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Did you catch that Walls Street Journal piece about Costco upsetting investment analysts because it's too good to its workers? How dare the giant wholesaler provide affordable health care coverage and other generous benefits to its employees?Mort Crim used to be a Philadelphia anchorman years ago. Happy to see he's still kicking - and that his heart's still in the right place.
Doesn't Costco's management understand every dime that goes to a worker is one less dime for investors? Paying a worker's hospital care might mean smaller yachts or slower private jets for the well-heeled.
What is Costco thinking? I mean Wal-Mart would never be so mean to its investors, which is why Wal-Mart workers don't have affordable health care and why that retailer faces so many lawsuits from workers who claim Wal-Mart routinely overworks and underpays them.
One retail analyst with Deutsche Bank Securities says Costco has it all wrong, that the first loyalty of public companies is to shareholders, not workers.
But Costco's CEO, Jim Sinegal, believes if you treat workers and customers right, in the long run investors will do OK.
Well, greed does have its rewards. Last time I looked, Costco shares were trading at about 20 times projected earnings, Wal-Mart's about 24 times.
Today's thought: It's a sad commentary on Wall Street when a corporation is criticized for treating its workers too well. Maybe it's not compassionate conservatives this country needs, but compassionate capitalists.
Rising Soviet defense spending aimed at competing with the United States may have hastened the economic decline in the Soviet Union, helped convince the Russian generals that they couldn't compete with U.S. military technology, and strengthened Gorbachev's hand as he pushed for glasnost. But this end-game challenge of Reagan's would have been ineffective had 40 years of patient Western containment and engagement not helped undermine the legitimacy of the Communist regime in the eyes of its subjects. It was popular discontent with economic, social, and political progress, and people's recognition of an appealing alternative system, that finished off the repressive regimes of Eastern Europe, and eventually the whole Soviet Union. No Western threat of force or military occupation forced their collapse. Indeed, subsequent examination by Germany's Bundeswehr has shown that the East German military remained a disciplined conscript organization that could have effectively responded to Western intervention. But these governments were unable to resist focused, strongly-articulated popular will.
MR. PRESTOWITZ: The secretary of the Treasury is walking a tightrope --
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Because of the election?
MR. PRESTOWITZ: Not because of the election, because of the nature of the global economy. Remember that the U.S. -- because we consume more than we produce we need to borrow money from the rest of the world. A strong dollar allows you to borrow money more easily than a weak dollar. So the --
Every morning when John Snow gets up, he looks himself in the mirror, and he says, Oh my gosh, I've got to find $2 billion net today. And he's got to get that primarily from the international community, from the Japanese, from the Chinese. So to get that, he likes to have a strong dollar. On the other hand, U.S. manufacturers are getting killed and losing jobs and moving plants to China and Southeast Asia because the dollar is too strong --
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Right.
MR. PRESTOWITZ: -- to be competitive with the exports of the other countries. So he's under pressure to try to have a weaker dollar. So he talks to the Chinese about adjusting their exchange rate, he talks to the Japanese and says, Please, please, you know, don't intervene so much. But he's carrying water on both shoulders.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Well, you seem to be quite understanding the dilemma that the secretary of the Treasury is. And you can explain it. You're almost -- you could almost be -- be --
MR. PRESTOWITZ: (Laughs.)
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: -- be characterized as an apologist for the secretary of the Treasury.
MR. PRESTOWITZ: I could -- I could say --
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Why are you going over to carry, if you do so well --
MR. PRESTOWITZ: Precisely. Precisely. Because the reason he has this dilemma, because the reason I can explain John Snow's dilemma is because they made a mistake in the very beginning. The tax cuts and the huge budget deficits are putting us in a situation that gives John Snow this dilemma. What the United States needs is what I think Senator Kerry is proposing, which is we need to achieve some closer range of balance in the federal budget deficit --
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: You mean he wants to cut some taxes.
MR. PRESTOWITZ: He wants to cut some taxes --
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: He wants to reduce some. He wants to restore some.
MR. PRESTOWITZ: He wants to -- he wants to reduce some of the tax cuts.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: He wants to restore some.
MR. PRESTOWITZ: He wants to bring the budget back into something approaching balance.
At the same time, Kerry's talking about some very important things. He's talking about not giving tax credits for -- to stimulate U.S. investment abroad. He's talking about taking some cognizance of the fact that other countries are offering lots of financial incentives to move U.S. plants abroad. For example, when a U.S. company is deciding to invest in a new factory, and it has a choice of location -- the U.S. or China, let's say -- and it may be the case that in China or in Singapore or other places in the world that there are lucrative tax abatements, tax holidays, other kinds of financial incentives.
The anchors and writers for the television network are clearly biased against the US invasion, and they make few bones about this fact. But then, they ask, aren't all the US networks supportive of the US? What's the difference? Isn't "objectivity" a crock?
But that doesn't mean there are no standards. When asked what is the purpose of Al Jazeera, an executive producers says it's showing the truth. Turth is of course biased, but there is at least one clear injunction in that for journalists.
Don't withhold information you know happened.
Al Jazeera passed that test. The US networks failed.
It was Al Jazeera that showed the results of US bombing-- the dead and crippled-- and the deaths of Americans themselves once they invaded. And they showed US soldiers threatening families as they went door to door.
They also showed the other side, the US military side, where they were willing to broadcast statements by the US government as to why everything was happening. As one top US official admits in the documentary, Al Jazeera was willing to broadcase almost any statement they gave them.
Yet Al Jazeera was accused of being deceptive.
Because it didn't censor images unflattering to the US.
Images that the US media, as if they were state-controlled media, dutifully refused to run as part of the war effort.
Who served truth?
An American news agency says it has seen official papers suggesting that prisoner abuse in Iraq took place at four sites other than Abu Ghraib.
Evidence of abuse has emerged from a marine camp at Nasiriya and army camps at Baghdad International Airport, Qaim and Samarra, the Associated Press says.
Scholars and political strategists say the ferocious Bush assault on Kerry this spring has been extraordinary, both for the volume of attacks and for the liberties the president and his campaign have taken with the facts. Though stretching the truth is hardly new in a political campaign, they say the volume of negative charges is unprecedented -- both in speeches and in advertising.
Daniel Okrent's rhetorical stance is always, "We journalists." His job, as he seems to take it, is to offer the (perversely uncomprehending) masses a glimpse into the mysteries of the trade. Okrent writes as if the "public" part of public editor were a suggestion of taint: as if his chief concern was to make sure that nobody in the fraternity could mistake him for one of those hairy, gap-toothed outsiders.
Today, Okrent unveils the "complex special project" his absence-of-a-column column hinted at last week: a report (the inanely, and inconsequentially, titled "Weapons of Mass Destruction? Or Mass Distraction?") on what pretty much everyone whose paycheck isn't signed by Arthur Sulzberger thinks is the Times' worst systematic fuckup ever, its pre-war WMD reporting. [You'll look in vain, by the way, for the "public editor" to assess the nature of the Times' public authority, and the damage sustained to that authority by the paper's massive failure of responsibility in the runup to war. If I were a public editor, that's probably where I'd start my approach to this issue.
Okrent, of course, has already dismissed the idea that the Times has any special authority in American life, and thus any unusual responsibility to its readers or to the record.] And though there is, in fact, real substance behind today's column, Okrent obstinately refuses to write to it. Reviewing the story of a systematic failure—of a paper whose journalistic process was biased toward promoting a war, and suppressing arguments against it—Okrent cannot or will not reckon systematically with it. Instead he produces a disjunct sequence of preening, clubby little homilies, like this one on "hit-and-run journalism" (i.e., the failure to provide follow-up to stories with extraordinary claims):
Stories, like plants, die if they are not tended. So do the reputations of newspapers.
Really, that's sweet. It may have given Dan a warm feeling writing that: but if there are motives, and patterns, in the failure to follow up sensational WMD stories, you won't hear it here. Okrent's basic position, like that of Wednesday's Editor's Note, is that the Times failed to live up to its own best standards: sermonettes about those standards seem the appropriate response. Why the Times' lapse from its best self should have happened in this instance, and should have worked so rigorously in a single direction, remains a bit of a mystery—but not an urgent one, by any means. Something in the water, maybe.
So where in Okrent's piece is the beef? He in fact alleges what looks like serious internal misconduct tending towards open reportorial and editorial bias—though without being so impolite as to call attention to it as misconduct.
Daniel Okrent's rhetorical stance is always, "We journalists." His job, as he seems to take it, is to offer the (perversely uncomprehending) masses a glimpse into the mysteries of the trade. Okrent writes as if the "public" part of public editor were a suggestion of taint: as if his chief concern was to make sure that nobody in the fraternity could mistake him for one of those hairy, gap-toothed outsiders.
Today, Okrent unveils the "complex special project" his absence-of-a-column column hinted at last week: a report (the inanely, and inconsequentially, titled "Weapons of Mass Destruction? Or Mass Distraction?") on what pretty much everyone whose paycheck isn't signed by Arthur Sulzberger thinks is the Times' worst systematic fuckup ever, its pre-war WMD reporting. [You'll look in vain, by the way, for the "public editor" to assess the nature of the Times' public authority, and the damage sustained to that authority by the paper's massive failure of responsibility in the runup to war. If I were a public editor, that's probably where I'd start my approach to this issue.
Okrent, of course, has already dismissed the idea that the Times has any special authority in American life, and thus any unusual responsibility to its readers or to the record.] And though there is, in fact, real substance behind today's column, Okrent obstinately refuses to write to it. Reviewing the story of a systematic failure—of a paper whose journalistic process was biased toward promoting a war, and suppressing arguments against it—Okrent cannot or will not reckon systematically with it. Instead he produces a disjunct sequence of preening, clubby little homilies, like this one on "hit-and-run journalism" (i.e., the failure to provide follow-up to stories with extraordinary claims):
Stories, like plants, die if they are not tended. So do the reputations of newspapers.
Really, that's sweet. It may have given Dan a warm feeling writing that: but if there are motives, and patterns, in the failure to follow up sensational WMD stories, you won't hear it here. Okrent's basic position, like that of Wednesday's Editor's Note, is that the Times failed to live up to its own best standards: sermonettes about those standards seem the appropriate response. Why the Times' lapse from its best self should have happened in this instance, and should have worked so rigorously in a single direction, remains a bit of a mystery—but not an urgent one, by any means. Something in the water, maybe.
So where in Okrent's piece is the beef? He in fact alleges what looks like serious internal misconduct tending towards open reportorial and editorial bias—though without being so impolite as to call attention to it as misconduct.
But by reminding us of how united we once were, Bush only underscored how divided we have become. And that is why a president who once soared in the polls now finds himself struggling for reelection -- less by touting his own achievements than by trashing his opponent. John Kerry has spent nearly 20 years in the Senate, so there are thousands of votes to go after, a lot of opportunities to say Kerry has flip-flopped, changed his views, done what's necessary to win election.
All this might have worked in normal circumstances, and maybe it will this time. But at the moment, Bush is losing support among independent voters and has not nailed down moderate or even moderately conservative Republicans. Bush has signaled his own weakness by buying time on the Golf Channel, more a home to Republicans than to swing voters (except, perhaps, where the game itself is concerned).
By failing to embrace his opportunity to be a president of national unity, Bush has endangered the great project of his presidency: remaking Iraq. And he has offered Kerry the chance to be as tough as Howard Dean was -- but in the name of uniting Americans at a moment when solidarity is desperately needed.
This is why Kerry has reason to hope that his identity as a Vietnam veteran can trump his history as a Massachusetts liberal. And it's why President Bush, lacking the political insurance he should have sought, is right to be running scared.
WASHINGTON - A single New Mexico family and a dozen big oil companies, including one once headed by Commerce Secretary Don Evans, now control one-quarter of all federal lands leased for oil and gas development in the continental United States despite a law intended to prevent such concentration, federal records show.
Since 1997, mainly as a result of mergers and acquisitions, six companies have exceeded the legal limit of 246,080 acres in lease holdings on public lands in states other than Alaska. But the Bureau of Land Management (news - web sites), in charge of enforcing the 1920 law, has chosen to extend compliance deadlines for years.
In fact, an Associated Press computer analysis found the Interior Department agency permitted companies it knew were in violation of the law in Wyoming to continue to acquire thousands of acres of new oil and gas leases in that state. The bureau has given the companies additional years to comply.
"They should not be purchasing leases," said Tom Lonnie, the bureau's assistant director for minerals, realty and resource protection. Before acquiring a lease, a company must certify that its holdings do not exceed the legal limit.
The government can cancel leases held by companies that exceed the cap. Agency officials acknowledge they have never done that nor denied a company's request for more time to comply.
Judith Miller undoubtedly believes she is being unfairly scapegoated, but she is not. Blair and Bragg were fired for offenses that didn't lead to any real consequences other than a lot of journalistic navel gazing. Yet Miller, more than anyone, was a willing tool for certain political friends and sources and used her prestige and position on the paper of record to further their agenda to take this country into a war. That is inexcusable. However, The New York Times has decided to excuse her and others like Patrick Tyler and Jill Abrahamson and is allowing them to keep their jobs.
Fine. If the paper wishes to hang its credibility on journalists like this then it obviously no longer cares about it. Therefore, the New York Times is collectively guilty and should be held responsible for the actions of these failed journalists.
The paper of record has officially chosen to became just another daily rag. RIP Gray Lady.
Vice President Dick Cheney was a guest on NBC's Meet the Press last September when host Tim Russert brought up Halliburton. Citing the company's role in rebuilding Iraq as well as Cheney's prior service as Halliburton's CEO, Russert asked, "Were you involved in any way in the awarding of those contracts?" Cheney's reply: "Of course not, Tim ... And as Vice President, I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts led by the [Army] Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the Federal Government."
Cheney's relationship with Halliburton has been nothing but trouble since he left the company in 2000. Both he and the company say they have no ongoing connections. But TIME has obtained an internal Pentagon e-mail sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official—whose name was blacked out by the Pentagon—that raises questions about Cheney's arm's-length policy toward his old employer. Dated March 5, 2003, the e-mail says "action" on a multibillion-dollar Halliburton contract was "coordinated" with Cheney's office. The e-mail says Douglas Feith, a high-ranking Pentagon hawk, got the "authority to execute RIO," or Restore Iraqi Oil, from his boss, who is Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. RIO is one of several large contracts the U.S. awarded to Halliburton last year.
The e-mail says Feith approved arrangements for the contract "contingent on informing WH [White House] tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w VP's [Vice President's] office." Three days later, the Army Corps of Engineers gave Halliburton the contract, without seeking other bids. TIME located the e-mail among documents provided by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group.
Cheney spokesman Kevin Kellems says the Vice President "has played no role whatsoever in government-contract decisions involving Halliburton" since 2000. A Pentagon spokesman says the e-mail means merely that "in anticipation of controversy over the award of a sole-source contract to Halliburton, we wanted to give the Vice President's staff a heads-up."
On the face of it, Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle of Iowa claims to have done the president one year better -- halving the ugly deficit in four years.
Don't believe it. The House budget is a document that makes ordinary Washington budgetary "smoke and mirrors" look good.
It was brought to the floor on May 19 under the sort of strong-arm procedures that Speaker Dennis Hastert and Majority Leader Tom DeLay use when they know they've got a turkey on their hands. Last year, with the Medicare drug benefits bill (whose true cost we now know was deliberately underestimated and concealed by the administration), their tactic was delay. The House was kept in session all night; the actual roll call was stretched to almost three hours -- not the normal 15 minutes. Dawn was breaking over the Capitol when the necessary votes were finally squeezed.
On this bill, they put on the rush job. The budget was filed at 6:20 a.m. At 7:15 a.m., the Rules Committee met to clear it for debate. A couple of hours later, the House met for an abbreviated session and adjourned, and when it met again to take up the budget at 11 a.m., it was "deemed" to have satisfied the requirement that all legislation lay over one day so members can become familiar with it.
Familiarity in this case could only breed contempt. The Budget Act requires each year's budget resolution to project the five-year costs of the programs it finances and the five-year revenues available to pay for them. This budget uses real numbers only for the first year, and then plugs in arbitrary figures for the next four years -- figures that conveniently show the deficit shrinking. Even the expiring Bush tax cuts the Republicans want to make permanent are included only at their relatively modest first-year cost.
***
Despite the efforts of Spratt, Stenholm and others, the budget passed 216 to 213 on an almost straight party-line vote. Only nine brave Republicans -- almost all of them from the party's conservative wing -- joined with all the voting Democrats in opposition. Virtually all of the self-styled moderate Republicans went along the charade, which, among other things, would allow House members to approve a $690 billion increase in the ceiling on the national debt without the embarrassment of having to vote on it as a separate matter.
Dozens of wealthy beach towns and coastal communities turned to the federal agency after Isabel and received tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded disaster relief, records obtained by The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act show.This is what happens with most disaster relief programs. By funding rebuilding in the same high-risk areas, you guarantee a cycle of periodic destruction.
The bulk of the money was used to clear debris and pay for emergency workers' overtime. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, however, were used to repair flagpoles, signs, bike paths and ball fields. And, in what some environmental groups and regulators say is a troubling development, the federal agency is paying for an estimated $15 million worth of sand.
Emerald Isle "was a declared area and they were an eligible applicant and they were funded," said Paul Wilson, a disaster recovery specialist in FEMA's Atlanta office. Agency officials did not respond to requests for additional comment.
Why is the nation's disaster relief agency paying for sand? Under FEMA's policies, beaches such as those in Emerald Isle are viewed as part of the public infrastructure, similar to a water plant or an electric utility. As long as the beaches are maintained and there is a federally declared disaster -- such as a hurricane -- a community can apply for funds to replace any washed-away sand.
The rationale is that the FEMA-funded beaches and sand dunes protect property and reduce storm damage. But some environmentalists say that FEMA, by paying for sand, is encouraging risky development in the very places that people should be avoiding, and exposing the federal treasury to an endless cycle of bailouts in the process.
The contract between a reporter and an unnamed source - the offer of information in return for anonymity - is properly a binding one. But I believe that a source who turns out to have lied has breached that contract, and can fairly be exposed. The victims of the lie are the paper's readers, and the contract with them supersedes all others. (See Chalabi, Ahmad, et al.) Beyond that, when the cultivation of a source leads to what amounts to a free pass for the source, truth takes the fall. A reporter who protects a source not just from exposure but from unfriendly reporting by colleagues is severely compromised. Reporters must be willing to help reveal a source's misdeeds; information does not earn immunity. To a degree, Chalabi's fall from grace was handled by The Times as if flipping a switch; proper coverage would have been more like a thermostat, constantly taking readings and then adjusting to the surrounding reality. (While I'm on the subject: Readers were never told that Chalabi's niece was hired in January 2003 to work in The Times's Kuwait bureau. She remained there until May of that year.)
***
Readers have asked why The Times waited so long to address the issues raised in Wednesday's statement from the editors. I suspect that Keller and his key associates may have been reluctant to open new wounds when scabs were still raw on old ones, but I think their reticence made matters worse. It allowed critics to form a powerful chorus; it subjected staff members under criticism (including Miller) to unsubstantiated rumor and specious charges; it kept some of the staff off balance and distracted.
The editors' note to readers will have served its apparent function only if it launches a new round of examination and investigation. I don't mean further acts of contrition or garment-rending, but a series of aggressively reported stories detailing the misinformation, disinformation and suspect analysis that led virtually the entire world to believe Hussein had W.M.D. at his disposal.
WOODRUFF: In Florida, county election boards are reviewing a list of state felons to determine if they will be properly denied the right to vote in November. Well, today, CNN sued the state for a copy of the list claiming the information should be made public, four years after Florida was at the center of a disputed presidential election. CNN and the public were invited to view the documents and state election headquarters in Tallahassee, but were prevented from making copies or from even taking notes. Civil rights advocates charge that in 2000, thousands of eligible voters were prevented from casting ballots because they were improperly listed as felons.Those are public records, and they can't stop you from copying them. I don't know what the laws are in Florida, but generally speaking, a government is not allowed to prevent you from making copies of public records, nor are they allowed to make the cost of obtaining copies prohibitive.
It’s almost as if the mainstream media abruptly awoke from a coma and realized their doctors had been slipping them sedatives and going through their wallets. Even useless tools like Chris Mathews seem to have light bulbs dimly flickering over their heads. Suddenly, the outrages the left side of the blogosphere has been screaming about for months – the crimes, the corruption, and, above all, the sheer incompetence of the “war effort” – are being splashed all over the tube. For the first time since I started Whiskey Bar, I've actually felt redundant. So for once I was content to sit back and take it all in, savoring the details of each new poll, chortling over each pathetic media mea culpa (culminating in the New Pravda’s hilariously understated “editor’s note”) and gleefully watching the pus ooze from each new infarction in the tissue of lies that is the Bush administration.Go. Feast.
Interrogation experts from the American detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, were sent to Iraq last fall and played a major role in training American military intelligence teams at Abu Ghraib prison there, senior military officials said Friday.
The teams from Guantánamo Bay, which had operated there under directives allowing broad latitude in questioning "enemy combatants," played a central role at Abu Ghraib through December, the officials said, a time when the worst abuses of prisoners were taking place. Prisoners captured in Iraq, unlike those sent from Afghanistan to Guantánamo, were to be protected by the Geneva Conventions.
The teams were sent to Iraq for 90-day tours at the urging of Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, then the head of detention operations at Guantánamo. General Miller was sent to Iraq last summer to recommend improvements in the intelligence gathering and detention operations there, a defense official said.
The involvement of the Guantánamo teams has not previously been disclosed, and military officials said it would be addressed in a major report on suspected abuses by military intelligence specialists that is being completed by Maj. Gen. George W. Fay.
***
But one member of the 377th Company said the fact that prisoners in Afghanistan had been labeled as "enemy combatants" not subject to the Geneva Conventions had contributed to an unhealthy attitude in the detention center.
"We were pretty much told that they were nobodies, that they were just enemy combatants," he said. "I think that giving them the distinction of soldier would have changed our attitudes toward them. A lot of it was based on racism, really. We called them hajis, and that psychology was really important."
WASHINGTON - Pat Tillman, the former Arizona Cardinals football player who died in April while a U.S. soldier fighting in Afghanistan, likely was killed by friendly fire, an Army investigation has concluded.
Colombo Bay sounds like it might be a novel by Joseph Conrad. It is instead a story by Richard Pollak about his voyage from Hong Kong to New York on a container ship named the Colombo Bay, which indeed stopped at the capital of Sri Lanka. The Colombo Bay also reveals just how badly the real war on terror has been compromised by the Iraq war.
***
The president talks about homeland security but, under the malign influence of the vice president and the ''neo-con'' intellectuals, he has made the war in Iraq a substitute for the real war on terrorism. Almost three years after the World Trade Center attack, O'Hare Airport does not have the equipment necessary to inspect checked luggage because the Transportation Safety Administration does not have the money to pay for the equipment.
But $25 billion more is going to his criminal war. The public still gives the president high marks on his success in the war on terror, mostly because they are judging by the war in Afghanistan and the early success in Iraq. However, our airports and our seaports are still not safe. How many more years will it take?
And how many years to straighten out the messes at the FBI and the CIA? A recent estimate was six years. When will that start?
Thus, despite all the talk about security during the years since the bombing of the World Trade Center, very little has been done to improve the security of our republic, other than talk. The majority of Americans expect another attack. They are wise to do so.
With less than six months to go before the presidential election, thousands of Florida voters who may have been improperly removed from the voter rolls in 2000 have yet to have their eligibility restored.
Records obtained by The Herald show that just 33 of 67 counties have responded to a request by state election officials to check whether or not nearly 20,000 voters should be reinstated as required under a legal settlement reached between the state, the NAACP and other groups nearly two years ago.
Some of the counties that have failed to respond to the state include many of Florida's largest, including Broward, Miami-Dade, Orange and Palm Beach.
Those counties that have responded told the state that they have restored 679 voters to the rolls so far -- more than enough to have tipped the balance of the 2000 election had they voted for Al Gore. President Bush won Florida and the presidency by 537 votes.
The fact that many counties have yet to add voters back to the rolls comes at the same time that election supervisors across Florida are being asked to look at purging more than 47,000 voters that the state has identified as possible felons who are ineligible to vote under state law.
The one military center Bush avoids is Dover Air Force in Dover, Del., where they bring in the dead bodies from Iraq.
Bush pretends they do not exist. He has the base sealed from cameras and reporters.
He also pretends that the prison torture scandal does not exist. But in attempting to make the nation into a convention of Southern suckers, he revealed exactly how slow-thinking he is. For in omitting the prison torture scandals, he only made things wide open for a stool pigeon, an informer, a rat, to detonate the murder investigations and leave Bush without a shred of credibility. If he had any heart and honor, the least he could have done was mention that he was surprised and sickened and the thing was so much worse than the original snarls - "the actions of a few soldiers."
If the White House thinks that talk of a rat, a witness turning, is only for police stations, they might look first at the history of their city. At 1:30 in the afternoon of March 20, 1973, Judge John Sirica opened his office door to give a message to his secretary, Mrs. Alease Holley. He saw one of his law clerks, Richard Azzaro, talking to James McCord. He was a defendant in the Watergate break-in case and was about to be sentenced by Sirica.
McCord had an envelope that he wanted to give to Sirica. The judge retreated into his office. He was an old scuffler, out of the back rooms of neighborhood stores and small fight clubs. You couldn't get him to touch that envelope with a gun at his back. The White House could have had that envelope filled with hundreds and set him up, Sirica thought.
He had a probation officer take the envelope from McCord and deliver it to the courtroom. Sirica came out and read McCord's letter. Which said that others were involved, and that people had threatened and committed perjury.
That letter went up to the president, Richard Nixon, and we had a new one. It was the power of a turncoat witness. Look out for them in Baghdad. This is an enormous national case these informers will be talking about.
Taguba’s report blamed, in part, a confused chain of command after Nov. 19, when the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade was given responsibility for Abu Ghraib and authority over the 800th Military Police Brigade. He reiterated that guards should play no role in the interrogation of prisoners.
Members of Congress from both parties complained Wednesday that while an expanded report by Taguba was delivered as promised, as many as 2,000 pages considered vital to the investigation were missing.
Congressional sources told NBC News that the missing documents included a written report from Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller that apparently lays out aggressive interrogation tactics for Abu Ghraib. Miller was recently reassigned to Iraq after spending 17 months as commander of operations at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Also missing was key testimony from Col. Thomas Pappas, the commander of military intelligence at Abu Ghraib, the sources said.
Lawrence Di Rita, a spokesman for the Defense Department, characterized the missing documents Wednesday as insignificant, saying the information was "available otherwise."
The White House put government agencies on notice this month that if President Bush is reelected, his budget for 2006 may include spending cuts for virtually all agencies in charge of domestic programs, including education, homeland security and others that the president backed in this campaign year.Would it really be too much for the Post to tell us which administration officials lied to them in February?
Administration officials had dismissed the significance of the proposed cuts when they surfaced in February as part of an internal White House budget office computer printout. At the time, officials said the cuts were based on a formula and did not accurately reflect administration policy. But a May 19 White House budget memorandum obtained by The Washington Post said that agencies should assume the spending levels in that printout when they prepare their fiscal 2006 budgets this summer.
"Assume accounts are funded at the 2006 level specified in the 2005 Budget database," the memo informs federal program associate directors and their deputies. "If you propose to increase funding above that level for any account, it must be offset within your agency by proposing to decrease funding below that level in other accounts."
Despite the commonness of such claims, little evidence has ever been presented for a left bias at NPR, and FAIR’s latest study gives it no support. Looking at partisan sources—including government officials, party officials, campaign workers and consultants—Republicans outnumbered Democrats by more than 3 to 2 (61 percent to 38 percent). A majority of Republican sources when the GOP controls the White House and Congress may not be surprising, but Republicans held a similar though slightly smaller edge (57 percent to 42 percent) in 1993, when Clinton was president and Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. And a lively race for the Democratic presidential nomination was beginning to heat up at the time of the 2003 study.
Partisans from outside the two major parties were almost nowhere to be seen, with the exception of four Libertarian Party representatives who appeared in a single story (Morning Edition, 6/26/03).
Republicans not only had a substantial partisan edge, individual Republicans were NPR’s most popular sources overall, taking the top seven spots in frequency of appearance. George Bush led all sources for the month with 36 appearances, followed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (8) and Sen. Pat Roberts (6). Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Secretary of State Colin Powell, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer and Iraq proconsul Paul Bremer all tied with five appearances each.
Senators Edward Kennedy, Jay Rockefeller and Max Baucus were the most frequently heard Democrats, each appearing four times. No nongovernmental source appeared more than three times. With the exception of Secretary of State Powell, all of the top 10 most frequently appearing sources were white male government officials.
May 26 (Bloomberg) -- Treasury Secretary John Snow was unaware he owned about $10 million in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds for 15 months, a period when he was lobbying Congress to create a tougher regulator for the two largest mortgage financiers, the department said.
On Feb. 3, 2003, and Feb 4, 2003, an investment adviser hired by Snow bought $10.87 million in 10 bonds of different maturities issued by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks, Treasury documents show. The error wasn't discovered until May 10, 2004, as Snow was preparing his 2003 financial disclosure form.
Snow has been the Bush administration's point man in pushing lawmakers for a regulator for government-sponsored enterprises such as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, offering to house the new overseer at the Treasury.
... Treasury spokesman Rob Nichols said Snow's ownership of the GSE debt was ``very regrettable'' because he asked his adviser to invest assets he was restructuring to divest stocks that might present him with potential conflicts of interest. Snow's assets, disclosed in a range, last year may be worth as much as $150 million.
NEW YORK -- Al Gore delivered a blistering denunciation Wednesday of the Bush administration's "twisted values and atrocious policies" in Iraq and demanded the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and CIA director George Tenet.I'll say something that might shock you: I don't care whether any of them resign. The fact is, Bush will simply replace them with people who are just as bad. What difference will it make?
Raising his voice to a yell in a speech at New York University, Gore said: "How dare they subject us to such dishonor and disgrace! How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein's torture prison!"
The Democratic former vice president said the situation in Iraq is spinning out of control.
"I am calling today for Republicans as well as Democrats to join me in asking for the immediate resignations of those immediately below George Bush and Dick Cheney, who are most responsible for creating the catastrophe we are facing in Iraq," Gore said, drawing strong applause from the partisan crowd.
"Donald Rumsfeld ought to resign immediately!" Gore bellowed. "Our nation is at risk every single day Rumsfeld remains as secretary of defense. We need someone with good judgment and common sense."
Rice "ought to resign immediately. She has badly mishandled the coordination of national security policy. This is a disaster for our country," he said.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Officials in major U.S. cities from New York to Los Angeles said they had not been informed of any heightened security concern despite the government's announcement on Wednesday of possible domestic terror attacks in the coming months. The mixed signals and lack of communication between Washington and key states highlight a need for a better system to boost public confidence when security alerts are issued, the top homeland security expert at the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress said.
"Many people think the current system of relaying threat alerts to the public could be improved," said Randall Yim, head of homeland security and justice team at the General Accounting Office (news - web sites). "Many times the intelligence information simply isn't detailed enough. When the chiefs of police in major cities are not informed about the current threat, it undermines the system."
***
Philadelphia officials said they had no knowledge of any new threat. Asked if the city was informed about Washington's latest warning, the city's managing director, Philip Goldsmith, said, "No, not as far as I know."
And the Los Angeles Police Department's No. 2 official, Jim McDonnell, said he had not been contacted by Washington. "No information has been given to me as to the time, place or method of attack."
Vermont jam band Phish is looking to go out on a high note. The band will call it quits at the end of their summer tour.First Jerry, now this.
Frontman Trey Anastasio said on the band's web site the band got together on Friday and talked about their future. He said he's had strong feelings that Phish has run its course, and they should end it while it's still on a high note.
Phish will release a new album, "Undermind," on June 15. They'll kick off a summer tour June 17 in New York. The band will wrap up the tour with a two-day festival August 14 and 15 in Coventry, Vermont.
WASHINGTON, May 25 (UPI) -- The Army kept a soldier whistle-blower in a locked psychiatric ward at its top medical center for nearly two weeks despite concern from some medical staff that he be released, according to medical records.
The Army then charged him nearly $6,000 for the stay at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, billing records show.
"They are definitely retaliating against me," said Army Reserve Lt. Jullian Goodrum, a 16-year veteran of the Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Doctors say Goodrum suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, or combat stress, from Iraq. Last summer Goodrum asked for an investigation into the death in Iraq of a 22-year-old soldier in his 212th Transportation Company. He was also quoted in a United Press International article about poor medical care at Fort Knox, Ky., that helped spark investigations in Congress.
Last fall Goodrum sought mental health care at Fort Knox but was turned away -- just days after complaining in the press about poor medical treatment at Fort Knox. "I said I was having problems. I told them I felt like I was having a breakdown right there," Goodrum said. "They did not care. They said leave."
A form from Fort Knox from the day Goodrum says he sought help states that Fort Knox officials in charge of medical care "do not want him" in the medical-hold unit at the base.
Goodrum then went to see a private doctor who hospitalized him. That doctor alerted Fort Knox that Goodrum had been hospitalized, according to Goodrum's medical records and documents from that doctor. But Fort Knox cut off his pay, terminated his Army medical insurance and threatened to charge him as absent without leave.
Goodrum showed up at Walter Reed hospital in Washington Feb. 9, where doctors admitted him to Ward 54, the locked psychiatric unit.
Some critics of our coverage during that time have focused blame on individual reporters. Our examination, however, indicates that the problem was more complicated. Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper. Accounts of Iraqi defectors were not always weighed against their strong desire to have Saddam Hussein ousted. Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all.As John Lennon once said: "How do you sleep?"
***
On Sept. 8, 2002, the lead article of the paper was headlined "U.S. Says Hussein Intensified Quest for A-Bomb Parts." That report concerned the aluminum tubes that the administration advertised insistently as components for the manufacture of nuclear weapons fuel. The claim came not from defectors but from the best American intelligence sources available at the time. Still, it should have been presented more cautiously. There were hints that the usefulness of the tubes in making nuclear fuel was not a sure thing, but the hints were buried deep, 1,700 words into a 3,600-word article. Administration officials were allowed to hold forth at length on why this evidence of Iraq's nuclear intentions demanded that Saddam Hussein be dislodged from power: "The first sign of a `smoking gun,' they argue, may be a mushroom cloud."
Five days later, The Times reporters learned that the tubes were in fact a subject of debate among intelligence agencies. The misgivings appeared deep in an article on Page A13, under a headline that gave no inkling that we were revising our earlier view ("White House Lists Iraq Steps to Build Banned Weapons"). The Times gave voice to skeptics of the tubes on Jan. 9, when the key piece of evidence was challenged by the International Atomic Energy Agency. That challenge was reported on Page A10; it might well have belonged on Page A1.
***
A sample of the coverage, including the articles mentioned here, is online at nytimes.com/critique. Readers will also find there a detailed discussion written for The New York Review of Books last month by Michael Gordon, military affairs correspondent of The Times, about the aluminum tubes report. Responding to the review's critique of Iraq coverage, his statement could serve as a primer on the complexities of such intelligence reporting.
We consider the story of Iraq's weapons, and of the pattern of misinformation, to be unfinished business. And we fully intend to continue aggressive reporting aimed at setting the record straight.
SAN FRANCISCO, May 25 /U.S. Newswire/ -- A new pharmaceutical front group, "CURES," opposing legislation to reimport cheaper U.S. made prescription drugs from Canada has political ties to both the Schwarzenegger and Bush Administrations, according to the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR). Coalition members include drug patent owners, pharmacists, Bush Administration appointees, and financial contributors to Governor Schwarzenegger. FTCR asked television and news media to alert consumers of the coalition's conflicts of interest.
Currently, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (news - web sites) and the Canadian government save 30-60 percent off the cost of U.S. made drugs as a result of negotiating lower rates for bulk quantities. AB 1957 and AB 1958 (Frommer, Los Angeles), to be voted on this week by the state Assembly, would facilitate drug importation from Canada and allow small business owners and the uninsured to join a CalPERS-run drug bulk purchasing program.
"The pharmaceutical industry has cobbled together another front group to hide their political agenda to keep drug prices high," said Jerry Flanagan of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights. "Consumers should know that these groups do not represent the needs of average Californians but the interests of the world's most profitable industry."
According to analysis released yesterday by FTCR, Governor Schwarzenegger has received over $325,000 in campaign contributions form pharmaceutical companies and the legislature has received $550,000. Pharmaceutical companies spent $1 million lobbying the legislature and Governor in the first three months of 2004, a 25 percent increase over the same period in 2003.
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- U.S. troops wanted Jeanan Moayad's father. When they couldn't find him, they took her husband in his place.
Dhafir Ibrahim has been in U.S. custody for nearly four months. Moayad insists that he is being held as a bargaining chip, and military officials have told her that he will be released when her father surrenders. Her father is a scientist and former Baath party member who fled to Jordan soon after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.
"My husband is a hostage," said Moayad, 35, an architect who carries a small portrait of Ibrahim in her purse. "He didn't commit any crime."
In a little-noticed development amid Iraq's prison abuse scandal, the U.S. military is holding dozens of Iraqis as bargaining chips to put pressure on their wanted relatives to surrender, according to human rights groups. These detainees are not accused of any crimes, and experts say their detention violates the Geneva Conventions and other international laws. The practice also risks associating the United States with the tactics of countries that it has long criticized for arbitrary arrests.
This magpie was one of the bloggers who cited a report that US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld had ordered a ban on camera phones and other video devices among the troops in Iraq. According to this article in The Register, however, the story isn't true — it originated in this piece from The Daily Farce, a satirical publication.
ExxonMobil ReHash Theatre presents:
Oval Office Space — The Director's Cut
Ebert and Roeper gave it two thumbs up. Entertainment Weekly called it "the laugh-out-loud funniest film about Washington politics since 'All the President's Men.' " Now, with GWBWYPGN?! heading up to Bahhston this weekend for a four-day balls-out pub crawl an editors' conference and posting most likely sparse over the next few days, we present a feeble attempt to tide you over until our return: the special DVD collector's edition of "Oval Office Space," digitally remastered, somewhat recast, and with a few deleted scenes newly added. Sure, we're just rehashing old material, but we're rehashing it in Dolby 5.1 surround sound, bitch! And now, the limited-edition director's cut of "Oval Office Space."
SCENE 1:
INT. WEST WING OFFICE — DAY
RICHARD CLARKE is working at an anonymous cubicle deep within the bowels of the West Wing, poring over papers, when his boss, GEORGE W. BUSH, stops by, cup of coffee in hand.
BUSH: Heeeey Clarke. Whaaaat’s happening.
CLARKE: Uh, hi, Mr. President.
BUSH: We need to talk about your WMD reports. Yeeeeah…we’re really trying to punch up our Iraq intelligence. Did you get a copy of that memo?
CLARKE: Uh, yeah, I got it, right here. I’m sorry. I was going over all the intelligence and I just couldn’t find anything indicating that Iraq had any weapons of mass destruction…but I promise I’ll do better next time.
BUSH: Yeeeeah. It’s just that we’re really trying to make it clear that the U.S. was in imminent danger from Saddam Hussein and everything, and he might have had a connection to al-Qaeda...so if you could just start putting that in your WMD reports, that’d be great.
CLARKE: But I don't think that —
BUSH: And I’ll make sure you get another copy of that memo, m’kay? Thanks a bunch.
BUSH walks off as CLARKE, shaking his head, returns to his paperwork. Within seconds, DICK CHENEY arrives.
CHENEY: Richard, we need to talk about your WMD reports.
CLARKE: Yeah. I know. I know. The President just came around and told me, and I promised him I’d…
CHENEY: It’s just that we’re trying to make it clear to everyone there was a "smoking gun" forcing us to invade Iraq and everything instead of focus on al-Qaeda, so if you could "punch it up" a little with those reports, that’d be super. OK?
CHENEY gives CLARKE an overly chummy punch on the shoulder, from which CLARKE recoils.
CHENEY: …And I’ll make sure you get another copy of that memo.
CHENEY walks off. CLARKE sighs heavily, gets up from his desk, and trudges into the situation room where GEORGE TENET and PAUL O'NEILL are looking at computer readings.
TENET: (angrily) Why does it say "Nigerian yellowcake" when there is no Nigerian yellowcake? One of these days I’m going to kick this piece of shit out the window, I mean it…
O'NEILL: You and me both, man. That thing's lucky I'm not armed. (notices CLARKE entering the room) ’Sup, G?
CLARKE: You guys want to go get some coffee at Starbucks or something? I gotta get out of here.
O'NEILL: Yeah, let's go.
CLARKE, TENET and O'NEILL grab their stuff and prepare to leave.
O'NEILL: By the way, what the hell’s up with your WMD reports?
Remember Howard Dean? Early last December he was riding high. Having been dismissed early in the campaign by even his fans as a hopeless cause, he'd managed to parlay a wave of anti-Bush sentiment and novel Internet organizing into front-runner status for the Democratic nomination. Still, two interconnected questions remained. First, could he beat George W. Bush? And second, did he have what it takes to run a campaign likely to focus on foreign-policy questions?
On December 15, 2003, Dean had a chance to dispel those doubts. His strong showing had allowed the campaign to attract interest from many of the Democratic Party's foreign-policy heavies, who’d busied themselves working with Dean’s staff to compose an address underlining the candidate’s basically centrist, mainstream convictions. His support for the Gulf War and those in Kosovo and Afghanistan, along with his advocacy of a tough stance on North Korea, were to be on display. The public would see a new Dean (or, rather, a new side of the same Dean who'd been there all along) -- the sensible, moderate Dean the voters of Vermont had known for years. The speech, delivered to the Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles, was his shot at the big time. And he blew it.
Not with anything in the carefully prepared text but with an ad-libbed piece of red meat thrown to his angry base. "The capture of Saddam [Hussein]," Dean said, "has not made America safer."
Good and decent people everywhere were outraged. Joe Lieberman said Dean had crawled into a "spider hole of denial." John Kerry called the remark "more proof that all the advisers in the world can't give Howard Dean the military and foreign-policy experience, leadership skills, or diplomatic temperament necessary to lead this country through dangerous times." Dick Gephardt was more restrained, merely accusing Dean of "playing politics with foreign policy."
The plan outlined by the President last night might have had more of a chance for success had it been announced a year ago.
The apparent aimlessness that has characterized Iraq policy for the past year has not encouraged international cooperation in either security or reconstruction, and has hardened the negative attitudes of some influential Iraqis. Success in Iraq will require a much more sustained effort to build international support than the Bush Administration has made thus far.
The symbolism of the June 30 transfer of authority and the destruction of the Abu Ghraib prison, as suggested by Congressman Jack Murtha and others, are significant. But what was most clear from the President's words last night is that there is a dangerous and expensive road ahead for the United States before the mission in Iraq will be accomplished. He should have made that clear before we went to war, not more than a year later.
The US-led war on Iraq (news - web sites), far from countering terrorism, has helped revitalise the Al-Qaeda terror network, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think-tank warned.
The London-based body said in its annual Strategic Survey 2003/2004 that the deadly train bombings in Madrid in March, the worst terror strike in Europe for more than a decade, showed that Osama Bin Laden's terror network "had fully reconstituted".
It also predicted the Islamic group would step up its anti-Western attacks, possibly even resorting to weapons of mass destruction and targeting Americans, Europeans and Israelis while continuing to support insurgents opposing the US-led occupation of Iraq.
Cardinal Francis George has instructed priests in the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago to deny communion Sunday to those who wear a so-called rainbow sash indicating they are gay or lesbian, WGN-Ch. 9 reported.
In a letter to pastors, the cardinal said those who wear the sash signal their opposition to church teaching and should not receive communion, WGN reported.
The national Rainbow Sash Movement has asked gay and lesbian church members to wear a sash made from rainbow-colored cloth to show their sexual orientation this Sunday, which is Pentecost on the church calendar.
In the year since the United States Marines pulled down Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad's Firdos Square, things have gone very badly for the United States in Iraq and for its ambition of creating a model democracy that might transform the Middle East. As of today the United States military appears committed to an open-ended stay in a country where, with the exception of the Kurdish north, patience with the foreign occupation is running out, and violent opposition is spreading. Civil war and the breakup of Iraq are more likely outcomes than a successful transition to a pluralistic Western-style democracy.Finally, a long, realistic look at imposing a centralized authority on a state that is little more than a collection of tribal factions, and a description of the hurdles the Kurds present to the American "plan."
Much of what went wrong was avoidable. Focused on winning the political battle to start a war, the Bush administration failed to anticipate the postwar chaos in Iraq. Administration strategy seems to have been based on a hope that Iraq's bureaucrats and police would simply transfer their loyalty to the new authorities, and the country's administration would continue to function. All experience in Iraq suggested that the collapse of civil authority was the most likely outcome, but there was no credible planning for this contingency. In fact, the US effort to remake Iraq never recovered from its confused start when it failed to prevent the looting of Baghdad in the early days of the occupation.
Here's one way to look at it. The job forecast in the 2002 Economic Report of the President assumed that by 2004 the economy would have fully recovered from the 2001 recession. That recovery, according to the official projection, would lead to average payroll employment of 138 million this year — 7 million more than the actual number. So we have a gap of 7 million jobs to make up.
And employment is chasing a moving target: it must rise by about 140,000 a month just to keep up with a growing population. In April, the economy added 288,000 jobs. If you do the math, you discover that President Bush needs about four years of job growth at last month's rate to reach what his own economists consider full employment.
The bottom line, then, is that Mr. Bush's supporters have no right to complain about the public's failure to appreciate his economic leadership. Three years of lousy performance, followed by two months of good but not great job growth, is not a record to be proud of.
But Bush did not provide the midcourse correction that even some Republicans had called for in the face of increasingly macabre violence in recent weeks -- from the assassination of the president of Iraq's Governing Council and controversy over dozens killed by U.S. warplanes at a purported wedding party to the grisly beheading of an American civilian.This PowerPoint President do love him some bullet-point plans, doesn't he? Global warming? Six-point plan. Nuclear proliferation? Three-point plan. Fungal itch? Four-point plan.
Nor did Bush try to answer some of the looming questions that have triggered growing skepticism and anxiety at home and abroad about the final U.S. costs, the final length of stay for U.S. troops, or what the terms will be for a final U.S. exit from Iraq. After promising "concrete steps," the White House basically repackaged stalled U.S. policy as a five-step plan.
In effect, the president said his current plan is good enough to win, and he set out to rally Americans to his cause with rousing language that placed the conflict in Iraq in the context of the larger, more popular battle against terrorism.
"Unless we change the system, you're going to lose," Frist told the doctors, urging them to become politically active.Here's the only fact you need to remember: 95% of all malpractice claims are against the same 5% of doctors.
Frist, the lone doctor in the U.S. Senate, criticized trial lawyers and their allies for opposing legislation that would cap non-economic damage awards to $250,000 in medical-malpractice lawsuits. Murray has joined other Senate Democrats in blocking that legislation, which Nethercutt, R-Spokane, supports.
Doctors blame large jury awards for the sharply rising costs of liability insurance, a cost that some say is hurting access to health care. But opponents argue that those concerned with rising liability costs should focus instead on reducing the rate of medical errors.
The doctors' protests aren't about good policy. They're about good politics. Although the malpractice strikes look like a natural outgrowth of physician frustration, they are, in fact, the product of a sophisticated lobbying campaign coordinated by Republican operatives and underwritten by business groups with little interest in the practice of medicine. GOP leaders view malpractice lawsuits as a pivotal issue for the 2004 campaign. With health-care costs skyrocketing on its watch, the GOP is eager to shift blame onto the Democrats, who have long enjoyed greater public trust on the issue. And doctors, who enjoy great credibility among voters, are the key. By linking rising health-care costs to frivolous medical lawsuits, Republicans can use doctors as a cudgel against trial lawyers, the Democratic Party's second-largest funding base and one which could be paralyzed by lawsuit caps. Once bills to restrict malpractice lawsuits are on the table--in Congress and in the state legislatures--Republicans can slip in much broader legal relief for corporations under the guise of bringing down health-care costs, especially for senior citizens.Remember this, too: When the politicians have been forced to testify under oath about the reasons behind the high malpractice premiums, they've admitted that payout caps have no effect.
Frank Galitski, a former Bush campaign staffer who works with the doctors as head of the Texas Alliance for Patient Access (TAPA), a coalition of insurance companies and health-care corporations, puts it bluntly: "This is a great issue for the president, particularly in the key battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, where they have an aging population." Indeed, if the experience in West Virginia is any indication, the GOP has found itself a winning formula.
White House asks media to respect the privacy which the twins have chosen to reject by appearing in Vogue and injecting themselves into a presidential campaign.
***
So although they have injected themselves into the public arena, the White House would like you to respect the privacy the twins have rejected for themselves by not publishing anything about them that won't make their parents happy.
Is this man Barbara's little boy or what?
Le Monde reported the day before (really the same day because it is an evening paper) that a Bout airline operating under the name "British Gulf" was transporting goods for the US forces in Iraq, with the strong suggestion that his removal from the blacklist was a quid pro quo.
British Gulf International Airlines appears to be based in Sharjah, but registered in Kyrgyzstan (does this sound ominous yet?), and was formed from the assets of a company of the same name registered in Sao Tome of all places, but interestingly also based in Sharjah, in the Sharjah Airport Free Zone. (Its phone number is 06-5570316. Isn't the net great?) It would appear that the owners of BGIA folded their shelf company in Sao Tome and formed another with the same aeroplanes. It apparently operates some four Antonov 12s, of which at least 2 and possibly another were originally registered to old BGIA. The old version of the company possessed some four An12s and an An26.
AeroTransport.org lists one of those An12s as "ultimate fate obscure" but does reveal that the An26 was given its registration, S9-BOV. Oddly enough, although as far as is known the "new" BGIA took over the "old" one's entire fleet, this aircraft is still listed as being with the "old" firm. Another An-12, S9-CAQ, is in storage in Sharjah under the "old" company's name. This stored ship, serial number 3341408, has a past. Its last owner was an outfit called Savanair based in Luanda, Angola. There, some five of its sisters were leased from none other than the Bout company Santa Cruz Imperial. Its friend S9-BOT (serial 5343305) was last registered to a "private operator in Angola". Who could that possibly be?
Now, you might be wondering if we - the Glorious Coalition - would really have dealings with this bunch of pirates. What about this? It is a record of purchase agreements signed between the US Defence Energy Support Centre and commercial enterprises. At the top of page 29, there is a listing for:
British Gulf International Airlines, TC
SAIF Zone, A3-24
PO BOX 26078
Sharjah, UAE.
The date of the agreement is given as the 5th of April, 2004. Now, what exactly is a Defence Energy Support Centre? ...It is the US armed forces' organisation for the supply of fuel. Looking up the DESC's contract instruction manual (aren't you glad I did it and not you), here, we find the details of how to interpret those purchase agreements. The "Signal Code" on the agreement shows "which activity receives the fuel and which activity receives the bill". On the one in question it is A, which according to the manual means "Ship to requisitioner/Bill requisitioner". That would appear to mean that the fuel is to be shipped to the billing address.
Which means that, without a doubt, British Gulf is working in our names. We are supplying its fuel.
Go check out this website. Amazing gumshoe and enormously disturbing to think the likes of Bout are being used by the Defense Department. It's like a very bad spy novel.
This is a real scandal. But it's a scandal occurring in a season of non stop jaw-dropping scandals, from Abu Ghraib to our Iraqi golden boy being a spy for Tehran, to the world's most notorious arms dealer being on the US payroll, so the competition is tight.
WASHINGTON - President Bush's campaign yesterday threatened to hold four days of campaign rallies to yank the media spotlight from Boston's Democratic National Convention if Sen. John F. Kerry [related, bio] delays accepting his party's nomination.And for the main event, Bubble Boy will be presented with a shiny new red, white and blue tricycle.
"Certainly, we would give strong consideration that there be (Bush) rallies all four nights of their four-day political rally in Boston, should Kerry decide to delay his nomination," said Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt.
The Kerry camp, already catching flak from some party officials complaining the delay could render the Hub event irrelevant, brushed off the Bush threat.
"We would expect that the Bush campaign is going to try and run counter-activities during the convention," said Kerry campaign spokesman Michael Meehan.
Republicans said if Kerry stalls on the nomination, the four-day Boston gathering should be considered a political rally, not a convention.
Echoing Armey, pollster John Zogby said he has heard the same anecdotal evidence of Republican disenchantment. "Today I'm in Austin, Texas," Zogby said in a phone interview, "and my driver said, 'I've been a Republican all my life, but I can't support him [Bush].'"
Polling data is beginning to reflect the souring mood, he said. In a survey of likely voters taken May 10-13, Zogby found that President Bush had the support of 71 percent of self-described conservatives, but 19 percent were for John Kerry. "That's really intriguing to me because the president and the administration have spent the last four years shoring up their conservative base," Zogby said. "But the tide may be going back out for them."
In Armey's view, hardball players like Rove and DeLay have lost perspective in their single-minded pursuit of power. The signal case is Medicare, he said. Desperate to co-opt one of the Democrats' strongest campaign issues, the White House made passage of Medicare prescription drug benefits one of its top priorities. But the seniors whom the bill was meant to win over are in revolt, perplexed by the program's complexity and worried that it will encourage employers to drop private drug coverage from retirement benefits. Kerry holds a 20-point advantage over Bush in key battleground states on the question of who would better handle the rising costs of prescription drugs, according to a joint poll conducted last month by the Republican Tarrance Group and the Democratic firm of Lake, Snell and Perry.
(CBS) The war in Iraq continues to tarnish the approval ratings of President Bush. Evaluations of the way Mr. Bush is handling the war in Iraq, how he is handling foreign policy, and how he is handling his job overall are now at their lowest levels ever in his presidency.
Mr. Bush's overall job approval rating has continued to decline. Forty-one percent approve of the job he is doing as president, while 52 percent disapprove — the lowest overall job rating of his presidency. Two weeks ago, 44 percent approved. A year ago, two-thirds did.
Sixty-one percent of Americans now disapprove of the way Mr. Bush is handling the situation in Iraq, while just 34 percent approve.
As concern about the situation in Iraq grows, 65 percent now say the country is on the wrong track — matching the highest number ever recorded in CBS News Polls, which began asking this question in the mid-1980's. Only 30 percent currently say things in this country are headed in the right direction. One year ago, in April 2003, 56 percent of Americans said the country was headed in the right direction.
The last time the percentage that said the country was on the wrong track was as high as it is now was back in November 1994. Then, Republicans swept into control of both houses of Congress for the first time in decades.
The Lippmann tradition of detachment and inpartiality was contravened by the conservatives. With the exception of Evans and Novak, who left reporting for the more gainful field of punditry, none of the new conservative movement columnists had worked as truth-seeking journalists or academics before they began opining. Rather, they were trained in polemics on the right-wing propaganda mills or came from the hardball world of political campaigns. Yet while they had never worked in newsrooms, their central rhetorical and marketing technique was a running attack on how journalistic professionals did their jobs. United Features syndicated columnist John Lofton, for instance, had gotten his start editing the Republican National Committee's First Monday, a magazine he used to launch attacks on journalism at the instruction of Charles Colson.Brock also points out that the newsroom culture values facts, fairness and independence - which puts liberal writers at a distinct disadvantage. (Hopefully, we're learning.)
President Bush took a spill during a Saturday afternoon bike ride on his ranch, suffering bruises and cuts that were visible later on his face just two days before he was to deliver a major prime-time speech on his Iraq policy.Kos obligingly presents the rainfall totals from Crawford:
The president was nearing the end of a 17-mile ride on his mountain bike, accompanied by a Secret Service agent, a military aide and his personal physician, Richard Tubb, who treated him at the scene, said White House spokesman Trent Duffy.
"It's been raining a lot and the topsoil is loose," Duffy said. "You know this president. He likes to go all-out. Suffice it to say he wasn't whistling show tunes."
So it's been raining a lot in Crawford, we are told. So here's the recent precipitation levels from Crawford:
May 22: 0"
May 21: 0"
May 20: 0"
May 19: 0"
May 18: 0"
May 17: 0"
May 16: 0"
May 15: 0"
May 14: 0.03"
May 13: 2.79"
May 12: 0"
May 11: 0.15"
May 10: 0"
May 9: 0"
May 13th saw some serious rain, but other than some sprinkles on the 14th, Crawford saw nothing but sun. In the last week alone, the temperature was in the high 80s the entire time.
So rain on the 13th and (barely) 14th was blamed for a Bush fall on the 22nd. As everything else, it wasn't Bush's fault. Nothing is Bush's fault.
Ever.
Liars.
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