16,000, according to court records.Issa, in a phone interview with The Chronicle Tuesday, blamed his brother for the car theft, which was detailed in documents on file in Santa Clara County Superior Court and which has never been made public.
Congratulations to a sick, twisted genius!
Sitting between my teenage daughters while watching Elle take on the U.S. Congress, I was struck by the palpable affect it had on them: they left the theater inspired, empowered, and talking about the things they wanted to change, and the ways they might be able to change them. None of which would have happened as a result of a lecture from mom.Most studio executives blanch at the mere mention of making a movie with a message, often invoking the tired old show biz adage, "If you wanna send a message, call Western Union." As MGM's Chris McGurk told me, "I know that people run away from movies that have a social conscience because they're afraid they'll be received as spinach. But sometimes the stars line up and you can produce a movie that is both very entertaining and delivers a powerful message." Besides, adds Kate Kondell, "as Elle would tell you, anything is more palatable if you dress it up in pink."
Of course, there is nothing more American than ordinary people -- whether dressed in high fashion pink or in overalls -- taking up the gauntlet to solve the problems and right the wrongs of our times. Elle's battle is to pass anti-animal testing legislation, but throughout our history, whatever the cause -- from the struggle for civil rights and the drive for women's suffrage to the fight to end the war in Vietnam -- it wasn't elected officials who were in the vanguard, but outraged and engaged citizens demanding reform.
So while the spotlight is currently on our political leaders vying for control in Washington, "Legally Blonde 2" reminds us that we can find the next generation of leaders by just looking in the mirror. And if you need to apply a fresh coat of lip-gloss while you're looking, go right ahead.
Instead, the federal government took over and imposed a consent decree that mandated a federal study rather than the more extensive and immediate cleanup sought by the Anniston community and was expected to be ordered by a state judge.Before a court hearing on the consent decree, MacGillivray said she got several calls from Bill Weinischke, the lead Department of Justice attorney in the case, suggesting she shouldn't testify.
"I felt intimidated," said MacGillivray, who is now a senior attorney for Riverkeeper Inc., a Garrison, N.Y.-based environmental group. "I felt this was so inappropriate for an attorney to be calling me repeatedly, giving me various reasons as to why I would be doing something I shouldn't be. It was just an intense feeling of pressure, and it made me feel tremendously uncomfortable."
Long-term capital gains accounted for 64 percent of the income of the top 400 in 2000, nearly double the level in 1992. Wages contributed 16.7 percent to the incomes of the top 400 in 2000, down from 26.2 percent in 1992, and dividends made up 2.8 percent.A second report that the I.R.S. will make public today shows that the number of Americans with high incomes who pay no taxes anywhere in the world has reached a record. In 2000, there were 2,022 Americans with incomes of more than $200,000 who paid no income tax anywhere in the world, up from just 37 in 1977, when the report was first issued.
What a cunning man Clarence Thomas is.He knew that he could not make a powerful legal argument against racial preferences, given the fact that he got into Yale Law School and got picked for the Supreme Court thanks to his race.
So he made a powerful psychological argument against what the British call "positive discrimination," known here as affirmative action.
Justice Thomas's dissent in the 5-4 decision preserving affirmative action in university admissions has persuaded me that affirmative action is not the way to go.
The dissent is a clinical study of a man who has been driven barking mad by the beneficial treatment he has received.
It's poignant, really. It makes him crazy that people think he is where he is because of his race, but he is where he is because of his race.
Other justices rely on clerks and legal footnotes to help with their opinions; Justice Thomas relies on his id, turning an opinion on race into a therapeutic outburst.
In his dissent, he snidely dismisses the University of Michigan Law School's desire to see minority faces in the mix as "racial aesthetics," giving the effort to balance bigotry in society the moral weight of a Benetton ad. The phrase "racial aesthetics" would be more appropriately applied to W.'s nominating convention in Philadelphia, when the Republicans put on a minstrel show for the white fat cats in the audience.
Justice Thomas scorns affirmative action as "a faddish slogan of the cognoscenti." Quoting Frederick Douglass on the "Negro" 140 years ago, he urges: " `All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! . . . Your interference is doing him positive injury.' "
He is at the pinnacle, an African-American who succeeded in getting past the Anita Hill sexual harassment scandal by playing the race card, calling the hearing "a high-tech lynching," and who got a $1.5 million advance to write his African-American Horatio Alger story, "From Pin Point to Points After."
Because the drug companies lie, omit and slant, and the FDA lets them. See the NYT article this morning on hormone replacement therapy for a good example of systemic drugs with unintended consequences.
Anyway, I'll be checking in and I'll throw readers a few tidbits. But I don't expect to be back to full blogging speed until Thursday night. Later!
Here is a fun comparison of the "Death Tax" with the Birth Tax:1. While the "Death Tax" was paid from less than 2% of the of the richest estates, the "Birth Tax" will be paid by everybody who pays federal taxes, including those who are so poor that they pay only Social Security taxes.
2. While the "Death Tax" was only collected after rich folks were completely finished with the estates (They're dead, remember?), the Birth Tax will paid by the living, most of whom aren't finished with their incomes.
3. While the "Death Tax" generally reduced the amount an estate would hand to an heir (in other words, the heir's unearned income), the Birth Tax reduces the amount of earned income a hard-working American will keep.
4. While the "Death Tax" went into the general fund to pay for things like health care for the elderly and homeland security, the Birth Tax will buy absolutely nothing.
5. While the "Death Tax" was paid only once, the Birth Tax will be paid yearly and will likely increase yearly, forever.
6. While the "Death Tax" is traced back to Thomas Paine, a REAL American patriot, the Birth Tax is given to us by pretend patriots, who proclaim that their love of America does not extend to funding America with their tax money.
If the republicans in the House have their way, we employed Americans will soon be enjoying our new Birth Tax. And we'll really enjoy knowing that this tax used to be paid by the very richest of estates after their former owners were finished with them, and that republicans decided to shift that burden to the rest of us instead.
So why are so many people making excuses for Mr. Bush and his officials?Part of the answer, of course, is raw partisanship. One important difference between our current scandal and the Watergate affair is that it's almost impossible now to imagine a Republican senator asking, "What did the president know, and when did he know it?"
But even people who aren't partisan Republicans shy away from confronting the administration's dishonest case for war, because they don't want to face the implications.
After all, suppose that a politician — or a journalist — admits to himself that Mr. Bush bamboozled the nation into war. Well, launching a war on false pretenses is, to say the least, a breach of trust. So if you admit to yourself that such a thing happened, you have a moral obligation to demand accountability — and to do so in the face not only of a powerful, ruthless political machine but in the face of a country not yet ready to believe that its leaders have exploited 9/11 for political gain. It's a scary prospect.
When you have a meltdown as a parent, you lose many of those nine functions, what we call the "low road." Your emotions become out of control. You're no longer attuned to your child, it's hard to remain in an empathic stance, you can't be flexible, you lose insight into yourself. Then you start having difficulty with your own old garbage, your fears come back. You lose your intuition and, sometimes, morality. When you're integrated, it's "the high road," and you have those nine functions present.When we said this, a number of parents started to cry. One parent said, "Thank you so much, because I thought I was insane because of what I did with my child. You have now helped me understand that my brain is disconnecting inside of myself, and I'm acting in ways I don't want to act."
And the next morning she reported, "You know, just understanding the model of the brain, and how I was flipping it, helped keep me from entering the low road. I got away from my child, didn't do anything destructive, took a deep breath. And then I came back on the high road. I realized I could apologize and explain to my child what had happened to me. I had never made a reconnection like that before."
....The great news is not only that the brain makes new connections throughout the life span, but there's some evidence to show that you can grow new integrative pathways. And when you give people that scientific fact, that the brain may be able to grow integrative fibers, they realize that even if they have unresolved issues of trauma or loss, or a lack of a prefrontal integration, they can still parent successfully.
Repair occurs because the shame is dissolved. And one of the most important things for a child is that the parents can make a reconnection after a disruption. There is always room for repair and healing -- inside of ourselves, and with our children.
Why? Two reasons: I remember how ineffectual Jimmy Carter was with Congress, simply because he had so little experience. If the public decides to throw Democrats the White House and the Repugs the Congress, we'll need someone experienced at the helm.
My second reason: Teresa Heinz. I think she's cool, even better than Hillary. She's got a long history of involvement in some pretty impressive causes (I don't think I've ever even seen a picture of Dean's wife.)
I do love Howard Dean, though. Even if he loses, he's already done a great job driving the agenda.
When I first saw it, I asked myself the obvious question: Of all the wonderful, awesome things in the world (a world which, if you're a believer, God has made), why is it that only wacko shit like this grabs the attention of these people?
The left as well as the right can learn to communicate so that "the boys in Lubbock can understand it". Unless it connects with a mass constituency, progressive politics is like the proverbial trees falling in a forest that no one hears. Professors and critics can and should have rarefied taste. Political activists must learn to speak the language of the people, not solely the "Latin" of the political elite.As Sid Blumenthal, former aide to President Clinton, observes, "Most people in Washington, including those on the left, love the idea of America, which is the ideals, the symbols, the monuments, and the history books, but they don't like actual Americans very much. Americans are those gross people who go to shopping malls and watch television."
This is another indulgence that the left cannot afford. Bob Dylan's message of four decades ago still works: "You better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone, for the times they are a changing."
Let's swim.
Will Linux suffer irreparable harm? Once again, there are a range of opinions on this subject. Although no one is recommending outright abandonment of Linux, some are recommending a cautious approach. Gartner recommends that its clients “minimize Linux in complex, mission-critical systems until the merits of SCO’s claims or resulting judgments become clear.” Robert Francis Group states that “IT executives should not scrap Linux deployment strategies out of hand…SCO’s attacks on enterprise users hinge on successfully proving its case against IBM, and the best estimates currently give it at least two years before the case will be finally decided. In the meantime, IT executives should evaluate alternatives such as BSD as an escape route….”Following up on its belief that IBM will make the SCO annoyance go away, Robert Francis Group firmly states that “enterprises should not stop their Linux rollouts.” In addition to its IBM buyout belief, it also argues for the continued use of Linux because “the risk that tiny SCO can muster the resources to effectively litigate against even one of two of the 1,500 companies it has threatened is low.”
The problem isn’t that Democrats are on the wrong side of the issues. They are afraid to make an issue of being on the right side - not to mention directly in the middle of mainstream America.Via Buzzflash.
For example, three out of four Americans believe the latest round of tax cuts will not significantly reduce their taxes and fewer than 30 percent think the cuts are the best way to stimulate the economy. A majority of Americans are intensely concerned about the skyrocketing unemployment rate and out-of-control budget deficits. But Democrats gelatinate when it comes to challenging a president who consistently provides more and more tax cuts for the wealthy. Some of them shoot out a few stinging words, but, inevitably, hitch themselves to that piece of Republican taxcut seaweed and float.On foreign policy, numbers also favor the Democrats. The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll indicates that 57 percent of Americans are opposed to investing the proposed years and billions of dollars to rebuild Iraq; however, Democrats twitter into semiliquidity when it comes to providing forceful opposition to the Iraqi quagmire - “Gosh, it may take a while, but we should fight the war on terrorism”.
And even though Weapons of Mass Destruction, Saddam Hussein, and Osama bin Laden have not been found, Democrats fear being called unpatriotic and unAmerican for speaking out about the wrongheaded and arrogant way pre-emptive invasion has been carried out without the support of the American public and the world.
And on it goes. The majority of the American people agree with the Democrats on protecting the environment, safeguarding Social Security, improving the quality of education, and providing greater access to affordable health care. They agree that corporate criminals must be prosecuted and that corporations must start ponying up their share of taxes instead of being given “corporate welfare”.
All of this makes the inability by Democrats to provide alternatives and opposition to the Bush administration even more infuriating. And shameful.
Internal Westar documents show a concerted effort to send campaign funds to certain key members of Congress who would help the company "get a seat at the table." In those documents, made public during an unrelated investigation, Westar executives refer to Shelby, R-Ala., as "our anchor" on energy-related issues in the Senate.In a May 20, 2002, memo, the company's vice president wrote that Shelby "made a substantial request of us" to support the congressional campaign of Shelby's former chief of staff, Tom Young. Young ran unsuccessfully last year for the Republican nomination for Alabama's 1st District congressional seat.
Campaign disclosure reports show that 11 days later, several Westar employees, including the company's chief executive and vice president, donated to Young. In all, Young received $15,000 in contributions from Westar executives and lobbyists, according to an analysis compiled by various public interest groups.
Westar was asking Congress to exempt it from certain regulatory oversight, a provision that was added in the House version of the bill but eventually removed.
Melanie Sloan, executive director of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, said Shelby may have violated the rules governing the professional conduct of lawyers, including a prohibition against implying "an ability to influence a government agency or official." The disciplinary commission in Alabama will review the complaint.
Because of it, I am thinking that it could be time for me to begin thinking about leaving this news business. It is not mine anymore. Let me tell you why.Friday, the newspapers and television reported the following matter with no anger or effort to do anything other than serve as stenographers for the government:
On March 1, give or take a day, in Columbus, Ohio, the FBI arrested an American citizen they say is Iyman Faris. There wasn't a word uttered. He vanished. No lawyer was notified. He made no phone calls and wrote no postcards or letters.
He was a United States citizen who disappeared without a trace into a secret metal world.
... This government's kidnapping of Faris/Rauf violated the laws handed down by Madison, Jefferson, Marshall. A small religious zealot, John Ashcroft, takes their great laws and bravery and using our new Patriot Act, turns it into Fascism.
He could do this openly because news reporters go about the government like gardeners, bent over, smiling and nodding when one of the owners shows up. You only have to look at a White House news conference to see how they aggressively pursue your right to know.
The newspeople stand when the president comes into the room. They really do. They don't sit until he tells them to. You tell them a lie and they say, "Sir."
And now you have a citizen kidnapped by agents and there is no anger. The day's news is about a children's book, and a has-been heavyweight, Mike Tyson, under arrest in a Brooklyn precinct at the foot of the bridge. Newspeople like to be called "journalists" and write of "the need to protect sources." They don't have any. Here's a guy held for three months and nobody even got a phone call.
The newest attribution in today's news reporting is, "senior law enforcement official." That is news report for a cop. Newspeople can speak French all over the place but I know of only two reporters in New York who can speak Arabic, and one of them is in the Middle East now and is of no help. That means you can't even quote somebody and attribute it to a "senior Arab."
There is not even the beginnings of anger about an American kidnapped by his government, over freedom being taken from us all, and bet me you won't see it back. The newspeople are comfortable with being known as the "media." That is a dangerous word; all evil rises around those afflicted with it.
Top Bush advisers do not believe one election alone creates a political realignment, but they know that 2004 is the key date in their long-term plan for expanding the party.One part of the strategy calls for continued care and feeding of the party's tripartite base of economic, national-security and social conservatives, with a policy agenda that touts U.S. preeminence in the world, pours more resources into the war on terrorism, calls for additional tax cuts and supports party orthodoxy with its positions on abortion, guns and judgeships.
A secure conservative base frees Bush and his advisers to pursue the other, more ambitious, element of their strategy, which is to use domestic and foreign policy initiatives, governmental appointments and symbolic actions to increase support among swing voters. Republican strategists believe they must move aggressively with Bush in office to reach out to nontraditional Republicans to offset demographic trends that would otherwise lessen the party's chances of sustaining power.
Bush's desire for a party-wide victory, according to strategists familiar with White House planning, means that the president's travel schedule, particularly in the final weeks of the campaign, will be determined by where he can do the most good for Republicans in competitive House, Senate and gubernatorial races as well as for himself. That would be a rerun of 2002, when Bush successfully used his political capital to rally GOP voters.
"There is total coordination," one party official said. "The message is coordinated, data is coordinated, the administration is coordinated. . . . The harmony between the political operation at the White House and the RNC is beyond what I've seen before."
"The reason these funding rules were put into place was to protect the government insurance program, so the premiums wouldn't be too high and so the taxpayer wouldn't have to bail this out," said Richard A. Ippolito, a former chief economist of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the agency that insures pensions.Keep those corporate welfare checks a-comin'.....
Bush administration officials say that U.S. intelligence agencies and the Pentagon expected that American troops in Iraq would stumble across all kinds of lethal and “dual use” equipment made by Western companies as they comb through the wreckage of Saddam Hussein’s military-industrial complex. Among the more intriguing items that have turned up is an assortment of French military equipment and German-made chemical-weapon protective gear; the French and Germans emphatically deny violating any United Nations weapons embargoes. One awkward find was a cache of missiles that were made in the United States.In other words, Reagan-Bush sold them to Hussein. Gee, you have to wonder why this rated such a small mention.Though details of the discovery are classified, sources in Washington say that military and intelligence agencies launched an urgent investigation to find out how the weapons got to Iraq and whether American firms might have violated U.N. embargoes and U.S. laws. Recently the inquiry was abandoned when convincing evidence turned up that the missiles had been exported legally from the United States to Iraq in the years before the first gulf war, when American policymakers cozied up to Saddam as a counterbalance to Iranian ayatollahs.
The American Corporate Media, so well-trained, sat quietly. As they almost always do. A rare exception:
Clark's assertion corroborates a little-noted CBS Evening News story that aired on September 4, 2002. As correspondent David Martin reported: "Barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, the secretary of defense was telling his aides to start thinking about striking Iraq, even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks." According to CBS, a Pentagon aide's notes from that day quote Rumsfeld asking for the "best info fast" to "judge whether good enough to hit SH at the same time, not only UBL." (The initials SH and UBL stand for Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.) The notes then quote Rumsfeld as demanding, ominously, that the administration's response "go massive...sweep it all up, things related and not."
We're so used in this country, in the post-Vietnam era, to seeing the media in an adversarial role when it comes to the government and military action. When a network like Fox drops some of that adversarial role and takes the government often -- although not always -- at its word, it seems to be toadying to the government.In fact, it is more accurate to criticize other networks for their constant cynicism than it is to criticize Fox for a generally more accepting attitude. I think there is a little less cynicism at Fox.
This doctor says there's no doubt TV has an effect on children:
Although Nieman says the form will take just a few minutes to fill out, if pediatricians are in a rush he urges them to ask just three questions:Do you watch TV with your children?
Does your child have a TV set in his or her room?
Do you eat dinner in front of the TV set?
The message about the dangers of media has been slow to get out, said Nieman.
"I talk to (patients) about the TV in the kids' bedroom and the mom looks at me as if I'm from Mars."
There are many examples of good TV shows, said Nieman, who agrees the scientific connection between media and childhood behaviour and health is inconsistent. In some cases, there is plenty of proof, he said. For example, two things are known to reduce the chance a child will be obese -- breast feeding and less time watching TV.
Nieman also points to a large-scale study published in Science Magazine in 2002, where researchers found teenagers who watched more than an hour of TV per day were more likely to be violent as adults. In particular, those between 14 and 16 years of age who watched more than three hours a day were about five times more likely to be violent adults compared with those who watched less than an hour.
The scientists had followed 707 families in upstate New York since 1975 and eliminated factors such as family income and education and history of violence.
Ackerman and Judis, however, marshal very persuasive circumstantial evidence that Dick Cheney -- and almost certainly other high-level officials -- knew the Niger uranium sale story was bogus before it was placed in the president's State of the Union speech. The argument they make is a cumulative one. So you'll really need to read the piece. But the key piece of information comes from the former US ambassador to Niger who visited the country and came back with clear and multiple evidence that the whole story was bogus.....Finally, Republicans are saying to Democrats, threatening them really, with the argument that going up against the president on the question of his administration's deceptions on the WMD issue is a political loser. Walking into a buzzsaw and so forth. I'm really not sure this is true. I think this may end up being a more debilitating issue than they imagine. But certainly it could be handled poorly by Democrats. And perhaps it's not good politics. But frankly I'm not sure that matters. As Ackerman and Judis say at the end of their article, some issues are well worth pressing quite apart from the politics. It's important simply because it's wrong. And this sort of indifference to the truth is toxic in a democracy. (I can already hear the Republicans snarking about definitions of sex and so forth. But, really, their inability or unwillingness to recognize the distinction between frivolous issues and ones that are central to a democracy indicts them from their own corrupt mouths.)
US banks warn that if official rates fall below 1 per cent, they will start to have trouble covering costs on cash accounts and may be forced to charge interest instead of paying it."Rates are now so low some people are wondering if it makes more sense to store their money under the mattress," said Rory Robertson, a New York economist for Macquarie Bank.
Well, who's laughing now?
Pabst Blue Ribbon -- P.B.R., as fans call it -- is currently enjoying a highly unlikely comeback. In 2002, sales of the beer, which had been sinking steadily since the 1970's, actually rose 5.3 percent. From the start of 2003 through April 20, supermarket beer sales are up another 9.4 percent. It is endorsed in ''The Hipster Handbook,'' a paperback dissection of cool, and is popping up in trendy bars from the Mission District to the Lower East Side. Sales in Chicago are up 134 percent. But the growth started and is most pronounced in Portland -- a city best known in the cosmology of beer as a haven for fancy microbrews -- where most agree that bike messengers have been in the P.B.R. vanguard. The lowbrow brew has risen to the No. 5-ranked beer in town and is still the fastest-growing of the top-50 domestic beer brands. In local supermarket sales it trails only Coors Light, Budweiser, Bud Light and Corona.
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