Room 101

Who'd a Thunk It?

2008-11-15T20:02:00.001-05:00

All the Bush stuff will come down on January 21, 2009.

Happy Day!

The Trick

2007-04-12T20:15:00.001-04:00

The trick is to "catch people before they become generals and presidents and so forth and poison their minds with humanity."

Kurt Vonnegut

An Epitaph

2007-04-12T19:44:00.000-04:00

Photo: Helayne Seidman/The Washington Post

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC.

Kurt Vonnegut

One of My Heroes is Gone

2007-04-11T23:44:00.000-04:00

Photo: Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Lovers

2007-04-07T19:02:00.000-04:00

Room For One More

2007-04-05T07:15:00.000-04:00

A Thousand Words

2007-04-04T14:14:00.000-04:00

Pathetic

2006-03-23T18:26:00.001-05:00

It's amazing how susceptible the American people are to Orwellian/Goebbels-like marketing. It's breathtaking to consider how close this country has come to a Hitler/Mussolini/Ceaucescu dictatorship. How different was the ascendancy of Bush and Cheney to those who came before them; on the adoring shoulders of the people? The adulation, the cult of personality, swallowing propaganda whole. Here is what Kurt Vonnegut said:

The only difference between [George W.] Bush and [Adolf] Hitler is that Hitler was elected.

This addendum to this formerly textless post was written at 3:59 A.M. on April 13, 2007, my son's birthday.

3/23/06

The Hoot of the Day!

2006-03-19T17:04:00.000-05:00

Cheney on Face the Nation:

SCHIEFFER: Mr. Vice President, all along the government has been very optimistic. You remain optimistic. But I remember when you were saying we'd be greeted as liberators, you played down the insurgency 10 months ago. You said it was in its last throes. Do you believe that these optimistic statements may be one of the reasons that people seem to be more skeptical in this country about whether we ought to be in Iraq?

CHENEY: No. I think it has less to do with the statements we've made, which I think were basically accurate and reflect reality, than it does with the fact that there's a constant sort of perception, if you will, that's created because what's newsworthy is the car bomb in Baghdad.

Stand Up to Santorum

2005-09-10T09:05:00.000-04:00

Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania is a wholly owned subsidiary of the private weather forecasting companies that are based in Pa. He has filled his snout at their money trough and has been trying to make illegal the dissemination of National Weather Service products to the taxpayers who fund the agency so that we have to pay the NWS to do the work, and then pay Santorum's sugar daddies to see that work. This page has commented on this before, on June 4, 2005.

Shamelessly, Santorum is using Katrina to further his sickening agenda.

PLEASE DON'T LET HIM DO IT!!!

This is from the Washington Post, Saturday, September 10, 2005:

Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, Santorum was drawing a second round of fire, this time for saying the National Weather Service's forecasts and warnings about Katrina's path were "not sufficient." Democrats e-mailed audio links to a radio interview in which Santorum said that "we need a robust National Weather Service" that focuses on severe weather predictions. "Obviously the consequences are incredibly severe, as we've seen here in the last couple of weeks, if we don't get it right and don't properly prepare," Santorum said.

In fact, many people think the Weather Service got the Katrina prediction exactly right. They include GOP Sen. Jim DeMint (S.C.), who chairs the Senate Commerce subcommittee on disaster prediction and prevention. He issued a statement headlined "DeMint Gives National Weather Service 'A' Grade for Katrina Prediction."

Santorum, long at odds with the federal agency, is pushing a bill that would require it to surrender some of its duties to private businesses, some of them located in his state. The National Weather Service Employees Organization said in a statement: "We did our job well and everyone knows it. By falsely claiming that we got it wrong, Rick Santorum is continuing his misguided crusade against the National Weather Service."

Santorum's office issued a statement yesterday repeating the concern that "there are serious consequences" when the Weather Service falls short of "getting it right."

Disgusting.

Bush's Priorities

2005-09-05T01:27:00.000-04:00

The same man who left his vacation and returned to Washington in the middle of the night to sign a bogus law written for a woman in a vegetative state for 14 years, went to Arizona and California for photo ops while thousands of Americans were begging for their lives.

No Comment

2005-09-04T10:26:00.000-04:00

"I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees"
- George Bush

"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center."
- Condoleeza Rice

Hard to be a Billionaire When Katrina Strikes

2005-09-02T18:16:00.000-04:00

The man who gives Bush his economic marching orders frets that America's billionaires may be inconvenienced by Katrina. His concern? The vote on the estate tax may go down or be delayed by the hurricane.

Grover, who said he wants to shrink the government to the size where it can be drowned in a bathtub, needs to take a swim in the cesspool he had a very large hand in creating.

The Real Looters

2005-09-02T17:20:00.000-04:00

From the Boston Globe, 9/2/05

DERRICK Z. JACKSON
Big oil's bigtime looting

By Derrick Z. Jackson | September 2, 2005

PRESIDENT BUSH yesterday told ABC-TV, ''there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this, whether it be looting or price-gouging at the gasoline pump or taking advantage of charitable giving or insurance fraud."

Zero tolerance is meaningless when the White House lets the biggest looters of Hurricane Katrina walk off with billions of dollars.

We are not referring to the people you currently see in endless footage, crashing through storefronts and wading through chest-high water with clothes, food, and pharmaceuticals. Some folks are disgusting in their thuggishness, but a great many others are simply desperate, having now gone three days without food or water. The latter are living out one of the most famous hypothetical problems in moral reasoning -- should a husband steal a cancer drug he cannot afford for his dying wife?

No such sympathy is to be extended to big oil. The nation has on its hands a disaster so profound that we have not even begun to seriously count the bodies in the floodwaters. It brings us as close as we may get in our lifetime to places like Bangladesh.

New Orleans is under martial law and will not return to normal for years. Members of the Red Cross, the Coast Guard, the National Guard, police agencies, and firefighters are sacrificing time and risking lives to save lives. Texas is opening up its school systems for homeless Louisiana children. Generous food wholesalers are giving away their stocks to passersby. The Astrodome is taking in the refugees of the Superdome.

In the midst of this charity, big oil looted the nation. The pumps instantly shot past $3 a gallon, with $4 a gallon well in sight.

In a thinly disguised attempt to act as if it cared about the people wading in the water, Chevron has pledged $5 million to relief efforts. ExxonMobil and Shell have pledged $2 million apiece. British Petroleum and Citgo have pledged $1 million each.

This is nothing next to their wealth. Of the world's seven most profitable corporations, four are ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, and Chevron. ExxonMobil is the world's most profitable company, making $25.3 billion last year. It and the other three corporations had combined profits last year of $72.8 billion. ExxonMobil is also the world's most valuable company, with a market value, according to Forbes magazine, of $405 billion. The combined market value of ExxonMobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, and Chevron is nearly $1 trillion.

And that was last year. A month ago, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips announced record second-quarter profits of $7.6 billion, $3.7 billion, and $3.1 billion, respectively. Royal Dutch Shell's quarterly profits of $5.2 billion were up by 34 percent over the same period last year. Other well-known companies like Sunoco also had record second-quarter earnings.

If ExxonMobil were to maintain its current pace of profits, it would cross the $30 billion barrier for 2005. The company's chief financial officer, Henry Hubble, bragged in classic corporatese, ''Our disciplined project management and operating practices deliver the benefits of strong industry conditions to our shareholders."

Those disciplined operating practices are hardly confined to the oil fields. Everyone knows that Bush does not really mean what he says about price-gouging at the pump, since he just gave energy companies the bulk of $14.5 billion in tax breaks in the new energy bill. Surprise, surprise. In Bush's two elections, oil and gas companies gave Republicans 79 percent of their $61.5 million in campaign contributions, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

If Bush really meant what he said, he would call for a freeze or cap on gasoline prices, especially in the regions affected most dramatically by Katrina. He would challenge big oil to come up with a much more meaningful contribution to relief efforts.

Insurance companies are expecting up to $25 billion in claims from Katrina. For ExxonMobil, which is headed to $30 billion in profits, to jack up prices at the pump and then only throw $2 million at relief efforts is unconscionable.

Stay fixated, if you wish, on the thieves and desperate families who are so much easier to catch on camera than comptrollers electronically stealing your cash. It is not pleasant to see anyone loot a store. But ExxonMobil and big oil are looting the nation, and no one declaring martial law on them.

Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com.

The Beast Starved

2005-08-31T19:44:00.000-04:00

All of those who supported Bush's policies, who care only for tax cuts, for suffocating the government. All of you who preach that the government should be shrunken until it can be drowned in a bathtub. Who rail against "entitlements." Here is what your tax cuts, your war in Iraq have begotten. Did you expect Exxon to pay to prevent the loss of New Orleans? Halliburton?

From Editor & Publisher:

Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? 'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues

By Will Bunch

Published: August 30, 2005 9:00 PM ET

PHILADELPHIA Even though Hurricane Katrina has moved well north of the city, the waters may still keep rising in New Orleans late on Tuesday. That's because Lake Pontchartrain continues to pour through a two-block-long break in the main levee, near the city's 17th Street Canal. With much of the Crescent City some 10 feet below sea level, the rising tide may not stop until it's level with the massive lake.

New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The Times-Picayune Web site, reported: "No one can say they didn't see it coming. ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps' project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:

"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can't stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can't raise them."

The panel authorized that money, and on July 1, 2004, it had to pony up another $250,000 when it learned that stretches of the levee in Metairie had sunk by four feet. The agency had to pay for the work with higher property taxes. The levee board noted in October 2004 that the feds were also now not paying for a hoped-for $15 million project to better shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain.

The 2004 hurricane season was the worst in decades. In spite of that, the federal government came back this spring with the steepest reduction in hurricane and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history. Because of the proposed cuts, the Corps office there imposed a hiring freeze. Officials said that money targeted for the SELA project -- $10.4 million, down from $36.5 million -- was not enough to start any new jobs.

There was, at the same time, a growing recognition that more research was needed to see what New Orleans must do to protect itself from a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. But once again, the money was not there. As the Times-Picayune reported last Sept. 22:

"That second study would take about four years to complete and would cost about $4 million, said Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi. About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 2005 fiscal-year budget, and the state had agreed to match that amount. But the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money, he said."

The Senate was seeking to restore some of the SELA funding cuts for 2006. But now it's too late.

One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer: a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach on Monday.

The Newhouse News Service article published Tuesday night observed, "The Louisiana congressional delegation urged Congress earlier this year to dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana's coast, only to be opposed by the White House. ... In its budget, the Bush administration proposed a significant reduction in funding for southeast Louisiana's chief hurricane protection project. Bush proposed $10.4 million, a sixth of what local officials say they need."

Local officials are now saying, the article reported, that had Washington heeded their warnings about the dire need for hurricane protection, including building up levees and repairing barrier islands, "the damage might not have been nearly as bad as it turned out to be."
Will Bunch (letters@editorandpublisher.com) is senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News. Much of this article also appears on his blog at that newspaper, Attytood.

Where are You, Rudy?

2005-08-27T08:44:00.000-04:00

Here's what Ann Coulter said, Rudy:

"It's far preferable to fight them on the streets of Baghdad than in the streets of New York, where the residents would immediately surrender."

We haven't heard a peep out of you, Rudy, you great hero of 9/11, you champion of the thousands of brave souls who sacrificed so much that day and in the months after.

Will you stand up to this harpy and speak up for the courage of New Yorkers? Or are you afraid to offend the right wing whose votes you covet so desperately for your presidential bid? Selling your soul is so hard, isn't it Rudy?

In politicians, even the ones who've snowed the people really well, ambition trumps principle every time. That is if there is a politician anywhere with an ounce of principle.

It's All Over But the Shooting

2005-08-14T09:34:00.000-04:00

Some in the administration, though certainly not Bush or Cheney have seen the writing on the wall. How many more will die before Bush and Cheney are willing to admit it?

Here is Frank Rich's piece which was published the same day as the Washington Post Piece. It's all over, Rover.

What a Coward is Bush

2005-08-11T21:40:00.000-04:00

Afraid to face Cindy Sheehan.

He was yellow during Viet Nam. And he's yellow now.

Maris Belongs in the Hall of Fame

2005-08-05T18:35:00.000-04:00

My letter, published in the August 5, 2005 New York Times:

To the Editor:

If baseball wanted to make a strong statement about its integrity and its values, it would immediately install Roger Maris in the Hall of Fame.

By doing so, baseball would be saying: "Here is a man who broke a sacred baseball record that stood for 34 years before he broke it, and that then stood for 37 years until it was broken, if indeed it was legitimately broken. He did it with nothing but a bat and his God-given talents."

What a perfect way for baseball to show what sort of man and performance it reveres!

How to Know When Your Government Has Contempt for its Citizens

2005-08-04T21:20:00.000-04:00

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld:

"As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know."

The Real Victims

2005-07-17T00:30:00.000-04:00

From Frank Rich, NY TIMES, July 17, 2005-

This case is about Iraq, not Niger. The real victims are the American people, not the Wilsons. The real culprit - the big enchilada, to borrow a 1973 John Ehrlichman phrase from the Nixon tapes - is not Mr. Rove but the gang that sent American sons and daughters to war on trumped-up grounds and in so doing diverted finite resources, human and otherwise, from fighting the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. That's why the stakes are so high: this scandal is about the unmasking of an ill-conceived war, not the unmasking of a C.I.A. operative who posed for Vanity Fair.

Human Slime

2005-07-08T08:39:00.000-04:00

Rove, who has testified before a grand jury investigating the case, likewise has maintained that he did not break the law, saying in a television interview, "I didn't know her name, and I didn't leak her name."

- Washington Post, 7/8/05

No, you didn't leak her name. But you outed her. What did you say? "Wilson's wife?"

I'm so glad Bush pledged to get to the bottom of this. Such a man of honor.

Bush Supports our Troops?

2005-06-21T18:39:00.000-04:00

Dad picks up $600 tab to get Marine battle ready

Jun. 18, 2005 12:00 AM John Tod of Mesa had been prepared to face Father's Day worrying about his son's pending date with the war in Iraq.

Then Uncle Sam stepped in with more disappointing developments.

Marine Pfc. Jeremy Tod called home with news that his superiors were urging him and fellow Marines to buy special military equipment, including flak jackets with armor plating, to enhance the prospects of their survival.

The message was that such purchases were to be made by Marines with their own money.

"He said they strongly suggested he get this equipment because when they get to Iraq they will wish they had," Tod said.

Total estimated cost: $600.

Tod said his son's call about two weeks ago from the Marine Corps Air Station-Yuma was a sobering reminder that the military is not prepared to equip Pfc. Tod and fellow Marines with the best equipment.

Besides the essential flak jacket with steel "trauma" plates, the shopping list for the young Marine included a Camelbak (water pouch) special ballistic goggles, knee and elbow pads, a "drop pouch" to hold ammunition magazines and a load-bearing vest.

Tod, 45, is picking up the tab for a son who blew most of his savings on a new pickup truck. And dad says he is tempted to forward the bill to the Pentagon. "Or maybe I can write it off in taxes," he said with a grin.

It's not the cost that concerns him, even though the self-employed home repairman will have to dig deep for the cash.

"We're supposed to have a professional army," he said, "the best in the world. And we're not providing them with the type of gear they need to protect themselves as they do their jobs."

Marine Maj. Nat Frahy, a spokesman in Washington, said the military issues equipment, but it's possible that young Tod's commanders told him that it was perfectly OK to buy equipment that would help him on the battlefield.

Told about the Marine request, U.S. Rep. J. D. Hayworth, the Republican whose 5th District includes Mesa, said he has never heard of a service person being told to buy his own equipment.

Hayworth said he will contact the military to "find out what on earth is going on and why isn't that stuff there for them already. If it involves bottlenecks and glitches to get equipment to them then there should be a voucher system where military personnel can be reimbursed."

Tod refers to himself as a regular, middle-class, blue-collar guy who is a fairly close fit to the economic demographic of most families with sons and daughters serving in the armed forces. His son, now 19, enlisted last year after graduating from Mesa's Westwood High School.

His dad says America was better served with the military draft because today's professional army is not representative of the country's economic and cultural spectrum.

Yet Tod is proud of his youngest son's decision to serve even though dad doesn't believe American troops should be in Iraq.

In a recent interview, Tod recalled the kid who made an unassisted triple play in Little League and the boy who became his father's best fishing buddy before he went to Marine boot camp in San Diego.

"When I close my eyes I can see him looking up at me and asking, 'Pants on swimming, dad, can I, huh?' when he wanted to go for a swim," Tod said.

On Father's Day, Tod will hang out at his home in north central Mesa and hope that Jeremy, the 5-foot-5 155-pound Marine, will get time to call as he trains with about 2,800 fellow Marines in Yuma.

"I'll probably get to see him before he leaves for Iraq," Tod said. "I just hope and pray nothing happens to him."

Reach Thomason at art.thomason@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-7971.

All You Need to Know

2005-06-14T19:50:00.000-04:00

Ex-Bush Aide Who Edited Climate Reports to Join ExxonMobil

Protect Your Weather Service

2005-06-04T08:08:00.000-04:00

Santorum wants to ban the National Weather Service from giving you, the taxpayers who fund the Weather Service, their products. He proposes to allow them to give their products only to the companies who sell their products so that you, who paid for them, will then be forced to pay these private companies, who happen to be based in his home state for this information. The editorial below lays out the facts. But it UNDER reports the amount of money Santorum has accepted in various forms from the companies he proposes to enrich at YOUR expense.

PLEASE CONTACT YOUR SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES AND TELL THEM THAT YOUR NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MUST SURVIVE. STOP THIS CYNICAL CORRUPTION BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE.

June 4, 2005
Overcast in Pennsylvania

Far from just talking about the weather, Senator Rick Santorum is doing something dank and cloudy about it: he is proposing to squelch the National Weather Service's growing role in the information age.

The Weather Service provides a priceless flow of nonstop measurements and readings that commercial forecasting companies package and sell to the public. Lately, the Weather Service itself has been trying to make all its information more accessible to anyone who wants it. But Mr. Santorum, the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, has introduced legislation that would basically require the service to give much of its data only to those private weather forecasting companies. A dozen of those businesses happen to be located in Mr. Santorum's home state, Pennsylvania.

"It's not an easy prospect for a business to attract advertisers, subscribers or investors when the government is providing similar products for free," the senator said, somehow overlooking that taxpayers finance this round-the-clock national resource in the first place.

Senator Santorum, who is running for re-election, is vowing to protect hundreds of Pennsylvania weather company jobs. But timing is everything in both politics and weather, and his case was not helped by the fact that two days before the bill was introduced, his campaign accepted a $2,000 donation from one of the weather companies lobbying for protection. This was dismissed by the senator's supporters as a small-beer coincidence in a $25 million race. But as they say on the weather segment, it's a lingering disturbance on the Doppler.

- NY Times

The Downing Street Memo

2005-06-03T21:01:00.000-04:00

SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL - UK EYES ONLY

DAVID MANNING
From: Matthew Rycroft
Date: 23 July 2002
S 195 /02

cc: Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Attorney-General, Sir Richard Wilson, John Scarlett, Francis Richards, CDS, C, Jonathan Powell, Sally Morgan, Alastair Campbell

IRAQ: PRIME MINISTER'S MEETING, 23 JULY

Copy addressees and you met the Prime Minister on 23 July to discuss Iraq.

This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents.

John Scarlett summarised the intelligence and latest JIC assessment. Saddam's regime was tough and based on extreme fear. The only way to overthrow it was likely to be by massive military action. Saddam was worried and expected an attack, probably by air and land, but he was not convinced that it would be immediate or overwhelming. His regime expected their neighbours to line up with the US. Saddam knew that regular army morale was poor. Real support for Saddam among the public was probably narrowly based.

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

CDS said that military planners would brief CENTCOM on 1-2 August, Rumsfeld on 3 August and Bush on 4 August.

The two broad US options were:

(a) Generated Start. A slow build-up of 250,000 US troops, a short (72 hour) air campaign, then a move up to Baghdad from the south. Lead time of 90 days (30 days preparation plus 60 days deployment to Kuwait).

(b) Running Start. Use forces already in theatre (3 x 6,000), continuous air campaign, initiated by an Iraqi casus belli. Total lead time of 60 days with the air campaign beginning even earlier. A hazardous option.

The US saw the UK (and Kuwait) as essential, with basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus critical for either option. Turkey and other Gulf states were also important, but less vital. The three main options for UK involvement were:

(i) Basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus, plus three SF squadrons.

(ii) As above, with maritime and air assets in addition.

(iii) As above, plus a land contribution of up to 40,000, perhaps with a discrete role in Northern Iraq entering from Turkey, tying down two Iraqi divisions.

The Defence Secretary said that the US had already begun "spikes of activity" to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections.

The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.

The Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult. The situation might of course change.

The Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors. Regime change and WMD were linked in the sense that it was the regime that was producing the WMD. There were different strategies for dealing with Libya and Iran. If the political context were right, people would support regime change. The two key issues were whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan the space to work.

On the first, CDS said that we did not know yet if the US battleplan was workable. The military were continuing to ask lots of questions.

For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began? You said that Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence Secretary.

The Foreign Secretary thought the US would not go ahead with a military plan unless convinced that it was a winning strategy. On this, US and UK interests converged. But on the political strategy, there could be US/UK differences. Despite US resistance, we should explore discreetly the ultimatum. Saddam would continue to play hard-ball with the UN.

John Scarlett assessed that Saddam would allow the inspectors back in only when he thought the threat of military action was real.

The Defence Secretary said that if the Prime Minister wanted UK military involvement, he would need to decide this early. He cautioned that many in the US did not think it worth going down the ultimatum route. It would be important for the Prime Minister to set out the political context to Bush.

Conclusions:

(a) We should work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action. But we needed a fuller picture of US planning before we could take any firm decisions. CDS should tell the US military that we were considering a range of options.

(b) The Prime Minister would revert on the question of whether funds could be spent in preparation for this operation.

(c) CDS would send the Prime Minister full details of the proposed military campaign and possible UK contributions by the end of the week.

(d) The Foreign Secretary would send the Prime Minister the background on the UN inspectors, and discreetly work up the ultimatum to Saddam.

He would also send the Prime Minister advice on the positions of countries in the region especially Turkey, and of the key EU member states.

(e) John Scarlett would send the Prime Minister a full intelligence update.

(f) We must not ignore the legal issues: the Attorney-General would consider legal advice with FCO/MOD legal advisers.

(I have written separately to commission this follow-up work.)

MATTHEW RYCROFT

(Rycroft was a Downing Street foreign policy aide)

I Agree with George W. Bush

2005-03-31T18:12:00.000-05:00

"The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak..."

-George W. Bush
March 31, 2005

Yes, Mr. Bush.

That is why you don't persist in giving huge tax cuts to the rich at the expense of the poor and middle class, especially when you have bankrupted the nation.

That is why you don't slash Medicaid to pay for the tax cuts for the rich.

That is why you don't single-mindedly set out to destroy Social Security, the program that is the difference between a dignified old age and poverty for millions of older Amercians, and do it by lying, and deceit, and sleazy huckstering.

That is why you don't slash programs like Head Start which exist to help the weakest among us have a better life.

That is why you don't give everything and more to the corporate interests of the country and the world at the expense of the people who cannot possibly stand up to their monetary and therefore, political might.

That is why you don't rape the environment for your corporate cronies at the expense of people all over the world.

That is why you don't protect the pharmaceutical giants, your patrons, at the expense of the nation's elderly and sick.

That is why you don't keep the victims of your corporate wet nurses from being able to sue for the death and maiming and heartache that your corporate puppetmasters wreak.

That is why you don't doom the victims of your credit card pushing sugar daddies who turn America's weak and disadvantaged, the ill and unemployed, into indentured servants for life by barring them from the protection of bankruptcy.

That is why you don't protect your Svengali Cheyney's Halliburton, for whom Cheyney in his wisdom bought massive asbestos liability when he ran that company, from having to make whole the victims of asbestos and their families.

That is why you don't prevent our great medical researchers and technologists from doing everything and anything to find cures for the suffering of millions of people so that you can pander to your theocratic zealot voter base, whom you harm by the policies of your true agenda, naivly empowered by those religious fanatics , in order to effect the enrichment of your cronies.

Yes, Mr. Bush, I agree that the essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak. So step forward, Mr. Bush, and for once, do the right thing for weak, the powerless, whom you have given the back of your hand. You have brought shame to our once-great civilization.

You still have time to take your own words to heart.

How Things Work

2005-03-28T21:25:00.000-05:00

Biggest Donors to Bush and the GOP

Ann Coulter & Michelle Malkin

2005-03-26T11:52:00.000-05:00

Ann Coulter
Ann Coulter
Ann Coulter
Ann Coulter
Ann Coulter
Ann Coulter
Ann Coulter
Ann Coulter
Ann Coulter
Ann Coulter
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Ann Coulter
Ann Coulter
Ann Coulter

Info

Michelle Malkin
Michelle Malkin
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Michelle Malkin
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Maybe My Christian Friends Can Help Me Out Here

2005-03-19T08:34:00.000-05:00

Please explain. As long as you don't fuck, ass fucking, blowjobs, and carpet munching are not sinful in the eyes of God?

No wonder you hate evolution. You feel left out!

Teen Pledges Barely Cut STD Rates, Study Says

By Ceci Connolly

Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 19, 2005; Page A03

Teenagers who take virginity pledges -- public declarations to abstain from sex -- are almost as likely to be infected with a sexually transmitted disease as those who never made the pledge, an eight-year study released yesterday found.

Although young people who sign a virginity pledge delay the initiation of sexual activity, marry at younger ages and have fewer sexual partners, they are also less likely to use condoms and more likely to experiment with oral and anal sex, said the researchers from Yale and Columbia universities. "The sad story is that kids who are trying to preserve their technical virginity are, in some cases, engaging in much riskier behavior," said lead author Peter S. Bearman, a professor at Columbia's Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy. "From a public health point of view, an abstinence movement that encourages no vaginal sex may inadvertently encourage other forms of alternative sex that are at higher risk of STDs."

Rates of Disease

The findings are based on the federally funded National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a survey begun in 1995 that tracked 20,000 young people from high school to young adulthood. At the start of the project, the students were 12 to 18 years old and agreed to detailed, sexually explicit interviews. They were re-interviewed in 1997 and again in 2002, when 11,500 also provided urine samples.

Virginity pledges emerged in the early 1990s based on the theory that young people would remain chaste if they had stronger community support -- or pressure -- to remain abstinent. Programs vary, but in most cases teenagers voluntarily sign a pledge or publicly announce their intention to abstain from sex. Often pledgers receive a pin or ring to symbolize the promise and team up with an "accountability partner."

Since it was founded in 1993, the virginity group True Love Waits claims 2.4 million youths have signed a card stating: "Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, those I date, and my future mate to be sexually pure until the day I enter marriage."

The study, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, found that 20 percent of those surveyed said they had taken a virginity pledge. Bearman and co-author Hannah Bruckner broke them into two categories -- "inconsistent pledgers" and "consistent pledgers" -- to reflect the fact that some changed their status or their responses between interviews. Among those youngsters, 61 percent of the consistent pledgers and 79 percent of the inconsistent pledgers reported having intercourse before marrying or prior to 2002 interviews.

Almost 7 percent of the students who did not make a pledge were diagnosed with an STD, compared with 6.4 percent of the "inconsistent pledgers" and 4.6 percent of the "consistent pledgers." Bearman said those differences were not "statistically significant," although Robert Rector, who studies domestic policy issues at the conservative Heritage Institute, said he interpreted the data to mean that young people committed to the abstinence pledge were less likely to become infected.

The study did not detect major geographic differences but found that minorities were far more likely to have an STD. About one quarter of African American girls in the survey tested positive for at least one STD in 2002.

In terms of high-risk behavior, the raw numbers were small, but the gap was statistically significant, Bearman said. Just 2 percent of youth who never took a pledge said they had had anal or oral sex but not intercourse, compared with 13 percent of "consistent pledgers."

Debate on Abstinence

The report sparked an immediate, bitter debate over the wisdom of teaching premarital abstinence.

Deborah Roffman, an educator and author of "Sex and Sensibility: The Thinking Parent's Guide to Talking Sense About Sex," said youths who take virginity pledges are often undereducated about sexual health. "Kids who are engaging in oral sex or anal sex will tell you they are practicing abstinence because they haven't had 'real sex' yet," she said.

Ralph DiClemente, a professor at Emory University's School of Public Health in Atlanta, compared virginity pledges to adults' efforts to make New Year's resolutions.

"I wish it was that easy. We'd all be a lot healthier," he said. "If we can't do it as adults, why would we expect kids to be able to handle those issues?"

But Joe S. McIlhaney Jr., chairman of the Medical Institute for Sexual Health, said the study offers an incomplete picture because it could not say whether sexually active teens who did not take a pledge had been pregnant or treated for an STD before the 2002 testing. The analysis "doesn't prove or disprove" assertions that virginity pledges are flawed, he said.

On the other hand, Bill Smith, public policy vice president for the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, said, "Not only do virginity pledges not work to keep our young people safe, they are causing harm by undermining condom use, contraception and medical treatment."

Conservative academics said the paper overlooked earlier important findings about adolescents who take virginity pledges, most notably that they have fewer pregnancies and out-of-wedlock births.

"It's hugely successful on those variables," Rector said. "Bearman has focused in on the one variable he thinks can show they [pledgers] don't do better."

President Bush has requested $206 million in federal funding for abstinence-only programs this year.

Several True Love Waits officials were unavailable Friday, according to a receptionist. Telephone calls to another virginity group, the Silver Ring Thing, were not returned.

Republicans Should be So Proud!

2005-03-17T22:01:00.000-05:00

When Senators restored $14 billion slated to be slashed from Medicaid, the program of health care for the poor, lame, halt, blind and needy, the lowest of our low, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, R-NH showed what compassionate conservatism is:

Gregg called claims that Medicaid cuts would hurt people ``absurd, misleading'' and ``just scare tactics.'

-AP, 3/17/05

For My Friends Who Voted for Bush

2005-03-14T22:20:00.000-05:00

In exchange for leading you to believe he is a Christian and cares about the things you care about, in exchange for his packing the courts with far right wing judges, here is what Bush is giving you:

"Passed: A tort reform bill that makes it harder for ordinary citizens to sue corporations who harm them.

"Coming soon: A bankruptcy bill that will make it harder for distressed workers to declare bankruptcy and will increase credit card company profits by an estimated $1 billion.

"Coming soon: A transportation bill that adds two unpaid hours onto the work days of short-haul and long-haul truckers.

"In progress: Changes to Social Security that will almost certainly include benefit cuts for current workers.

"In progress: Making permanent a set of tax cuts that primarily helps the upper class.

"And it's only the middle of March. Can anyone name even one thing the Bush administration has done this year -- or is proposing to do -- that would benefit ordinary workers? Do they even pretend to care any more?"

-From Kevin Drum, Washington Monthly

Is this what you thought you were voting for?

"With legislative maneuvering designed to punish and deprive the least fortunate among us -- working people at the lower end of the American economy and their children -- the Republicans don't seem to be upholding the caring Christian ideals often proclaimed by the President. They're pushing down wages, snatching away tax credits and food stamps, slashing Medicaid and children's health insurance, and removing bankruptcy protections from families that suffer medical catastrophes. But they're extending tax cuts on dividends and capital gains, and making sure that those bankruptcy laws still protect the richest deadbeats.

"In short, they are stealing bread from the mouths of the poor and stuffing cake into the maws of the wealthy.

"The bankruptcy 'reform' currently pending in the Senate, for instance, would compound the misery of Americans already ruined by enormous medical expenses, which is what drives most filers to seek legal protection. The sponsors of this punitive act, which will further inflate the profits of credit-card companies, rejected every amendment to discourage deceptive and extortionate lending practices, as well as every amendment to soften the impact on destitute veterans and others whose misfortune might ordinarily stir feelings of compassion."

-From Joe Conason in Salon

Does the man you voted for have one ounce of concern for you? Well, if you're a well connected multi-millionaire, a large financial concern, an oil company, a polluter, or the credit card companies, then yes.

Hannity is a Liar

2005-03-12T16:46:00.000-05:00

Sean Hannity

Sean Hannity

Sean Hannity

Sean Hannity

Sean Hannity

Sean Hannity

Sean Hannity

Sean Hannity

Sean Hannity

Sean Hannity

Sean Hannity

Sean Hannity

Sean Hannity

Sean Hannity

To help spread the word and for an explanation, go here.

The Pendulum Swings

2005-03-12T10:19:00.000-05:00

Bush's scheme to destroy Social Security is dead.

His budget, phase two of "Starve the Beast," is dying, killed by his own party.

His environmental plundering is dying, killed by his own party.

Tom DeLay is finally going down.

Santorum is going to meet the fate of Daschle.

The winds of change are blowing, the times they are a changin'.

Some of the American people are realizing that while they believed the bible thumping, culture war lip service that was being sold to them, Bush's real agenda was not at all in their interests. You touched the third rail, George. Now you're starting to fry.

Forked Tongue

2005-03-12T10:11:00.000-05:00

Just because Karen Hughes was able to lie and distort and ridicule and character-assasinate to get the American yahoos to [almost] vote Bush into office, Bush thinks she can work that same magic with the rest of the world?

The rest of the world isn't so stupidly, ignorantly, gullible, Mr. Bush.

You aren't, are you?

Hunter S. Thompson

2005-02-21T08:54:00.000-05:00

"Objective journalism is one of the main reasons that American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long.

You can't be objective about Nixon. How can you be objective about Clinton?"

Hunter S. Thompson
1937-2005

2005-01-21T21:13:00.000-05:00

Janis

R. Crumb

2005-01-21T20:43:00.000-05:00

When I started this thing, I mentioned that I had very few heroes. That got me to thinking and I realized that I do indeed have some very important heroes. I'm older and jaded now, and I don't need heroes. But I look back on the heroes of my youth, people whom I looked up to and who helped form me, by my imitation or my admiration, and I approve of my early choices. I've already written about Kurt Vonnegut. He will always be a hero. I can't get enough of him. When he was still writing regularly, getting a new Vonnegut book was like getting a new Beatles album. Something very special. Something you wanted to roll around on your tongue and savor. It was only new once.

Another hero of mine, from the time that I went through some major league changes, is the great R. Crumb. Anyone interested in a little taste of his greatness can go here Along with his unique, brilliant, instantly recognizable, and beautiful artistic style, comes his brilliant, twisted, hip, yet unhip point of view. His unbridled id tickled my unbridled id. I'll never forget reading Despair #1. It was perfect, cover to cover. Funny, insightful, outrageous, just plain cool. He is a fan of the music of the early 20th century and of the blues and the pioneers of the blues. Well words don't work. See his work. There's quite a bit of it on the web. Go see what I saw. And if you want to see a nexus of two towering talents, have a look at the cover of the single greatest rock album ever made, Cheap Thrills by Janis Joplin. A perfect package for a perfect work of art. R. Crumb - An American treasure.

Let's Make Up and Be Friends

2005-01-21T20:26:00.000-05:00

When I started this thing, I was deep in the hole of depression following the debacle. I had no stomach for the news. And I managed to write some stuff that I kind of liked. But it couldn't last. The beast was so outrageously evil, so audacious. And the nation was so sick with his hate. This thing got away from me. I said what I had to. But of course, nobody saw it. And it made no difference.

So here's the thing. He has fucked up the country beyond recognition. Every time you think he can't get more insane, he will top himself. Every time it appears he will be stood up to, he will simply drive another nail into the coffin.

And some day, maybe far off in the distance, history will tell the truth that today's opiated masses miss in their reverie.

So let's just say it only going to get worse and leave it at that. Don't say I didn't warn ya.

Now, I'm gonna have some fun.

Rice's Nose Actually Grew When She Said This One

2005-01-19T17:55:00.000-05:00

But they note that Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the committee, "dismissed as 'malarkey' Ms. Rice's assertion that 120,000 Iraqi troops had been trained. He said that based on his own interviews on trips in Iraq, the actual number of fully trained Iraqis was closer to 4,000."

Required Reading

2005-01-19T17:40:00.000-05:00

This is an excerpt from Condoleeza Rice's confirmation hearing. When exposed as the ruthless liar that she is, she resorted to the "I will not sit here and allow you to impugn my honor and integrity" card. Barbara Boxer didn't have to impugn her honor and integrity. She did it all by herself and has been doing it since 2001. This excerpt is from the LA Times.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-011805boxertext_wr,0,7859017.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Boxer, Rice Exchange Pointed Words

Following is a transcript of Sen. Barbara Boxer's remarks and Condoleezza Rice's response at Rice's confirmation hearing as provided by Federal News Service.

SEN. BOXER: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Rice, for agreeing to stay as long as it takes, because some of us do have a lot of questions.

And, Senator Lugar, you are a very fair chairman, and I wanted to say to the new members also welcome -- and you'll enjoy this committee, because we have such a great chairman and such a terrific ranking member, and we really do a lot of things in a bipartisan way, unlike other committees. And I think you're going to enjoy your time here.

Dr. Rice, before I get to my formal remarks, you no doubt will be confirmed -- that's at least what we think. And if you're going to become the voice of diplomacy -- this is just a helpful point -- when Senator Voinovich mentioned the issue of tsunami relief, you said -- your first words were, "The tsunami was a wonderful opportunity for us." Now, the tsunami was one of the worst tragedies of our lifetime -- one of the worst -- and it's going to have a 10-year impact on rebuilding that area. I was very disappointed in your statement. I think you blew the opportunity. You mention it as part of one sentence. And I would hope to work with you on this, because children are suffering, we're worried they're going to get in the sex trade. This thing is a disaster, a true natural disaster and a human disaster of great proportions, and I hope that the State Department will take a huge lead under your leadership in helping those folks in the long range.

Well, Mr. Chairman, again I thank you. I am -- Dr. Rice, I was glad you mentioned Martin Luther King -- it was very appropriate, given everything. And he also said, Martin Luther King, quote, "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter." And one of the things that matters most to my people in California and the people in America is this war in Iraq.

Now, it took you to page three of your testimony to mention the word "Iraq." You said very little really about it, and only in the questioning have we been able to get into some areas. Perhaps you agree with President Bush, who said all that's been resolved. I'm quoting today's Post: "Bush said in an interview last week with the Washington Post that the '04 election was a moment of accountability for the decisions he made in Iraq." But today's Washington Post/ABC poll found that 58 percent disapprove of his handling of the situation, to 40 percent who approve -- and only 44 percent said the war was worth fighting.

So in your statement it takes you to page three to mention the word "Iraq." Then you mention it in the context of elections -- which is fine -- but you never even mention indirectly the 1,366 American troops that have died, or the 10,372 who have been wounded -- many mentally, as a report that I read over the weekend that maybe a third will come home and need help because of what they saw -- it's been so traumatic to them. And 25 percent of those dead are from my home state. And this from a war that was based on what everyone now says, including your own administration, were falsehoods about WMDs, weapons of mass destruction. And I've had tens of thousands of people from all over the country say that they disagree -- although they respect the president -- they disagree that this administration and the people in it shouldn't be held accountable. I don't know if you saw the movie, "The Fog of War" -- war is a nightmare, you know that. Colin Powell I think was the most eloquent I've heard on it, because he's seen it himself -- he's been there and done it. And I don't want to have you in a circumstance where you're writing something years later about the fog of war. And I'm fearful if we don't see some changes here we're going to have trouble.

And I think the way we should start is by trying to set the record straight on some of the things you said going into this war. Now, since 9/11 we've been engaged in a just fight against terror. And I, like Senator Feingold and everyone here who was in the Senate at the time, voted to go after Osama bin Laden and to go after the Taliban, and to defeat al Qaeda. And you say they have left territory -- that's not true. Your own documents show that al Qaeda has expanded from 45 countries in '01 to more than 60 countries today.

Well, with you in the lead role, Dr. Rice, we went into Iraq. I want to read you a paragraph that best expresses my views, and ask my staff if they would hold this up -- and I believe the views of millions of Californians and Americans. It was written by one of the world's experts on terrorism, Peter Bergen, five months ago. He wrote: "What we have done in Iraq is what bin Laden could not have hoped for in his wildest dreams: We invaded an oil-rich Muslim nation in the heart of the Middle East, the very type of imperial adventure bin Laden has long predicted was the U.S.'s long-term goal in the region. We deposed the secular socialist Saddam, whom bin Laden has long despised, ignited Sunni and Shi'a fundamentalist fervor in Iraq, and have now provoked a defensive jihad that has galvanized jihad- minded Muslims around the world. It's hard to imagine a set of policies better designed to sabotage the war on terror." This conclusion was reiterated last Thursday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director's think tank, which released a report saying that Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of professionalized terrorists.

That's your own administration's CIA. NIC chairman Robert Hutchings said Iraq is, quote, "a magnet for international terrorist activity."

And this was not the case in '01. And I have great proof of it, including a State Department document that lists every country -- could you hold that up? -- in which al Qaeda operated prior to 9/11. And you can see the countries; no mention of Iraq. And this booklet was signed off on by the president of the United States, George W. Bush. It was put out by George Bush's State Department, and he signed it. There was no al Qaeda activity there -- no cells.

Now, the war was sold to the American people, as Chief of Staff to President Bush Andy Card said, like a "new product." Those were his words. Remember, he said, "You don't roll out a new product in the summer." Now, you rolled out the idea and then you had to convince the people, as you made your case with the president.

And I personally believe -- this is my personal view -- that your loyalty to the mission you were given, to sell this war, overwhelmed your respect for the truth. And I don't say it lightly, and I'm going to go into the documents that show your statements and the facts at the time.

Now, I don't want the families of those 1,366 troops that were killed or the 10,372 that were wounded to believe for a minute that their lives and their bodies were given in vain, because when your commander-in-chief asks you to sacrifice yourself for your country, it is the most noble thing you can do to answer that call.

I am giving their families, as we all are here, all the support they want and need. But I also will not shrink from questioning a war that was not built on the truth.

Now, perhaps the most well-known statement you've made was the one about Saddam Hussein launching a nuclear weapon on America with the image of, quote, quoting you, "a mushroom cloud." That image had to frighten every American into believing that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of annihilating them if he was not stopped. And I will be placing into the record a number of such statements you made which have not been consistent with the facts.

As the nominee for secretary of State, you must answer to the American people, and you are doing that now through this confirmation process. And I continue to stand in awe of our founders, who

understood that ultimately those of us in the highest positions of our government must be held accountable to the people we serve.

So I want to show you some statements that you made regarding the nuclear threat and the ability of Saddam to attack us. Now, September 5th -- let me get to the right package here. On July 30th, 2003, you were asked by PBS NewsHour's Gwen Ifill if you continued to stand by the claims you made about Saddam's nuclear program in the days and months leading up to the war.

In what appears to be an effort to downplay the nuclear-weapons scare tactics you used before the war, your answer was, and I quote, "It was a case that said he was trying to reconstitute. He's trying to acquire nuclear weapons. Nobody ever said that it was going to be the next year." So that's what you said to the American people on television -- "Nobody ever said it was going to be the next year."

Well, that wasn't true, because nine months before you said this to the American people, what had George Bush said, President Bush, at his speech at the Cincinnati Museum Center? "If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy or steal an amount of highly-enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year."

So the president tells the people there could be a weapon. Nine months later you said no one ever said he could have a weapon in a year, when in fact the president said it.

And here's the real kicker. On October 10th, '04, on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, three months ago, you were asked about CIA Director Tenet's remark that prior to the war he had, quote, "made it clear to the White House that he thought the nuclear-weapons program was much weaker than the program to develop other WMDs. Your response was this: "The intelligence assessment was that he was reconstituting his nuclear program; that, left unchecked, he would have a nuclear weapon by the end of the year."

So here you are, first contradicting the president and then contradicting yourself. So it's hard to even ask you a question about this, because you are on the record basically taking two sides of an issue. And this does not serve the American people.

If it served your purpose to downplay the threat of nuclear weapons, you said, "No one said he's going to have it in a year." But then later, when you thought that perhaps you were on more solid ground with the American people because at the time the war was probably popular, or more popular, you'd say, "We thought he was going to have a weapon within a year."

And this is -- the question is, this is a pattern here of what I see from you on this issue, on the issue of the aluminum tubes, on the issue of whether al Qaeda was actually involved in Iraq, which you've said many times. And in my rounds -- I don't have any questions on

this round, because I'm just laying this out; I do have questions on further rounds about similar contradictions. It's very troubling.

You know, if you were rolling out a new product like a can opener, who would care about what we said? But this product is a war, and people are dead and dying, and people are now saying they're not going to go back because of what they experienced there. And it's very serious.

And as much as I want to look ahead -- and we will work together on a myriad of issues -- it's hard for me to let go of this war, because people are still dying. And you have not laid out an exit strategy. You've not set up a timetable.

And you don't seem to be willing to, A, admit a mistake, or give any indication of what you're going to do to forcefully involve others. As a matter of fact, you've said more misstatements; that the territory of the terrorists has been shrinking when your own administration says it's now expanded to 60 countries. So I am deeply troubled.

MS. RICE: Senator, may I respond?

SEN. LUGAR: Yes, let me just say that I appreciate the importance of Senator Boxer's statement. That's why we allowed the statement to continue for several more minutes of time.

SEN. BOXER: I'm sorry, I lost track of time.

SEN. LUGAR: But clearly you ought to have the right to respond. Then, at that point, we're going to have a recess. But will you please give your response?

MS. RICE: Yes. Senator, I am more than aware of the stakes that we face in Iraq, and I was more than aware of the stakes of going to war in Iraq. I mourn and honor -- I mourn the dead and honor their service, because we have asked American men and women in uniform to do the hardest thing, which is to go and defend freedom and give others an opportunity to build a free society, which will make us safer.

Senator, I have to say that I have never, ever lost respect for the truth in the service of anything. It is not my nature. It is not my character. And I would hope that we can have this conversation and discuss what happened before and what went on before and what I said without impugning my credibility or my integrity.

The fact is that we did face a very difficult intelligence challenge in trying to understand what Saddam Hussein had in terms of weapons of mass destruction. We knew something about him. We knew that he had -- we had gone to war with him twice in the past, in 1991 and in 1998.

We knew that he continued to shoot at American aircraft in the no-fly zone as we tried to enforce the resolutions of U.N. Security -- that the U.N. Security Council had passed. We knew that he continued to threaten his neighbors. We knew that he was an implacable enemy of the United States who did cavort with terrorists.

We knew that he was the world's most dangerous man in the world's most dangerous region. And we knew that in terms of weapons of mass destruction, he had sought them before, tried to build them before, that he had an undetected biological weapons program that we didn't learn of until 1995, that he was closer to a nuclear weapon in 1991 than anybody thought. And we knew, most importantly, that he had used weapons of mass destruction.

That was the context that frankly made us awfully suspicious when he refused to account for his weapons-of-mass-destruction programs despite repeated Security Council resolutions and despite the fact that he was given one last chance to comply with Resolution 1441.

Now, there were lots of data points about his weapons-of-mass- destruction programs. Some were right and some were not. But what

was right was that there was an unbreakable link between Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction. That is something that Charlie Duelfer, in his report of the Iraq survey group, has made very clear, that Saddam Hussein intended to continue his weapons-of-mass- destruction activities, that he had laboratories that were run by his security services. I could go on and on.

But Senator Boxer, we went to war not because of aluminum tubes. We went to war because this was the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a man against whom we had gone to war before, who threatened his neighbors, who threatened our interests, who was one of the world's most brutal dictators. And it was high time to get rid of him, and I'm glad that we're rid of him.

Now, as to the statement about territory and the terrorist groups, I was referring to the fact that the al Qaeda organization of Osama bin Laden, which once trained openly in Afghanistan, which once ran with impunity in places like Pakistan, can no longer count on hospitable territory from which to carry out their activities.

In the places where they are, they're being sought and run down and arrested and pursued in ways that they never were before. So we can have a semantic discussion about what it means to take or lose territory, but I don't think it's a matter of misstatement to say that the loss of Afghanistan, the loss of the northwest frontier of Pakistan, the loss of running with impunity in places like Saudi Arabia, the fact that now intelligence networks and law enforcement networks pursue them worldwide, means that they have lost territory where they can operate with impunity.

SEN. BOXER: Mr. Chairman, I'm going to take 30 seconds, with your permission. First of all, Charles Duelfer said, and I quote -- here it is; I ask unanimous consent to place in the record Charlie Duelfer's report --

SEN. LUGAR: It will be placed in the record.

SEN. BOXER: -- in which he says, "Although Saddam clearly assigned a high value to the nuclear progress and talent that had been developed up to '91, the program ended and the intellectual capital decayed in the succeeding years."

Here's the point. You and I could sit here and go back and forth and present our arguments, and maybe somebody watching a debate would pick one or the other, depending on their own views. But I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in the facts. So when I ask you these questions, I'm going to show you your words, not my words.

And, if I might say, again you said you're aware of the stakes in Iraq; we sent our beautiful people -- and thank you, thank you so much for your comments about them -- to defend freedom. You sent them in there because of weapons of mass destruction. Later, the mission changed when there were none. I have your quotes on it. I have the president's quotes on it.

And everybody admits it but you that that was the reason for the war. And then, once we're in there, now it moves to a different mission, which is great. We all want to give democracy and freedom everywhere we can possibly do it. But let's not rewrite history. It's too soon to do that.

MS. RICE: Senator Boxer, I would refer you to the president's speech before the American Enterprise Institute in February, prior to the war, in which he talked about the fact that, yes, there was the threat of weapons of mass destruction, but he also talked to the strategic threat that Saddam Hussein was to the region.

Saddam Hussein was a threat, yes, because he was trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction. And, yes, we thought that he had stockpiles which he did not have. We had problems with the intelligence. We are all, as a collective polity of the United States, trying to deal with ways to get better intelligence.

But it wasn't just weapons of mass destruction. He was also a place -- his territory was a place where terrorists were welcomed, where he paid suicide bombers to bomb Israel, where he had used Scuds against Israel in the past.

And so we knew what his intentions were in the region; where he had attacked his neighbors before and, in fact, tried to annex Kuwait; where we had gone to war against him twice in the past. It was the total picture, Senator, not just weapons of mass destruction, that caused us to decide that, post-September 11th, it was finally time to deal with Saddam Hussein.

SEN. BOXER: Well, you should read what we voted on when we voted to support the war, which I did not, but most of my colleagues did. It was WMD, period. That was the reason and the causation for that, you know, particular vote.

But, again, I just feel you quote President Bush when it suits you but you contradicted him when he said, "Yes, Saddam could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year." You go on television nine months later and said, "Nobody ever said it was" --

MS. RICE: Senator, that was just a question of pointing out to people that there was an uncertainty. No one was saying that he would have to have a weapon within a year for it to be worth it to go to war.

SEN. BOXER: Well, if you can't admit to this mistake, I hope that you'll --

MS. RICE: Senator, we can have this discussion in any way that you would like. But I really hope that you will refrain from impugning my integrity. Thank you very much.

SEN. BOXER: I'm not. I'm just quoting what you said. You contradicted the president and you contradicted yourself.

MS. RICE: Senator, I'm happy to continue the discussion, but I really hope that you will not imply that I take the truth lightly.

SEN. LUGAR: Let me intervene at this point. Now we've had four hours of good hearing, and we thank all members for their constancy. We're going to recess, and I'm going to suggest we come back at 2:30. Is that convenient for you, Dr. Rice?

MS. RICE: Perfect.

SEN. LUGAR: Very well. We recess until 2:30.

© Federal News Service

The Brilliant Maureen Dowd

2005-01-08T22:03:00.000-05:00

January 9, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Defining Victory Down
By MAUREEN DOWD
New York Times
WASHINGTON

The president prides himself on being a pig-headed guy. He is determined to win in Iraq even if he is not winning in Iraq.

So get ready for a Mohammedan mountain of spin defining victory down. Come what may - civil war over oil, Iranian-style fatwas du jour or men on prayer rugs reciting the Koran all day on the Iraqi TV network our own geniuses created - this administration will call it a triumph.

Even for a White House steeped in hooey, it's a challenge. President Bush will have to emulate the parsing and prevaricating he disdained in his predecessor: It depends on what the meaning of the word "win" is.

The president's still got a paper bag over his head, claiming that the daily horrors out of Iraq reflect just a few soreheads standing in the way of a glorious democracy, even though his commander of ground forces there concedes that the areas where more than half of Iraqis live are not secure enough for them to vote - an acknowledgment that the insurgency is resilient and growing. It's like saying Montana and North Dakota are safe to vote, but New York, Philadelphia and L.A. are not. What's a little disenfranchisement among friends?

"I know it's hard, but it's hard for a reason," Mr. Bush said on Friday, a day after seven G.I.'s and two marines died. "And the reason it's hard is because there are a handful of folks who fear freedom." If it's just a handful, how come it's so hard?

Then the president added: "And I look at the elections as a - as a - you know, as a - as - as a historical marker for our Iraq policy."

Well, that's clear. Mr. Bush is huddled in his bubble, but he's in a pickle. The administration that had no plan for what to do with Iraq when it got it, now has no plan for getting out.

The mood in Washington about our misadventure seemed to grow darker last week, maybe because lawmakers were back after visiting with their increasingly worried constituents and - even more alarming - visiting Iraq, where you still can't drive from the Baghdad airport to the Green Zone without fearing for your life.

"It's going to be ugly," Joe Biden told Charlie Rose about the election.

The arrogant Bush war council never admits a mistake. Paul Wolfowitz, a walking mistake, said on Friday he's been asked to remain in the administration. But the "idealists," as the myopic dunderheads think of themselves, are obviously worried enough, now that Mr. Bush is safely re-elected, to let a little reality seep in. Rummy tapped a respected retired four-star general to go to Iraq this week for an open-ended review of the entire military meshugas.

Mr. Wolfowitz, who devised the debacle in Iraq, is kept on, while Brent Scowcroft, Poppy Bush's lieutenant who warned Junior not to go into Iraq, is pushed out as chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. That's the backward nature of this beast: Deceive, you're golden; tell the truth, you're gone.

Mr. Scowcroft was not deterred. Like Banquo's ghost, he clanked around last week, disputing the president's absurdly sunny forecasts for Iraq, and noting dryly that this administration had turned the word "realist" into a "pejorative." He predicted that the elections "have the great potential for deepening the conflict" by exacerbating the divisions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. He worried that there would be "an incipient civil war," and said the best chance for the U.S. to avoid anarchy was to turn over the operation to the less inflammatory U.N. or NATO.

Mr. Scowcroft appeared at the New America Foundation with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, who declared the Iraq war a moral, political and military failure. If we can't send 500,000 troops, spend $500 billion and agree to resume the draft, then the conflict should be "terminated," he said, adding that far from the Jeffersonian democracy Mr. Bush extols, the most we can hope for is a Shiite-controlled theocracy.

The Iraqi election that was meant to be the solution to the problem - like the installation of a new Iraqi government and the transfer of sovereignty and all the other steps that were supposed to make things better - may actually be making things worse. The election is going to expand the control of the Shiite theocrats, even beyond what their numbers would entitle them to have, because of the way the Bush team has set it up and the danger that if you're a Sunni, the vote you cast may be your last.

It is a lesson never learned: Matters of state and the heart that start with a lie rarely end well.

Wise to Bush's Game

2005-01-08T13:22:00.000-05:00

Bush Paints His Goals As 'Crises'
President Reprises A First-Term Tactic

By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 8, 2005; Page A01

President Bush had great success in his first term by defining crises that demanded decisive responses. Now, as he begins a second term, Bush is returning to the same tactic to accomplish three longtime conservative goals.

Warning of the need for urgent action on his Social Security plan, Bush says the "crisis is now" for a system even the most pessimistic observers say will take in more in taxes than it pays out in benefits well into the next decade.

He calls the proliferation of medical liability lawsuits a "crisis in America" that can be fixed only by limiting a patient's right to sue for large damages. And Bush has repeatedly accused Senate Democrats of creating a "vacancy crisis" on the federal bench by refusing to confirm a small percentage of his judicial nominees.

This strategy helped Bush win support for the war in Iraq, tax cuts and education policies, as well as reclaim the White House. What is unclear is whether the same approach will work, given the battering to the administration's credibility over its Iraq claims and a new Democratic campaign accusing Bush of crying wolf.

"This White House had made an art of creating crisis where a crisis does not exist," said Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.).

Painting a grim picture of problems is as old as politics itself. But Democrats and some presidential scholars say there is a danger for Bush if he appears to stoke fears for political gain. The Bush administration was criticized throughout the campaign -- and before -- for its repeated prewar warnings of Saddam Hussein's deadly weapons cache, which turned out to be based on faulty intelligence and proved largely untrue. Democrats contend Bush also exaggerated the nation's economic problems to justify tax cuts, terrorist threats to convince the public of the need for restrictions on civil liberties, and John F. Kerry's record to win a second term.

"One of the key problems of this form of rhetorical leadership" is discerning the difference "between a genuine and manufactured crisis," said Jeffrey K. Tulis, author "The Rhetorical Presidency" and a government professor at the University of Texas. "People do respond to crisis -- if you think there is one, you tend to support the leader. The danger there is if it appears there is not one, you can have a credibility problem."

A crisis, of course, is often in the eye of the elected. Webster's Dictionary defines it as "an unstable situation of extreme danger or difficulty." To Bush, vacancies on the federal bench, high-dollar medical liability lawsuits and the strained Social Security system all fit the definition.

But there is a political strategy behind the rhetorical technique, too. The president is convinced that lawmakers -- and the public -- are not inclined to tackle difficult issues unless "crisis is upon them."

In a Dec. 20 news conference, the president explained. "Many times, legislative bodies will not react unless the crisis is apparent, crisis is upon them," Bush said, discussing Social Security. "And so for a period of time, we're going to have to explain to members of Congress that crisis is here."

Four days earlier, he told participants at an economic conference how central this concept is to White House leadership. "A lot of government, if the truth be known, is crisis-oriented management," he said. "We wait and wait and wait, and then crisis is upon us and everybody demands a solution."

But are programs such as Social Security really in crisis? There is strong disagreement between Bush and Democrats. The president, for instance, has described the Social Security program as being in crisis in more than a dozen speeches, statements and news conferences since the Nov. 2 election. "You may not feel it, your constituents may not be overwhelming you with letters demanding a fix now, but the crisis is now," he said last month.

The crisis, as Bush explains, is this: A decade or so from now the Social Security system will begin paying out more in benefits than it takes in payroll taxes because there will be higher percentage of older Americans than there is today. From that point, the system, if unchanged, will create a $3.7 trillion shortfall by 2075, or $10.4 trillion if calculated over eternity, that future generations will be forced to pay for. The crisis, in effect, is not fixing the problem before it spreads out of control, according to Bush.

But Bush's chief solution -- allowing younger workers to divert a portion of their 6.2 percent payroll tax into private investment accounts -- will do nothing to avert it unless it is accompanied by a reduction in future guaranteed benefits or other changes to the retirement program, according to many experts on Social Security.

"It is a crisis created in the mind of the White House because they want to take care of the fat cats on Wall Street," Reid said. He argued that Social Security is primed to pay out full benefits until 2055 -- even if no changes are made. Many Democrats propose small and gradual changes such as raising the payroll tax or reducing future benefits, perhaps just for the wealthy, to head off problems. Reid and most Democrats oppose private Social Security accounts.

As for medical malpractice, Bush says greedy trial lawyers are driving up health care costs for consumers and driving good doctors out of business by filing frivolous lawsuits. "It's crisis because it affects lives and health care," said Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman.

Bush used the word "crisis" four times Thursday in a campaign-style speech in Collinsville, Ill., where he blamed lawsuits for depriving Americans, especially those in rural areas, of quality physicians to deliver babies and save lives. "It is a societal issue that we must deal with," he said. "We don't want our little towns . . . not having any health care."

Both sides agree there is major health care problem in some states and localities where doctors are fleeing because of skyrocketing medical malpractice insurance costs. But there is widespread disagreement about how pervasive the problem is and who is to blame.

In 2002, the last year for which complete figures are available, malpractice costs amounted to less than 2 percent of health care costs, according to the Congressional Budget Office. "A reduction of 25 percent to 30 percent in malpractice costs would lower health care costs by only 0.4 percent to 0.5 percent, and the likely effect on health insurance premiums would be comparably small," according to the CBO study. Still, several areas are suffering from a shrinking number of doctors.

Reid said the insurance companies, which set the rates for physicians, are to blame, not the trial lawyers.

Finally, Bush accuses Democrats of creating a "vacancy crisis" on the courts by opposing his nominees. Republicans claim Democrats have abused the Senate filibuster by blocking 10 of the president's 229 judicial nominees in his first term -- although confirmation of Bush nominees exceeds, in most cases, the first-term records of presidents going back to Ronald Reagan. "Does that sound like a crisis? Only if you failed math really badly," Reid said.

More on Bush's Failure

2005-01-02T22:56:00.000-05:00

From the Village Voice

Desperately Seeking Dubya
White House Swamped by Tsunami Response
by James Ridgeway, with Nicole Duarte
December 29th, 2004 6:01 PM

WASHINGTON, D.C.—President’s Bush’s disappearing act in the face of one of the world’s greatest natural catastrophes in recent memory just raises new questions about what he’s all about. For the rich blue blood to kick back on his Texas ranch while an entire region of the globe attempts to recover from the tsunami that appears to have killed more than 100,000 people—many of them children—is beyond belief.

The president did pause to call for a coordinated disaster relief team, but it wasn't enough to keep even bureaucrats in Washington from finding his behavior odd. “Kind of freaky” was the way one of them put it to The Washington Post.

While Bush stayed home, his aides were playing politics, looking askance at the move by former president Clinton, who almost immediately spoke up from Great Britain about the need for coordinated international response. "Actions speak louder than words," a top Bush aide told the Post, referring to Bush’s view of his appropriate role. But by the time the White House had started damage control on its tsumani response, Clinton, not Bush, had become the voice of the American conscience.

The U.S. is formally pledged to give upwards of $35 million in relief, compared to the EU’s $40 million and Japan’s $30 million. And when you compare the tsunami aid with spending on the Iraq war, for which Congress has appropriated $80 billion-plus, our contribution is peanuts. Even compared with this year's Wall Street bonuses, totaling $15.9 billion, it seems piddling.

American officials are talking about eventually giving $1 billion in aid over, but that will have to be approved by Congress.

As for the U.N. official’s comment on Monday about us being stingy, the president had little patience. "Well, I felt like the person who made that statement was very misguided and ill-informed," Bush told the AP from his Texas ranch. "We're a very generous, kindhearted nation, and, you know, what you're beginning to see is a typical response from America."

The NY TIMES Sees it as I Do

2004-12-30T01:03:00.000-05:00

December 30, 2004
EDITORIAL
Are We Stingy? Yes

President Bush finally roused himself yesterday from his vacation in Crawford, Tex., to telephone his sympathy to the leaders of India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia, and to speak publicly about the devastation of Sunday's tsunamis in Asia. He also hurried to put as much distance as possible between himself and America's initial measly aid offer of $15 million, and he took issue with an earlier statement by the United Nations' emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, who had called the overall aid efforts by rich Western nations "stingy." "The person who made that statement was very misguided and ill informed," the president said.

We beg to differ. Mr. Egeland was right on target. We hope Secretary of State Colin Powell was privately embarrassed when, two days into a catastrophic disaster that hit 12 of the world's poorer countries and will cost billions of dollars to meliorate, he held a press conference to say that America, the world's richest nation, would contribute $15 million. That's less than half of what Republicans plan to spend on the Bush inaugural festivities.

The American aid figure for the current disaster is now $35 million, and we applaud Mr. Bush's turnaround. But $35 million remains a miserly drop in the bucket, and is in keeping with the pitiful amount of the United States budget that we allocate for nonmilitary foreign aid. According to a poll, most Americans believe the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on aid to poor countries; it actually spends well under a quarter of 1 percent.

Bush administration officials help create that perception gap. Fuming at the charge of stinginess, Mr. Powell pointed to disaster relief and said the United States "has given more aid in the last four years than any other nation or combination of nations in the world." But for development aid, America gave $16.2 billion in 2003; the European Union gave $37.1 billion. In 2002, those numbers were $13.2 billion for America, and $29.9 billion for Europe.

Making things worse, we often pledge more money than we actually deliver. Victims of the earthquake in Bam, Iran, a year ago are still living in tents because aid, including ours, has not materialized in the amounts pledged. And back in 2002, Mr. Bush announced his Millennium Challenge account to give African countries development assistance of up to $5 billion a year, but the account has yet to disperse a single dollar.

Mr. Bush said yesterday that the $35 million we've now pledged "is only the beginning" of the United States' recovery effort. Let's hope that is true, and that this time, our actions will match our promises.

Bravo NY Times for having the balls to speak the truth! And while we're at it, does Colin Powell know no limit to how low he will grovel to Bush, even at this late date? How could he look the world in the eye and get indignant about our pathetic reaction?

I Am Ashamed to be an American

2004-12-29T18:30:00.000-05:00

When 3,000 Americans died in the attacks of 9/11/01, there was an outpouring of sympathy, and outrage, and support from all over the world. By sunset of that terrible day, there was probably not a single nation that failed to weigh in with expressions of horror and solidarity.

When probably hundreds of thousands of human beings died and perhaps millions were displaced in an unspeakable horror, the President of the United States, the leader of the free world, the spokesman for all Americans cleared brush and rode his bicycle on his ranch, not showing his face or saying a word for three days.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder rushed back to Berlin from his vacation to address the disaster. The only American voice heard was that of Bill Clinton who expressed horror and appealed for international relief on the BBC. The administration's response was to trash Clinton.

Explaining the about-face, a White House official said: "The president wanted to be fully briefed on our efforts. He didn't want to make a symbolic statement about 'We feel your pain.' [Washington Post]"

"Actions speak louder than words," a top Bush aide said, describing the president's view of his appropriate role.

So true! And what action spoke louder than Bush's absence of words? The Americans pledged $15 million! 15 million dollars! Bush is probably going to spend more than that on his inauguration. He then reacted indignantly when the United Nations called America stingy. What else can one call it? In a tragedy of unimaginable magnitude, $15 million? This is America? I am ashamed.

There was an international outpouring of support after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and even some administration officials familiar with relief efforts said they were surprised that Bush had not appeared personally to comment on the tsunami tragedy. "It's kind of freaky," a senior career official said.

These are Bush's true colors.

But here's the real tragedy. Indonesia is the largest Islamic nation in the world, and one of the hardest hit. What better way to show to the Islamic world, to show to the entire world, that America is a nation of compassion and of caring, and not a selfish, resource-gobbling, exploiting, war mongering people?

Why are we hated in the world, Mr. Bush? Because they hate us for our freedoms, as you so cynically love to say? No. Because of your inexcusable treatment of the rest of the world. You are the ugliest of ugly Americans. Your contempt for your own people is exceeded only by your contempt for the people of the rest of the world.

Instead of all the propoganda efforts, instead of all the infiltration and espionage, instead of all the disinformation campaigns, you should be leading the world in the effort to help these poor people.

You call yourself a Christian, Mr. Bush? Shame on you.

All are urged to read this story. See who you elected to lead us and lead the world.

Magnificent Poetry

2004-12-28T21:03:00.000-05:00

And through the window in the wall
Comes streaming in on sunlight wings
A million bright ambassadors of morning

Anyone care to identify that sublime snippet?

An equally beautiful evocation of an almost identical image:

...And the sun poured in like butterscotch and stuck to all my senses

I'm sure you all know that one.

How the fuck would he know?

2004-12-26T22:42:00.000-05:00

"It takes over your mind."

Senator Orrin Hatch, in The Washington Times, speaking about pornography, 12.20.04

Well, now that I think about it, it DID take over the mind of the best man available to be a Supreme Court justice when little Georgie's daddy nominated Clarence Thomas. It must have taken over Orrin's mind too.That must be why he destroyed the reputation of Anita Hill in order to save the ass of Mr. Justice Monkey Spanker. Not that there's anything wrong with being a pervert. As long as you cop to it, rather than smearing an innocent person who stepped forward to do right by her country, giving them the information they needed to make an informed judgement as to whether they wanted a sexual harrasser on the Court, right Clarence?

How DID your wife feel about your porn jones and your repeated clumsy attempts to bed Ms. Hill? ("How did this pubic hair get on my Coke can?" Jesus Christ, why didn't I ever try that line when I tried to bag babes?)

FULL DISCLOURE: I, like most American males, (even you Christian choirboys) have a porn monkey on my back. My life is all the richer for it. God bless porn. And when I'm nominated for Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America, I will proudly admit it to Mr. Hatch and the Senate Judiciary Committee.

How much influence peddling money do you take from porn purveyors like your good friend Rupert Murdoch, Orrin? I'll bet he shtups you good.

[POSTSCRIPT: Well wouldja look at this:

Contributor
MURDOCH, KEITH RUPERT
WASHINGTON, DC 20001
NEWS CORPORATION
Recipient:
HATCH, ORRIN G (R)
Senate - UT
HATCH ELECTION COMMITTEE INC $1,000
primary 09/29/98]

Stale

2004-12-26T19:59:00.000-05:00

There's nothing more stale than Christmas music the day after Christmas.

Merry Christmas

2004-12-24T07:52:00.000-05:00

washingtonpost.com

The True Values of The Day

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Friday, December 24, 2004; Page A17

No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor. The self-sufficient, the proud, those who, because they have everything, look down on others, those who have no need even of God -- for them there will be no Christmas. Only the poor, the hungry, those who need someone to come on their behalf, will have that someone. That someone is God, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Without poverty of spirit there can be no abundance of God.

-- the late Archbishop Oscar

Romero of El Salvador

This is supposed to be the year when moral values dominated politics. On the eve of Christmas, let's talk about values.

In any given city this Christmas, homeless people will not be looking forward to opening presents. They will be lucky to have a place to go at all. They will, by Archbishop Romero's radical and demanding definition, be the true participants in Christmas. But it's unlikely that the rest of us will think much about them. Isn't that a question of values?

Unemployed parents who love their children as much as the rest of us love ours won't have the same chance to show them materially the love they feel in their hearts. God willing, their kids will understand. But some kids, watching other kids in the television ads, might wonder: Why can those parents give their kids all that stuff that my parents can't give me? Isn't that a question of values?

In the fall, I got the chance to moderate a post-election panel at Fordham University's Center on Religion and Culture in New York. Former senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska noted that on Jan. 1, the quotas protecting what's left of the U.S. textile and apparel industry will end. "Over a 12-month period," he said, "three or four million jobs that are currently paying $8 to $10 an hour are going bye-bye unless those jobs are protected.

"Now, I hazard to guess that most of those individuals will move into the ranks of poverty," Kerrey went on. "They'll move to minimum-wage jobs, which is 20 or 30 percent under poverty today. . . . If it's a young woman who gets pregnant and says, 'I don't have health insurance anymore. I can't -- it's expensive to raise a baby right today' -- that they're more likely to choose an abortion even if Bush appoints anti-Roe v. Wade justices that overturn it, because they're going to make what I consider to be a tragic choice out of economic necessity."

Whatever you think of abortion or, for that matter, free trade, who can argue with Kerrey's central assertion: that the abortion rate is more likely to go up when economic opportunities for the poor are curtailed? (As Mark W. Roche of Notre Dame noted in the New York Times this fall, the abortion rate dropped by 11 percent during the prosperous years of the Clinton presidency.) Shouldn't all who care about abortion be passionately committed to changing the economic circumstances in which women make their choices? Isn't that a question of values?

In many parts of our country, parents who lack health insurance are wondering if they will be around for their children next Christmas. A mother has a lump on her breast and worries about the cost of having it checked out. A father has chronic chest pains but decides that seeing a cardiologist would be too expensive. They ought to get help. Isn't that a question of values?

In Iraq, young men and women serving their country complain of equipment shortages and wonder why their leaders didn't send enough troops in the first place. Could it be that acknowledging the true cost of the Iraqi invasion at the outset might have endangered all those tax cuts -- and might have reduced support for the war? Isn't that a question of values?

Archbishop Romero was murdered on March 24, 1980, because he chose to stand with El Salvador's poor against a repressive regime. "Brothers, you came from our own people," Romero told soldiers in El Salvador's army. "You are killing your own brothers. . . . In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cry rises to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you: Stop the repression."

How many among the cardinals and bishops and pastors and preachers and televangelists who now enjoy favor in high places would have the courage to do what Archbishop Romero did? In fairness, how many of the rest of us would? Isn't that a question of values?

A child was born in a manger because there was no room for his family anywhere else. Wasn't that a question of values?

postchat@aol.com

Bob Herbert

2004-12-24T01:21:00.000-05:00

December 24, 2004
NY TIMES OP-ED COLUMNIST
Families Pay the Price
By BOB HERBERT

"It's like watching your son playing in traffic, and there's nothing you can do." - Janet Bellows, mother of a soldier who has been assigned to a second tour in Iraq.

Back in the 1960's, when it seemed as if every other draftee in the Army was being sent to Vietnam, I was sent off to Korea, where I was assigned to the intelligence office of an engineer battalion.

Twenty years old and half a world away from home, I looked forward to mail call the way junkies craved their next fix. My teenage sister, Sandy, got all of her high school girlfriends to write to me, which led some of the guys in my unit to think I was some kind of Don Juan. I considered it impolite to correct any misconceptions they might have had.

You could depend on the mail for an emotional lift - most of the time. But there were times when I would open an envelope and read, in the inky handwriting of my mother or father or sister, that a friend of mine, someone I had grown up with or gone to school with, or a new friend I had met in the Army, had been killed in Vietnam. Just like that. Gone. Life over at 18, 19, 20.

I can still remember the weird feelings that would come over me in those surreal moments, including the irrational idea that I was somehow responsible for the death. In the twisted logic of grief, I would feel that if I had never opened the envelope, the person would still be alive. I remember being overwhelmed with the desire to reseal the letter in the envelope and bring my dead friend back to life.

This week's hideous attack in Mosul reminded me of those long ago days. Once again American troops sent on a fool's errand are coming home in coffins, or without their right arms or left legs, or paralyzed, or so messed up mentally they'll never be the same. Troops are being shoved two or three times into the furnace of Iraq by astonishingly incompetent leaders who have been unable or unwilling to provide them with the proper training, adequate equipment or even a clearly defined mission.

It is a mind-boggling tragedy. And the suffering goes far beyond the men and women targeted by the insurgents. Each death in Iraq blows a hole in a family and sets off concentric circles of grief that touch everyone else who knew and cared for the fallen soldier. If the human stakes were understood well enough by the political leaders of this country, it might make them a little more reluctant to launch foolish, unnecessary and ultimately unwinnable wars.

Lisa Hoffman and Annette Rainville of the Scripps Howard News Service have reported, in an extremely moving article, that nearly 900 American children have lost a parent to the war in Iraq. More than 40 fathers died without seeing their babies.

The article begins with a description of a deeply sad 4-year-old named Jack Shanaberger, whose father was killed in an ambush in March. Jack told his mother he didn't want to be a father when he grew up. "I don't want to be a daddy," he said, "because daddies die."

Six female soldiers who died in the war left a total of 10 children. This is a new form of wartime heartbreak for the U.S.

We have completely lost our way with this fiasco in Iraq. The president seems almost perversely out of touch. "The idea of democracy taking hold in what was a place of tyranny and hatred and destruction is such a hopeful moment in the history of the world," he said this week.

The truth, of course, is that we can't even secure the road to the Baghdad airport, or protect our own troops lining up for lunch inside a military compound. The coming elections are a slapstick version of democracy. International observers won't even go to Iraq to monitor the elections because it's too dangerous. They'll be watching, as if through binoculars, from Jordan.

Nobody has a plan. We don't have enough troops to secure the country, and the Iraqi forces have shown neither the strength nor the will to do it themselves. Election officials are being murdered in the streets. The insurgency is growing in both strength and sophistication. At least three more marines and one soldier were killed yesterday, ensuring the grimmest of holidays for their families and loved ones.

One of the things that President Bush might consider while on his current vacation is whether there are any limits to the price our troops should be prepared to pay for his misadventure in Iraq, or whether the suffering and dying will simply go on indefinitely.

E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com

Like Charlie Brown and the Football

2004-12-23T13:07:00.000-05:00

Iraq Reality Check
By Molly Ivins
AlterNet.org

Wednesday 22 December 2004

Since the season should require us to do at least some thinking about the killing being done in our name, let's do a reality check.

It's hard to make Iraq into a suitable Christmas topic, unless one bears news of Our Boys getting home-knit socks and home-baked cookies from Lard Lake or Fluterville. Mere mention is enough to drive full-grown adults to doctored eggnog. Nevertheless, since the season should require us to do at least some thinking about the killing being done in our name, let's do a reality check.

The Sabbath gasbags, as The Nation's Calvin Trillin calls our Sunday TV news commentators, distinguished themselves yet again. They're trying to gang up on Donald Rumsfeld on the theory that the entire Iraq war would have worked out just dandy if it hadn't been for Rumsfeld's mistakes.

This shark attack was precipitated by blood in the water to wit, Rumsfeld's dismissive answer to a soldier inquiring as to why his unit's vehicles weren't armored. Rumsfeld treated the soldier exactly the way he treats members of the press or anyone else who raises questions about the war: as though he were an impertinent fool. It didn't look good on television.

For those now waxing indignant about Rumsfeld and the whole situation concerning armor, I remind you that when "60 Minutes" carried exactly this story in October, as did other news outlets, the right wing promptly pounced on it as further evidence of supposed liberal bias in the media.

Rumsfeld's mistakes may constitute an impressive list, but is there any evidence that this war could ever have worked out well? I know, anyone who asks that question is promptly denounced by the right wing, insisting, as the media watchdog group FAIR puts it, "that the war is going well and anyone who feels otherwise is a defeatist liberal uninterested in bringing democracy to the Middle East."

So far, we have not brought democracy to Iraq. We have brought blood, killing and death. Our so-called liberal media do a pathetically inadequate job of telling us about the war because, first, it is too dangerous to cover most of the country, and second, reporters who are critical of the endeavor are blacklisted by our military. The few American reporters who speak Arabic are sending hair-raising reports.

For evidence that the whole enterprise needed to be rethought from the beginning, I cite the Los Angeles Times story from June about the iconic image of this war the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein in the great square in Baghdad. It was actually a U.S. Army psy-ops stunt staged to look like a spontaneous action by Iraqis.

"It was a Marine colonel not joyous Iraqi civilians, as was widely assumed from the TV images who decided to topple the statue, the Army report said. And it was a quick-thinking Army psychological operations team that made it appear to be a spontaneous Iraqi undertaking."

From then 'til this past election, when Bush kept insisting no more troops were necessary, we have been treated like mushrooms. On Dec. 1, the administration announced 12,000 more troops would be added, mostly by extending the tours of those due to come home and drafting very surprised National Guardsmen.

It's hard to imagine any group more credulous than the American media in relation to this administration. It's like Charlie Brown and the football.

The latest talking point is that all the nay-sayers will be proven wrong and the elections in Iraq will work a treat. Well, OK, we all hope so. But what is the evidence? The attacks go up day after day they're coming from all over the country.

The U.S. response is that these attacks are the last gasp of a desperate insurgency trying to buffalo Iraqis before the elections, and it will all collapse after that. That is exactly what the administration told us before the "handover" to the puppet Iraqi government last June. The attacks went up from 20 to 30 to 50 and now to 100 a day.

Meanwhile, we keep bombing Iraqis. I sometimes think Americans don't realize that. This is not "precision," "pinpoint" bombing it's bombing. It kills innocent people. The best we can hope for from this election is that the Shiite slate endorsed by al-Sistani wins. That would be the slate pledged to ask the United States to leave the minute it gets in. With any luck, they'll ask politely.

Elsewhere on our suffering orb, genocide proceeds in Darfur. The United States won't act. The United Nations won't act. We're all... just letting it happen. Again.

The new film "Hotel Rwanda" has come to remind us all of the moral complicity of those who do nothing but sit and watch. The least we can do in honor of the season is send money to the relief organizations. And you might, if you don't have hand-cramp from writing all your cards wishing for peace on earth, write your congressman as well.

I Did Not Choose to Live in a Theocracy-But Here I Am

2004-12-23T10:42:00.000-05:00

Christmas Eve of Destruction
By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: December 23, 2004, New York Times

In Iraq, as Yogi Berra would say, the future ain't what it used to be.

Now that the election's over, our leaders think it's safe to experiment with a little candor.

President Bush has finally acknowledged that the Iraqis can't hack it as far as securing their own country, which means, of course, that America has no exit strategy for its troops, who will soon number 150,000.

News organizations led with the story, even though the president was only saying something that everybody has known to be true for a year. The White House's policy on Iraq has gone from a total charade to a limited modified hangout. Mr. Bush is conceding the obvious, that the Iraqi security forces aren't perfect, so he doesn't have to concede the truth: that Iraq is now so dire no one knows how or when we can get out.

If this fiasco ever made sense to anybody, it doesn't any more.

John McCain, who lent his considerable credibility to Mr. Bush during the campaign and vouched for the president and his war, now concedes that he has no confidence in Donald Rumsfeld.

And Rummy admitted yesterday that his feelings got hurt when people accused him of being insensitive to the fact that he arrogantly sent his troops into a sinkhole of carnage - a vicious, persistent insurgency - without the proper armor, equipment, backup or preparation.

The subdued defense chief further admitted that despite all the American kids who gave their lives in Mosul on the cusp of Christmas, battling an enemy they can't see in a war fought over weapons that didn't exist, we're not heading toward the democratic halcyon Mr. Bush promised.

"I think looking for a peaceful Iraq after the elections would be a mistake," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

His disgraceful admission that his condolence letters to the families of soldiers killed in Iraq were signed by machine - "I have directed that in the future I sign each letter," he said in a Strangelovian statement - is redolent of the myopia that has led to the dystopia.

The Bushies are betting a lot on the January election, even though a Shiite-dominated government will further alienate the Sunnis - and even though Iraq may be run by an Iranian-influenced ayatollah. That would mean that Iraq would have a leadership legitimized by us to hate us.

International election observers say it's too dangerous to actually come in and monitor the vote in person; they're going to "assess" the vote from the safety of Amman, Jordan. Isn't that like refereeing a football game while sitting in a downtown bar?

The administration hopes that once the Iraqis understand they have their own government, that will be a turning point and they will realize their country is worth fighting for. But this is the latest in a long list of turning points that turn out to be cul-de-sacs.

From the capture of Saddam to the departure of Paul Bremer and the assault on Falluja, there have been many false horizons for peace.

The U.S. military can't even protect our troops when they're eating lunch in a supposedly secure space - even after the Mosul base commanders had been warned of a "Beirut-style" attack three weeks before - because the Iraqi security forces and support staff have been infiltrated by insurgency spies.

Each milestone, each thing that is supposed to enable us to get some traction and change the basic dynamic in Iraq, comes and goes without the security getting any better. The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that a major U.S. contractor, Contrack International Inc., had dropped out of the multibillion-dollar effort to rebuild Iraq, "raising new worries about the country's growing violence and its effect on reconstruction."

The Bush crowd thought it could get in, get out, scare the Iranians and Syrians, and remove the bulk of our forces within several months.

But now we're in, and it's the allies, contractors and election watchdogs who want out.

Aside from his scintilla of candor, Mr. Bush is still not leveling with us. As he said at his press conference on Monday, "the enemies of freedom" know that "a democratic Iraq will be a decisive blow to their ambitions because free people will never choose to live in tyranny."

They may choose to live in a theocracy, though. Americans did.

E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com

Right on the Nose

2004-12-21T06:14:00.000-05:00

Social Security Slam-Dunk

By Richard Cohen
Washington Post, Tuesday, December 21, 2004; Page A25

Why do I think that the Social Security crisis -- "the crisis is now," President Bush said recently -- is the domestic version of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Could it be that I am hearing the same sense of false urgency? Could it be that the predicted insolvency of the Social Security system is something other than -- yes -- "a slam-dunk"? I wonder.

My cynicism -- like yours -- has been earned the hard way. George Bush has a charming tendency to make up his mind first and then seek the evidence for his decision. This is how he went about deciding to go to war in Iraq -- telling Don Rumsfeld to produce a war plan in the days right after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, even though there was no evidence Iraq was responsible. It did not matter. Bush wanted war with Iraq, Bush got it -- and now we're stuck with it.

Read the rest here.

We've Turned the Corner and We're Not Going Back?

2004-12-18T13:04:00.000-05:00

White House Predicts Slower Growth in 2005

-New York Times, December 18, 2004

You've got what you voted for, America.

So Many Mothers' Children Dead for Pigheaded Ideology

2004-12-18T07:04:00.000-05:00

Our 'Best Equipped' Army? Baloney!

By Mark Shields
Washington Post, Saturday, December 18, 2004

In the three years immediately after Pearl Harbor, the United States, a nation of 132 million people with a gross domestic product of less than $100 billion, produced the following to win World War II:

• 296,429 aircraft.

• 102,351 tanks.

• 87,620 warships.

• 372,431 artillery pieces.

• 2,455,694 trucks.

Compare those heroic achievements with the current dismal supply record as the U.S. war in Iraq is fast approaching its third year and the United States, now a nation of nearly 300 million with defense spending in excess of half a trillion dollars:

• Only 5,910 of the 19,584 Humvees that U.S. troops in Iraq depend on are protected with factory-installed armor.

• More than 8,000 of the 9,128 medium and heavyweight trucks transporting soldiers and supplies in that war zone are without armor.

Because of the incompetence or indifference of this nation's civilian leadership of the war, Americans in Iraq are living with an increased risk of death.

All the official transcripts of White House signing ceremonies for every defense spending bill, all the presidential proclamations for Veterans Day and every prepared statement by the secretary of defense before a congressional committee include the same stock phrase. U.S. troops are invariably referred to as "the best trained, best equipped" ever. Best equipped? To call today's American troops in Iraq the "best equipped" is more than an exaggeration; it is bilge, baloney and cruel.

An America coming out of the Great Depression somehow found the leadership and the will to build and deploy around the globe 2.5 million trucks in the same period of time that the incumbent U.S. government has failed to get 30,000 fully armored vehicles to Iraq.

The Bush administration has appropriated $34.3 billion on a theoretical missile defense system -- which proved again this week to be an expensive dud in its first test in two years, when the "kill vehicle" never got off the ground to intercept the target missile carrying a mock warhead -- but has been able up to now, according to congressional budget authorities, to spend just $2 billion to armor the vehicles of Americans under fire.

Nobody has been more persistent in holding the Pentagon and the White House accountable than maverick Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.), who serves on the House Armed Services Committee. "When I visit Iraq," says Taylor, "I ride around in an armored vehicle, and I am sure the secretary [of defense] does as well. That should be the single standard: If it is good enough for the big shots, it is good enough for every American soldier."

The armor is truly a matter of life and death, as the Mississippi congressman explains: "Half of all our casualties, half of all our deaths and half of all our wounded are the direct result of improvised explosive devices [IEDs, or homemade bombs]." But when Washington officials visit Iraq, their traveling security includes not only heavily armored vehicles but also radio-signal jammers, which can disable the IEDs.

What makes Taylor authentically angry is the inexcusable failure of the U.S. brass -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, he names -- to provide radio jammers (which cost $10,000 each) to the fewer than 30,000 U.S. military vehicles in Iraq.

How many U.S. vehicles are now equipped with jammers? The Pentagon insists the figure is classified. According to Taylor, the number is "minuscule." But because he is offended by visiting corporate chief executives and deputy assistant secretaries of weights and measures getting better protection than Marine lance corporals and Army privates, Taylor would not appreciate the fact that funds for the jammers have probably already been dedicated to underwriting the next failed missile defense test.

"A jammer costs about $10,000, and it probably costs about $10,000 to bury a dead GI. I believe Americans would rather spend the $10,000 to prevent the GI's funeral being held." Gene Taylor is right. Every American has a moral obligation to make certain that the nation's troops truly are the world's "best equipped."

For shame, America.

Wisdom

2004-12-17T21:02:00.000-05:00

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts."
- Daniel Patrick Moynahan

Borborygmy

2004-12-12T10:47:00.000-05:00

As a lover of language, I carry around in my crowded skull a list of words that make me laugh or just strike me as strange. For example, I learned the word eelymosynary from the great senator from North Carolina, Sam Ervin, the man who helped save America (so we could have Bush?) by chairing the Senate Watergate Committee and beginning the end of the personality disordered Nixon (whom I look back upon with a certain amount of nostalgia now that America is being systematically destroyed).

And who can forget borborygmy, a delightfully descriptive word?

Can any of the one of you who read this thing step forward and tell us what these words mean (without resorting to the dictionary!)?

Here, lady and gentleman, is the strangest word in the English language. A word that I find myself saying over and over, rolling it about on the tongue of my mind.

The strangest word in the English language:

lunch

To All You Mothers with Children in Iraq...

2004-12-11T10:36:00.000-05:00

...Look how much your beloved commander-in-chief cares about the lives of your beloved children. When John Kerry told you over and over that your children were sent to war without armor, he was ridiculed. All the while your commander-in-chief knew your children were dying because they were naked in the face of insurgents' explosives. He had a blank check. Money was no object. Production was NOT maxed out. HE DID NOTHING. Not until Rummy, whose genius idea it was to go to war unprepared, publicly humiliated himself in front of those he sent to die, 1000 combat deaths later, did your commander-in-chief do anything. Once again, your commander-in-chief's policy is, if confronted with the truth, and you don't give a shit, give 'em the back of your hand, lie!

Here, have a look:

Army orders increase in armor production

By Bryan Bender, Boston Globe Staff | December 11, 2004

WASHINGTON -- The Army yesterday ordered the main supplier of armored Humvees to ramp up production from 450 to 550 vehicles per month after coming under intense criticism in recent days that it has not utilized all its manufacturing capacity to protect soldiers in Iraq from roadside bombs.

After meeting with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld -- who faced tough questioning from troops on Wednesday about the lack of armored vehicles in Iraq -- Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey called the CEO of Armor Holdings in Jacksonville, Fla., and asked the company to increase production as soon as it can.

So Moms, why now and not before March, 2003? Anyone care to venture an answer?

OK, Sheep, Get With the Herd!

2004-12-10T19:00:00.000-05:00

All together now, you sheep, who fill your snouts so willingly at the trough of Bushian propoganda:

There is a problem and we need to gut social security.

Have a look at what your handlers will be drumming into your malleable little heads, courtesy of Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post:

The word of the day at the White House yesterday was "problem" -- as in, the Social Security problem.

If you only heard a sound bite or two from President Bush's brief comments after a meeting with the Social Security Trustees yesterday, you really missed the bruising lack of subtlety with which he -- and then his spokesman -- pounded away at this one message.

"We had a good discussion about the problems that face the Social Security system," Bush told the press, "and there is a recognition among the experts that we have a problem. And the problem is America is getting older and that there are fewer people to pay into the system to support a baby boomer generation which is about to retire.

"Therefore, the question is, does this country have the will to address the problem. I think it must. I think we have a responsibility to solve problems before they become acute. . . . [W]e must be willing to address this problem. . . . [T]he time is ready for us to solve this problem. . . . I think what's really important in the discussions is to understand the size of the problem. . . . What's important, Steve, is before we begin any discussion is to understand the scope of the problem. And that's why these trustees are vital in helping educate the American people, and Congress, as to the size of the problem. And I will not prejudge any solution. I think it's very important for the first step to be a common understanding of the size of the problem. . . .

"We have got a member of what was called the Moynihan Commission with us. They studied this problem in detail. They made some suggestions about how to move forward in solving the problem. Much of my thinking has been colored by the work of the late Senator Moynihan and the other members of the commission who took a lot of time to take a look at this problem, and who came up with some creative suggestions."

And, Bush said in closing: "We will not raise payroll taxes to solve this problem."

A couple hours later, press secretary Scott McClellan took to the podium for his press briefing. And in case anyone missed it: "We all need to agree that this is a real problem," he said. Over and over again.

It's like I wrote in my Tuesday column: An essential part of the Bush campaign to add private accounts to Social Security is getting the public to believe that there is in fact an imminent crisis.

That's step one; step two is to getting people to believe private accounts will help; step three is to getting people to believe that borrowing another $2 trillion or so right now to pay for them is a good idea.

And in pretty much all of today's coverage, as the White House surely hoped, the existence of some sort of amorphous, alarming Social Security problem was taken as a given. Step one seemingly accomplished.

See how it works, sheepies? You ate it up during the election. Now you will be obedient little sheep nodding earnestly as you walk to your slaughter. "Bahhhhhh we have a prahhhhhhblem! Bahhhhhhhhrow a couple of trillion dahhhhhhhlers! Cut my benefits! Raise my age of retahhhhhhhhrment! Enrich the brokers with lots of fees! The federal government is bahhhhhhhd and we need to cripple and kill it forever. Bahhhhhhhh, we sure do have a prahhhhhhhhhblem." There's a good little robot!

Now, why don't you automata go ahead and see what the truth is. Need more? Here, have some. Isn't that amazing? There is no problem! You're being lied to again to further their ultra-ideological agenda which is entirely antithetical to your interests. Go figure.

Bless you, Paul Krugman. And all of you friends who are not sheep, why don't you share this with your congressheep. If you act like sheep, they will treat you like sheep.

Playing Soldier

2004-12-09T06:25:00.000-05:00

The brilliant Maureen Dowd is hip to this guy. Go read the full column, "Lost in a Masquerade," at www.nytimes.com. Meanwhile:

The president loves dressing up to play soldier. To rally Camp Pendleton marines facing extended deployments in Iraq, he got gussied up in an Ike D-Day-style jacket, with epaulets and a big presidential seal on one lapel and his name and "Commander in Chief" on the other.

When he really had a chance to put on a uniform and go someplace where the enemy was invisible and there was no exit strategy and our government was not leveling with us about how bad it was, W. wasn't so high on the idea. But now that it's just a masquerade - giving a morale boost to troops heading off someplace where the enemy's invisible and there's no exit strategy and the government's not leveling with us about how bad it is - hey, man, it's cool.

So It Wasn't Just Me

2004-12-08T22:03:00.000-05:00

Dan Froomkin, the excellent columnist from the Washington Post can also see that the emperor has no clothes. Or in this case, embarrassing clothes. From today's column:

What's With the Jacket?

Bush wore a specially embroidered sand-colored military-style jacket yesterday, raising many eyebrows.

The jacket, complete with epaulets, appears to be a Marine tanker jacket, an all-purpose, all-weather uniform regulation jacket.

Bush's was specially stitched with the inscription: "George W. Bush, Commander in Chief." It is also embroidered with the presidential seal and the American flag.

Here it is.

In the immortal words of young Alvy Singer, "What an asshole!"

Georgie Plays Dress Up!

2004-12-07T20:02:00.000-05:00

What the fuck is Junior wearing?!

I remember Eisenhower. Ike was the president. You're no Ike.

In case you can't read it, the jacket reads, "Commander-in-Chief."
At long last, Georgie,have you no shame?

Why the Internet is Great

2004-12-07T18:45:00.000-05:00

Just when you think you'll never come up with anything worth reading for this stupid thing, life throws you a gift. Thanks to Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post, I give you www.breakupnews.com !

Need a sample? Here, have this one:

Singh/Athanandh

Reshma Singh, 20, has broken up with “useless waste of space” Shaun Athanandh, 32, because having sex with him was less pleasurable than “masturbating with a stick.”

Enough said.

The Sage Advice of a Beloved Mentor

2004-12-02T20:36:00.000-05:00

My mentor is a brilliant, successful professor, world reknowned in our field, and a wonderful man. I haven't seen him in at least 20 years. I left the field. His name is Jack Katz. Hi Jack!

This is a man who thrived in a life in academia. He knew a lot of things. Here is something he once told me:

"If you don't go right back to school for your Ph.D., you never will. You reach an age when you can't put up with this artificial bullshit anymore." (Sorry all you kids putting up with that artificial bullshit. I didn't mean to burst your bubble). (Sorry to my wife Janet, who is once again putting up with that artificial bullshit, and doing her usual great job of it).

Here is what my mentor once told me:

"Why do something today, if you can do it tomorrow, right?"

Buffalo

2004-11-27T08:42:00.000-05:00

When I lived in Buffalo, it had to be the bowling capital of the world.

Cleveland

2004-11-24T19:38:00.000-05:00

When I lived in Cleveland, it had to be the LSD capital of the world.

Oh...And the Christians...

2004-11-24T18:09:00.000-05:00

JESUS CHRIST!!!!!!!!!!! GIVE IT A FUCKING REST ALREADY, WILLYA????

There . Now I feel better.

A Plug

2004-11-24T18:01:00.000-05:00

I've been mindlessly leafing through blogs for some days now. Infinite Singaporeans. Adolescents Ad Infinitum. College girls who still think they can figure this thing out. (Girls: You can't figure this thing out. Stop wasting your time and get on with it.) But I've found one. Go here:

http://freddiesblog.blogspot.com/

First there was Moe & Curly...

2004-11-22T21:07:00.000-05:00

...and of course, Archie Bunker and Meathead kept the tradition going. But if this doesn't raise this old vaudeville gag to its highest form, I don't know what does. There's got to be a Pulitzer Prize in this photo.

The Worst Thing in the World

2004-11-18T23:26:00.000-05:00

Maybe some of you dear readers (all one of you) recognize Room 101. No? Maybe this will help:

'The worst thing in the world,' said O'Brien, 'varies from individual to individual. It may be burial alive, or death by fire, or by drowning, or by impalement, or fifty other deaths. There are cases where it is some quite trivial thing, not even fatal.'

He had moved a little to one side, so that Winston had a better view of the thing on the table. It was an oblong wire cage with a handle on top for carrying it by. Fixed to the front of it was something that looked like a fencing mask, with the concave side outwards. Although it was three or four metres away from him, he could see that the cage was divided lengthways into two compartments, and that there was some kind of creature in each. They were rats.

'In your case,' said O'Brien, 'the worst thing in the world happens to be rats.'

I'm not smart enough or clever enough to have thought of using Room 101 as the name of this place. I wish I were. I will freely credit my inspiration , the person I borrowed it from. He is another of my heroes and I'll write about him one of these days. You've never heard of him.

Meanwhile, tell me. What is YOUR worst thing in the world?

Boxers

2004-11-17T20:17:00.000-05:00

As I stare obsessively at this thing I wrote yesterday, the pattern surrounding this page sneaks insidiously into my consciousness, looking remarkably like a pattern on a pair of boxer shorts. Very masculine, isn't it? I've never, not even once, worn boxer shorts.

If I ever wear a pair of boxer shorts and especially if they have a pattern even remotely like the one on this page, please put me out of my misery.

Wherein I Meet My Hero, Kurt Vonnegut, and he Turns Out to be Just Like Kurt Vonnegut

2004-11-16T22:46:00.000-05:00

Kurt Vonnegut is one of my heroes. One of my few heroes. Perhaps my only hero. I would have to think about that. He has been one of my heroes since I was a teenager, lo those many years ago. Having read everything he's ever written, and him writing in such a unique voice, one gets an impression of what he is actually like. In real life. He is.

It was around 1991. I used to take my little boy, Foster, to Concerts for Young People by the Little Orchestra Society at Avery Fischer Hall in Lincoln Center, New York City. Something my mother used to take me to when I was a little boy, lo those MANY, MANY years ago. I recommend it to all of you young parents in the New York area. Maybe you'll be lucky and your kids will grow up with a love for music, especially good music.

On this particular Saturday, in early spring I would guess, Mr. Vonnegut's wife, the photographer Jill Krementz was appearing with the Little Orchestra Society, in conjunction with a new photo book of hers aimed at children. I think she was set up at a table, signing books, before the concert began. And who do I see sort of hanging out, completely unnoticed in the vicinity of this table, but the great man himself. He did nothing to draw attention to himself. I think I was the only person in this crowded lobby to recognize him. I was dumbfounded. I got chills. I said to little Foster, "Do you know who that is??" "No," he said. "That's Kurt Vonnegut!" I whispered. Predictably, he said, "Who?"

We went inside for the concert. Having subscribed for probably three years by then, our seats had gotten progressively better. We were on the aisle in about the fourth row of the orchestra that season. As we settled in to our seats, Mr. Vonnegut walked by and sat down in the aisle seat, two rows in front of us.

He spent the better part of the concert air conducting.

When the show was over, we found our way out of the auditorium, back into the lobby. Ms. Krementz was back at the book table. And Kurt Vonnegut was once again hanging out, leaning against a railing. He was doing nothing to draw attention to himself, and he got no attention for his efforts.

Being shy, and the type of person who would NEVER approach a celebrity, feeling I was invading his or her privacy, I did the only thing I could. I approached Kurt Vonnegut. I was compelled.

He didn't seem particularly alarmed. I said to him, "Mr. Vonnegut, I never do this, but I feel I have to tell you how much I've admired you for so much of my life." He looked at me and said, I can only assume referring to his air conducting, "How did I do?"