Snoop Bloggy Blog

2003-10-09T11:23:00.000-04:00

To the cronies go the spoils
Having trouble keeping track of all the Bush-Cheney pals who have their snouts in Iraq's trough? Here's a handy clip 'n' save guide!
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By Farhad Manjoo

Oct. 9, 2003 On Sept. 17, the Bush administration handed Congress a spending bill that reads like a bleeding-heart liberal's legislative fantasy, a massive, government-funded infrastructure revitalization program of the kind not seen since the days of FDR: It calls for $800 million for the police, $300 million for firefighters, and almost $3 billion for clean water systems. It sets aside tens of millions of dollars to build thousands of new public housing units, but it warns that much more money will be needed in the future. The bill allocates about $1 billion to spend on healthcare, including $150 million for a state-of-the-art children's hospital. There's even $5 million to build a women's center and a million dollars for a new museum.

Is George W. Bush finally displaying the compassion long advertised to run through his brand of conservatism? Not exactly. As you may have guessed, this particular plan isn't aimed at fixing the problems of Boston or Boise but those of Baghdad and Basra and Tikrit and Najaf. Congress is now debating -- and, after many adjustments, will likely approve -- the president's plan to rebuild Iraq's schools, hospitals, highways, prisons, the electricity grid, railroads, and every other institution of civilized society; of the $87 billion the administration seeks, about $20 billion is earmarked for Iraqi nation-building.

Iraq desperately needs rebuilding, and it might seem churlish to question what the administration has requested. But when the price tag is in the tens of billions, one can't help wondering: How much money will actually find its way into the hands of Iraqis? Who will profit from this reconstruction windfall?

In Congress, Democrats are asking the same questions -- and many are saying that the spending request is nothing but a huge gift to Bush's moneyed friends. "Item after item [in the request] reads like a government contractor's wish list," Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, wrote in a recent letter to the White House's Office of Management and Budget.

Is Waxman right? Is the rebuilding request tailor-made to pad the accounts of U.S. corporations, and in particular, those with good connections to the White House? It's hard to get definitive answers to this question, mostly because nobody seems to know how much money Iraq needs, and, consequently, whether the president's plan is too big, too small, or just right.

"I'm hard-pressed to criticize the particular numbers -- I can see an argument for why all of these things could be good for Iraq," says Bathsheba Crocker, a post-conflict reconstruction expert at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. "But that doesn't mean that the U.S. taxpayer can or should afford all of these things, and you do have to protect against padding of the contracts."

This reconstruction fog raises all sorts of vexing problems for the average concerned citizen. You want to support the rebuilding in Iraq, but you don't want to overpay. You want to make sure the Iraqis get what they need, but you're not too thrilled about Halliburton getting a blank check. It'd be great if the work was done in a transparent manner, but since when does a government program work like that? And is there a danger of the president's pals making off with the biggest prizes -- and are they trying to do that? Of course.

What you need is a guide to the main players in Iraq -- a handy list of the various interests who are winning, trying to win, losing, and trying not to lose. You need to know what makes the work in Iraq so expensive, and so prone to cozy political relationships. And you need to see why rebuilding the country is going to be a long, difficult, ugly process.

Fortunately, we have created such a guide for you:

The lobbyists. Late in September, the Washington newspaper The Hill reported that some of the president's closest political allies had created a new firm, New Bridge Strategies, whose main goal is to help corporations "evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the U.S.-led war in Iraq." The company, which is headed by Joe Allbaugh, Bush's chief of staff in Texas and his campaign manager in 2000, was not exactly hard to find -- it has a Web site that boasts of its intimate ties to government officials: "New Bridge Strategies principals have years of public policy experience," the site says. The company's directors "have held positions in the Reagan Administration and both Bush Administrations and are particularly well suited to working with international agencies in the executive branch, Department of Defense and the U.S. Agency for International Development, the American rebuilding apparatus and establishing early links to Congress." Other New Bridge partners include Ed Rogers, vice chairman of the lobbying firm Barbour Griffith & Rogers, and a close political aide to George H.W. Bush; and Lanny Griffith, also at Barbour Griffith, who served in several positions in Bush senior's White House, including as Southern political director in the 1988 campaign.

You might think it a bit unseemly for the president's close friends to use their proximity to power to profit from a war that the administration assured us had nothing to do with profiteering, but that's only because you're naive. According to Allbaugh and the others at New Bridge, having friends in high places is no reason not to make money; that's how things work in Washington, it's not at all unusual. "Because my friend is president of the United States, I'm supposed to check out of life?" Allbaugh asked the New York Times on Friday. (Nobody at New Bridge Strategies -- nor at any of Washington's other lobbying firms looking for work in Iraq -- returned Salon's repeated calls.) "I have nothing to hide. I'm straightforward. I deal my cards on top of the table," Allbaugh told the newspaper, and he added that there was in fact something honorable about working in Iraq. "We fought a war, we displaced a horrible, horrible regime, and as a part of that we have an obligation to help Iraqis. We can't just leave in the middle of the night."

On its Web site, New Bridge Strategies says that the business opportunities in Iraq are of an "unprecedented nature and scope," but what that means specifically is left up in the air. So far, it appears that New Bridge's only public client is MCT Corp., a cellular phone company based in Alexandria, Va., that has previously built phone systems in the former Soviet Union and Afghanistan. In August, MCT and New Bridge Strategies submitted a bid to build the mobile system in Iraq, but New Bridge's political ties do not appear to have helped it very much. On Monday, the Iraqi communications ministry announced that it had awarded mobile phone bids to three Middle Eastern firms.

But that may have just been New Bridge's bad luck. In Iraq, virtually everything that gets built is built with the approval, if not by decree, of Washington -- which is, after all, funding the entire endeavor. Undignified as it may appear, New Bridge's pitch is rather logical, and after the new spending bill is signed, it's likely that many companies will decide that the best way to get to Baghdad is by way of K Street.

And perhaps that's why New Bridge Strategies is not the only lobbying firm looking to push work in Iraq. On Oct. 2, the Washington Post reported that the Livingston Group, the firm headed by former Rep. Robert Livingston -- the Republican whose plans to become speaker of the House in 1998 unraveled when it was revealed that he'd carried on an extramarital affair -- is also quite interested in working for companies looking to take part in the Iraqi reconstruction. One firm Livingston is helping is De La Rue, a British paper company. De La Rue has already received a contract to print Iraq's new currency, and it wants to work on secure travel documents, too. A Livingston lobbyist told the Post that he was rather busy pitching De La Rue's case to a number of influential members of Congress. "We're trying to get the right people to ask the right questions of the right people," he said.

De La Rue, incidentally, provides a good indication of how lucrative working in Iraq can be. The company's fortunes had been flagging recently; in July, the Justice Department began an investigation of De La Rue to see if one of its subsidiaries was involved in a scheme to fix the prices of holographic security stickers used for Visa credit cards -- news of the investigation sank De La Rue's stock. Thanks to Iraq, things now look fine for the firm. In September, the company said that its profits would soar, mostly due to its reconstruction work.

Halliburton. In March, Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, signed a contract with the Defense Department to fight fires in Iraq in the event that Saddam Hussein tried to destroy his oil fields during the war. The contract seemed fishy from the start. It was awarded on a "no-bid" basis; only Halliburton was asked to do the work. The Defense Department has subsequently been suspiciously cagey about its details, slow to answer questions about the contract's size and specific purpose. Only in April, a month after it was signed, did the Army Corps of Engineers disclose (in response to questions from Henry Waxman) that the contract was potentially worth $7 billion to Halliburton. It took another month for the Army Corps to say that Halliburton would not only fix damaged oil facilities but would also operate oil centers and even distribute the oil. (Waxman's complete correspondence with the Army Corps is here.)

Why was Halliburton awarded this lucrative, expansive contract on a no-bid basis? To most people, the answer is obvious -- in the 1990s Halliburton was run by Vice President Dick Cheney. There is no proof that Cheney's ties to the company had anything to do with Halliburton's good fortune in Iraq, but there are enough clues to make you suspect the worst. Halliburton's story -- a no-bid contract, a friend in the highest place -- has all the hallmarks of cronyism, and it ought to stand as the model of how not to reconstruct Iraq.

Both Cheney and Halliburton say that he played no part in the awarding of the contract. "Nobody has produced one single shred of evidence that there's anything wrong or inappropriate here, nothing but innuendo, and -- basically they're political cheap shots is the way I would describe it," Cheney said on "Meet the Press" on Sept. 14. "I don't know any of the details of the contract because I deliberately stayed away from any information on that, but Halliburton is a fine company. And as I say -- and I have no reason to believe that anybody's done anything wrong or inappropriate here."

In an e-mail to Salon, Wendy Hall, a spokeswoman for Halliburton, echoed Cheney's denial of impropriety. "There have been many allegations that Halliburton received the contract for the reconstruction of Iraq because of political influence," she wrote. "Certainly it's easier to assign devious motives than to take the time to learn the truth." The real reason Halliburton was awarded the contract, Hall said, is because of "our unique combination of business experience in defense contracting, engineering and construction and oilfield services." Hall added that "Our employees in the Middle East are building housing, preparing meals, delivering the mail and providing many other vital services for our troops. Our Halliburton people are sharing the hardships and the risks. Three have lost their lives while working there."

At the same time, though, Halliburton has made quite a bit of money in Iraq. So far, it has received about $1.2 billion under the oilfield contract -- more money than any other firm working in Iraq. Moreover, Cheney's insistence that he has no financial stake in the company is dubious. Since he became vice president, Cheney has continued to receive checks in deferred compensation from the company -- he got almost $150,000 in 2001 and $162,000 in 2002, and he will keep getting money until 2006. The White House denies that this represents a financial interest in the company; because he purchased an insurance policy on the compensation, Cheney will get the money regardless of Halliburton's fortunes. In addition, he has agreed to donate the money to charity. In late September, however, the Congressional Research Service concluded that despite these measures, the paychecks represented an actual stake in Halliburton.

The web of coincident interests here is almost comical -- indeed, the most artful criticism of the Halliburton story, the one that several of its critics mention, is a joke David Letterman made on his show. The president "is asking Congress for $80 billion to help rebuild Iraq," Letterman said. "And when you make out that check, remember -- there are two L's in Halliburton." In September, the activist group American Family Voices featured Letterman's quip in an anti-Bush ad it ran in five states. Is this the image the Bush administration wants for its mission in Iraq?

There is perhaps one silver lining to Halliburton's dark deal with the government -- it has so offended lawmakers that they've decided to put an end to no-bid contracts. On Oct. 2, during its deliberations over the Iraq spending bill, the Senate passed an amendment that requires all contracts in Iraq to be awarded only after a rigorous bidding process has been conducted. The House is expected to follow suit.

Bechtel In its long history of government work, this privately owned San Francisco firm has built some of the largest public projects in the world -- including the Hoover Dam, the subway systems in San Francisco and Washington, the tunnel under the English Channel, and many American nuclear power plants -- and, at least according to its critics, it has also built something even more valuable: close connections to the most powerful people in the country. Former Reagan administration officials Caspar Weinberger and George Shultz have worked for the firm (Shultz is still on its board). In February, the company's CEO, Riley Bechtel, was named, along with dozens of other executives, to the president's Export Council, a White House trade advisory group.

Critics charge that it was Bechtel's ties to Republicans that helped it win one of the most lucrative Iraq rebuilding contracts -- a $680 million infrastructure development grant awarded by the U.S. Agency for International Development in April. (Since then, the contract has ballooned beyond that initial sum; according to the USAID, Bechtel has so far received more than $900 million in orders through the contract.)

While Bechtel is certainly a skilled player in the Iraq game, its operations are altogether more routine, and therefore more defensible, than those of Halliburton, a company with which it is frequently lumped together for criticism. Bechtel's contract with the government was awarded in a semi-competitive bidding process (foreign firms weren't invited to apply) and there's no sign that it benefited from special favors, beyond the favors that usually accrue to giants in the military industrial complex. The firm also maintains a Web site that is frequently updated with detailed information about its work in the country; nothing about its plans in Iraq are secret.

That's not to say Bechtel doesn't have its critics. In his letter to the OMB, Henry Waxman charged Bechtel with blocking Iraqi companies from participating in the rebuilding work. Waxman said that he's uncovered evidence showing that Bechtel requires local companies to carry expensive insurance plans in order to be considered fit to subcontract from Bechtel. Waxman also said that the type of contract Bechtel has with the government -- a "cost-plus" contract, in which Bechtel is paid a certain fixed fee over its costs, meaning that it's guaranteed to make money -- provides little incentive for the company to reduce costs by subcontracting to Iraqis. "It is easy to understand how this arrangement is lucrative for [Bechtel]," Waxman wrote. "But what is unclear is how these arrangements protect the interests of the U.S. taxpayer or further the goal of putting Iraqis to work rebuilding their own country."

Michael Kidder, a spokesman for the company, said that Waxman's assessment of Bechtel's work is simply incorrect. "The congressman's letter inaccurately described our method of hiring Iraqi subcontractors," Kidder said. "There is no bond industry in Iraq, but this lack of construction insurance has never prevented Bechtel from awarding any subcontracts to Iraqi firms. Following USAID's direction and their priorities, a vast majority of the subcontracting work Bechtel has awarded has gone to Iraqi subcontractors." Of the 133 subcontracts the company has awarded, 98 have gone to Iraqi firms, the company says on its Web site.

Since the eve of the invasion, when Bechtel's headquarters became a prime San Francisco protesting spot, the company has generally tried hard to counter the charge that it is profiteering from the war and that it won its contracts in Iraq through its political ties. Online, Bechtel has posted a list of "media inaccuracies" that it says the press routinely reports as fact. "Through endless repetition, rather than facts, Bechtel has gained an undeserved reputation as a secretive company that succeeds through powerful friends in high places," the site says. "Over the years, we have certainly built good relationships with important people. We network like anyone in business or the professions ... But the implication that Bechtel wins business or succeeds in a highly competitive marketplace through political connections is misguided and false."

Security guards. Iraq, as you may have heard, isn't exactly a pleasant place to do business, and when companies like Bechtel set up shop there, they're finding that thinly stretched American forces aren't always available to protect corporate interests. Instead of relying on the military for help, many companies are hiring their own protection -- elite security-service firms that provide executives with armed guards, convoys of Humvees, and all manner of amenities in order to stay alive in Baghdad. The security business is one of the few growth industries in postwar Iraq, a fact that can't be heartening to the Bush administration.

Security firms began gearing up for work in Iraq before the war, when they predicted that the chaos immediately following regime change would create temporary opportunities for their services. "We didn't know at that point how difficult it was going to be, and I think it's exceeded our expectations," says David Claridge, the managing director of Janusian, a British security firm working in Iraq. He says that few people in his business predicted "the longevity of the problem, the depth of the problem" in securing Iraq. "Probably everybody inside and outside government failed to estimate the situation."

There are at least 100 security firms working in Iraq today; most are British (Claridge says that the Brits are "regarded as the best, even by American customers") but some large American companies have won choice security contracts with the government. DynCorp, a subsidiary of CSC, an American military contractor, has been tapped to train Iraq's police force. Vinnell, a division of Northrop Grumman, is training the Iraqi army. (If you're a former Special Forces officer who can't find a job in America, you might want to consider working for Vinnell in Iraq.)

The unsafe operating conditions in Iraq have clearly hampered the rebuilding effort, and the need for private security firms likely accounts for the larger-than-expected reconstruction costs. "One of our major clients is entitled to protection from the U.S. military in Baghdad," Claridge says, "but waiting for them left three- or four-hour delays just for their convoy of Humvees to show up. For them the only real solution was to move to private security." Claridge adds: "There's a connection between security and reconstruction. The two have to move hand in hand, and private security has the capacity to make up what is missing in the coalition effort. There isn't capacity in the military to deal with the reconstruction process."

The French. On a trip to Paris in early October, Alan Larson, the undersecretary of state for economic affairs, told a business conference that the United States is quite willing to have French firms work in Iraq. "The door is open for French companies to participate in infrastructure contracts in Iraq," he said, according to AFP. "We're open to companies from all over the world regarding the rebuilding of Iraq."

Beyond that remark, however, it appears that few French companies are participating in the country, and the French government -- along with the Germans and just about everyone else in the world -- has pledged relatively small sums for the reconstruction effort. Late in October in Madrid, the United Nations will hold a donor conference to raise money for Iraq; the U.N. wants about $35 billion, but only about $1 billion has been pledged so far. One wonders how much more money we'd have available if Donald Rumsfeld would learn to measure his words.

The Iraqis and the Americans. The question of whether Iraqis will ultimately benefit or suffer as a result of the U.S. occupation is the most important, and freighted, issue of the war, and it can't be answered here. But it's important to note how firmly the financial fate of the average Iraqi citizen is now dependent on the continued goodwill of the average American taxpayer. At least for the next few years, until Iraq regains its oil production capacity, the country will run on U.S. dollars. And as we all share the same pool of money, our fortunes will be mutually exclusive: When the Iraqis get money, Americans will lose money, and vice versa. This situation cannot make for a fast friendship, and it's further complicated by the political imbalance: Because it's the Americans who get to vote, the Iraqis ought to be wary.

Indeed, the Iraqis are already starting to lose. After the president presented his reconstruction plan to Congress, lawmakers immediately began trimming it. In the House, Bill Young, the Florida Republican who chairs the Appropriations Committee, has "scrubbed" the bill of about $1.7 billion of the president's reconstruction request. Young deleted the $50 million the administration wanted to buy cars for the Iraq's traffic police; $153 million for "solid waste management," including the purchase of 40 trash trucks; $9 million for creating ZIP codes in the country; and the $150 million to build that advanced children's hospital in Basra.

Meanwhile, in the Senate, many Democrats and some Republicans are arguing that at least some of the money the U.S. provides to Iraq should be paid back when Iraq becomes self-sustaining. The Iraqis are obviously not pleased with this plan, and members of the governing council have cautioned senators that Iraq is already heavily burdened with Saddam Hussein's loans. But the idea of lending Iraq its reconstruction money has obvious political appeal in the U.S. -- Americans faced with a ballooning deficit and the hazy notion that Iraq is sitting on billions of dollars in oil wealth might think it only fair that Iraqis pitch in. As the conservative syndicated columnist Cal Thomas wrote recently, "Why should the Iraqis complain? It's their freedom we bought. Let them help pay for it."

But the Iraqis didn't ask for the war, and they didn't volunteer to pay for it. "I'm sympathetic to the argument that it would be nice if the U.S. could get paid back some of this money," says Bathsheba Crocker, the reconstruction expert at CSIS. "But I don't think the loan is the way to do it. I'm worried about how it looks to make Iraq fairly heavily indebted to the United States. It's not something that looks all that great given the heavy degree of suspicion about what our motives are here."

In other words, we wouldn't want to be in the position of reminding the Iraqis that, when they make their checks out for the reconstruction, there are two L's in Halliburton.

2003-10-08T14:58:00.000-04:00

Here are some interesting facts from the exit polls. Yes I am still a political geek.

ABC News' Langer, in his exit poll analysis: "In the end it was more about Gray Davis than about Arnold Schwarzenegger, and on Davis, the voters' judgment was harsh" (release, 10/8).

Highlights from the exit polls:

He Never Had A Chance? According to the Edison/Mitofsky exit poll, "many voters had in fact decided long ago to recall" Davis; 67% "decided on their vote more than a month ago and just 15 percent decided how they would vote on the recall in the campaign's final week" (CBS News polling unit, 10/8).

Dems Leave Home... According to the Los Angeles Times exit poll, "a quarter of liberals and at least 3 in 10 moderate Democrats" voted yes on the recall. Members of "traditional" Dem consituencies -- such as union members and Latinos -- "voted against the recall, but not in overwhelming numbers." Davis "found his strongest support among African American and Jewish voters." Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger "had a strong showing across the political spectrum." As for Bustamante, his standing as the "only prominent Democrat on the ballot did not deliver him unified Democratic support"; "fewer than 2 in 3 backed" him (Gold, Los Angeles Times, 10/8).

...Or, They Stay Home "Many" Dems, "ignoring please from party leaders ... stayed home." Dems comprise 44% of CA's regis. voters, "but made up only" 39% of voters in the 10/7 election, according to exit polls (Coile, San Francisco Chronicle, 10/8).

Union Support Diminshed, Too: While union members "came out against the recall at the polls" today by a 55% to 45% margin, "Davis' support among this group was not as strong today as it was in 2002," when 64% of union voters cast their vote for Davis, compared to "just" 30% for Simon (CBS News polling unit, 10/8).

The Latino Vote: According to Edison Media Research exit poll, among Latinos, 46% voted for the recall, while Schwarzenegger and McClintock combined took 40% in the replacement election; Bustamante nabbed 52% of the Latino vote (Weintraub, "California Insider," sacbee.com, 10/8).

About That Thursday Bombshell... The Los Angeles Times exit poll suggests "the groping stories had an effect" -- those voters who say they made up their minds before last weekend went 56%-44% for the recall, and 50%-32% for Schwarzenegger over Bustamante. Those who decided last weekend or later went 51%-49% for the recall and 38%-34% for Schwarzenegger over Bustamante ("California Insider," sacbee.com, 10/8).

ABC News notes that Schwarzenegger "had a slight gender gap, but not a garish one"; he did seven points better with men than with women, "but won both sexes" in the replacement ballot; "remarkably, he even won 20 percent of liberal women" (10/8).

Breaking Age Barriers: Among all voters surveyed, "a majority in every age group voted for Davis' recall," according to the Los Angeles Times exit poll. Further, Schwarzenegger "appeared to gain the most from first-time voters" (Los Angeles Times, 10/8).

However, a look at the Edison/Mitofsky exit numbers reveal that, among all age groups, Schwarzenegger actually had his poorest showing among the 18-29 age group (Hotline exit poll scouring, 10/8).

The Mod Squad: Schwarzenegger boasted a "strong showing" among moderates and indies, two groups of "swing voters" that "helped elect Davis twice, just as they had staked" ex-Gov. Pete Wilson (R) to two terms. On 10/7, mods and indies "returned to the GOP fold for the first time since the mid-1990s." Bustamante "fared poorly" among the two groups (Ritter, USA Today, 10/8).

Issues? Who Needs Issues? While 64% of voters said Schwarzenegger did not address the issues "in enough detail during his campaign," this "did not derail his effort to reach Sacramento"; among those who said he did not give enough specifics, 25% "still voted for him nonetheless (CBS News polling unit, 10/8).

Too Late For Davis To Run For Office There? The recall "was losing by wide margins" in eight of nine Bay area counties; "nowhere was the 'no vote stronger" than in San Francisco (Zamora/Chiang, San Francisco Chronicle, 10/8).

2003-10-08T11:32:00.000-04:00

AZ Pride Baby!

2003-10-03T10:23:00.000-04:00

For all of you October Birthdays out there you can check out who else was born on your birthday here

Happy Birthday to me. Check out all the fabulous people that were born today!

1916
James Herriot
W r i t e r

1925
Gore Vidal
W r i t e r

1941
Chubby Checker
M u s i c a l A r t i s t

1951
Lindsey Buckingham
M u s i c a l A r t i s t

1954
Stevie Ray Vaughan
M u s i c a l A r t i s t

1962
Tommy Lee
M u s i c a l A r t i s t

1969
Gwen Stefani
M u s i c a l A r t i s t

1971
Kevin Richardson
M u s i c a l A r t i s t

1973
Neve Campbell
A c t r e s s

2003-10-02T10:18:00.000-04:00

Good morning here are a few fun facts to start out your day from the LA Times:

Also, the Census Bureau reported recently that in 2002, the income for average families declined for the second consecutive year, poverty shot up by 1.7 million (the largest one-year increase since the elder Bush was president) and the number of Americans without health insurance grew by 2.4 million (again, the biggest annual increase since his father was in office).

2003-10-01T11:22:00.000-04:00

My friend Wendy Howell is working for Howard Dean as his director of LGBT outreach in New Hampshire. If you would like to give money to Dean you can do so at this link and help Wendy reach her personal fundraising goal she has set.

Wendy has taken a paycut to do this important work. She has made the amount of her pay cut the amount she is trying to raise for Dean. Donate here

2003-10-01T09:35:00.000-04:00

I just finished this article from the LA Times. If you are into Latino voting and politics -- its a good read. I dont get Latinos that vote Republican, are pro-187, pro Bush. It just doesnt make any sense to me.

Maybe I am being too quick to judge but I think they are vendidos. Either way its a political reality that those of us who want to affect change in CA and nationally are going to have to face eventually. In the meantime I am going to pray a la virgencita that Latinos turn out to vote next Tuesday and vote no on recall and yes for Bustamante. To read article go here: Latino Voters Can't Be Treated as a Bloc

2003-09-30T15:18:00.000-04:00

After a few weeks off to promote his book (which Joaquin recently purchased and returned after realizing it was just a collection of Krugman's NY Times articles nothing new) Krugman is back:Who's Sordid Now?

2003-09-30T12:29:00.000-04:00

WHEN YOU PIRATE MP3s, YOU'RE DOWNLOADING COMMUNISM!

2003-09-30T12:13:00.000-04:00

An article by one of my bestest friends in the world:AlterNet: Here Come the Metrosexuals

2003-09-26T12:40:00.000-04:00

People are always giving me shit about AZ and Republicans. It looks like the state may be changing:Just a third of Arizonans give thumbs up to Bush second term

2003-09-25T12:16:00.000-04:00

Just one more reason to get Bush out of office and begin to undo the worldwide damage this admin has done. I was so pissed when I read this article. Check it out:

BBC NEWS | Africa | US abortion rule 'hits Africa women'

2003-09-24T14:06:00.000-04:00

I just watched a very funny animated movie on Arianna's web page called The Special Interest Brothel . It features Davis, Bustamante, and Arnold in red speedos with Dick and Bush dancing in the background. Check it our for a smile!

2003-09-23T14:45:00.000-04:00

An open invitation to election fraud

Not only is the country's leading touch-screen voting system so badly designed that votes can be easily changed, but its manufacturer is run by a die-hard GOP donor who vowed to deliver his state for Bush next year.

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By Farhad Manjoo

Sept. 23, 2003 As if the public image of punch-card voting machines had not already been bruised and battered enough, on Sept. 15 the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals went for the K.O. Punch-card voting, a three-judge panel of the court said in its ruling halting the California gubernatorial recall election, is an embarrassment to our high-tech times: "Just as the black and white fava bean voting system of revolutionary times was replaced by paper balloting, and the paper ballot replaced by mechanical lever machine, newer technologies have emerged to replace the punch-card, including optical scanning and touch screen voting."

But according to Bev Harris, a writer who has spent more than a year investigating the shadowy world of the elections equipment industry, the replacement technologies the court cited may be worse -- much worse -- than the zany punch-card systems it finds so abhorrent. Specifically, Harris' research into Diebold, one of the largest providers of the new touch-screen systems, ought to give elections officials pause about mandating an all-electronic vote.

Harris has discovered that Diebold's voting software is so flawed that anyone with access to the system's computer can change the votes without leaving any record. On top of that, she's uncovered internal Diebold memos in which employees seem to suggest that the vulnerabilities are no big deal. The memos appear to be authentic -- Diebold even sent Harris a notice warning her that by posting the documents on the Web, she was infringing upon the company's intellectual property. Diebold did not return several calls for comment.

The problems Harris uncovered are not all that surprising; technologists have been warning of the potential for serious flaws in electronic voting systems -- especially touch-screen systems -- for years. In July, scientists at Johns Hopkins and Rice found that security in Diebold's voting software fell "far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts." The report prompted Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich to order a review of the Diebold systems used in his state. Many of the world's most highly regarded computer scientists have called on voting companies to build touch-screen systems that print a paper ballot -- a "paper trail" -- in order to reduce the risk of electronic tampering.

Activists have also questioned the political affiliations of the leading voting companies. Late last year, Harris found that Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, used to run the voting company that provided most of the voting machines in his state. And in August, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that Walden O'Dell, the CEO of Diebold, is a major fundraiser for President Bush. In a letter to fellow Republicans, O'Dell said that he was "COMMITTED TO HELPING OHIO DELIVER ITS ELECTORAL VOTES TO THE PRESIDENT NEXT YEAR."

But the problems Harris found in Diebold's system are perhaps the best proof yet that electronic voting systems aren't ready for prime time. Indeed, the vulnerabilities in the software, as well as the internal memos, raise questions about the legitimacy of the California recall election. In its ruling, the 9th Circuit Court put the election on hold until the six counties that currently use punch-card systems -- six counties that comprise 44 percent of the state's voters -- upgrade their systems. On Monday, 11 judges on the 9th Circuit reheard the recall case; they may very well allow the election to go ahead on Oct. 7. If the recall vote is put on hold until March, however, many may wonder whether to trust the results: Four of the six punch-card counties -- including the largest, Los Angeles and San Diego -- have plans to upgrade to Diebold machines by March. (UPDATE: On Tuesday, the appellate court ruled that the recall would go ahead as originally scheduled, on Oct. 7.)

Harris is a literary publicist and author whose investigations into the secret world of voting equipment firms have led some to call her the Erin Brockovich of elections, and who is now writing a book called "Black Box Voting." She spoke to Salon about her findings, by telephone, from her home in Seattle.

Tell me about the flaw you uncovered in the Diebold system.

Well, we uncovered a few problems in the memos, but the first one that we published specifically supported the flaw that I wrote about in July of 2003. And to my surprise these memos admitted they were aware of the flaw, and it was actually brought to their attention by Ciber labs -- which is a certifier -- in October 2001, and they made a decision not to fix it.

So it was brought to their attention two years ago?

Right.

So what was the flaw?

Specifically the flaw was that you can get at the central vote-counting database through Microsoft Access. They have the security disabled. And when you get in that way, you are able to overwrite the audit log, which is supposed to log the transactions, and this [audit log] is one of the key things they cite as a security measure when they sell the system.

So you can break in and then hide your tracks.

You don't even need to break in. It will open right up and in you go. You can change the votes and you can overwrite the audit trail. It doesn't keep any record of anything in the audit trail when you're in this back door, but let's say you went in the front door and you didn't want to have anything you did there appear anywhere -- you can then go in the backdoor and erase what you did.

Who would have access to this? Are we talking about elections officials?

A couple situations. Obviously anybody who has access to the computer, whether that's the election supervisor, their assistants, the IT people, the janitor -- anybody who has access to the computer can get into it.

Where is this computer -- is there one per county?

Yes, there's one per county.

The other situation would be supposing someone gets in by either hacking the telephone system or by going backwards in through the Internet, because the Internet does connect to these GEMS computers, even though they deny it. A lot of the press watches election results come in on the Web and what they're watching is actually being uploaded directly off the GEMS computer.

These computers in the counties are connected to the Internet, and someone can go through the Internet --

-- and just go into it, correct. It would be as the results are uploading. You see, they make a big point of the fact that there's no Internet connection to the voting machine, but that's sort of parsing the issue. That's true, in the polling places there's no Internet connection, but the voting machines connect into the GEMS machine through modem. And the GEMS machine then connects to the Internet, and that's what the press watches.

And somebody who knows about this can go to each one of those GEMS machines and have access to the vote and change the results?

Yes, as they're coming in.

What led you to believe that there might be this flaw in the first place?

Well I work with about 22 computer programmers who have been looking at this stuff -- I'm not that brilliant. Immediately when they began looking at the GEMS program they began commenting on the fact that it has no -- it's something called referential integrity. And what that means is that there are many different ways that it can become vulnerable to hacking. It has to do with how one part of the database is hooked into the next part.

I got a call from one of our more brilliant computer programmers -- he's got quite a few advanced degrees -- and he called me on a weekend and he said, "I want you to go to your computer." And he walked me through it just like a support tech does -- open this panel, click this, do this, do that. And as I'm doing this it was appalling how easy it was. Once you know the steps, a 10-year-old can rig an election. In fact it's so easy that one of our activists, Jim March in California, put together a "rig-a-vote" CD. He's been going around showing it to elections officials, and now this CD has been making its way to Congress members.

It's shocking. All you do is double-click the icon. You go backwards through the Internet to that county computer, and if you have Microsoft Access on your machine you can walk right into that election database while it's open. It's configured for multiple access at the same time. You can be in there changing things and you can change anything you want.

There's nothing -- no security in this?

No, in fact in the memo, [Ken Clark, an engineer at Diebold] says specifically that they decided not to put a password on it because it was proving useful. They were using the back door to do end runs around the voting program. And he named two places where they were doing this, Gaston County, N.C., and King County, Wash.

Right, in the memo he says, "King county is famous for it. That's why we've never put a password on the file before." What does that mean? Why would the counties find this useful?

I have no idea what they were doing. [But] because you can change anything on the database, they could have been doing anything, whether it was nefarious or just fixing a stupid thing that they had done. The problem is this: You should set up the program so that anything you do is going to be recorded and watched and audited -- it's official. There's nothing you can do that's legitimate by going into a back door that never records anything. If you need to go change some vote total because they came out wrong, that needs to be done publicly and the candidates should be aware of it. You don't do that by going into a back door.

What do officials in these counties say?

Well in Gaston County it was done by a Diebold employee. [In the memo, Clark says this employee, identified only as "Jane," "did some fancy footwork on the .mdb file in Gaston recently."] I would assume that someone would need to contact Diebold. For King County, it doesn't say whether an election official did it or whether [Diebold] did it.

But it is curious wording -- King County is famous for it.

I know! Dave Ross, who has a radio show in Seattle, called King County and asked if they would like to explain it and they said no. [In an interview with Salon on Thursday, Dean Logan, King County's elections director, could not immediately say what the reference to his county in the Diebold memo could mean. Logan, who said he has just been on the job two weeks, said he would check with members of his staff and call back.]

And these counties are still using Diebold systems?

They still are.

Where else are Diebold systems being used?

They're in 37 states. And, by the way, this flaw that we're discussing right now affects optical-scan and touch-screen machines equally. They both come into the GEMS program.

Diebold is actually the fastest-growing voting company in the United States right now. The reason they're the fastest-growing is they tend to sell a whole state at a time. They sold to the state of Georgia, the state of Maryland, the state of Arizona. They're trying to sell the state of Ohio. They also picked very large metro areas.

Georgia used Diebold's touch-screen machines in 2002, right?

Yes.

And Georgia also had some wacky results, right?

They did. They had six upsets. The most famous one is Max Cleland [the Democratic senator and the incumbent]. That's because he was quite far ahead in the polls and an 11-point shift happened overnight and [Republican] Saxby Chambliss won instead. And the other upset that surprised people was Sonny Purdue, who was the first Republican governor elected in 134 years.

Do you think those elections were legitimate elections?

Well, I think that it was an illegal election in that they had no idea what software was on the machines at the time. Georgia was a situation where they had changed the software not once or twice but seven or eight times so it went through so many permutations without even being examined by anyone, and nobody has any idea what the machines did. [Harris says she confirmed these preelection changes to Diebold's software in conversations with Georgia voting officials, but Diebold denies that any changes were made. In February, Joseph Richardson, a spokesman for the company, told Salon: "We have analyzed that situation and have no indication of that happening at all."]

I do find this suspicious -- they have since scrubbed clean the flash memory [small cards that store the results from each touch-screen machine]. They've overwritten it with a whole new thing. What's amazing is you keep paper ballots for 22 months, and they're an awful lot bulkier than these credit card-size memory cards, but for some reason they felt compelled to get rid of them all. They have also overwritten all of the GEMS programs in the counting machines. They've gone through and overwritten everything in the state.

OK, so we should talk about how Diebold responded to your posting these memos.

As soon ... a few days after we posted them they sent us a cease-and-desist letter -- interestingly authenticating the memos and laying claim to them, telling us that they were copyrighted. So they claimed copyright and they told us to take them off the Web.

Right. By claiming copyright they're saying they own them, so that seems to indicate they are authentic memos.

Exactly.

So what's your response to their copyright claim?

Well, I don't believe you can protect intent to break the law by slapping a copyright on it. And the memos that we posted show that the law has been broken. If you can protect intent to break the law, all anybody would need to do is take their bank robbery plans and put a copyright on it, and then say nobody can look at them because they're copyrighted.

Do you really think that their memos show intent to break the law?

Oh yes, yes. The Ken Clark memo is absolutely clear. It says they have been aware of these security flaws for years and they have chosen not to correct it. He says something to the effect of, find out what it will take to make this problem go away. [Referring to a voting equipment certifier, Clark tells a colleague to "find out what it is going to take to make them happy."] He says if you don't mention [a problem] you may "skate through" certification. And talking about doing "end runs" is not a good thing either.

And what's disturbing is the very same thing that these memos are talking about -- overwriting the audit log -- in the presentation in which they sold their machines to the state of Georgia they specifically bring up the audit log and say that no human can change it. This shows they made fraudulent claims, frankly.

There's a thing called a Qui Tam suit which citizens can file if they feel that federal money has been spent based on fraudulent claims. I haven't done it because it gives you a gag order and I refuse to be gagged even for billions of dollars, but these things are wide open for such a thing. If you go and look at the sales documents, they made one claim after the next.

So because the memos show what you say is clear intent to break the law, that's why you don't think that they have a valid copyright claim.

Well, the other issue is an overriding public interest. We are told that we are to depend on these systems in 37 states and yet they are admitting that they are easy to tamper with.

Are you going to respond to them?

Well, these memos are on the Web in so many locations that we took them off and put a link to someone else who put them up. So that fulfills our requirement under the law.

But do you know if it's possible for you to face any --

-- any retaliation? It's certainly possible that they will try retaliation, and if so I will use the full extent of the law available to me for full discovery of everything. And I think that going through discovery will become a very uncomfortable process and perhaps put some people in jail ... Not on our side, by the way.

At this point activists are now taking these memos from various places on the Web into their state attorneys general and asking for an investigation, and since Diebold has now authenticated them it's no longer, "I found this on the Web," it's, "I found this on the Web and Diebold says they wrote them."

When Diebold is put to greater scrutiny, won't the elections officials say, "We won't go with Diebold, but we'll use touch-screen systems from this company or this company?"

Well, I think that won't fly in the long run because the same illness is afflicting all of them, and that is that they are not auditable and secret. The solution is pretty simple and obvious, and that is to get properly auditable machines. A lot of the security stuff goes away -- the most bulletproof system that I know anyone has come up with is one that is a touch screen but then prints a ballot that the voter verifies.

Whatever the software is doing, if you have something with a really bulletproof audit -- the voter verifying the paper, and the computer tally -- if those two things match, you've got a pretty good confidence level.

If Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia want to come up with a nice paper trail, voter-verified paper trail that's a touch screen, I'm supporting them. But right now they're fighting it tooth and nail.

How are they fighting it?

For one thing they had a meeting on Aug. 22 -- the voting machine manufacturers and the Election Center [a nonprofit management division of the National Association of State Election Directors, which handles part of the voting-machine certification process] and a lobbyist. The whole purpose of this meeting was to try to get the public to figure out how to accept machines without a paper trail.

How did you find out about this meeting?

Actually, this is kind of funny. My publisher found out about this. It was a teleconference and he just called in under his own name and nobody asked him where he was from, and he sat in on the whole meeting. [Harris' publisher, David Allen, posted notes on the meeting on his Web site.]

The meeting had quite a few things of concern in it. They were being told that as an industry they had to come up with $200,000 in seven days in order to come up with a P.R. campaign to whitewash their P.R. problem, as they put it.

So apparently they feel they have a problem?

Yeah, they do. And in this particular meeting, one of the things they discuss is, they say, "Now we need to make sure the press never finds out this because we don't want them to know we have a problem." [According to David Allen, Harris Miller, the president of the Information Technology Association of America, said, "We just didn't want a document floating around saying the election industry is in trouble, so they decided to put together a lobbying campaign."]

Was there anything discussed about addressing the problem?

Absolutely, what they want to do is not fix the problem, but they agreed to fix the perception of the problem.

Did they indicate what they thought would be a problem with printing paper ballots?

No. It was a foregone conclusion that we don't want paper.

But they say that they would try to convince the public that having no paper is fine?

Right.

It's rather confusing why they're fighting this ...

Yes, actually I find it a little bit suspicious frankly.

What do you mean by that?

Well -- it just seems like, OK, most of us who've ever run a business before, you know what the public wants. Diebold could have early on become a hero by saying, "You know what, this is a problem, but here's what we're going to do. We're going to make sure that you guys have what you want, we're going to get you this paper ballot." And instead there's this huge amount of money being expended to avoid it. It's such a simple solution -- it's too much fighting over something that's so simple and that is pretty much agreed on by all of the tech experts anyway.

The last thing I wanted to talk to you about is the California recall.

Hey, you Californians. What in Sam Hill are you doing?

Well -- as you know, the other day the 9th Circuit Court ruled that the election should be put on hold because punch-card systems are being used in six counties. Do you have any opinion on that -- on whether it's a good idea to hold off on the election because of the punch-card systems? Isn't it better to have punch cards than touch screens?

Well, here's my opinion on that. First of all I don't understand why you guys are doing this election, but be that as it may. There's a study by MIT and Caltech from 2001, and it found that optical scans lose about 3 percent of the vote, punch cards lose about 4.1 percent, and touch screens lose 5.7 percent. [Harris' numbers are a bit off. The Caltech MIT study, which was one of the most thorough investigations into what went wrong in the 2000 election, analyzed "residual votes" -- "uncounted, unmarked and spoiled ballots" -- caused by different types of voting machines. For the presidential race, 2.5 percent of all votes cast on punch-card machines were residual votes; the rate was slightly lower, 2.3 percent, for touch-screen machines. But in gubernatorial and senatorial races, punch-card machines had a 4.7 percent error rate, while touch-screen machines had an alarming 5.9 percent error. The study's 95-page report is available here.]

If you're going from punch cards to optical-scan ballots, that is an upgrade, but if you're going from punch cards to touch screens, that makes no sense. According to the research, the one system that is currently being sold that is less accurate than a punch card is a touch screen. The court decision doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It sounds to me that, as is so typical with this, you have people who really don't understand the issues and don't understand much about how the computer programs work forming decisions based on a combination of what politicians and vendor P.R. people say.

But one of the problems with optical-scan ballots is that you have to print up a lot of paper -- and, you know, if this election is postponed until March, a lot of the counties are going to have huge bills because they have to print new ballots.

Oh, goodness! I hadn't thought of that. Huge, huge bills, completely wasted.

So isn't that an argument for touch-screen voting?

I think the touch screens, if they had a paper trail so that we could do a proper audit, they would be my choice. The thing is if you speak Chinese, they can print something in Chinese. There would be no reason for all these combinations of ballots that folks have. It's kind of a nightmare which would be solved with the touch screens that can print.

Yes, I imagine that's one of the main selling points for touch-screen machines.

I would think so. It's just that they're not auditable. I'm not opposed to it, and I think it has tremendous advantages, but it just needs to be auditable. That's a deal-breaker -- it has to be auditable. And why I've been so down on Diebold is because they're the poster child for why it has to be auditable.
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About the writer
Farhad Manjoo is a staff writer for Salon Technology & Business.

2003-09-22T18:27:00.000-04:00

YEAH!

(CNN) -- President Bush has the lowest approval rating of his presidency and is running about even with five Democratic challengers led by newly announced candidate Wesley Clark, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Monday. CNN.com - Poll: Bush down, Clark up - Sep. 22, 2003

2003-09-22T11:25:00.000-04:00

51% of people 18-34 support legalizing gay marriage while only 20% of over 65 year olds do. Now if we can just reverse the growing life expectancy rate or here's another novel idea. YOUNG PEOPLE CAN VOTE!

Check out the poll at this link:
ABCNEWS.com : Poll: Most Oppose Same-Sex Marriage

2003-09-19T09:52:00.000-04:00

U.S. Customs would not allow a married Canadian gay couple to enter as a family into the United States. Read more here

2003-09-19T09:26:00.000-04:00

We need more Dems like this! You go, Ted! Read more here

2003-09-18T11:03:00.000-04:00

Federal Budget Disaster Seen, but Won't Be Heard
By Janet Hook, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Something remarkable will happen here today. A senior congressional figure will declare the federal budget, in effect, a disaster area — and official Washington will probably react with a shrug.

Even though the government is on track to run a record deficit in excess of $500 billion next year, neither President Bush nor congressional leaders have proposed doing anything to balance the budget anytime soon. Their strategy: to wait for a vigorous economy to do the job for them.

That makes David M. Walker, head of the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm, a rare Cassandra. He is giving a speech today warning that the nation's long-term fiscal outlook is seriously out of whack. And he challenges the assumption that economic recovery will solve the problem painlessly.

"We need a wake-up call," Walker said in an interview. "We need to come to terms with reality: The gap is too great to grow our way out of the problem. Tough choices will be required."

His is a lonely voice on Capitol Hill, where deficit-expanding initiatives are growing like crabgrass, unchecked amid new budget demands for the war on terrorism and the reconstruction of Iraq.

Bush and lawmakers from both parties continue to press for a $400-billion, 10-year expansion of Medicare to provide prescription drug benefits. House Republicans are pushing yet another round of tax cuts — this time for big business, at a cost of more than $100 billion over 10 years. And even as Bush asks for $87 billion more for military and reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, there seems to be little appetite in Congress for offsetting cuts in domestic spending.

"This is truly a Lyndon Johnson guns-and-butter fiscal policy," said Daniel J. Mitchell, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

Democrats — both in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail — have tried to spotlight the deficit as an emblem of the failure of Bush's fiscal policy. It has given new impetus to Democratic proposals to repeal all or part of the 2001 tax cut. Some congressional Democrats are considering a proposal to help cover Iraq costs by raising taxes on the wealthiest taxpayers.

"The deficit is an easy-to-understand symbol that things are being mismanaged," said David Sirota, spokesman for the Center for American Progress, a liberal research group. "It should reopen the entire debate on whether we should continue cutting taxes for the wealthy."

But the Democratic Party is deeply divided over whether or how far to raise taxes. And with their own big spending plans for Medicare, education and other domestic priorities, Democrats also lack a clear program for getting the budget back into balance. Missing from the presidential field is an H. Ross Perot, whose 1992 maverick campaign made budget balancing the cornerstone of his challenge to the Washington establishment.

"Nobody is prepared to make any trade-offs," said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a budget watchdog group. "No one is prepared to give up anything important to them to bring the budget under control."

The deficit has cast an increasingly long shadow over Congress with each upward revision. In August, the Congressional Budget Office said the deficit in 2004 would reach $480 billion — and that did not include the cost of the conflict in Iraq or pending legislation to expand Medicare. Now, in light of its Iraq budget request, the administration projects that next year's deficit will reach at least $525 billion.

It seems certain that Congress will approve at least the $87 billion Bush has requested. The bigger question is whether that will boost the deficit so high that lawmakers will reassess other parts of the budget or change their legislative ways.

Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine), who voted against Bush's tax cut last spring because she was concerned about the deficit, said she thought the budget was putting new pressure on lawmakers to propose offsetting spending cuts when they propose increases — as she plans to when she pushes for more child-care funding in a welfare bill soon to come before the Senate.

"The deficit is now back on everyone's radar screen," Snowe said. "On the spending side, we have to make some choices."

But Snowe herself demonstrates why it will be so hard to reverse the current trend. Even though she says she is an adamant foe of deficits, Snowe still wants to go ahead with the $400-billion Medicare drug benefit. "Medicare is an exception and it should be," she said.

Bush and other politicians argue that running a deficit is justified at a time of military conflict abroad and economic downturn at home. His administration's stated goal has been to cut the deficit in half in five years. Rather than propose tax increases or big spending cuts, he is counting on economic growth to increase government revenue and reduce the red ink.

Bush and his Republican allies argue that tax cuts will help reduce the deficit, not increase it, because they spur the economic growth that will generate new revenue. That is why House Republicans are still plowing ahead with plans this week to pass another $12.5-billion tax cut to encourage charitable giving. A bigger test will come this fall when Congress debates a big-business tax break later this fall. A version drafted by House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Bakersfield) would cost $127 billion over 10 years.

"When you give people their money back, they grow the economy much better than the government does," said House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.). "The way to move out of deficit is to grow the economy."

Walker and other analysts argue, however, that economic growth alone will not bring the budget back into the black. They say that will require aggressive anti-deficit initiatives on a par with those launched in the 1980s and 1990s.

A 1985 law, for example, set up a mechanism to make automatic spending cuts if Congress missed specified annual deficit targets. In 1990, a tax hike was passed with the support of President George H. W. Bush, the current president's father.

In 1993, President Clinton and Congress passed a package of tax increases and spending cuts. In 1997, Congress passed a budget-balancing plan that included politically painful reductions in the growth of Medicare spending.

Now, however, any tax hike is anathema to a Republican Party that has turned into a bastion of tax cut enthusiasts in the decade since the elder Bush left office.

On the other hand, according to a study by the libertarian Cato Institute, the current president's first three annual budgets increased outlays by 15.6% — compared with 6.8% in President Reagan's first three budgets.

2003-09-16T18:35:00.000-04:00

Very good news for all my pill loving amigos. Read on from salon.

E-fer madness
In one of the more embarrassing moments in drug research history, a study that "proved" how dangerous Ecstasy is was retracted after its authors realized they actually gave monkeys speed.
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By Larry Smith

Sept. 16, 2003 | In a bizarre turn of events, the results of the most widely publicized study on the effects of Ecstasy on the brain were recently retracted. Published in the journal Science in September 2002, the study found that Ecstasy dramatically damaged monkey brain cells and was even deadly in some instances. At the time the study was released, former National Institute for Drug Abuse (NIDA) director Alan Leshner called taking Ecstasy "playing Russian roulette with your brain." But critics scratched their heads, wondering how 40 percent of the test animals could die when so few humans actually OD on MDMA. Almost a year later, an investigation conducted by the study's own researchers has revealed that the monkeys were given speed, not the popular club drug. The lab animals, it seemed, were misdosed.

Although MDMA was invented in 1912 by the pharmaceutical company Merck, its value -- and its dangers -- began to be intensely debated only in the late '80s. From gray-haired professors to teen members of the harm-reduction organization DanceSafe, the pro-MDMA movement argues that when used safely, MDMA can be a miracle medicine for empathy and psychotherapeutic breakthroughs. Yet as it emerged from underground therapy circles and the London rave scene in the early '80s, it was subject to widespread use and abuse. In 1985, it was declared a Schedule 1 narcotic, a class of drugs deemed to have a high potential for abuse and no sanctioned medical use. Since that classification, Ecstasy use in America has increased each year. In 2000, the Drug Enforcement Administration seized 949,257 tablets, up from 13,342 in 1996.

In a two-part series this summer in Salon that brought on its own debate, I investigated the drug's appeal and downsides. My exploration was spurred by the now delegitimized report that appeared in the Sept. 27, 2002, issue of Science, the weekly peer-reviewed journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. One of the world's most esteemed research journals, Science published the results of a study called "Severe Dopaminergic Neurotoxicity in Primates After a Common Recreational Dose Regimen of MDMA ('Ecstasy')," aka the monkey study. Johns Hopkins neurologist Dr. George Ricaurte (working with three other researchers including Dr. Una McCann), aiming to mimic human Ecstasy habits, injected five monkeys with high doses of what he thought was MDMA every three hours. Some monkeys died; others experienced damage to the cells that secrete the brain chemical dopamine, damage that can cause symptoms similar to Parkinson's disease.

From NPR to the Cleveland Plain Dealer the news spread, and the news was bad: Even one hit of the "club drug" can fry your brain, cause Parkinson's, or even kill you. Frightening facts for millions of Ecstasy users across the globe, but the reports were based on false data. The researchers had made a major error: They accidentally gave the monkeys methamphetamine -- aka speed -- not methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), commonly called Ecstasy. Speed is widely known to affect the brain's dopamine system, which in turn affects thinking and movement -- so Parkinson's-like symptoms would be expected.

How does one of the nation's most prestigious and well-funded research labs make such a colossal blunder? And how can such an error go undetected (or unacknowledged) for almost a year?

As detailed in the current issue of Science, where the study is officially retracted, Ricaurte explains that the labels provided by the lab's longtime supplier, Research Triangle Institute, were incorrect. Methamphetamine would be expected to produce the brain damage seen in the monkeys, the researchers said in their retraction. (If you've ever met a speed freak, that comes as no surprise.) When the researchers couldn't reproduce the data in subsequent studies (though this time they gave the animals oral doses, rather than injections as they had in the first study), they retraced their steps, finally realizing their mistake: A bottle of meth and a bottle of MDMA arrived in the same package and were evidently mislabeled.

"This is the kind of retraction nobody likes, but the only villain -- if there is one -- is the vendor that sent the compounds in mislabeled vials," says Donald Kennedy, editor of Science. "It is not unusual for experienced investigators to trust vendors they have worked with, and these authors had no reason to mistrust the labeling."

Research Triangle Institute did not return phone calls by press time. Neither Ricaurte nor McCann responded to repeated phone calls and e-mails from Salon. On Sept. 6, Ricaurte did tell the New York Times: "The laboratory made a simple, human error. We're scientists, not politicians. We're not chemists. We get hundreds of chemicals here. It's not customary to check them." According to the Baltimore Sun, Ricaurte's team is in the process of retracting another study -- which used the mislabeled vials -- linking MDMA to brain damage.

Johns Hopkins, which says it has no plans to take disciplinary action against the research team, released the following statement: "While it is unfortunate the labeling error occurred, this in no way undermines the results of numerous previous studies performed in multiple laboratories worldwide demonstrating the serotonin neurotoxic potential of recreational doses of MDMA in various animal species, including several primate species. The study results replicate what was previously published regarding the neurotoxic effects of methamphetamine use, and the researchers' efforts to investigate conflicting data in the laboratory are an excellent example of how science is self-correcting."

While it appears that a simple human mistake occurred, it's reasonable to ask why the study was published and so widely publicized without undergoing more fail-safe measures, which presumably would have exposed the egregious error. "The paper was peer-reviewed carefully by experienced, capable referees," says Science's Donald Kennedy. "The results and the presentation wouldn't have suggested that there was a problem, so I can't fault that process. And the authors did a hard thing: They discovered the problem and came right to us with the retraction."

While retractions in peer-reviewed journals such as Science are extremely rare and indeed newsworthy, the initial bad data takes on a life of its own. "One thing about retracted articles, they can be officially retracted, but the original article never goes away," says Michael Castleman, who has written on medicine and health for the past two decades. "The original study gets out on Medline [the medical research Web site] and other research hubs and will be quoted for 10 years. News of the study runs on Page 1, the correction runs on Page 17."

Looking back, none of the scientists I spoke with before the retraction could make sense of how MDMA could have killed the poor monkeys. "The abrupt deaths of two of the monkeys, the intense toxicity to most of the others, and the unexpected changes within the dopamine system, all seemed strange," says Dr. Alexander Shulgin, one of the drug's earliest researchers. The consensus among those who believe that MDMA's downsides have been overstated was that the dosage levels were unusually high -- researchers gave five monkeys high doses of "MDMA" every three hours -- exaggerating human use, rather than mirroring it.

For the past 20 years, Ricaurte has been considered one of the leading experts on MDMA and its effects. His research has been prominently featured on NIDA's Web site and cited in congressional testimony. He has received millions of dollars in funding for his research on MDMA and other drugs, research that has proved prominent in government's $54 million dollar effort in 1999 to educate the public about "club drugs." After the recent retraction, his critics make a dramatic charge: Ricaurte and his team were ardent to get their findings out to the public because the results were precisely the ammo the federal government needed for its War on Drugs.

"Ricaurte's got a long career of being funded by NIDA to say how dangerous MDMA is," says Dr. Julie Holland, an editor of "Ecstasy: The Complete Guide, A Comprehensive Look at the Risks and Benefits of MDMA," and the attending psychiatrist at the Bellevue Hospital Psychiatric Emergency Room. "He also should have known that no one else has been able to show dopamine damage from MDMA -- it should have occurred to him to question his results -- everyone else was suspicious of them. But instead of checking his work right away, they come up with a press release saying you're playing Russian roulette with the brain." Holland and others are calling for the release of the results from the oral replications -- the follow-up research that led to the study's retraction. "If Ricaurte can show neurotoxicity with those oral doses, then he'd silence his critics," says Holland. "If he can't, then that's interesting also."

The academic work of scientists in research labs around the country can have dramatic consequences for ordinary citizens. Ricaurte's findings were widely quoted when Congress was lining up support for the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act, also known as the Rave Act, which makes it easier to prosecute club owners and event promoters for the drug use of their customers. Congress passed the Rave Act on April 10, 2003. And tax dollars pay for public service announcements declaring that one hit of Ecstasy can destroy your brain.

"This study looks like high-class 'Reefer Madness,'" said Marsha Rosenbaum, director of the Safety First Project of the Drug Policy Alliance. "The government's trying to scare the kids out of experimentation and into abstinence, and it just doesn't work. The problem is that the kids after 20 years of these messages have become incredibly cynical about what we tell them about drugs. 'This is your brain on Ecstasy' turned out to be completely bogus -- so they roll their eyes and say, Who do they think they're kidding?"

Dr. Charles Grob, a professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, who 1994 conducted the first FDA-approved research study examining the effects of MDMA on human volunteers, has been a leading critic of the monkey study, as well as Ricaurte's earlier research of MDMA's effects on the brain. In 2000, he published an article in the journal Addiction Research examining what he felt were serious flaws in Ricaurte's research going back to the 1980s. "It's not that MDMA's without risk; that's not the case," says Grob. "But the neurotoxicity issue has been such an attention grabber that it's distracting us from more realistic concerns, such as people using the drug under adverse conditions, and the substitution of other drugs in pills passed off as pure MDMA."

To be sure, almost no one in the pro-MDMA movement says widespread pill popping is a good idea. What Grob and others believe is that with the rush to declare that MDMA fries your brain -- the neurotoxicity issue, an issue that clearly requires further research -- its therapeutic potential is being ignored. "It's certainly worth investigation," says Grob, "but we haven't been able to get to first base because everyone is so hyped up about neurotoxicity."

This fall, Rick Doblin, the founder of MAPS, a nonprofit organization that aims to develop MDMA into a FDA-approved prescription medicine, hopes to hit the home run of MDMA research. "It always shocked me that superimposed on MDMA -- which is a remarkably benign drug when used in therapeutic settings, with serious adverse effects quite rare even in uncontrolled recreational settings -- was an edifice of such fear and misinformation," he says. MAPS will examine the use of MDMA and psychotherapy for the treatment of patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in a clinic in Charleston, S.C. Doblin then plans to examine MDMA's use for alleviating anxiety, depression and pain in cancer patients at Harvard Medical School.

In the retraction, Ricaurte stands by what he believes are MDMA's considerable risks to the brain. Dr. Jean Lud Cadet, another leading expert on MDMA use and the brain, won't comment on the monkey study as he was not one of that study's researchers, but he remains steadfast in his belief that long-term Ecstasy use can lead to sleeping problems, depression and memory loss. Dr. Drew Pinsky, author of the book "Cracked," co-host of the radio show "Loveline," and director of the Department of Chemical Dependency Services at Las Encinas Hospital in Pasadena, Calif., points out some of the less deadly but nonetheless unfortunate side effects of prolonged MDMA use, explaining, "What we see clinically is a characteristic syndrome where very social people suddenly start isolating and soon they begin experiencing panic attacks and agoraphobia."

Where do we go from here? Somewhere between teenagers (or people who still think they are) doing too many doses at raves and "one hit of E can kill you" there may be acceptable therapeutic uses for MDMA. One thing is certain: After this mind-blowing blunder, everyone should heed that old raver adage -- mark your pills, people.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

About the writer
Larry Smith has written for ESPN magazine, the New York Times, Teen People, and other publications.

2003-09-16T15:39:00.000-04:00

Last night I was one of the thousands drenched in the park. Although I did not see the halo of fire that was to illuminate the sky, it was still pretty funny. Read more:New York City - Central Park Light Party Fizzles

2003-09-16T12:00:00.000-04:00

Three Easy Pieces for Any Decent American (from Michael Moore)
September 15, 2003

There are many otherwise decent Americans who are either still on the fence about George W. Bush or they actually profess to like the man. They are the ones who make up the 58% approval ratings and the 64% who say they still believe the war was a good idea. You know these people well. They work next to you, or they sit in the classroom next to you, or they may even be sitting at your kitchen table right now!

I think that we need to hold out a hand to them, not in a partisan sort of way, and not with any condescension. I think that if we share with them a few pieces of information, and do it with common sense instead of politics, there is a chance we just might break through and turn things around. Perhaps it's my foolish optimism in the goodness that is in every person, and in their ability to ultimately know right from wrong.

I would like to give you three little vignettes to share with them. They are so simple and so shocking in their very content that, if you pass them around the office, the school, the neighborhood or the bedroom, it may just do the trick. Here they are:

1. GEORGE AND LAURA ON 9/11 -- A BARREL OF LAUGHS!

The following is an interview with the First Couple from the current issue of one of my favorite magazines, Ladies Home Journal (Oct. '03). They are asked about what September 11, 2001, was like for them personally, and, although over 3,000 people had just perished, George W. was able to find some humor by the end of that day:

Peggy Noonan (the interviewer): You were separated on September 11th. What was it like when you saw each other again?

Laura Bush: Well, we just hugged. I think there was a certain amount of security in being with each other than being apart.

George W. Bush: But the day ended on a relatively humorous note. The agents said, "you'll be sleeping downstairs. Washington's still a dangerous place." And I said no, I can't sleep down there, the bed didn't look comfortable. I was really tired, Laura was tired, we like our own bed. We like our own routine. You know, kind of a nester. I knew I had to deal with the issue the next day and provide strength and comfort to the country, and so I needed rest in order to be mentally prepared. So I told the agent we're going upstairs, and he reluctantly said okay. Laura wears contacts, and she was sound asleep. Barney was there. And the agent comes running up and says, "We're under attack. We need you downstairs," and so there we go. I'm in my running shorts and my T-shirt, and I'm barefooted. Got the dog in one hand, Laura had a cat, I'm holding Laura --

Laura Bush: I don't have my contacts in , and I'm in my fuzzy house slippers --

George W. Bush: And this guy's out of breath, and we're heading straight down to the basement because there's an incoming unidentified airplane, which is coming toward the White House. Then the guy says it's a friendly airplane. And we hustle all the way back up stairs and go to bed.

Mrs. Bush: [LAUGHS] And we just lay there thinking about the way we must have looked.

Peggy Noonan (interviewer): So the day starts in tragedy and ends in Marx Brothers.

George W. Bush: THAT'S RIGHT-- WE GOT A LAUGH OUT OF IT!

(end)

Although America had just suffered the worst attack ever on our own soil, somehow this man was able to end his day on a funny note. I wonder how many of the 3,000 families who lost someone earlier that day had a funny ending before they went to sleep? Please read the above exchange aloud to anyone who will listen. It speaks volumes.

2. WE HAVE JUST WRECKED OUR KIDS' FUTURE.

The first paragraph in yesterday's New York Times story on how Bush has taken a record surplus and demolished it into a record deficit was one of the best lead paragraphs I have ever read in a newspaper article.

Here's how it went :

"When President Bush informed the nation last Sunday night that remaining in Iraq next year will cost another $87 billion, many of those who will actually pay that bill were unable to watch. They had already been put to bed by their parents."

Bingo. Gee, I hope the kids thank us some day!

Here's the next paragraph (my emphasis added):

"Administration officials acknowledged the next day that every dollar of that cost will be BORROWED, a loan that economists say will be repaid by the NEXT generation of taxpayers AND THE GENERATION AFTER THAT. The $166 BILLION cost of the work SO FAR in Iraq and Afghanistan, which has stunned many in Washington, will be added to what was already the largest budget deficit the nation has ever known."

Every conservative friend of yours should weep when they read that, and then you should hug them and tell them that it'll be okay, once we all do what we need to do.

3. WHAT WOULD $87 BILLION BUY?

If you can't get through this list without wanting to throw up, I'll understand. But pass it around anyway. This is the nail in the Iraq War's coffin for any sane, thinking individual, regardless of their political stripe (thanks to TomPaine.com and the Center for American Progress )...

To get some perspective, here are some real-life comparisons about what $87 billion means:

$87 Billion Is More Than The Combined Total Of All State Budget Deficits In The United States.

The Bush administration proposed absolutely zero funds to help states deal with these deficits, despite the fact that their tax cuts drove down state revenues. [Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities]

$87 Billion Is Enough To Pay The 3.3 Million People Who Have Lost Jobs Under George W. Bush $26,363 Each!

The unemployment benefits extension passed by Congress at the beginning of this year provides zero benefits to "workers who exhausted their regular, state unemployment benefits and cannot find work." All told, two-thirds of unemployed workers have exhausted their benefits. [Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities]

$87 Billion Is More Than DOUBLE The Total Amount The Government Spends On Homeland Security.

The U.S. spends about $36 billion on homeland security. Yet, Sen. Warren Rudman (R-N.H.) wrote "America will fall approximately $98.4 billion short of meeting critical emergency responder needs" for homeland security without a funding increase. [Source: Council on Foreign Relations]

$87 Billion Is 87 Times The Amount The Federal Government Spends On After School Programs.

George W. Bush proposed a budget that reduces the $1 billion for after-school programs to $600 million -- cutting off about 475,000 children from the program. [Source: The Republican-dominated House Appropriations Committee]

$87 Billion Is More Than 10 Times What The Government Spends On All Environmental Protection.

The Bush administration requested just $7.6 billion for the entire Environmental Protection Agency. This included a 32 percent cut to water quality grants, a 6 percent reduction in enforcement staff, and a 50 percent cut to land acquisition and conservation. [Source: Natural Resources Defense Council]

There you go. In black and white. A few million of you will receive this letter. Please share the above with at least a half-dozen people today and tomorrow. I, like you, do not want to see another approval rating over 50%.

Yours,
Michael Moore
www.michaelmoore.com
moorelist@aol.com

PS. Thanks for the astounding response to the Wesley Clark letter (and for your kind comments to me). Over 95% of the thousands of letters received favored the General tossing his helmet in the ring. All were passed on to his organization. More to come on the road to removing Bush...

2003-09-02T13:16:00.000-04:00

If you forgot why we should be SO PISSED at Bush, check this out.

2003-08-28T14:24:00.000-04:00

Every day something to do with the Bush White House comes across my screen to really piss me off and reinforce in my mind exactly why we need to him out of office.

Check out this article from the Washington Post today about Halliburton and how much money they have made off Operation Iraqi Freedom. For those of you who dont know, Cheney headed this company before becoming VP.

2003-08-27T11:01:00.000-04:00

People always ask me if I would ever live in Phoenix again. Lets see, would you return to a place where it is over 100 degrees for seven months out of the year and over 85 for most of the rest.

And dont get me started on Phoenix's "culture".

For more against living in Phoenix read Salon.com News | Phoenix gas shortage exposes its meager mass-transit system .

2003-08-22T10:44:00.000-04:00

To my brothers and sisters in Cali. You are not this stupid, right? Since I moved to New York I defended you countless times against New Yorkers. They say that you dont read books in Cali. They think you are obsessed with celebrity. Come on. Please dont prove them right. I just dont think I will be able to defend a population that elects a fading action star as governor.

Lets be realtic. Arnold's movies suck. He doesnt know shit about govt. or budgets and he has surrounded himself with a team that is MUCH more conservative than the people of California.

Of course Krugman gots some guidance. Check it out
here

2003-08-21T14:59:00.000-04:00

> Quotes about the Valley:
>
> You know what San Fernando Valley is? Cleveland with palm trees.
> - Bob Hope, Toluca Lake resident for 65 years.
>
> We build a city a month out here.
> - W.P. Whitsett, in 1951
>
> If there is a river within 1000 miles of Riverside Drive, I never saw it.
> It's like everything else out here: Endless scorched boulevards, lined with
> one-story stores, shops, bowling alleys, skating rinks, tacos drive-ins, all
> of them shaped not like rectangles but like trapezoids...
> - Tom Wolfe, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby
>
> Putting me in a closed car and stewing me in the sun is not the right way to
> guarantee my safety. This development causes me bitter regret. I thought I
> could come here as a free man.
> - Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, complaining about touring the Valley
> instead of Disneyland in 1959.
>
> Home of a hundred King Bear Auto Centers, a thousand Yoshinoya Beef Bowls,
> and ten thousand yard sales.
> - Depth Takes a Holiday, Sandra Tsing Loh
>
> When we moved to the valley, I felt like I was being tossed into quicksand.
> - Robert Redford in L.A. Times interview
>
> It‚s hot, it‚s barren, it‚s vacuous. That may seem a little harsh, but ample
> parking is about all this vast suburban wasteland has to offer in the way of
> cultural enlightenment. The Valley‚s threatened secession from L.A. would be
> a fiscal drain, but a net gain in other departments.
> - Danny Feingold, losangeles.com
>
> It‚s pretty quiet here after 9 o‚clock.
> - Mrs. Edward F. True of Glendale, in the L.A. Times 1961
>
> I can‚t say that this is an exciting valley; it‚s just a good, comfortable
> valley, that‚s all.
> - Ferdinand Mendenhall, editor of the Valley News, in 1981 interview
>
> Roscoe - the very name conjures up images of having driven too far north.
> --"Laugh Lines," L.A. Times
>
> We‚re in the Valley, Vincent! Marcellus ain‚t got no friendly places in the
> Valley.
> --Pulp Fiction
>
> Don‚t get 818 on me.
> - Girl to whining friend in the film Go
>
> Off-Ramp Acres ? Asphalt-By-The-Sea ? Smogadena ? Pornadelphia ? Newer Jersey
> ? Unknown Actorville ? Hellholia.
> - Jay Leno's joke names for a Valley city.
>
> L.A. is surrounded by valleys, but there‚s only one Valley, and to everybody
> who lives on the other side of the hill from it, it‚s a standing joke.
> - Hush Money, novel by Peter Israel
>
> I had no idea I even lived in Los Angeles.
> - Charles Perry in L.A. Times Magazine, about the 1940s in Van Nuys.
>
> Better than Los Angeles bread
> - Bakery ad in 1910
>
> The whole valley has the well kept appearance of a yard. Weeds are hard to
> find. Everywhere carefully cultivated fields, and small bungalows with lawns,
> flowers and shrubs emphasize the appearance of prosperity.
> - Gladys Brandt, 1928 master's thesis at University of Chicago
>
> It took God millions of years to get Tarzana and me together.
> - Edgar Rice Burroughs
>
> America‚s most spectacular residential area.
> - Holiday magazine, 1951
>
> Encino is, like, so bitchen!
> - Moon Unit Zappa on "Valley Girl
>
> The Valley is a flat sea of sameness surrounded by hills that beckon. I think
> it would make a good reservoir.
> - Robert Burlingham, August 2003

2003-08-21T11:03:00.000-04:00

WOW. If the AZ courts approve gay marriage -- maybe Joaquin and I will settle down in the the Valley of the Sun. Read article here

2003-08-20T14:48:00.000-04:00

Its only a matter of time before Ashcroft is coming for you! Read on

2003-08-19T14:20:00.000-04:00

Paul Krugman's take on the blackout from today's New York Times.

2003-08-19T13:16:00.000-04:00

Why the lights went out. Greg Palast, author of "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy," has the answer. Read about how Republicans, deregulators, Bush the 1st and W are fucking us from NYC to Cali!

2003-08-19T12:22:00.000-04:00

More bad news for LGBT community. Another poll showing a gay backlash.

I think this might be another example of the lazy media running with a narrative that has been set. The LGBT community is everywhere in media this summer so thhe story that everyone is writing is about a backlash.

When you study poll findings you have to look really closey at a few things. One of the most interesting is the dates that a poll was taken. This poll was taken over August 8 - 12 which is a Friday through Monday. Now any pollster will tell you that if you want your data to skewed to the right you conduct a poll over the weekend when young people are out and about and older more conservative people are home to answer polls.

2003-08-18T17:56:00.000-04:00

Okay I survived what has become an annual trauma. It wasn’t too long ago that a trip to Hallmark for Father's Day or my Dad's birthday would leave me in tears. After years of therapy, both professional and through Diana, I can now go into the card store and get out in just under an hour.

I checked out the cards in Spanish. Nothing. Surely the African-American card section would have something closer to my experience. Nada.

And on and on:
To a very special Dad

Hmm. No.

Dad, you're one in a million.

Could be true, but unfortunately I have shared too many stories to think my Dad is this rare.

Dad, I am so grateful...

Next!

Why don’t I just go for a blank card, you ask?

Well I guess acknowledging that Hallmark does not make a card for me makes me feel even more isolated so I search on.

What's this?

Thank you American Greetings. Their new card line called Coffeehouse offers "a special blend of thoughts and wishes." A little bitter, a little sweet, yep Coffeehouse carried them all!

I dove into their cards:

Our lives have taken us apart, but...

Warmer.

We have shard many memories and even though...

Warmer still.

Finally I found a card that was sweet enough to show that I care but detached enough to show that I was not delusional. Oh thank you American Greetings and Happy Birthday Dad.

2003-08-14T16:04:00.000-04:00

Quiz time! Its the same story as told by the evil Fox News, CNN, and BBC. Can you guess which is which? The answers may surprise you! Answers below.

Version 1
Key Asian terror suspect seized

The suspected leader of the militant Jemaah Islamiah group in South-East Asia has been arrested, the White House has announced.

The man known as Hambali, whose real name is Riduan Isamuddin, was wanted by Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines in connection with a series of bomb attacks in the last three years.

Members of Jemaah-Islamiah (JI) have been linked with the Bali bombings and Hambali is also alleged to have connections with the al-Qaeda network of Osama Bin Laden.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said: "His capture is another important victory in the global war on terrorism and a significant blow to the enemy."

No details of how he was arrested were immediately available.

Version 2
Top al Qaeda operative in Southeast Asia captured

Al Qaeda's top planner in Southeast Asia has been captured, a senior Bush administration official told _____. Riduan Isamabudian, known as Hambali, is suspected of masterminding the bombing in Bali last year, which killed 202 people. A senior administration official said al Qaeda asked Hambali to recruit hijackers for other attacks after September 11. Suspect in Bali bombings captured

His full name is Riduan Isamabudian, and as a key leader of Jemaah Islamiyah is a key link between JI and al Qaeda. He is wanted by at least a half-dozen countries in Southeast Asia, according to ______'s Maria Ressa.

Hambali also is believed to be linked to last week's bombing at the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia. The Bali bombings killed more than 200 people; the hotel bombing killed at least 14.

He is being held at an undisclosed location outside the United States, according to a senior Bush administration official.

Version 3
U.S. Captures Bali Bombing Mastermind

The U.S. has captured Hambali, the alleged mastermind of the 2002 Bali bombing in Indonesia, the White House announced Thursday.

Hambali, whose full name is Riduan Bin Isomuddin, is also suspected of being the mastermind of the Aug. 5 bombing of the Marriott hotel in Jakarta, which killed 12 people. He was in custody of the U.S. government on Thursday, being held at an undisclosed location.

"His capture is another important victory in the global war on terrorism and a significant blow to the enemy," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan aboard Air Force One. President Bush was told about the arrest on Wednesday.

Hambali is thought to be Al Qaeda's chief representative and senior planner in Southeast Asia.

He is also described as the operational director of Jemaah Islamiyah, the Southeast Asian Islamic fundamentalist group blamed for both bombings as well as for another series of blasts in the southern Philippines. Jemaah Islamiyah (search) and Al Qaeda reportedly have strong ties.

Highlight below for answers:
Version 1= BBC Version 2=CNN Version 3=Fox News

2003-08-13T12:32:00.000-04:00

This year I was inspired to do something for the first time -- I gave money to a political candidate. Over the years I have given countless hours to good Democrats and progressive causes on the phone calling registered voters and canvassing neighborhoods to identify supporters, passing out flyers at movie theaters and shopping malls, driving people to the polls, and standing on street corners with campaign signs at 6 AM on election day!

This year I plan to do all that again to get Bush out of office next November - but what made me finally part with some of my hard earned non-profit organization salary? HOWARD DEAN. To put it simply for the first time in a long time it feels like I am supporting someone who is not ashamed to be a Democrat and that gives me hope.

In Vermont and now across the country Dean is standing behind civil unions because it is the right thing to do. In Vermont, as governor, Dr. Dean provided health care coverage for all children and most working class adults. Howard Dean is also standing up to George W. and holding him accountable for not giving Americans the full story before sending our troops into Iraq.

Don’t believe the hype. Howard Dean is not too liberal to beat Bush. Dean will inspire voters who have long been turned off by Democrats who act like they are running on the Republican ticket and don’t bother to vote. Together we can get Bush out of the White House and elect a President who will balance the budget, fight for working class families, helps to protect the environment -- not just the interests of corporations.

2003-08-12T14:34:00.000-04:00

Thanks for the M.R.E.'s

By PAUL KRUGMAN

A few days ago I talked to a soldier just back from Iraq. He'd been in a relatively calm area; his main complaint was about food. Four months after the fall of Baghdad, his unit was still eating the dreaded M.R.E.'s: meals ready to eat. When Italian troops moved into the area, their food was "way more realistic" — and American troops were soon trading whatever they could for some of that Italian food.

Other stories are far worse. Letters published in Stars and Stripes and e-mail published on the Web site of Col. David Hackworth (a decorated veteran and Pentagon critic) describe shortages of water. One writer reported that in his unit, "each soldier is limited to two 1.5-liter bottles a day," and that inadequate water rations were leading to "heat casualties." An American soldier died of heat stroke on Saturday; are poor supply and living conditions one reason why U.S. troops in Iraq are suffering such a high rate of noncombat deaths?

The U.S. military has always had superb logistics. What happened? The answer is a mix of penny-pinching and privatization — which makes our soldiers' discomfort a symptom of something more general.

Colonel Hackworth blames "dilettantes in the Pentagon" who "thought they could run a war and an occupation on the cheap." But the cheapness isn't restricted to Iraq. In general, the "support our troops" crowd draws the line when that support might actually cost something.

The usually conservative Army Times has run blistering editorials on this subject. Its June 30 blast, titled "Nothing but Lip Service," begins: "In recent months, President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have missed no opportunity to heap richly deserved praise on the military. But talk is cheap — and getting cheaper by the day, judging from the nickel-and-dime treatment the troops are getting lately." The article goes on to detail a series of promises broken and benefits cut.

Military corner-cutting is part of a broader picture of penny-wise-pound-foolish government. When it comes to tax cuts or subsidies to powerful interest groups, money is no object. But elsewhere, including homeland security, small-government ideology reigns. The Bush administration has been unwilling to spend enough on any aspect of homeland security, whether it's providing firefighters and police officers with radios or protecting the nation's ports. The decision to pull air marshals off some flights to save on hotel bills — reversed when the public heard about it — was simply a sound-bite-worthy example. (Air marshals have told MSNBC.com that a "witch hunt" is now under way at the Transportation Security Administration, and that those who reveal cost-cutting measures to the media are being threatened with the Patriot Act.)

There's also another element in the Iraq logistical snafu: privatization. The U.S. military has shifted many tasks traditionally performed by soldiers into the hands of such private contractors as Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary. The Iraq war and its aftermath gave this privatized system its first major test in combat — and the system failed.

According to the Newhouse News Service, "U.S. troops in Iraq suffered through months of unnecessarily poor living conditions because some civilian contractors hired by the Army for logistics support failed to show up." Not surprisingly, civilian contractors — and their insurance companies — get spooked by war zones. The Financial Times reports that the dismal performance of contractors in Iraq has raised strong concerns about what would happen in a war against a serious opponent, like North Korea.

Military privatization, like military penny-pinching, is part of a pattern. Both for ideological reasons and, one suspects, because of the patronage involved, the people now running the country seem determined to have public services provided by private corporations, no matter what the circumstances. For example, you may recall that in the weeks after 9/11 the Bush administration and its Congressional allies fought tooth and nail to leave airport screening in the hands of private security companies, giving in only in the face of overwhelming public pressure. In Iraq, reports The Baltimore Sun, "the Bush administration continues to use American corporations to perform work that United Nations agencies and nonprofit aid groups can do more cheaply."

In short, the logistical mess in Iraq isn't an isolated case of poor planning and mismanagement: it's telling us what's wrong with our current philosophy of government.

2003-08-12T14:31:00.000-04:00

I am counting down the days until Mary J Blige's album drops. I just read an interview and she seems to be in a good space. To share her joy click here.

2003-08-11T11:24:00.000-04:00

Thank you Mr. Sandman, I owe you one.

Last night I had a dream that might make a better post to nifty.org. than Snoop Bloggy Blog. My dream begins with me chatting at the top of some bleachers with Seann William Scott and Justin Timberlake . As we are talking SWS begins to aggressively flirt with Justin. As I type this it brings to mnd
After hearing from Joaquin that he has just spotted Sex & the City being filmed on his way to work

2003-08-08T17:38:00.000-04:00

Fuck Chino and Orange County too! LA County BABY!

From the LA Times

'The O.C.' Riles Up Chino With Too Many Prime-Time Put-Downs
By Kristina Sauerwein, Times Staff Writer

The new prime-time soap opera "The O.C." isn't getting rave reviews in Chino.

In the show's inaugural episode Tuesday, the young and beautiful people of Orange County's Newport Beach took delight in bashing the city of Chino as a seedy backwater, where crass neighbors live in run-down homes with chain-link fences and lawns littered with weeds, tires and mattresses.

And residents of Chino are firing back.

Chino's city manager Thursday criticized Fox TV for its "irresponsible and inconsiderate" depiction of the San Bernardino County city as a hick town.

"As a result of a negative reference to the city of Chino in the program, our city has received numerous phone calls from outraged residents who are completely offended by the portrayal of Chino as a 'ghetto town' on the 'wrong side of the tracks,' " Chino City Manager Glen Rojas said in a letter to the network.

It was bad enough Tuesday night when "The O.C." premiered, portraying Newport Beach as an "idyllic paradise" and Chino as a spawning ground for thieves, drunks and other unpleasantness.

But for Fox TV to rebroadcast the episode last night?

"It just makes me mad," Rojas said.

Fox TV executives declined comment Thursday.

In the TV series, main character Ryan Atwood, played by Benjamin McKenzie, moves to glitzy Newport Beach from what the show portrays as gritty Chino, where he stole a car and his mother is a boozer.

The people he meets from Orange County are less than kind about his hometown.

"Why don't you just go back to Chino?" one guy tells him. "I'm sure there's a really nice car in the parking lot that you can steal."

"Chino?" one girls asks. "Eeewwwwww."

Rojas sighs. "The phone's going to be ringing."

Since the drama's debut, Rojas has received about 20 phone calls from insulted residents. He's bracing for more this morning.

"People here are upset by it," said Rojas, noting that the city has moved beyond its image of a dusty, smelly town with dairy farms and a state prison. "Those things are such a small part of Chino."

During the past seven years, the city has attracted shopping centers with tenants such as Borders, Nordstrom Rack, Target, Wal-Mart, On the Border Restaurant and Fresh Choice, a salad and soup bar. In some neighborhoods, homes can cost $600,000.

"Chino has moved away from the way it was negatively perceived," said Rojas, inviting Fox execs to tour the city and see for themselves.

Still, Rojas acknowledged that Chino lacks Orange County's upscale restaurants and retailers. He fears "The O.C." will scare people away, especially developers.

"We're on the verge of getting some higher-end businesses," such as a P.F. Chang's and Trader Joe's, Rojas said. "This kind of negative publicity doesn't help."

The Chino bashing attracted some angry responses on the show's Internet site. Under the heading "Why dog on Chino," city defenders boasted of all their neighborhoods have to offer and took jabs at the producers.

"No one I know in Chino lives in a shack with old tires and ratty furniture in the frontyard," one wrote. "Don't perpetuate negative stereotypes for a television show!!!! Do your due diligence and actually find out what a city is before you slam it nationally."

2003-08-08T17:15:00.000-04:00

'Flash Mobs' Stage Wacky Public Stunts
Tue Aug 5, 1:16 AM ET

By BIPASHA RAY, Associated Press Writer

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - About 200 people, mostly in their 20s and 30s, crowd into the card section of the Harvard Coop bookstore, pretending to look for a card for "Bill."

On cue, they burst into spontaneous applause.

It's another "flash mob" strike, wherein a crowd, organized by e-mail lists and Web sites, converges in pre-arranged location and performs a wacky, harmless stunt for a few minutes in public.

The crowd then abruptly disappears, leaving bystanders befuddled.

Some participants consider these acts of swarming to be art. Others fancy them social revolution. But for many it's just irreverent, silly fun.

The phenomenon, called smart flocking by some, is spreading across the globe along with the portable digital devices that enable it.

After the original flash mob coalesced in Manhattan less than two months ago, similar 21st century be-ins were staged from Minneapolis to Tokyo to Vienna.

In June, flash-mobbers crowded into a Manhattan Macy's and surrounded a large oriental rug, telling puzzled salespeople they all lived together and wanted the $10,000 "Love Rug."

In Rome, hundreds flooded a bookstore, asking employees for imaginary books and authors.

In San Francisco, a flock crossed a busy downtown crosswalk back and forth, waving their arms in the air and spinning in circles, as tourists stared agape.

The Cambridge crowd fascinated Melissa Krodman, a 24-year-old mobber.
"But to get the joke, you had to look at the woman there behind the counter, the expression on her face" when the crown materialized out of nowhere, Krodman said.

A flash mob is a lighthearted variation of the "smart mob" — people who use digital technology to hastily mobilize, as activists did to protest the U.S. invasion of Iraq (news - web sites) or cell phone-equipped teenagers simply do to organize their evening on the spur of the moment.

Futurist Howard Rheingold unwittingly inspired the flash-mobbers, with his 2002 book "Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution," which examines how technology redefines social interaction.

Often, anonymous flash mob organizers send out e-mails and post on online "blogs" specifying a date and time for swarming. Word spreads quickly. And before you know it, hundreds are in New York's Central Park, making bird sounds.

What inspires participants?

"Everything makes a lot of sense nowadays, a bit too much sense. Then, for 10 minutes, you get to do something completely nonsensical. You get to be a kid for a few minutes," said a 30-year-old organizer of the San Francisco mob, who wanted to be known only as "The Governor."

Even friends who got his mob "summonses" didn't know he was the organizer, he says — and that secrecy is part of what has people hooked.

Only organizers know the details. Participants are told to synchronize their watches and gather in nearby bars, organized in clusters according to their birth month.

Volunteers, who get cues only minutes prior by cell phone, hand out slips of paper with instructions — the precise minute when the mob should appear and disappear.

The slips must be hidden after memorizing instructions and everyone must disperse no later than two minutes after it ends.

"It's all very 'spy novel,' very hush-hush," said 34-year-old New York City flash-mobber Fred Hoysted.

Numerous web logs (blogs), chat rooms and Yahoo group lists are devoted to the movement.

As soon as San Francisco blogger Sean Savage started recording flash mob events on his Web site — www.cheesebikini.com — traffic skyrocketed from 350 visitors a day to more than 9,000, he said.

A recent mention on the popular techie site, Slashdot.org, brought even more traffic, crashing Savage's server.

Savage, 31, says the phenomenon empowers citizens in a world controlled by "Big Government and Big Corporation."

"This interests people — even if it's frivolous, totally for fun, and doesn't have a label attached to it — because they see something can still happen from the grassroots without any help from the government and corporations," said Savage, a computer system designer and analyst at Stanford University.

Rob Zazueta, who is creating an online meeting place — FlockSmart.com — for organizers and wannabe participants, says the practice turns on its head arguments that evolving digital communications tools like text messaging or e-mail are depersonalizing.

"With smart mobs, these same tools that used to push us apart, are now bringing us back together," he said.

Zazueta, 28, hopes to see more instant physical gatherings — not of anonymous pranksters but rather of like minds. They could be at a coffee shop to discuss anything from technology, to music to politics.

"It takes the concept of chat rooms," he said, "and brings it into the real world (news - Y! TV)."

2003-08-08T10:56:00.000-04:00

The Republicans have moved onto another "war." This one against pornography. How many ways will our civil liberties be attacked by the Bush White House?

Read article here.

2003-08-06T10:09:00.000-04:00

At work everyone makes fun of my craigslist obsession. But hey I am going to see Gypsy tonight on Broadway for only 50 bucks! Over half off the face value of the ticket - yeah!

Tacos to trannies: Craigslist has it all

In my heart of hearts, this whole site still feels to me like a hobby, even though I consciously realize it's much bigger.

-- Craig Newmark, Craigslist founder

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- Michael Ferris Gibson has been awake for 24 hours, and the frazzled filmmaker can't think straight after chugging countless cans of soda spiked with extra caffeine.

Should he dispatch camera crews to shoot the Ethel Merman drag queen auditioning drummers for his '70s-style rock band? The penny-pinching foodies seeking comrades for a late-night taqueria tour? The cash-strapped transsexual selling "erotic services" to pay for a sex change? Or the heart-tugging tale of a woman looking for someone to adopt her blind Australian Shepherd dog?

Such are the quandaries of the director of a documentary about Craigslist, the wildly popular Web site where millions of people buy, sell, swap and debate everything from politics and condos to poodles and casual sex.

Gibson hopes his 90-minute "Craigslist: The Movie," which chronicles 24 hours in the life of the online forum, makes it to the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. His company, Zealot Pictures, monitored thousands of Monday's postings and shot digital video of several dozen people who wrote them. Camera crews will spend the next three months following the most interesting stories.

"We want to show how Craigslist is the digital commons," the 32-year-old director said Monday in Zealot's "war room" -- a sunny loft strewn with bags of bagels, energy bars and bottled water in San Francisco's gritty South of Market district. "We want to show how it preserves the freethinking, young, intelligent, anti-capitalist attitude of people trying to save the world."

Staying true to community

Craig Newmark founded Craigslist in 1995, at the urging of friends who enjoyed receiving his e-mail roundup of local events. The bare bones site was meant as an "online community where folks help each other out with everyday stuff." He now runs it with 12 other employees and a chief executive, Jim Buckmaster.

Michael Ferris Gibson, director of "Craigslist: The movie," hopes his 90-minute film makes it to the 2004 Sundance Film Festival.

"It's all very surreal," said Newmark, a former IBM programmer who spends about 60 hours a week chasing spammers and deleting inappropriate messages from Craigslist.

Despite the venture capital boom in Silicon Valley in the late 1990s, when offers of acquisitions flowed into the Victorian storefront that serves as Craigslist's San Francisco headquarters, Newmark insisted the site remain "not motivated by the possibility of making big money."

It charges companies $75 per job posting and may soon charge landlords for apartment listings, but Buckmaster said it would never charge individuals for classifieds, personals and discussion forums.

Big in San Francisco

Craigslist expanded to Boston, then Seattle, New York and 19 other regions. But San Francisco still generates 50 percent of the 450 million page views and 4 million unique visitors per month. Northern Californians write 500,000 of the site's 800,000 forum postings per month.

Rachel Berney, 32, turned to Craigslist to sell a ticket to Burning Man, an experimental village that rises up every September in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. The doctoral student at University of California, Berkeley, needs to recuperate from shoulder surgery, and would not sell her $225 ticket anywhere except Craigslist -- for face value, not profit.

"The people who interact with Craigslist fit the type of people I want to interact with," she said.

2003-08-05T14:26:00.000-04:00

Persuaders or Partisans

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 5, 2003; 9:10 AM

It should be utterly predictable, right? The New York Times and Washington Post editorial pages beat up on George W., while the Wall Street Journal and Washington Times editorial pages doggedly defend the president.

Well, not quite.

A new Harvard study says the conservative editorial pages are more intensely partisan, and far less willing to criticize a Republican administration than the liberal pages are to take on a Democratic administration.

New York magazine columnist Michael Tomasky, who did the study for the Joan Shorenstein press center, is a certified liberal, so some may be inclined to discount his findings. But the nature of his research makes it harder to dismiss.

Tomasky examined the editorial commentary on 10 Bush and Clinton episodes that were roughly comparable. He did not include extraordinary events, such as the Lewinsky scandal or 9/11. Everyone knows that virtually all papers, of every political stripe, whacked Clinton over his Monica dissembling. No surprise there, and there's no similar Bush scandal. More interesting is how the papers handled run-of-the-mill political controversies.

The liberal papers criticized the Clinton administration 30 percent of the time, while the conservative papers slapped around the Bush administration just 7 percent of the time.

The liberal papers praised the Clintonites 36 percent of the time, while the conservative papers praised the Bushies 77 percent of the time.

One more set of numbers: The liberal papers criticized Bush 67 percent of the time; the conservative papers criticized Clinton 89 percent of the time.

As for intensity, Tomasky cites a Journal editorial soon after the Clintonites arrived in Washington, describing administration figures as "pod people from a 'Star Trek' episode . . . genetically bred to inhabit the public sector."

Let's go to the numbers:

When Hillary's health care task force was sued in 1993 to open its records, the NYT wrote four editorials, all negative toward the Clintons. The WP had one mixed. The WSJ wrote eight, all negative. The WT had seven, all negative.

The New York Times, for example, called the Clinton secrecy "unseemly, possibly illegal and wrong." The Washington Times said that "if ever there was a situation that demanded that all ethics regulations be followed down to the last dot on the last 'i' and the last cross on the last 't' it is the doings of the health care task force."

Cut to Dick Cheney's energy task force keeping its records secret. The NYT, as it had with Hillary, wrote five editorials, all negative. The WP wrote one, mixed. The WSJ wrote one positive, and the WT wrote one positive, one mixed and one negative.

Said the Journal: "This purely political lawsuit was [John Dingell and Henry Waxman's] attempted end-run around the Constitution's tedious separation of powers."

The Washington Times compared the Hillary and Cheney situations, saying: "Perhaps the most important difference between the two task forces is that no one on the Bush team is channeling policy from Eleanor Roosevelt."

During Janet Reno's first year as attorney general, the NYT wrote five positive editorials, 11 mixed and 17 negative. The WP wrote seven positive, three mixed and four negative. By contrast, the WSJ wrote one positive, four mixed and 11 negative. The WT carried two mixed and 16 negative.

As for John Ashcroft's first year, the NYT had four positive, seven mixed and 13 negative. The WP had four positive, six mixed and 13 negative. The WSJ: nine positive and one mixed. The WT: 10 positive, two mixed and three negative.

2003-08-01T11:11:00.000-04:00

2003-08-01T11:10:00.000-04:00

State of Decline
By PAUL KRUGMAN

From smog to silicon, from the sexual revolution to the tax revolt, the future has usually arrived in California first. Now the Golden State is degenerating into a banana republic. Can the nation be far behind?

The recall isn't just a case of hardball politics. It's also a grand act of evasion: in the face of a severe fiscal crisis, voters are being invited to focus not on hard choices but on personality. Replacing Gray Davis with someone more likable isn't going to pay the bills.

And California's slide into irresponsibility, in which politicians refuse to acknowledge any connection between the government services the public demands and the taxes that pay for those services, is being replicated all across America.

Thanks to the end of the tech boom and the bursting of the tech bubble — with an assist from energy price gouging — California's budget has plunged into deficit. State and local governments faced with deficits normally respond with a mix of spending cuts and tax increases. That's what Mayor Michael Bloomberg has done in New York, it's what Gov. Pete Wilson did in California's last fiscal crisis, in the early 1990's, and it's what Mr. Davis proposed earlier this year.

But California's Constitution requires that budgets be passed in the State Legislature by a two-thirds' margin — which gives the Republican minority blocking power. And that minority has refused either to vote for any tax increase, or to make realistic proposals for spending cuts.

You often hear claims that excessive spending is responsible for California's budget woes. True, budgets grew rapidly after the mid-1990's. But California began the 1990's by slashing outlays in response to a fiscal crisis, and most of the subsequent growth was simply a return to pre-crisis levels. As analysts at the nonpartisan California Budget Project point out, real state spending per capita was only 10 percent higher in 2002-03 than it was in 1989-90 — that is, most of the spending growth was simply a matter of keeping up with the population and inflation.

The key factor in rising California spending has been the effort to rebuild a crippled education system.

Proposition 13, the 1978 cap on property taxes, led to a progressive starvation of California's once-lauded public schools. By 1994, the state had the largest class sizes in the nation; its reading scores were on a par with Mississippi's.

Voters wanted this shameful situation remedied. Indeed, much of the recent growth of education spending was mandated by a rather complex measure called Proposition 98. So when conservatives denounce "runaway government spending" in California, what they're really talking about is the effort to hire more teachers and repair decrepit school buildings.

Still, now the state faces a huge deficit, and spending must be cut. But shouldn't the state also seek more revenue? During California's last crisis, Governor Wilson increased the sales tax and temporarily raised income taxes on top brackets. This time Governor Davis proposed doing more or less the same thing — but Senate Republicans refused to go along. Their counterproposal relied entirely on spending cuts — but, tellingly, offered no specifics about what, exactly, should be cut.

This week the stalemate was finally resolved, sort of. The budget that was passed contains one significant tax increase, a rise in the vehicle licensing fee — for technical reasons, this didn't require a vote. And it uses elaborate fiscal footwork to evade restrictions on state borrowing, passing the problem on until next year. It's better than no budget at all, but it's a monument to political irresponsibility.

Which brings me to the final point: is Washington any better than Sacramento?

Outside the Social Security system, the federal government is now running a deficit equal to a third of its spending — worse than California. The administration says it will never, ever contemplate increasing taxes; it says it will narrow the deficit through spending restraint, but has never said what spending it intends to restrain.

If the federal government isn't in crisis, that's only because — unlike state governments — it isn't obliged to balance its budget each year. And so far bond markets have been willing to give the feds the benefit of the doubt.

But the people now running the country are every bit as irresponsible as those blocking a serious response to California's crisis. And sooner or later that irresponsibility will have the usual consequences. California, here we come.

2003-08-01T10:06:00.000-04:00

2003-08-01T09:59:00.000-04:00

2003-07-31T17:38:00.000-04:00

Bush is dumb.

From cnn.com
Bush adds to list of sayings

A taste for simple, to-the-point lines

Wednesday, July 30, 2003 Posted: 6:02 PM EDT (2202 GMT)

President Bush addresses reporters during a news conference in the Rose Garden.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush, known for being plainspoken and having a folksy way with words and phrases, has added to the growing list of what are known as "Bush-isms."

Asked for his views on homosexuality during a rare and formal White House news conference on Wednesday, Bush suggested it was sinful. But being "mindful that we're all sinners," he said people should be respectful of each other, including those of a different sexual orientation.

"I caution those who may try to take the speck out of a neighbor's eye when they got a log in their own," added Bush, quoting from the Bible as he answered questions for about an hour in the Rose Garden.

Some might say the response was classic Bush, delivered by a chief executive who for the most part favors sweet, simple and to-the-point replies over lengthy, more flowery prose.

"I think he's a person that thinks that words oftentimes get in the way of communication, rather than in assistance to it," said Roderick Hart, who teaches communication and government at the University of Texas at Austin, in Bush's home state.

"He's a person who believes in direct, no-nonsense chatter," Hart added.

To wit, Bush has said he'll take terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." He has pledged to "smoke them out" of their caves -- "them" being bin Laden and his terrorist fighters.

Last year, Bush said Democrats who criticize his tax cuts are really tax raisers in disguise and he declared, "Not over my dead body will they raise your taxes!"

He caused a bit of a stir just a few weeks ago when he challenged would-be killers of U.S. troops in Iraq by taunting, "Bring 'em on."

"He goes for the crispest, simplest, probably least elegant" language, Hart said of Bush.

He also gets his point across.

On Wednesday, after repeating that the government has begun mailing millions of checks worth up to $400 per child to middle-income households under recently enacted tax cuts, Bush quipped: "This time when we say, 'The check's in the mail,' we mean it."

Bush's solo appearance Wednesday before reporters eager for a chance to question him was the ninth of his presidency. It also was the first since before the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq last March.

Tongue-in-cheek apology

The event elicited seven words from the president that some people probably thought they'd never hear: an apology to a member of bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network. Bush was grinning when he said the words, though.

In response to a question about homeland security, Bush said the United States was dismantling the network's senior management. Then he started ticking off the Arab names of al Qaeda members in U.S. custody until he became tongue-tied on one in particular.

"Ramzi. Ramzi Alshibh or whatever the guy's name was," Bush said.

His audience laughed.

"Sorry, Ramzi, if I got it wrong," Bush said, referring to Ramzi Binalshibh, the captured al Qaeda prisoner and suspected plotter of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

More laughter.

"Binalshibh. Excuse me," the president said, correcting himself before continuing.

2003-07-25T01:57:00.000-04:00

Coming to you LIVE FROM MEXICO DF - SNOOP BLOGGY BLOG!

What up. I am coming to you straight live from La Condesa hood in Mexico City where Christian and I just embarked on a late night Mexican munchies extravaganza with eight tacos al pastor, queso fundido with chorizo (served w/ hot tortillas) and a hawaianna quesadilla. Dont be jealous.

I gotta say today was a good day. I made my pilgrimage to Coyoacan to worship at La Casa Azul. This time, eight years older and wiser, I did not disobey the order of the house and touch Frida's corset. I kept my hands to myself.

When I entered Diego's side of the casa in San Angel (where Frida caught him fucking her sister) I was overcome by an energy running through my body. Yep, I was channeling Frida's pain. She was all around that place and I felt blessed to feel so close.

I love Mexico City.

Tonight we are going to bed early so we can wake up and travel to Teotihuacan.

I miss you boo boo. Mwah!

2003-07-22T10:02:00.000-04:00

So tomorrow morning bright and early I am leaving to Mexico City on the 6 AM flight out of La Guardia. Things seem to finally be looking up in this country. Bush is going down all over the media. Every poll shows his approval ratings dropping como moscas and equally exciting his more Americans do not trust him than trust him.

Now if only we can keep Nader out of the election. Sorry Diana, but there is a difference between the parties and the reality is that we would not be in this mess if Nader had not run in states like Florida.

Who's Unpatriotic Now?
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Some nonrevisionist history: On Oct. 8, 2002, Knight Ridder newspapers reported on intelligence officials who "charge that the administration squelches dissenting views, and that intelligence analysts are under intense pressure to produce reports supporting the White House's argument that Saddam poses such an immediate threat to the United States that pre-emptive military action is necessary." One official accused the administration of pressuring analysts to "cook the intelligence books"; none of the dozen other officials the reporters spoke to disagreed.

The skepticism of these officials has been vindicated. So have the concerns expressed before the war by military professionals like Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, about the resources required for postwar occupation. But as the bad news comes in, those who promoted this war have responded with a concerted effort to smear the messengers.

Issues of principle aside, the invasion of a country that hadn't attacked us and didn't pose an imminent threat has seriously weakened our military position. Of the Army's 33 combat brigades, 16 are in Iraq; this leaves us ill prepared to cope with genuine threats. Moreover, military experts say that with almost two-thirds of its brigades deployed overseas, mainly in Iraq, the Army's readiness is eroding: normal doctrine calls for only one brigade in three to be deployed abroad, while the other two retrain and refit.

And the war will have devastating effects on future recruiting by the reserves. A widely circulated photo from Iraq shows a sign in the windshield of a military truck that reads, "One weekend a month, my ass."

To top it all off, our insistence on launching a war without U.N. approval has deprived us of useful allies. George Bush claims to have a "huge coalition," but only 7 percent of the coalition soldiers in Iraq are non-American — and administration pleas for more help are sounding increasingly plaintive.

How serious is the strain on our military? The Brookings Institution military analyst Michael O'Hanlon, who describes our volunteer military as "one of the best military institutions in human history," warns that "the Bush administration will risk destroying that accomplishment if they keep on the current path."

But instead of explaining what happened to the Al Qaeda link and the nuclear program, in the last few days a series of hawkish pundits have accused those who ask such questions of aiding the enemy. Here's Frank Gaffney Jr. in The National Post: "Somewhere, probably in Iraq, Saddam Hussein is gloating. He can only be gratified by the feeding frenzy of recriminations, second-guessing and political power plays. . . . Signs of declining popular appreciation of the legitimacy and necessity of the efforts of America's armed forces will erode their morale. Similarly, the enemy will be encouraged."

Well, if we're going to talk about aiding the enemy: By cooking intelligence to promote a war that wasn't urgent, the administration has squandered our military strength. This provides a lot of aid and comfort to Osama bin Laden — who really did attack America — and Kim Jong Il — who really is building nukes.

And while we're on the subject of patriotism, let's talk about the affair of Joseph Wilson's wife. Mr. Wilson is the former ambassador who was sent to Niger by the C.I.A. to investigate reports of attempted Iraqi uranium purchases and who recently went public with his findings. Since then administration allies have sought to discredit him — it's unpleasant stuff. But here's the kicker: both the columnist Robert Novak and Time magazine say that administration officials told them that they believed that Mr. Wilson had been chosen through the influence of his wife, whom they identified as a C.I.A. operative.

Think about that: if their characterization of Mr. Wilson's wife is true (he refuses to confirm or deny it), Bush administration officials have exposed the identity of a covert operative. That happens to be a criminal act; it's also definitely unpatriotic.

So why would they do such a thing? Partly, perhaps, to punish Mr. Wilson, but also to send a message.

And that should alarm us. We've just seen how politicized, cooked intelligence can damage our national interest. Yet the Wilson affair suggests that the administration intends to continue pressuring analysts to tell it what it wants to hear.

2003-07-15T10:21:00.000-04:00

Ex-Inspector's Book Attacks Bush, U.N.
Tue Jul 15, 1:53 AM ET

By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer

UNITED NATIONS - Former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter released a new book, accusing President Bush (news - web sites) of illegally attacking Iraq (news - web sites) and calling for "regime change" in the United States at the next election.

Ritter criticized key figures caught up in the U.S.-led war at Monday's U.N. news conference. He said Bush lied to the American people and Congress about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction; U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) lacked courage; former chief weapons inspector Hans Blix was "a moral and intellectual coward."

Ritter, a former U.S. Marine, was a weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. He has been a vocal critical of the Bush administration's policy on Iraq.

Ritter said he wrote "Frontier Justice, Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwacking of America" to educate people. The 209-page paperback, published by Context Books, has on its cover a picture of Bush in jeans and a cowboy hat, behind the wheel of a truck.

In the book, Ritter notes that the Bush administration's stated reason for launching the war was to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. The book argues that there is no evidence that Iraq possesses, produces or concealed nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Therefore, Ritter argues that "the United States carried out an illegal war of aggression."

Bush, responding Monday to similar charges about the lack of evidence of illegal Iraqi weapons, insisted: "When it's all said and done, the people of the United States and the world will realize that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) had a weapons program."

Ritter said Bush's real goal was to get rid of Saddam Hussein's regime. "What is needed in America is regime change," Ritter writes. "Anything but Bush and (Vice President Dick) Cheney."

At the news conference, Ritter accused France and Germany of failing to get a Security Council or General Assembly resolution calling the war illegal and demanding a U.S. withdrawal.

Ritter had kind words for Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. He said ElBaradei was "much more honest" than Blix about appraising Iraq's nuclear weapons and the threat they posed.

2003-07-15T09:36:00.000-04:00

I feel like I have been waiting for Paul Krugman to get back from vacation for weeks! Here he is finally with his take on W's bullshit.

Pattern of Corruption
By PAUL KRUGMAN

More than half of the U.S. Army's combat strength is now bogged down in Iraq, which didn't have significant weapons of mass destruction and wasn't supporting Al Qaeda. We have lost all credibility with allies who might have provided meaningful support; Tony Blair is still with us, but has lost the trust of his public. All this puts us in a very weak position for dealing with real threats. Did I mention that North Korea has been extracting fissionable material from its fuel rods?

How did we get into this mess? The case of the bogus uranium purchases wasn't an isolated instance. It was part of a broad pattern of politicized, corrupted intelligence.

Literally before the dust had settled, Bush administration officials began trying to use 9/11 to justify an attack on Iraq. Gen. Wesley Clark says that he received calls on Sept. 11 from "people around the White House" urging him to link that assault to Saddam Hussein. His account seems to back up a CBS.com report last September, headlined "Plans for Iraq Attack Began on 9/11," which quoted notes taken by aides to Donald Rumsfeld on the day of the attack: "Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

But an honest intelligence assessment would have raised questions about why we were going after a country that hadn't attacked us. It would also have suggested the strong possibility that an invasion of Iraq would hurt, not help, U.S. security.

So the Iraq hawks set out to corrupt the process of intelligence assessment. On one side, nobody was held accountable for the failure to predict or prevent 9/11; on the other side, top intelligence officials were expected to support the case for an Iraq war.

The story of how the threat from Iraq's alleged W.M.D.'s was hyped is now, finally, coming out. But let's not forget the persistent claim that Saddam was allied with Al Qaeda, which allowed the hawks to pretend that the Iraq war had something to do with fighting terrorism.

As Greg Thielmann, a former State Department intelligence official, said last week, U.S. intelligence analysts have consistently agreed that Saddam did not have a "meaningful connection" to Al Qaeda. Yet administration officials continually asserted such a connection, even as they suppressed evidence showing real links between Al Qaeda and Saudi Arabia.

And during the run-up to war, George Tenet, the C.I.A. director, was willing to provide cover for his bosses — just as he did last weekend. In an October 2002 letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee, he made what looked like an assertion that there really were meaningful connections between Saddam and Osama. Read closely, the letter is evasive, but it served the administration's purpose.

What about the risk that an invasion of Iraq would weaken America's security? Warnings from military experts that an extended postwar occupation might severely strain U.S. forces have proved precisely on the mark. But the hawks prevented any consideration of this possibility. Before the war, one official told Newsweek that the occupation might last no more than 30 to 60 days.

It gets worse. Knight Ridder newspapers report that a "small circle of senior civilians in the Defense Department" were sure that their favorite, Ahmad Chalabi, could easily be installed in power. They were able to prevent skeptics from getting a hearing — and they had no backup plan when efforts to anoint Mr. Chalabi, a millionaire businessman, degenerated into farce.

So who will be held accountable? Mr. Tenet betrayed his office by tailoring statements to reflect the interests of his political masters, rather than the assessments of his staff — but that's not why he may soon be fired. Yesterday USA Today reported that "some in the Bush administration are arguing privately for a C.I.A. director who will be unquestioningly loyal to the White House as committees demand documents and call witnesses."

Not that the committees are likely to press very hard: Senator Pat Roberts, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, seems more concerned about protecting his party's leader than protecting the country. "What concerns me most," he says, is "what appears to be a campaign of press leaks by the C.I.A. in an effort to discredit the president."

In short, those who politicized intelligence in order to lead us into war, at the expense of national security, hope to cover their tracks by corrupting the system even further.

2003-07-14T15:07:00.000-04:00

From Today's Hotline

42 NEWSWEEK: 47% Say They Want To See Bush Reelected; 46% Say No Conducted 7/10-11 by Princeton Survey Research Assocs.; surveyed 1,017 adults; margin of error +/- 3% (release, 7/12).

Want To See Bush Reelected?(RVs)
Now 5/2 4/11
47% 51% 52%
46 38 38

2003-07-14T14:36:00.000-04:00

You know I love to hear people talk shit about Joe Lieberman. I am not sure I could vote for him if we was the nominee.

NAACP president assails three Democrats
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Nedra Pickler

July 14, 2003 | MIAMI BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- NAACP President Kweisi Mfume criticized Democratic presidential candidates Dick Gephardt, Joe Lieberman and Dennis Kucinich on Monday for skipping the group's presidential forum, saying the three have become "persona non grata" among black voters.

Mfume lashed out at the three during a speech to about 1,000 gathered for the NAACP's convention. Each time Mfume mentioned their name an organmaster played a death knell chord.

"In essence, you now have become persona non grata," he said. "Your political capital is the equivalent of confederate dollars."

The crowd responded to his condemnation with applause and then a chorus of "oooo" at the mention of confederate money.

Sens. John Kerry and John Edwards were not planning to take part in the forum with Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, former Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton. But Kerry and Edwards escaped Mfume's wrath by deciding late Sunday to join their rivals.

Gephardt said he had a prior family obligation, Lieberman said he had campaign events in New York and Kucinich said he wanted to be in Washington to make votes in the House. Spokesman for all three said their absence wasn't meant to be a snub and they hoped to work with the NAACP throughout the campaign, but Mfume wouldn't excuse them.

"If you expect us to believe that you could not find 90 minutes to come by and address the issues affecting our nation, then you have no legitimacy over the next nine months in our community," he said to applause from the delegates.

Kerry's aides said the Massachusetts senator initially refused to take part in the forum to honor a verbal agreement quietly reached with three of his rivals -- Edwards of North Carolina; Gephardt, a congressman from Missouri; and Lieberman, a senator from Connecticut.

Under the agreement, the candidates would not share a stage other than during six debates being organized by the Democratic National Committee.

That would mean convincing the various groups that invite them to speak to give each candidate a designated time instead of having them appear together.

The joint appearances are a common format for dozens of presidential forums being organized by labor unions, environmentalists, civil rights activists, abortion rights supporters and other interest groups active in Democratic politics.

The NAACP was one such group and had invited all nine Democratic candidates to their convention.

Such forums are supposed to give the candidates a chance to woo Democratic voters, but the campaigns have received so many invitations this year that the forums are creating scheduling headaches. All nine candidates agreed that the Democratic National Committee would sponsor six official televised debates beginning in September.

Even though that agreement did not prevent the candidates from appearing at any other events, Kerry aides said four of the campaigns took it a step further in an attempt to bring order to their overall schedules.

Edwards originally said he would skip the NAACP forum because of scheduling conflicts, as did Gephardt, Lieberman and Kucinich of Ohio.

Kerry initially agreed to attend the convention but - to honor his informal agreement with Edwards, Gephardt, Lieberman -- said he would not participate unless he could address the audience without the other candidates on stage.

But Edwards decided late Sunday to cancel his campaign events Monday in Iowa to participate and Kerry then agreed to take part, too -- under the ground rules set by the NAACP.

2003-07-13T14:08:00.000-04:00

National House of Waffles
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

More and more, with Bush administration pronouncements about the Iraq war, it depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is.

W. built his political identity on the idea that he was not Bill Clinton. He didn't parse words or prevaricate. He was the Texas straight shooter.

So why is he now presiding over a completely Clintonian environment, turning the White House into a Waffle House, where truth is camouflaged by word games and responsibility is obscured by shell games?

The president and Condi Rice can shuffle the shells and blame George Tenet, but it smells of mendacity.

Mr. Clinton indulged in casuistry to hide personal weakness. The Bush team indulges in casuistry to perpetuate its image of political steel.

Dissembling over peccadillos is pathetic. Dissembling over pre-emptive strikes is pathological, given over 200 Americans dead and 1,000 wounded in Iraq, and untold numbers of dead Iraqis. Our troops are in "a shooting gallery," as Teddy Kennedy put it, and our spy agencies warn that we are on the cusp of a new round of attacks by Saddam snipers.

Why does it always come to this in Washington? The people who ascend to power on the promise of doing things differently end up making the same unforced errors their predecessors did. Out of office, the Bush crowd mocked the Clinton propensity for stonewalling; in office, they have stonewalled the 9/11 families on the events that preceded the attacks, and the American public on how — and why — they maneuvered the nation into the Iraqi war.

Their defensive crouch and obsession with secrecy are positively Nixonian. (But instead of John Dean and an aggressive media, they have Howard Dean and a cowed media.)

In a hole, the president should have done some plain speaking: "The information I gave you in the State of the Union about Iraq seeking nuclear material from Africa has been revealed to be false. I'm deeply angry and I'm going to get to the bottom of this."

But of course he couldn't say that. He would be like Sheriff Bart in "Blazing Saddles," holding the gun to his own head and saying, "Nobody move or POTUS gets it." The Bush administration has known all along that the evidence of the imminent threat of Saddam's weapons and the Al Qaeda connections were pumped up. They were manning the air hose.

Mr. Tenet, in his continuing effort to ingratiate himself to his bosses, agreed to take the fall, trying to minimize a year's worth of war-causing warping of intelligence as a slip of the keyboard. "These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president," he said, in 15 words that were clearly written for him on behalf of the president. But it won't fly.

It was Ms. Rice's responsibility to vet the intelligence facts in the president's speech and take note of the red alert the tentative Tenet was raising. Colin Powell did when he set up camp at the C.I.A. for a week before his U.N. speech, double-checking what he considered unsubstantiated charges that the Cheney chief of staff, Scooter Libby, and other hawks wanted to sluice into his talk.

When the president attributed the information about Iraq trying to get Niger yellowcake to British intelligence, it was a Clintonian bit of flim-flam. Americans did not know what top Bush officials knew: that this "evidence" could not be attributed to American intelligence because the C.I.A. had already debunked it.

Ms. Rice did not throw out the line, even though the C.I.A. had warned her office that it was sketchy. Clearly, a higher power wanted it in.

And that had to be Dick Cheney's office. Joseph Wilson, former U.S. ambassador to Gabon, said he was asked to go to Niger to answer some questions from the vice president's office about that episode and reported back that it was highly doubtful.

But doubt is not the currency of the Bush hawks. Asked if he regretted using the Niger claim, Mr. Bush replied: "There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a threat to world peace. And there's no doubt in my mind that the United States, along with allies and friends, did the right thing in removing him from power. And there's no doubt in my mind, when it's all said and done, the facts will show the world the truth."

I'm happy that Mr. Bush's mental landscape is so cloudless. But it is our doubts he needs to assuage.

2003-07-11T10:37:00.000-04:00

One more reason for working people to not vote Republican.

From the New York Times -

House Defeats Democrats' Bid to Thwart New Overtime Rules
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, July 10 — The House cleared the way today for the Bush administration to impose new rules on overtime pay, narrowly rejecting Democratic arguments that the plan will cost millions of workers the opportunity to earn extra money.

While considering a $138 billion measure that pays for labor, health and education programs, the Republican-controlled House defeated a Democratic proposal to block proposed wage rules that have become the subject of a struggle between business and labor. The vote was 213 to 210. The underlying spending measure was approved 215 to 208.

Under a proposal made this spring by the Labor Department, anyone earning less than $22,100 would qualify for overtime if they worked more than 40 hours, an increase from the current level of $8,060.

At the same time, businesses would gain new authority to exempt white-collar workers and others deemed to hold "positions of responsibility" from extra pay.

Democrats said the proposal would mean that as many as eight million workers like police officers and fire and hospital employees who count on overtime as an essential part of their income could be denied the money.

2003-07-09T09:40:00.000-04:00

A nation of scared sheep
Why don't Americans care that Bush may have lied to them about Iraq? The answer lies deep in our reptilian brains.

By Louise Witt

July 9, 2003 | The deep, almost spiritual conflict between honesty and lying is ingrained in our national psyche. Who doesn't remember as a schoolchild hearing the tale about George Washington father's discovering the young boy next to a felled cherry tree? When asked who had cut the tree, George is said to have replied, "I can't tell a lie, Pa; you know I can't tell a lie. I did cut it with my hatchet." As it turns out, that story was a lie concocted by an early 19th century biographer to embellish Washington's rather staid character.

But the story illustrates Americans' paradoxical approach to lies. Certainly most humans hold complicated and deep-seated views on deceit and candor; Americans, however, seem to have an especially bipolar one. At times, they assume a puritanical, absolutist stance on telling falsehoods: It is always bad. Other times, they're far more lenient: It's acceptable. This conflict is evident today when we look at how Americans have reacted to the fact that the Bush administration hyped, and perhaps in part fabricated, its case for invading Iraq, and that it grossly distorted who would benefit from its massive tax cuts. Americans put a premium on honesty and forthrightness, but they appear willing to forgive Bush's exaggerations and hype and the convoluted excuses his administration has offered in the aftermath of war. At one point -- in response to those who questioned the administration's assertions about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction -- Bush accused his critics of indulging in "revisionist history."

It's ironic that this is the very same populace that a few years ago was glued to its TV sets as Congress impeached then-President Bill Clinton for fibbing about his sexual dalliances with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Clinton was vilified, even though his lie was one many men caught in a similar position wouldn't have thought twice about committing. (In fact, some of his most vituperative opponents, including Newt Gingrich, hid their own sexual affairs.) Eventually, Americans wearied of the drawn-out impeachment process, and the Senate acquitted Clinton. Still, many Americans thought -- and still think -- that his lie undermined the integrity of the presidency. A more recent example is Martha Stewart. Many Americans believe Stewart should be punished for allegedly lying about the sale of roughly $240,000 in ImClone stock.

Why is it that Americans have given Bush a pass on his misleading and trumped-up evidence about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, when they pilloried Clinton and Stewart for far less devastating transgressions? The answer may be simple: It's human nature. We're hard-wired to forgive some lies -- and liars -- more than others.

"People don't focus as much on the sin as on the sinner," says Robert P. Lawry, a professor of law and the director of the Center for Professional Ethics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law, in Cleveland. "Bush's popularity explains the shrugging of the shoulders. An awful lot of people seem to have a visceral, negative reaction to Martha Stewart; they don't like her. They like Bush, so they forgive him. It has nothing to do with the lie. Going to war is much more problematic a lie than one that nets you a small gain, relatively speaking, in the stock market. People are not paying attention to the implications and importance of the lie."

Lawry surmises people base their likes and dislikes on fairly superficial assessments: They see Martha as an uppity bitch and George W. as a regular guy. Yet, there are deeper, more complicated reasons why Americans are forgiving Bush -- and it has nothing to do with his magnetic personality and far more with the times we live in.

We're scared.

Since 9/11, Americans have been living in a state of fear and anxiety comparable to the Cold War in the '50s and early '60s, or to the World War II era. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon took more than 3,000 lives, making it the deadliest foreign attack on the U.S. since Pearl Harbor. Experts who study deceit in all of its forms and degrees contend that it therefore makes perfect sense that Americans are willing to accept and forgive, though not necessarily believe, Bush's statements, even if those were intentionally or otherwise misleading. Humans are more or less genetically programmed to accept falsehoods that comfort them during periods of extreme stress. Call it the fear factor: Being able to rally around a strong leader -- and the flag -- is reassuring to many Americans.

"An audience is softened up to believe information when they feel threatened or when they are aroused by anger or fear," says Carolyn Keating, a professor of psychology at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y. "Two things happen when we are under threat: We focus on peripheral, superficial clues and we don't follow complex logic -- only what we feel."

Consider the now famous suggestion made by President Bush in his January State of the Union address that Iraq had tried to buy "significant quantities" of uranium from an unnamed African country, widely assumed to be Niger, for use in nuclear weapons. In the days before the war started, the documents on which the allegation was based were debunked as forgeries by United Nations weapons inspectors. Top administration officials insisted as recently as last month that they were not aware of the forgeries at the time of Bush's speech. But then, on Sunday, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV wrote in the New York Times that the CIA sent him to Niger in 2002 to assess the validity of the alleged uranium sale. Wilson wrote that he'd quickly determined the reports were false and that his findings were forwarded to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Finally, on Monday, the White House admitted the president relied on inaccurate, incomplete information for that crucial passage of his State of the Union address.

It is among the clearest evidence to date that the administration ignored critical information that didn't support its war cause and that it thereby misled the American people. But what Americans feel right now, according to psychologists and other experts, is that they want to support Bush whether he's right or wrong.

Of course, it remains possible that the administration received bad information from the intelligence agencies. And, too, the belief that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction or the materials and means to produce them extended far beyond the White House to many Western intelligence agencies and to past and current members of the United Nations weapons inspections team.

Or perhaps Americans were less concerned about WMD than about other justifications for war. Saddam was well known as a megalomaniacal dictator who gassed his own people, assassinated and tortured his political opponents, and waged war against neighboring Iran and Kuwait. Influential Times columnist Thomas Friedman summed up this the-ends-justify-the-means argument in an April piece: "Whether you were for or against this war, whether you preferred that the war be done with the United Nations' approval or without it, you have to feel good that right has triumphed over wrong. America did the right thing here."

Friedman's reasoning might go a long way to explaining why, despite grumblings from a few Democrats, there hasn't been public outrage over the fact that the United States' preemptive attack on another country may have been based on errant or manipulated intelligence. In mid-June, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that almost a third of the respondents didn't expect the United States to find WMD in Iraq. However, a poll in September 2002 showed that a large majority of Americans supported the Iraq war because they believed administration contentions that Saddam's regime had biological or chemical weapons, was developing nuclear weapons, and had harbored terrorists. At the time, Americans thought the war was justified because of Saddam's threatening weapon arsenal.

More than two months after U.S. Marines took control of Baghdad, no WMD have been located. Sure, a couple of tractor-trailers, stripped bare by looters, have been found, but even the State Department's intelligence division isn't sure those are the same mobile bioweapon factories that Secretary of State Colin Powell warned of when he spoke before the United Nations in February. The Iraqi nuclear arsenal? Parts of equipment that could be used to enrich uranium were found buried in a scientist's garden. The International Atomic Energy Agency says that the few pieces don't show that Saddam had resumed his nuclear weapons program.

That may be why Americans are willing to overlook Bush's statements about the WMD and instead accept that the war was necessary to topple a murderous, tyrannical dictator. "There's an odd sense that maybe they [the Bush administration officials] lied to us, but we still did the right thing, so it doesn't matter," says Evelin Sullivan, the author of "The Concise Book of Lying" and a lecturer at Stanford University.

It's not as though Americans don't take lying seriously. They do. According to a Gallup poll conducted in early June and released on June 24, a majority didn't think the federal government unfairly targeted Martha Stewart for allegedly selling ImClone stock on an inside tip. Her crime? Fibbing. Federal prosecutors charged Stewart with lying about her actions to federal investigators and her shareholders -- not insider trading. Only 35 percent of Americans believe Stewart is being unfairly singled out because she is a successful woman. Most didn't buy Stewart's lawyers' arguments -- presented on her Web site -- that the Department of Justice is attempting to divert attention away from Enron and WorldCom.

For those who may not be up on the Enron saga, Ken Lay, the former CEO of the energy company and a Bush political supporter, hasn't been indicted for his role in the financial scandal even though he publicly assured investors, employees and the press that his company was healthy only months before it was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December 2001.

And Americans' contradictory views on deceit have nothing to with the implications or relevance of the false statements in question. Hundreds of American and British soldiers have been killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom, along with several thousand Iraqi civilians and soldiers. More are being killed each week. An untold number have been either injured or maimed. And U.S. involvement in that country is not over. Establishing order and rebuilding the infrastructure during the occupation will cost billions of dollars and more American lives. The consequences of Stewart's mendacity, in comparison, seem, inconsequential.

Why, then, does Bush get a pass? The answer is that humans are hard-wired to believe their leaders, especially during times of anxiety and fear. Psychological studies show people are apt to identify with those who make them feel more powerful, says Keating, who studies charisma and leadership. In that sense, we're less likely to criticize a leader if it would make us feel worse about ourselves at a time when we already feel vulnerable. If you doubt Americans feel insecure, consider the duct tape fiasco earlier this year, when the new Department of Homeland Security advised citizens to stock tape and plastic sheeting to seal their homes in case of biological or chemical attacks.

In her studies, Keating found that people tended to describe themselves in positive terms after seeing images of Bush. Shortly after he took office in 2001, she showed participants in an experiment computer screens that flashed subliminal pictures of him. Later, she showed them screens that flashed subliminal pictures of an anonymous New Jersey pig farmer. Even though the participants weren't conscious of seeing either portrait, they were more apt to describe themselves in positive terms -- powerful, compassionate, and strong --after seeing Bush's face. This was even truer a couple of months after the al-Qaida attacks and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

After the September strikes, Bush took an aggressive stance against terrorists. At one point, he even invoked a line reminiscent of the Old West, saying the United States wanted Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." Bush also said that the largely Christian U.S. would wage a "crusade" against the Muslim terrorists. After the attacks, numerous news articles and TV commentaries extolled Bush's newfound leadership abilities. So it wasn't surprising to Keating that test participants thought of themselves in more positive terms after 9/11. Bush was being presented as a virile leader. "In the face of a threat," she says, "we are particularly susceptible to falling under the influence of powerful leaders."

When we're stressed, we also block out more complex thoughts and instead focus on easily assimilated information. It's as though our cognitive reasoning abilities fall asleep and our emotions take over. "Studies show that during those times they are more likely to process information that they have received on a very superficial level," Keating says. Not only are we more apt to support our leaders, then, but we're also not really discerning what we're being told.

The best evidence that the public doesn't make rational judgments during troubled periods is its acceptance of the administration's implication of a link between al-Qaida and Saddam. Though Bush administration officials never provided concrete evidence Saddam was behind the 9/11, they mentioned the two in the same breath often enough for most Americans to believe that there was a legitimate connection. It's almost as though it was a subliminal message -- and if it was, it worked. In a February CNN-Time poll, 76 percent of those surveyed felt Saddam provided aid to al-Qaida and 72 percent thought he was "personally involved" in the September attacks. This misconception served to bolster Bush's contention that Saddam was an immediate threat to the United States. At the end of June, a U.N. group charged with monitoring al-Qaida reported that so far it hadn't found evidence connecting the terrorist group to Saddam's regime.

The tactic of creating a menace to rally the populace around a cause isn't new. "This is the oldest trick in the book for politicians," Keating says, "even if they don't know how it works."

When Gustave Gilbert, a psychologist who interviewed the Nuremberg prisoners, talked to Hermann Goering, the former leader of the Third Reich's Luftwaffe, Goering volunteered that it was relatively easy to persuade a populace to go to war. As quoted in Gilbert's book "Nuremberg Diary," Goering said: "It is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship."

Gilbert disagreed with Goering's analysis. "There is one difference," he answered. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars." But Goering held his ground: "Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

Which may explain why Americans overwhelmingly supported the Iraq war, even though most of the rest of the world was willing to let the U.N. inspectors ferret out any weapons of mass destruction. But now that the war is over and our fear is, presumably, eased, why do we still believe Bush? Once again, it's our human nature.

Homo sapiens are built to obstinately hold on to their beliefs, even in the face of conflicting evidence. Which means Americans who believed Saddam was behind the 9/11 attacks and posed a threat to the world with his WMD will sift through all the information being presented to them and choose to heed only that which confirms their preexisting point of view. They will chose to believe administration speculations that Saddam may have moved his deadly arsenal to Syria before the war or perhaps hid it in obscure places around the country. (That may indeed be the case, but, so far, there's no evidence to support those theories.) This is consistent with dissonance theory, says Douglas Raybeck, a professor of anthropology at Hamilton College in upstate New York.

"If we supported the war initially, then we are invested in that decision," Raybeck says. "If you encounter information showing that the reasons for the war were not well founded, or were exaggerated, you have two choices: the war was indeed worthwhile, or we were took. We either acted wisely or were damned fools." And few, understandably, want to think of themselves as fools.

A similar, if less glaring, example of denial took place over the Vietnam War. Americans were loath to condemn the U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, even after it become known that President Lyndon Johnson had trumped up the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964. As it turned out, the "unprovoked attack" on a U.S. destroyer on a "routine patrol" was a lie the Johnson administration used to ramp up military involvement in that Southeast Asian conflict. The war didn't end until almost a decade and 50,000 American deaths later. Of course, the administration advanced many other Cold War arguments for the war, but nonetheless the episode shows that facts cannot always dissuade people from their original beliefs.

As the world becomes more complex and frightening, cognitive dissonance becomes even more prevalent, Raybeck says. People filter out more and more information in order to hold on to their beliefs. "Dissonance theory appears part of general human psychology," he says, "but cultures, such as our own, that place a premium on individuality, are particularly subject to its influence."

This trend in the United States toward less thoughtful and less objective reasoning will be hard to reverse -- with ominous consequences for our democracy. Human behavior reinforces habits. Once people adjust their behavior to accommodate subtle deception or blatant lying from their leaders, it will be difficult for them to become more discerning or skeptical in the future, Raybeck says. It's similar to when someone's finger hurts when he bends it. If he avoids moving his finger, eventually the muscle will atrophy and he may lose all movement. Just as the body makes adjustments, so does the mind. Which may also explain why Americans didn't seem to care that the Bush administration lied, or at the very least egregiously distorted the truth, when it declared that the new $350 billion tax cuts would benefit all.

"To the extent that American people abandon a critical and observant stance toward those in power," Raybeck says, "it is more difficult to reverse this trend, especially since those in power will, or can, use their leverage to inhibit a change. One can anticipate more sound bites and 30-second political ads designed to associate the power holder with important symbols, but not a substantive treatment of issues."

Sullivan, author of "The Concise Book of Lying," believes the media may play a large role in determining which lies Americans care about and which ones they don't. Perhaps, she surmises, we're more concerned with Stewart's coverup because that is the story presented to us day after day in newspapers, magazines and TV shows. Conversely, she says, we may not be as concerned about Bush's prevarication, because the media hasn't played it up. "I find that alarming," Sullivan says. "If you package something right, you can get away with anything ... If this administration has figured that out, then they can do anything. That strikes me as sinister."

The British press, in fact, is giving Prime Minister Tony Blair a much harder time about the coalition's assertion that Saddam had WMD.

Michael Wolff, in his column in the June 30 issue of New York magazine, theorizes that the media may even have aided the administration in its packaging of the war. When coalition forces were in Iraq, U.S. media giants were gunning for relaxed FCC rules, so they had an incentive to give the Bush administration glowing, heroic coverage of the Iraq war.

Maybe the bigger question for American democracy is: Did the Bush administration intentionally use our evolutionary weakness against us? Did it use orange alerts, duct tape and scary tales of WMDs to create an atmosphere in which Americans would be so frightened and feel so vulnerable that they would believe almost anything they were told and ignore all conflicting evidence?

Perhaps, though, our inbred desire for truth and honesty will eventually prevail. If history is any indication, our denial may weaken as evidence and more evidence surfaces that the Bush administration may not have been as truthful with us as we once thought. It took the White House tapes to bring down Nixon after Watergate. Unfortunately, it took thousands and thousands of Americans lives before the United States left Vietnam.

A Fox News opinion poll conducted on June 30 and July 1 shows that 60 percent of the respondents approved of how Bush is handling Iraq, and 30 percent disapproved. That's a sharp decline from the time of Baghdad's fall, when 75 percent approved and 19 percent disapproved.

But Americans, like all other humans, are susceptible to fooling themselves. "We are highly self-deceptive as a species," Keating says. "Self-deception allows you to get behind the wheel of a car after an accident, or live at the foot of an active volcano. That's how human beings deal with stress that they can't control."

- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer
Louise Witt is a writer who lives in Hoboken, N.J.

2003-07-03T15:05:00.000-04:00

Anyone who has found themselves curious as to who I am currently obsessed with -- look no further.

To read more about the beautiful Amanda Lepore click here for an interview where she discusses her life, her past, and her upcoming new single Deeper.

For you New Yorkers, Ms. Lepore will be performing her single on stage at XL on Friday night at midnight. You know I will be there. I couldnt ask for a bigger 4th of July spectacle!

2003-07-03T09:52:00.000-04:00

Damn the FIFA. They have taken away my favorite part of the game!

Stripping banned at soccer games

By Clare Nullis

July 2, 2003 | GENEVA (AP) -- Keep that shirt on, Brandi Chastain.

FIFA's executive committee decided Saturday that players must keep their shirts on during games and banned all celebratory post-goal stripping.

"There were several awkward situations at the Confederations Cup," FIFA president Sepp Blatter was quoted as saying in Wednesday's editions of the Swiss newspaper Blick. "One player needed five minutes to put his jersey back on because his vest was sewn into it."

Blatter also said the sport's governing body intends to consider whether to impose a heat limit on games. Last week, Cameroon's Marc-Vivien Foe collapsed and died during the semifinals of the Confederations Cup in France.

Temperatures were in the 90s during the game. The cause of Foe's death has not been announced.

Blatter plans to attend Foe's funeral Thursday in Lyon and his memorial service on July 12 in Cameroon's capital, Yaounde.

FIFA first introduced the ban on shirt removal in 1996 but then relaxed it. Details of the new regulation will be distributed shortly to national soccer associations before the upcoming season.

In 1999, Chastain famously pulled off her shirt after scoring the winning goal for the United States in the Women's World Cup final against China.

Players who ignore the new regulation risk receiving a yellow card.

2003-07-01T14:48:00.000-04:00

Want to waste time at work?

Go to Google (www.google.com), type "Weapons of Mass Destruction" into the search box, then click the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button and read closely. Pretty Clever.

2003-07-01T14:30:00.000-04:00

Who says Americans are stupid??

Poll Says Most Believe Saddam-9/11 Link
Tue Jul 1, 9:46 AM ET

WASHINGTON - Seven in 10 people in a poll say the Bush administration implied that Iraq (news - web sites) and its leader Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) were involved in the Sept. 11 attacks against the United States.

And a majority, 52 percent, say they believe the United States has found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam was working closely with the al-Qaida terrorist organization.

The number that believes this country has found weapons of mass destruction is 23 percent, down from 34 percent in May, according to a poll conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland.

Prewar assertions by the Bush administration about al-Qaida's ties to the Iraqi government have not been proven, and weapons of mass destruction have not been found since the invasion of Iraq.

CIA (news - web sites) officials have said that two trailers recovered in Iraq were mobile biological weapons laboratories; Bush administration officials have called the trailers the most significant evidence yet that their allegations of Saddam's weapons programs were accurate.

Only four in 10 of those polled, 39 percent, said they thought the government was being fully truthful when it presented evidence of links between Saddam and al-Qaida. But among those who thought the government was not telling the truth, people were more likely to say the government was "stretching the truth, but not making false statements" rather than "presenting evidence they knew was false."

The number who want the United Nations (news - web sites) to take a leadership role in Iraq has grown from 50 percent in April to 64 percent now.

More than 60 U.S. troops have died in Iraq since President Bush (news - web sites) declared May 1 that major combat had ended. But the American public remains committed to sticking with the Iraq mission.

Eight in 10 said the United States has the responsibility to remain in Iraq as long as necessary until there is a stable government.

The poll of 1,051 adults was taken June 18-25 by Knowledge Networks and has an error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

2003-06-30T14:38:00.000-04:00

Eating disorders among hispanic women up

By Ananda Shorey

June 30, 2003 |

PHOENIX (AP) -- Melissa Roman's skin was yellow, her nails were chipping off, her hair was falling out. She had migraines and was frequently fainting.

But the 25-year-old Miami woman didn't think anything was wrong.

"I hit rock bottom," Roman said. "I never thought I was sick, and I was completely in denial."

Roman, a recovering anorexic, is among a growing number of Hispanic women who are developing eating disorders which, until recently, had been typically thought of as a white, suburban problem.

Some health officials say eating disorders started affecting an increasing number of Hispanic women as Latin culture began surging in popularity in recent years. The women are feeling pressure to be thin as they strive to mirror stars who appear to be shrinking as their reputations grow, experts say.

"The dominant culture believes that thinness is beauty and gets you success," said Catherine Shisslak, a professor at the University of Arizona College of Medicine.

Roman, who is trying not to be pressured by such beliefs, is learning to love her body. She posts affirmation notes around her house, sees a nutritionist and a therapist and avoids magazines with unrealistic images of women.

But many Hispanic women seem to be critical of their own bodies.

A study presented at the 2002 International Conference on Eating Disorders in Boston shows that women of color have many of the same abnormal eating patterns as white females, said Shisslak, the study's principal investigator.

The study involving 173 Hispanic, black and white teenagers found that in seventh grade, Hispanic girls were more likely to report the most frequent weight loss attempts over the previous year. Frequent binge eating in the seventh grade was highest among Hispanic girls, according to the study, which was part of a larger 10-year study involving 2,000 girls.

Hispanic women were once thought to be immune to these disorders because they had better body images and different cultural expectations than white women, Shisslak said. But with the high visibility of Hispanic celebrities like Penelope Cruz and Jennifer Lopez, their cultural expectations are changing, she said.

"The more you see Hispanic role models, whether on TV or in movies or from music, emulating a thin body weight, the more you are going to see young girls trying to achieve that," Shisslak said.

Driving the desire to be thin are peer pressure and low self-esteem - often the top factors in developing eating disorders, which, besides anorexia nervosa, include bulimia and compulsive overeating, according to health officials.

Anorexia is characterized by fear of weight gain, starvation dieting, excessive exercising and below-normal weight. Bulimia manifests itself in episodes of dieting, bingeing and vomiting.

Shisslak said the university expects to submit another study to the New England Journal of Medicine that looks at 2,000 girls in fourth through 12th grades.

"The thing that is very disturbing is that, regardless of age, we see this pattern of unhealthy weight loss cutting across all ethnicities," Shisslak said.

Lisa Rubin, a doctoral student in clinical psychology at Arizona State University, said she has found similar rates of eating disorders among Hispanic and white adolescents. Recent research reflecting an increase in the prevalence of eating disorders among Hispanic women doesn't necessarily reflect a new trend, she said.

It may not be so much that more Hispanic women are developing eating disorders now, but that researchers and the media have just started focusing on them, Rubin said.

Also, the number of eating disorders among Hispanic women is unclear because many of them don't seek treatment because of the associated stigma, said Jennifer Nardozzi, a psychologist at the Renfrew Center, a national, nonprofit treatment center where Roman received care.

The reasons behind why Hispanic women are contracting these disorders are also disputed.

Rullina Acra, a nutritionist at the center's Miami facility, said she believes the media are causing more Hispanic women to have eating disorders, but the complex disorders go beyond just wanting to look like a celebrity.

"They don't come in saying I want to look like Jennifer Lopez," Acra said. "It is more complex than that."

The center works to teach patients like Roman that personality factors, the environment and families can also contribute to their developing the disorders.

Roman said she knows now that if she is focusing too much on food, something else is bothering her. But knowing what's going on is only half the battle.

"I still think that I am huge," she said Roman, who is 5-foot-7 and wears size 2. "My mind plays so many tricks.

"I know I have a long way to go, but I do have hope."

2003-06-30T12:34:00.000-04:00

Dancers take control of nation's first unionized strip club

Terence Chea
Associated Press
Jun. 27, 2003 12:15 PM

Dancers at the country's first unionized strip club are now stripping for themselves.

The Lusty Lady Theater, the nation's only peep show with an organized work force, is now owned by its employees.

"We're seizing the means of production," Donna Delinqua told fellow dancers Thursday at a ceremony in which the new worker-owners cut an oversized frilly garter belt outside the club. "We're focused on running our own place and keeping our heads above water."

Located near downtown San Francisco, the Lusty Lady is an adult entertainment club where customers in private booths drop in quarters to watch lingerie-clad dancers strip in an enclosed room. The club doesn't allow touching, lap dancing or tucking dollars under G-strings.

Founded more than two decades ago, the Lusty Lady made history in 1995 when it became the nation's first strip club to unionize, joining the Service Employees International Union to improve work conditions.

Earlier this year, the union and the owners reached agreement on a new two-year contract that boosted hourly wages, increased sick pay and lowered the number of dancers hired.

A month later, the owners told the dancers they were closing the club, saying the business had become too expensive.

In danger of losing their livelihoods, the San Francisco dancers pooled their experience and solicited help from a local grocery cooperative to form their own co-op and buy the club. Terms were not disclosed.

"It's been really educational for all of us," Delinqua said.

Under the new management, dancers still earn an hourly wage, but each can pay $300 to buy into the co-op. At year's end, each member receives a portion of the profits based on the number of hours worked.

So far, about 45 of the club's 60 dancers and 10 nondancing staffers have signed up. The new owners elected a board of directors and will vote on all major managerial decisions, including new hires.

"I never thought I'd be a business owner," said "Havana," who would not give her real name. She started dancing at the Lusty Lady six years ago after moving to San Francisco from Kansas. Her family thinks she waits tables.

"We're not making money for someone else anymore," she said. "We'll have a lot more interest in putting on a good show."

2003-06-30T10:40:00.000-04:00

Nino's Opéra Bouffe
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON — Antonin Scalia fancies himself the intellectual of the Supreme Court, an aesthete who likes opera and wines, a bon vivant who loves poker and plays songs like "It's a Grand Old Flag" on the piano; a real man who hunts and reads Ducks Unlimited magazine; a Catholic father of nine who once told a prayer breakfast: "We are fools for Christ's sake. We must pray for the courage to endure the scorn of the sophisticated world."

Like other conservatives, he enjoys acting besieged while belittling the other side. "Alas," he drily told the journalist Hanna Rosin, "being tough and traditional is a heavy cross to bear. Duresse oblige."

He's so Old School, he's Old Testament, misty over the era when military institutes did not have to accept women, when elite schools did not have to make special efforts with blacks, when a gay couple in their own bedroom could be clapped in irons, when women were packed off to Our Lady of Perpetual Abstinence Home for Unwed Mothers.

He relishes eternal principles, like helping a son of the establishment dispense with the messiness of a presidential vote count. (His wife met him at the door after Bush v. Gore with a chilled martini.)

He's an American archetype, or Archie type. Full of blustery rants against modernity and nostalgia for "the way Glenn Miller played, songs that made the hit parade . . . girls were girls and men were men." Antonin Scalia is Archie Bunker in a high-backed chair. Like Archie, Nino is the last one to realize that his intolerance is risibly out-of-date.

The court issued a bracing 6-to-3 decision declaring it illegitimate to punish people for who they are, and Justice Scalia fulminated in a last gasp of the old Pat Buchanan/Bill Bennett homophobic conservatism.

In his dissent to the decision striking down a Texas sodomy law and declaring that gays are "entitled to respect for their private lives," Justice Scalia raved that the court had "largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda" and predicted a "massive disruption of the current social order." (Has this man never seen a Rupert Everett movie?)

State laws could tumble, he huffed, barring masturbation. Next, Sister Scalia will tell us it makes you go blind. He also tut-tutted that laws against bestiality might fall away. (Maybe he should be warning fellow dissenter Clarence Thomas. Anita Hill told Congress he had been beastly to her by describing an X-rated film about bestiality.)

The stegosaurus Scalia roared that the court had "taken sides in the culture war." Conservatives shrieked the door was open to everything from lap dancing to gay marriage. (Note to the panicked right: Newsweek just reported married heterosexuals were strangers to sex. So, if you want gay couples to stop having sex, let them get married.)

Mr. Scalia has frothed about "Kulturkampf" since 1996, when he did an Archie screed on gays having "high disposable income" and "disproportionate political power." Sounds just like people at Bush fund-raisers. (One here Friday was headlined by the First Nephew, George P. Bush, to buck-rake for a group promoting conservative court nominees.)

Most Americans, even Republicans, have a more tolerant and happy vision of the country than Mr. Scalia and other nattering nabobs of negativism. Their jeremiads yearn for an airbrushed 50's America that never really existed. (The pedophile scandal in the Catholic Church, which condemns homosexuality, proves that.) And the America they feared — everyone having orgies, getting stoned and burning the flag — never came to pass.

Nino is too blinded by his own bloviation to notice that Americans are not as censorious as he is. They like the complicated national mosaic — that Dick Cheney has a gay daughter, that Jeb Bush has a Latina wife, that Clarence Thomas has a white wife. Newt Gingrich can leave two wives for younger women and Bill (Virtues) Bennett can blow $8 million on slot machines. Even those who did not like Bill Clinton cringed at Ken Starr's giddy voyeurism.

Justice Scalia may play patriotic songs on the piano, but Justice Anthony Kennedy gave patriotism true meaning in time for the Fourth of July. His ruling eloquently reminded the country, "Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct."

In the immortal words of John Riggins, loosen up, Nino, baby.

2003-06-30T09:39:00.000-04:00

This weekend while at a street fair in NYC, I mad-dogged a Gay and Lesbian Republican group and then talked shit when they asked me if I wanted to register to vote. Yesterday at Pride my boyfriend booed the Log Cabin Republicans! Oh what a pair we are.

I hate to admit this but even though it bothers me when Republican leadership makes anti-gay comments, it gives me a sick pleasure to think about the Log Cabin Republicans and fucking stupid they must feel when they read stuff like this: When are they going to wake the fuck up.

Check it -

Senate majority leader endorses gay marriage ban

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By William C. Mann

June 29, 2003 | WASHINGTON (AP) --

The Senate majority leader said Sunday he supported a proposed constitutional amendment to ban homosexual marriage in the United States.

Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said the Supreme Court's decision last week on gay sex threatens to make the American home a place where criminality is condoned.

The court on Thursday threw out a Texas law that prohibited acts of sodomy between homosexuals in a private home, saying that such a prohibition violates the defendants' privacy rights under the Constitution. The ruling invalidated the Texas law and similar statutes in 12 other states.

"I have this fear that this zone of privacy that we all want protected in our own homes is gradually -- or I'm concerned about the potential for it gradually being encroached upon, where criminal activity within the home would in some way be condoned," Frist told ABC's "This Week."

"And I'm thinking of -- whether it's prostitution or illegal commercial drug activity in the home -- ... to have the courts come in, in this zone of privacy, and begin to define it gives me some concern."

Asked whether he supported an amendment that would ban any marriage in the United States except a union of a man and a woman, Frist said: "I absolutely do, of course I do.

"I very much feel that marriage is a sacrament, and that sacrament should extend and can extend to that legal entity of a union between -- what is traditionally in our Western values has been defined -- as between a man and a woman. So I would support the amendment."

Same-sex marriages are legal in Belgium and the Netherlands. Canada's Liberal government announced two weeks ago that it would enact similar legislation soon.

Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colo., was the main sponsor of the proposal offered May 21 to amend the Constitution. It was referred to the House Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution on Wednesday, the day before the high court ruled.

As drafted, the proposal says:

"Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any state under state or federal law shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups."

To be added to the Constitution, the proposal must be approved by two-thirds of the House and the Senate and ratified by three-fourths of the states.

Frist said Sunday he respects the Supreme Court decision but feels the justices overstepped their bounds.

"Generally, I think matters such as sodomy should be addressed by the state legislatures," Frist said. "That's where those decisions -- with the local norms, the local mores -- are being able to have their input in reflected.

"And that's where it should be decided, and not in the courts."

2003-06-27T15:06:00.000-04:00

Attention fellow Taco Bell lovers!

L.A. Taco Bell worker had hepatitis

June 27, 2003 | ALHAMBRA, Calif. (AP) --

Los Angeles County health officials are urging anyone who ate at a Taco Bell restaurant in Alhambra a few weeks ago to get vaccinated for hepatitis A after a worker was diagnosed with the liver disease.

Officials said customers' risk of contracting the disease was low and the immune globulin vaccinations were precautionary.

2003-06-27T14:01:00.000-04:00

HEY, AL GORE, CHECK THIS OUT
From Justice Scalia's dissent on Lawrence v. Texas: "But persuading one's fellow citizens is one thing, and imposing one's views in absence of democratic majority will is something else."

2003-06-27T10:00:00.000-04:00

Toward One-Party Rule
By PAUL KRUGMAN

In principle, Mexico's 1917 Constitution established a democratic political system. In practice, until very recently Mexico was a one-party state. While the ruling party employed intimidation and electoral fraud when necessary, mainly it kept control through patronage, cronyism and corruption. All powerful interest groups, including the media, were effectively part of the party's political machine.

Such systems aren't unknown here — think of Richard J. Daley's Chicago. But can it happen to the United States as a whole? A forthcoming article in The Washington Monthly shows that the foundations for one-party rule are being laid right now.

In "Welcome to the Machine," Nicholas Confessore draws together stories usually reported in isolation — from the drive to privatize Medicare, to the pro-tax-cut fliers General Motors and Verizon recently included with the dividend checks mailed to shareholders, to the pro-war rallies organized by Clear Channel radio stations. As he points out, these are symptoms of the emergence of an unprecedented national political machine, one that is well on track to establishing one-party rule in America.

Mr. Confessore starts by describing the weekly meetings in which Senator Rick Santorum vets the hiring decisions of major lobbyists. These meetings are the culmination of Grover Norquist's "K Street Project," which places Republican activists in high-level corporate and industry lobbyist jobs — and excludes Democrats. According to yesterday's Washington Post, a Republican National Committee official recently boasted that "33 of 36 top-level Washington positions he is monitoring went to Republicans."

Of course, interest groups want to curry favor with the party that controls Congress and the White House; but as The Washington Post explains, Mr. Santorum's colleagues have also used "intimidation and private threats" to bully lobbyists who try to maintain good relations with both parties. "If you want to play in our revolution," Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, once declared, "you have to live by our rules."

Lobbying jobs are a major source of patronage — a reward for the loyal. More important, however, many lobbyists now owe their primary loyalty to the party, rather than to the industries they represent. So corporate cash, once split more or less evenly between the parties, increasingly flows in only one direction.

And corporations themselves are also increasingly part of the party machine. They are rewarded with policies that increase their profits: deregulation, privatization of government services, elimination of environmental rules. In return, like G.M. and Verizon, they use their influence to support the ruling party's agenda.

As a result, campaign finance is only the tip of the iceberg. Next year, George W. Bush will spend two or three times as much money as his opponent; but he will also benefit hugely from the indirect support that corporate interests — very much including media companies — will provide for his political message.

Naturally, Republican politicians deny the existence of their burgeoning machine. "It never ceases to amaze me that people are so cynical they want to tie money to issues, money to bills, money to amendments," says Mr. DeLay. And Ari Fleischer says that "I think that the amount of money that candidates raise in our democracy is a reflection of the amount of support they have around the country." Enough said.

Mr. Confessore suggests that we may be heading for a replay of the McKinley era, in which the nation was governed by and for big business. I think he's actually understating his case: like Mr. DeLay, Republican leaders often talk of "revolution," and we should take them at their word.

Why isn't the ongoing transformation of U.S. politics — which may well put an end to serious two-party competition — getting more attention? Most pundits, to the extent they acknowledge that anything is happening, downplay its importance. For example, last year an article in Business Week titled "The GOP's Wacky War on Dem Lobbyists" dismissed the K Street Project as "silly — and downright futile." In fact, the project is well on the way to achieving its goals.

Whatever the reason, there's a strange disconnect between most political commentary and the reality of the 2004 election. As in 2000, pundits focus mainly on images — John Kerry's furrowed brow, Mr. Bush in a flight suit — or on supposed personality traits. But it's the nexus of money and patronage that may well make the election a foregone conclusion.

2003-06-26T15:29:00.000-04:00

Dont believe the hype!
IAEA: Centrifuge parts not evidence of 'smoking gun'

U.N. watchdog: Iraq had no nuclear weapons program after '91

From Caroline McDonald - CNN
Thursday, June 26, 2003 Posted: 10:23 AM EDT (1423 GMT)

(CNN) -- The International Atomic Energy Agency said Thursday the parts needed to develop a bomb program that the CIA says were found in Baghdad are not "evidence of a smoking gun" proving Iraq had a current weapons of mass destruction program.

"The findings refer to material and documents of the pre-1991 Iraqi nuclear weapons program that have been well-known to the agency," said spokesman Mark Gwozdecky.

The CIA said it has critical parts of a key piece of Iraqi nuclear technology, parts needed to develop a bomb program that were dug up in a Baghdad back yard.

2003-06-24T10:38:00.000-04:00

Denial and Deception
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Politics is full of ironies. On the White House Web site, George W. Bush's speech from Oct. 7, 2002 — in which he made the case for war with Iraq — bears the headline "Denial and Deception." Indeed.

There is no longer any serious doubt that Bush administration officials deceived us into war. The key question now is why so many influential people are in denial, unwilling to admit the obvious.

About the deception: Leaks from professional intelligence analysts, who are furious over the way their work was abused, have given us a far more complete picture of how America went to war. Thanks to reporting by my colleague Nicholas Kristof, other reports in The New York Times and The Washington Post, and a magisterial article by John Judis and Spencer Ackerman in The New Republic, we now know that top officials, including Mr. Bush, sought to convey an impression about the Iraqi threat that was not supported by actual intelligence reports.

In particular, there was never any evidence linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda; yet administration officials repeatedly suggested the existence of a link. Supposed evidence of an active Iraqi nuclear program was thoroughly debunked by the administration's own experts; yet administration officials continued to cite that evidence and warn of Iraq's nuclear threat.

And yet the political and media establishment is in denial, finding excuses for the administration's efforts to mislead both Congress and the public.

For example, some commentators have suggested that Mr. Bush should be let off the hook as long as there is some interpretation of his prewar statements that is technically true. Really? We're not talking about a business dispute that hinges on the fine print of the contract; we're talking about the most solemn decision a nation can make. If Mr. Bush's speeches gave the nation a misleading impression about the case for war, close textual analysis showing that he didn't literally say what he seemed to be saying is no excuse. On the contrary, it suggests that he knew that his case couldn't stand close scrutiny.

Consider, for example, what Mr. Bush said in his "denial and deception" speech about the supposed Saddam-Osama link: that there were "high-level contacts that go back a decade." In fact, intelligence agencies knew of tentative contacts between Saddam and an infant Al Qaeda in the early 1990's, but found no good evidence of a continuing relationship. So Mr. Bush made what sounded like an assertion of an ongoing relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, but phrased it cagily — suggesting that he or his speechwriter knew full well that his case was shaky.

Other commentators suggest that Mr. Bush may have sincerely believed, despite the lack of evidence, that Saddam was working with Osama and developing nuclear weapons. Actually, that's unlikely: why did he use such evasive wording if he didn't know that he was improving on the truth? In any case, however, somebody was at fault. If top administration officials somehow failed to apprise Mr. Bush of intelligence reports refuting key pieces of his case against Iraq, they weren't doing their jobs. And Mr. Bush should be the first person to demand their resignations.

So why are so many people making excuses for Mr. Bush and his officials?

Part of the answer, of course, is raw partisanship. One important difference between our current scandal and the Watergate affair is that it's almost impossible now to imagine a Republican senator asking, "What did the president know, and when did he know it?"

But even people who aren't partisan Republicans shy away from confronting the administration's dishonest case for war, because they don't want to face the implications.

After all, suppose that a politician — or a journalist — admits to himself that Mr. Bush bamboozled the nation into war. Well, launching a war on false pretenses is, to say the least, a breach of trust. So if you admit to yourself that such a thing happened, you have a moral obligation to demand accountability — and to do so in the face not only of a powerful, ruthless political machine but in the face of a country not yet ready to believe that its leaders have exploited 9/11 for political gain. It's a scary prospect.

Yet if we can't find people willing to take the risk — to face the truth and act on it — what will happen to our democracy?

2003-06-17T15:14:00.000-04:00

Attorney General Ashcroft is visiting an elementary school. After
the typical civics presentation to the class, he announces, "All
right, boys and girls, you can all ask me questions now."

A young boy named Bobby raises his hand and says, "I have three questions:
1. How did Bush win the election with fewer votes than Gore?
2. Why are you using the USA Patriot Act to limit Americans' civil liberties?
3. Why hasn't the US caught Osama bin Laden yet?"

Just then the bell sounds and all the kids run out to the playground.
Fifteen minutes later, the kids come back in class and Ashcroft says, "I'm
sorry we were interrupted by the bell. Now, you can all ask me questions."

A young girl named Charlene raises her hand and says, "I have five questions:
1. How did Bush win the election with fewer votes than Gore?
2. Why are you using the USA Patriot Act to limit Americans' civil liberties?
3. Why hasn't the US caught Osama bin Laden yet?
4. Why did the bell go off 20 minutes early?
5. Where's Bobby?"

2003-06-12T09:07:00.000-04:00

How Badly Do You Want to Win?
U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky
June 5, 2003

Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D-Illinois) made the following speech at the Campaign for America's Future conference in Washington DC on June 4, 2003.

Do you want a different President in 2004? I'm asking this as a serious question, not a rhetorical one. Do you want it badly enough to actually do what is necessary to win the election that will take place just 17 months from now?

Everywhere I go, everywhere every Democrat goes, we hear, "Where are the Democrats?" And I take that challenge seriously, and many of us are working day and night to make ourselves heard, putting together an inside/outside strategy with members who are willing to use tougher language and "creative" tactics in coordination with outside organizations.

Yes, we need more Democrats who believe, as Paul Wellstone said, that "the politics of conviction is a winning politics," but I challenge you to do the same by asking, "Where are you?" I say that as an activist and organizer myself and with a great deal of respect for the work that all of you are doing. I acknowledge the magnificent visibility of the antiwar activities, and the web-based organizing that has generated millions of emails to Congress, the work of the Anti-Tax Cut Coalition and others. I say that with enormous respect for the work of organized labor nationally and locally. I know we are all grateful to President John Sweeney of the AFL-CIO and his incredibly effective leadership.

Even so, there have been too few examples of viewpoints, other than those consistent with the Administration's, breaking through to the public. If we are to win, it's clear we need to do more, do it louder, do it faster and do it better. And if we don't, in 2008 we will live in a country and a world far different from the one we have had and the one to which we aspire.

This President is seriously undermining the rule of law and the Constitution of the United States, precious civil liberties and doing it all in the name of patriotism. So where are the lawyers and judges? Why am I not hearing your protests, your emails and phone calls, your letters to the editor, your calls to talk radio, your high-profile law suits? This could be a bipartisan effort, one that stretches from left to right. Privacy is a major concern for average Americans and Big Brother is mining our most private information as we sit here. I realized how serious this was when a woman asked me how she could get another perspective on the Iraq war and I suggested a few web sites. She asked me if she went there if she would find herself on a list. In all honesty, I found that I couldn't say with confidence, "Absolutely no; this is still the United States of America and you can look at anything you want."

Lawyers, judges, where are you?

Seniors, where are you? I want to see sustained, loud, angry activity. After all, the Republicans still want to privatize Social Security and Medicare and cut Medicaid so they can give tax cuts to their rich friends and destroy those basic programs to boot. It's a twofer for them.

Even veterans are not immune. Many veterans have to wait 15 months just to get an appointment. The drug companies are conducting a $150 million campaign to prevent any move to lower drug prices, allocating $9.5 million to public relations, even $1 million to get rid of the national health care system in Canada. When I was director of the Illinois State Council of Senior Citizens, our group was chasing Dan Rostenkowski down the street. Seniors, now is the time to get on your running shoes. You should be chasing George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Tom Delay all over the country.

Environmentalists: Alaska is melting; the journal Nature reports that 90 percent of all large fish such as tuna, marlin, swordfish, cod and halibut are gone from our oceans; fuel efficiency of our cars is at a 22-year low. It's now considered patriotic, for crying out loud, to drive a Hummer. So where the hell are you? I want to read about you or even join you protesting at hearings in Washington or Big Oil shareholder meetings. We need the activists and
scientists to challenge this aggressively anti-science administration. Some things we may be able to reverse when we wrest power over the planet from their control. But extinct is extinct.

My sisters, where are the demonstrations against the war on women that is being waged every day in every way. Today on the floor is the bill to ban the mythical partial birth abortion, which is a thinly disguised assault on fundamental reproductive rights. On his first day in office, President Bush attacked the poorest most vulnerable women in the world when he cut U.S. funds for family planning funds for organizations that have the gall to counsel, refer or, God forbid, perform abortions in countries where it is legal (which it happens to be in ours, by the way).

Our women in the military can't, with their own funds, have a safe and legal abortion at a military hospital, even if they are in Iraq or Saudi Arabia. A rabidly anti-choice man who thinks that women's health concerns can be cured with prayer now heads up the Food and Drug Administration's Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs. They want to eliminate Title IX, equal opportunities for women in education and sports; they've done little to help victims of sexual assault and domestic violence.

We all need to join in the efforts of organized labor on behalf of ALL working families in this country. This week we may be considering a so-called "Comp Time" bill that shreds the basic concept of a day's pay for a day's work, and makes the notion of time-and-a half for overtime an idea of the past. Just picture another four years of a Bush Administration unfettered by concerns of re-election. Unions are not in the 2008 picture. In 2008 there may not be any public employees let alone public employee unions. Everything will be privatized and contracted out. Private sector unions will be under siege, constant well-financed referenda will happen in state after state, legal assaults and investigations will take place at every level, and we'll always be the target of well financed media campaigns.

I salute the leadership that the religious leaders -- clergy and lay people -- have shown on the war. Don't stop now. "God is a Republican" is a guiding principle for this Administration. As long as there are Congressional resolutions and official days of prayer, the United States can continue to preemptively attack any country it wants. As Senate Leader Bill Frist said at a large gathering I attended, "All you need to know is the difference between right and wrong, good and evil."

Their God is homophobic and anti-choice. The Secretary of Education Rod Paige said, "All things equal, I would prefer to have a child in a school that has a strong appreciation for the values of the Christian community. In a religious environment the value system is set. That's not the case in a public school where there are so many different kids with different kinds of values." The dangerous destruction of the wall between Church and State is well underway. It is religious leaders and the faith community that needs to address this.

Disability rights activists, immigrant advocates, housing advocates, civil rights leaders, GLBT activists, all warriors for social and economic justice, thank you for what you do. And now we need to do more, do it louder, do it faster and do it better.

Clearly they have a number of tools at their disposal right now that we don't have.

They control the White House and are placing ideologues at every level of the Administration, the Senate and House and much of the judiciary.

They control much of the media and that creates a very effective echo chamber for all their initiatives and smear campaigns. The June 2 ruling of the Federal Communications Commission lifting most restrictions on consolidation will allow the Foxification and Clear Channelization of even more.

They have most of the money, and their corporate agenda and tax cuts for the rich ensure that fact will continue.

They lie with impunity. Let's fact it. They're liars. They lied about the reason they took our sons and daughters to war. They spend millions of dollars in campaign ads saying they are for a prescription drug benefit under Medicare. They call their dirty air legislation "Clear Skies" and their plan to give the timber companies our trees, "Healthy Forests." They call their job-killing economic program a "jobs program." They say they are for peace when
they are for war. Millions of children are left behind under their miserly "No Child Left Behind" education bill. They tout a child tax credit and then silently drop it in favor of more tax cuts for millionaires.

And perhaps most important, they are unafraid and unabashed and unapologetic about pushing their right-wing agenda, no matter what. They are always playing offense. I used to think, oh they can't be serious about this or that -- another huge tax cut, eliminating Title IX, continuing tax breaks for companies that move their offices to Bermuda, locking up immigrants indefinitely without due process, using Federal dollars to build churches -- it's just a trial balloon. Forget it. They mean what they say and they don't give up until they get it. This is where we come in.

If we are serious about getting rid of George W. Bush in 17 months, then we have to make some decisions and some commitments. During the war, a couple of nuns came to see me in my Chicago office. They were on their way to jail to serve a three-month sentence for an aggravated misdemeanor for protesting the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. They crossed a line in the road and now they were going to prison. Think of it. Anyway, on their way to jail, they had been arrested on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago in an antiwar protest. The police got a bit carried away even though the City Council had passed a strong antiwar resolution.

The nuns wanted to know what could be done to change the state of affairs. I said I thought someone needed to take voter registration forms to every meeting and demonstration and get people fired up to vote. They said that would be hard. Why? Because people were fed up with the Democrats. I said, then they are going to have to Get Over It, and you are going to have to help them. Because like it or not, either George W. Bush or the Democratic nominee, whoever he may be, will be our next President.

All of you know who I'm talking about; I may be talking about you. We should, by all means, be working to promote a progressive agenda with each and every candidate and to make the nominee as progressive as possible.

But in the end, we are going to have to dedicate ourselves to electing the Democrat. To do otherwise is a luxury we cannot afford. I look forward to our campaign for a universal health care plan or a real education bill or labor law reform. We cannot even have that conversation now. We are trying to hang on by our fingernails to what we have now. And we are losing.

The good news today is that we have them on the run on several fronts. They were hoping that the conversation this week would be about the flag burning amendment that passed the House yesterday and partial birth abortion. Instead it's about their decision to cut 6.5 million American families with 12 million children, including families of service men and women, out of their tax relief bill because they jeopardized tax cuts for the rich. Some Senate Republicans realize this level of greed may have been a tad too much for most Americans, but Tom Delay, God love him, is really steaming that Democrats are demanding action on the issue. He says, "There are a lot of things that are more important than that." Like more tax cuts for the rich. He indicated that he'd think about it if it were part of a package that permanently repealed the estate tax.

The missing weapons of mass destruction are becoming a real annoyance to them now, and the media is starting to pick it up. More and more members of Congress, even some Republicans, are asking for investigations. Editorial boards are beginning to write about it.

We need to take advantage of these opportunities. The polls tell us that the President is in fact vulnerable. His re-elect numbers are not that great. We have to do with fervor what we already know how to do. We have to register base voters who have left us at least in part because they think we don't speak to them. And here you have another choice. You can bitch that the Democrats don't speak to them, or you can speak to them, one on one, door to door, worker to worker, meeting after meeting, neighbor to neighbor. Set a goal for yourself, personally, perhaps, 100 new Democratic voters between now and Election Day.

Become part of a progressive echo chamber. When the Republicans go after Tom Daschle or Nancy Pelosi for being unpatriotic when they criticize the President, Fox News and Rush Limbaugh begin spinning the same line. We need to push back, writing letters to the editor, calling talk shows, emailing Congress, emailing Sean Hannity and telling him he's out of line, calling them un-American for stifling dissent.

When Republicans launch a really bad proposal or Democrats a good one, we need to have coordinated efforts throughout the country. We need to use our think tanks and grassroots and web-based organizations in increasingly creative ways and coordinate that with activities of the Democrats that are becoming more and more vocal in the Congress.

You can tell the truth. We don't need to lie. Democrats are better for their health and well being, their kids' education and their family budget, and, Republican propaganda notwithstanding, our
national security, stopping terrorism, and peace on earth.

2003-05-27T11:02:00.000-04:00

Stating the Obvious
by PAUL KRUGMAN

The lunatics are now in charge of the asylum." So wrote the normally staid Financial Times, traditionally the voice of solid British business opinion, when surveying last week's tax bill. Indeed, the legislation is doubly absurd: the gimmicks used to make an $800-billion-plus tax cut carry an official price tag of only $320 billion are a joke, yet the cost without the gimmicks is so large that the nation can't possibly afford it while keeping its other promises.

But then maybe that's the point. The Financial Times suggests that "more extreme Republicans" actually want a fiscal train wreck: "Proposing to slash federal spending, particularly on social programs, is a tricky electoral proposition, but a fiscal crisis offers the tantalizing prospect of forcing such cuts through the back door."

Good for The Financial Times. It seems that stating the obvious has now, finally, become respectable.

It's no secret that right-wing ideologues want to abolish programs Americans take for granted. But not long ago, to suggest that the Bush administration's policies might actually be driven by those ideologues — that the administration was deliberately setting the country up for a fiscal crisis in which popular social programs could be sharply cut — was to be accused of spouting conspiracy theories.

Yet by pushing through another huge tax cut in the face of record deficits, the administration clearly demonstrates either that it is completely feckless, or that it actually wants a fiscal crisis. (Or maybe both.)

Here's one way to look at the situation: Although you wouldn't know it from the rhetoric, federal taxes are already historically low as a share of G.D.P. Once the new round of cuts takes effect, federal taxes will be lower than their average during the Eisenhower administration. How, then, can the government pay for Medicare and Medicaid — which didn't exist in the 1950's — and Social Security, which will become far more expensive as the population ages? (Defense spending has fallen compared with the economy, but not that much, and it's on the rise again.)

The answer is that it can't. The government can borrow to make up the difference as long as investors remain in denial, unable to believe that the world's only superpower is turning into a banana republic. But at some point bond markets will balk — they won't lend money to a government, even that of the United States, if that government's debt is growing faster than its revenues and there is no plausible story about how the budget will eventually come under control.

At that point, either taxes will go up again, or programs that have become fundamental to the American way of life will be gutted. We can be sure that the right will do whatever it takes to preserve the Bush tax cuts — right now the administration is even skimping on homeland security to save a few dollars here and there. But balancing the books without tax increases will require deep cuts where the money is: that is, in Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.

The pain of these benefit cuts will fall on the middle class and the poor, while the tax cuts overwhelmingly favor the rich. For example, the tax cut passed last week will raise the after-tax income of most people by less than 1 percent — not nearly enough to compensate them for the loss of benefits. But people with incomes over $1 million per year will, on average, see their after-tax income rise 4.4 percent.

The Financial Times suggests this is deliberate (and I agree): "For them," it says of those extreme Republicans, "undermining the multilateral international order is not enough; long-held views on income distribution also require radical revision."

How can this be happening? Most people, even most liberals, are complacent. They don't realize how dire the fiscal outlook really is, and they don't read what the ideologues write. They imagine that the Bush administration, like the Reagan administration, will modify our system only at the edges, that it won't destroy the social safety net built up over the past 70 years.

But the people now running America aren't conservatives: they're radicals who want to do away with the social and economic system we have, and the fiscal crisis they are concocting may give them the excuse they need. The Financial Times, it seems, now understands what's going on, but when will the public wake up?

2003-05-23T10:48:00.000-04:00

Bush's Basket
Why the President Had to Show His Balls
by Richard Goldstein

The Village Voice
May 21 - 27, 2003

Who's the man? Check out the package.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

n the annals of infotainment, few moments match the sight of George Bush leaping from the cockpit of a fighter jet and striding across the deck of a carrier at sea. Top Gun: The Pseudo Event enchanted the public, horrified liberals, and galvanized the press. Suddenly media mavens noticed that Bush's handlers have elevated the photo-op to pure cinema. So what else is new?

Actually there was something novel about this occasion, but it passed utterly below the radar. Discretion prevented anyone from mentioning that Bush's outfit gave him a very vivid basket. This was the first a time a president literally showed his balls. Check it out—your subconscious already has.

This manly exhibition was no accident. The media team that timed Bush's appearance to catch just the right tone of sunlight must have chosen that uniform and had him try it on. I can't prove they gave him a sock job, but clearly they thought long and hard about the crotch shot. As students of the cinematic, they would know that the trick is to make the bulge seem natural, so it registers without raising an issue. Tight jeans (a staple of Bush's dress-down attire) can achieve this look, but nothing works like fighter-pilot drag, with its straps that frame and shape the groin. Most people presume this effect is merely functional. That frees the imagination to work, and work it does, in men and women alike.

Say what you will about the male body being objectified. We may expect a dude to display himself like an Abercrombie & Fitch model—but the president? Clearly Bush's handlers want to leave the impression that he's not just courageous and competent but hung. Why is this message important to send? That's a very salient question, if only because it's unlikely to be addressed.

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Among modern presidents, Kennedy projected the studliest aura (though the sexual evidence was closely held at the time). Yet, in an era of body-hugging menswear, JFK wore loose-fitting suits. Clinton was perhaps the ultimate rogue in chief, but he shrank from showing his body—he wouldn't have dared. Cartoonists alluded to Clinton's libido by giving him a large bulbous nose, which became his emblem. Look at the face cartoonists have given Bush: The ears are outsized while the nose is modest. Big ears are not exactly phallic signifiers; if anything, they connote a state of permanent childhood, à la Mickey Mouse. In caricature Bush looks like a perplexed piker. There's a reason he once drew the ultimate Texas dis: "All hat and no beef." This sissifying contempt still lingers under the hoopla about Bush's prowess.

9-11 scared America into solidarity, but if people perceive the Republican agenda as an equal threat, their doubts about Dubya's manhood will resurface. They will notice his reliance on strong-willed advisers, his association with a patriarchal father, and even his diminutive size. Karl Rove's rangers must be aware of this possibility since they've crafted an image to counter Bush's macho problem. His public affect—the narrowed eyes, the locked-and-loaded look—is calculated to annul his liabilities, present and past. Imagine what the Republicans would make of a Democrat who was a cheerleader in prep school, who wrangled his way into Yale on family connections, and who weaseled out of active duty. Clinton was butch-baited for less.

Bush could easily have lived up to his home-state nickname, Shrub—and in the early hours of 9-11, he did. But rehabilitation is the master narrative of Bush's presidency. This party animal turned commander is Prince Hal to his own Falstaff.

Overcoming is a powerful American theme; hence the proliferation of log cabins and front porches in the iconography of presidents, even some who grew up in splendor. Bush may be a master of populist pretense, but he can't claim to be self-made. His saga rests on his quest to be a man. The real triumph of Bush's media team is not a matter of lighting and positioning but of creating a presidential persona that radiates stead-fastness, plainspokenness, sexual continence, and righteous religiosity. These are the hallmarks of conservative macho.

But something about Bush's image seems as artificially enhanced as his crotch. His need to flaunt it can be read as a response to anxiety. If you have to show your balls, maybe it's because you can't take them for granted. That isn't just Bush's problem. If macho seems so tragicomically x-treme these days, it's because many men think masculinity could actually disappear.

All men must cope with the complications of feminism. I would argue that the demand for sexual equality is a major reason for the global rise of fundamentalism. Bush owes his fortune to this movement in America, but his appeal goes far beyond the Christian right. He represents a model that invites female initiative and counsel but not control. This is the Dred Scott compromise of our time, and it's evident in Bush's administration as well as in his marriage to an intelligent woman who knows how to stay three steps behind her husband. But Bush also embodies the primal uncertainty many men feel in the face of sexual change. This angst, which threatens to pop up like a sour belch, solidifies his bond with threatened men. They identify with his struggle to carry off the feat of macho, and many women empathize with that effort. A lot of people root for Bush to make it as a man, and they're happy to see his big basket (even if it does suggest a male version of the push-up bra).

------------------------------------------------------------------------

If America remains preoccupied with terrorism, the sexual politics I'm describing will affect the 2004 election only obliquely. But if voters focus on other things, the macho issue could be as crucial as it was in 2000, when Al Gore was wussified. Rove's rangers have already begun bashing the Democratic candidate most likely to make Bush look like all cake and no beef: John Kerry.

First they questioned his patriotism, then they accused him of looking French, and now they're landing on his wife, casting her as a hyper-Hillary. Teresa Heinz Kerry's outspokenness, her devotion to her dead former husband, her current prenup, and her vow to maim any man who steps out on her are all being used to portray her as a ball-breaking bitch and John Kerry as her emasculated victim. So powerful is this harridan image that it actually allows the Bushies to bash Teresa for her wealth. If she doesn't finance Kerry's campaign, she's dissing him; if she does, he's a kept man.

Kerry isn't the front-runner, yet the White House has singled him out for sexual calumny. To understand this fixation, you have to consider Kerry's stature (he towers over Bush), his war record, and his sloe-eyed Kennedy aura. In another era, these would be clear signals of masculinity. Today, you have to flash your stash, and Kerry's patrician style doesn't lend itself to that. But he does have those tales from 'Nam, and in a one-on-one he could expose the angst under Bush's aggression. If the economy tanks while Iraq seethes, we just might have a real contest.

Fasten your crotch straps. With luck, we're in for a bumpy ride.

2003-05-20T13:36:00.000-04:00

The 14 Characteristics of Fascism
"Fascism Anyone?," Lawrence Britt, Free Inquiry, Spring 2003, page 20.

Dr. Lawrence Britt, a political scientist, wrote an article about fascism which appeared in Free Inquiry magazine, a journal of humanist thought. Dr. Britt studied the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia), and Pinochet (Chile). He found the regimes all had 14 things in common, and he calls these the identifying characteristics of fascism.

The 14 characteristics are:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc..

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc..

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed .

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

2003-05-19T17:24:00.000-04:00

Have I said today how much I love our President.

Use of 'gay' may block AIDS research
Tom Musbach, Gay.com / PlanetOut.com Network
Friday, April 18, 2003 / 04:51 PM

Federal health officials have given undocumented warnings to scientists who study AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases to keep words like "gay" and "transgender" out of their grant applications if they wish to receive funds, the New York Times reported on Friday.

An anonymous official at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) told the newspaper that grant applicants had been told by officers at the agency to avoid "sensitive language" when describing their research. The official added that the scrutiny for politically "delicate" words has become, under the Bush administration, "much worse and more intense."

Targeted words and phrases include "men who have sex with men," "needle exchange," "anal sex" and "sex workers."

Bill Pierce, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) which oversees NIH, denied that federal health officers screen grant applications in that way.

The article's suggestion that research may be thwarted due to conservative politics distressed some GLBT rights activists and advocates for people with HIV/AIDS.

San Francisco AIDS Foundation spokesman Redge Norton said, "This is very alarming. If it's true, it seems like the (Bush) administration is turning its back on the people and communities who need the research the most."

David Smith, spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, the largest GLBT political group in the country, called the news "outrageous." He said that HRC is investigating the matter.

"If it's true, we will take immediate action, and that may include involving Congress," Smith told the Gay.com/PlanetOut.com Network.

A University of California researcher told the Times he was advised by an NIH staffer to delete words like "gay" and "transgender" from his grant proposal. The study, however, focused on HIV testing among gay men.

"It's hard not to mention them in your abstract," he said.

On Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, another branch of HHS, released a revised national HIV prevention strategy aimed at making HIV tests more routine and channeling more prevention efforts toward HIV-positive people. The plan was praised by many, but several AIDS groups cautioned about removing counseling from testing programs.

2003-05-16T10:13:00.000-04:00

Keepers of Bush Image Lift Stagecraft to New Heights
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

ASHINGTON, May 15 — George W. Bush's "Top Gun" landing on the deck of the carrier Abraham Lincoln will be remembered as one of the most audacious moments of presidential theater in American history. But it was only the latest example of how the Bush administration, going far beyond the foundations in stagecraft set by the Reagan White House, is using the powers of television and technology to promote a presidency like never before.

Officials of past Democratic and Republican administrations marvel at how the White House does not seem to miss an opportunity to showcase Mr. Bush in dramatic and perfectly lighted settings. It is all by design: the White House has stocked its communications operation with people from network television who have expertise in lighting, camera angles and the importance of backdrops.

On Tuesday, at a speech promoting his economic plan in Indianapolis, White House aides went so far as to ask people in the crowd behind Mr. Bush to take off their ties, WISH-TV in Indianapolis reported, so they would look more like the ordinary folk the president said would benefit from his tax cut.

"They understand the visual as well as anybody ever has," said Michael K. Deaver, Ronald Reagan's chief image maker. "They watched what we did, they watched the mistakes of Bush I, they watched how Clinton kind of stumbled into it, and they've taken it to an art form."

The White House efforts have been ambitious — and costly. For the prime-time television address that Mr. Bush delivered to the nation on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House rented three barges of giant Musco lights, the kind used to illuminate sports stadiums and rock concerts, sent them across New York Harbor, tethered them in the water around the base of the Statue of Liberty and then blasted them upward to illuminate all 305 feet of America's symbol of freedom. It was the ultimate patriotic backdrop for Mr. Bush, who spoke from Ellis Island.

For a speech that Mr. Bush delivered last summer at Mount Rushmore, the White House positioned the best platform for television crews off to one side, not head on as other White Houses have done, so that the cameras caught Mr. Bush in profile, his face perfectly aligned with the four presidents carved in stone.

And on Monday, for remarks the president made promoting his tax cut plan near Albuquerque, the White House unfurled a backdrop that proclaimed its message of the day, "Helping Small Business," over and over. The type was too small to be read by most in the audience, but just the right size for television viewers at home.

"I don't know who does it," Mr. Deaver said, "but somebody's got a good eye over there."

That somebody, White House officials and television executives say, is in fact three or four people. First among equals is Scott Sforza, a former ABC producer who was hired by the Bush campaign in Austin, Tex., and who now works for Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director. Mr. Sforza created the White House "message of the day" backdrops and helped design the $250,000 set at the United States Central Command forward headquarters in Doha, Qatar, during the Iraq war.

Mr. Sforza works closely with Bob DeServi, a former NBC cameraman whom the Bush White House hired after seeing his work in the 2000 campaign. Mr. DeServi, whose title is associate director of communications for production, is considered a master at lighting. "You want it, I'll heat it up and make a picture," he said early this week. Mr. DeServi helped produce one of Mr. Bush's largest events, a speech to a crowd in Revolution Square in Bucharest last November.

To stage the event, Mr. DeServi went so far as to rent Musco lights in Britain, which were then shipped across the English Channel and driven across Europe to Romania, where they lighted Mr. Bush and the giant stage across from the country's former Communist headquarters.

A third crucial player is Greg Jenkins, a former Fox News television producer in Washington who is now the director of presidential advance. Mr. Jenkins manages the small army of staff members and volunteers who move days ahead of Mr. Bush and his entourage to set up the staging of all White House events.

"We pay particular attention to not only what the president says but what the American people see," Mr. Bartlett said. "Americans are leading busy lives, and sometimes they don't have the opportunity to read a story or listen to an entire broadcast. But if they can have an instant understanding of what the president is talking about by seeing 60 seconds of television, you accomplish your goals as communicators. So we take it seriously."

The president's image makers, Mr. Bartlett said, work within a budget for White House travel and events allotted by Congress, which for fiscal 2003 was $3.7 million. He said he did not know the specific cost of staging Mr. Bush's Sept. 11 anniversary speech, or what the White House was charged for the lights. A spokeswoman at the headquarters of Musco Lighting in Oskaloosa, Iowa, said the company did not disclose the prices it charged clients.

White House communications operatives in previous administrations said many costs of presidential trips were paid for by whoever was deemed the official host of a trip — typically a federal agency, a city or a company. Trips deemed political are paid for by the parties.

"The total cost of a trip is ultimately shared across a wide spectrum of agencies and hosts," said Joshua King, who was director of production of presidential events in the Clinton administration. "To get to who really pays for presidential events would keep a team of accountants very busy."

The most elaborate — and criticized — White House event so far was Mr. Bush's speech aboard the Abraham Lincoln announcing the end of major combat in Iraq. White House officials say that a variety of people, including the president, came up with the idea, and that Mr. Sforza embedded himself on the carrier to make preparations days before Mr. Bush's landing in a flight suit and his early evening speech.

Media strategists noted afterward that Mr. Sforza and his aides had choreographed every aspect of the event, even down to the members of the Lincoln crew arrayed in coordinated shirt colors over Mr. Bush's right shoulder and the "Mission Accomplished" banner placed to perfectly capture the president and the celebratory two words in a single shot. The speech was specifically timed for what image makers call "magic hour light," which cast a golden glow on Mr. Bush.

"If you looked at the TV picture, you saw there was flattering light on his left cheek and slight shadowing on his right," Mr. King said. "It looked great."

The trip was attacked by Democrats as an expensive political stunt, but White House officials said that Democrats needed a better issue for taking on the president. A New York Times/CBS News nationwide poll conducted May 9-12 found that the White House may have been right: 59 percent of those polled said it was appropriate, and not an effort to make political gain, for Mr. Bush to dress in a flight suit and announce the end of combat operations on the aircraft carrier.

But even this White House makes mistakes. One of the more notable ones occurred in January, when Mr. Bush delivered a speech about his economic plan at a St. Louis trucking company. Volunteers for the White House covered "Made in China" stamps with white stickers on boxes arrayed on either side of the president. Behind Mr. Bush was a printed backdrop of faux boxes that read "Made in U.S.A.," the message the administration wanted to convey to the television audience.

The White House takes great pride in the backdrops, which are created by Mr. Sforza, and has gone so far as to help design them for universities where Mr. Bush travels to make commencement addresses. Last year, the White House helped design a large banner for Ohio State as part of the background for Mr. Bush; last week, the White House collaborated with the University of South Carolina to make Sforzian backdrops for a presidential commencement speech in the school's new Carolina Center.

"They really are good," said Russ McKinney, the school's director of public affairs, as he listened to the president.

Television camera crews, meanwhile, say they have rarely had such consistently attractive pictures to send back to editing rooms.

"They seem to approach an event site like it's a TV set," said Chris Carlson, an ABC cameraman who covers the White House. "They dress it up really nicely. It looks like a million bucks."

Even for standard-issue White House events, Mr. Bush's image makers watch every angle. Last week, when the president had a joint news conference with Prime Minister José Mariá Aznar of Spain, it was staged in the Grand Foyer of the White House, under grand marble columns, with the Blue Room and a huge cream-colored bouquet of flowers illuminated in the background. (Mr. Sforza and Mr. DeServi could be seen there conferring before the cameras began rolling.) The scene was lush and rich, filled with the beauty of the White House in real time.

"They understand they have to build a set, whether it's an aircraft carrier or the Rose Garden or the South Lawn," Mr. Deaver said. "They understand that putting depth into the picture makes the candidate or president look better."

Or as Mr. Deaver said he learned long ago with Mr. Reagan: "They understand that what's around the head is just as important as the head."

2003-05-13T16:15:00.000-04:00

From the Hotline -
IPSOS/COOK POLITICAL REPORT: Bush Job At 61%; Just 43% Say They'd Definitely Vote To Reelect Bush

Conducted 4/15-17 and 5/6-8; surveyed 2,001 adults; margin of error +/- 2.2%. Subsample: 1,532 regis. voters; margin of error +/- 2.5% (release, 5/13). Note: Unless indicated by ^, all questions asked of RVs only.

Bush Job As President
Approve 61%
Disapprove 37

Bush Job Handling:
The economy
Approve Disapprove
49% 48%
Domestic issues like health care,
education, the environment, energy
Approve Disapprove
47% 49%
Foreign policy issues, war on terrorism
Approve Disapprove
68% 29%

If The Election Were Held Today, You You:
Definitely vote to reelect Bush as President -- 43%
Consider voting for someone else -- 22%
Definitely vote for someone else -- 31%b

If The Election For Congress Were Held Today, You'd Want To See:
Democrats win control of Congress -- 45%
Republicans win control of Congress -- 41%

2003-05-13T11:21:00.000-04:00
For you Six Feet Under fans check out this link. Some people on my fan group think that its not a coincidence. Either way its kind of eerie.

Also check out the new controversial Six Feet Under ad campaign in England.

2003-05-13T10:40:00.000-04:00
Jane Fonda on gender
By Michael Rowe

An exclusive interview with the famous mom of Troy Garity—star of the upcoming gender-defying film Soldier’s Girl—becomes a fascinating give-and-take on “penis privilege” and how breaking down gender barriers could change the world.

An Advocate.com exclusive posted May 12, 2003

In the Showtime original film Soldier’s Girl, debuting May 31, actor Troy Garity plays Barry Winchell, the doomed Army private whose love affair with transgendered nightclub entertainer Calpernia Addams led to his brutal murder in July 1999 at the hands of a fellow soldier at Fort Campbell, Ky. In the course of writing this issue’s cover story on Soldier’s Girl, journalist Michael Rowe had occasion to speak with Garity’s mother, actress Jane Fonda. Although she rarely grants interviews, Fonda agreed to an exclusive one-on-one with The Advocate to discuss her son, the political family in which he was raised, and the elusive notion of gender—particularly as it applies to patriarchy, homophobia, and the violence that led to Barry Winchell’s murder.

Advocate.com: You saw Soldier’s Girl at the Sundance Film Festival screening this past winter. It stars your son, Troy Garity, playing murdered soldier Barry Winchell. What was your impression of the film?

Jane Fonda: I’m really proud of it. I think it’s very powerful, and I think every performance in it is outstanding. It raises many issues. One of the issues—the army’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy—is raised by the film, but it has also been raised by Barry Winchell’s parents, specifically his mother, Pat Kutteles, who was there at the screening. She is extremely brave. Have you talked to her?

Yes, I have. I was in Kansas City with Barry’s parents last month. As you know, the family have been very sharp critics of the army’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and in fact hold it primarily responsible for creating the climate of frustrated rage and intolerance that led to their son’s murder.

“Don’t ask, don’t tell” is a sham and needs to be revamped or looked at again. Something needs to be done. There was a marine in the audience at Sundance who stood up. He introduced himself as a U.S. marine, and I thought, Uh-oh. What’s he going to do? He said, “Thank you for this film. We need to look at this issue in the military, and [the film] is a great way to open it up.”

Did you meet also Calpernia Addams at the screening?

I had the pleasure of sitting next to Calpernia for the rest of the evening, and at the party afterwards. She was on one side of me, and her roommate, Andrea, was on the other. Andrea is also a transsexual. I see her as a theoretician of the transgender movement. She views what transsexuals do as smashing patriarchy.

What is it, do you suppose, about transsexual women that causes such a wide divergence of opinion among the general populace? The pendulum seems to swing from adoration to the purest loathing, in some quarters.

Transsexual women have given up “penis privilege.” This is profoundly threatening to people on so many different levels. I suddenly saw how hard it is, and how vulnerable they are. I’ve since put them in touch with Eve Ensler, who is interviewing them to develop a monologue to add to [her one-woman show] The Vagina Monologues that will speak to these women who have given up the “penis privilege” voluntarily. We hope to do an all-transgendered Vagina Monologues in Los Angeles next February.

Troy made some very interesting points during our interview yesterday—

I’m not surprised! [Laughs]

I asked him what it was like to be raised in a family with a tradition of social awareness and social conscience, and how that shaped him as an actor and as a man. He indicated that it helped shape his view. Did you raise Troy in any conscious way that might have shaped his later political views? And I mean political in the largest human sense. For instance, was Troy raised with strong feminist sensibilities?

Yes, although I have to fess up that I’m late coming to all this. He saw it because I was always strong and independent, but I didn’t have a strong feminist consciousness when he was growing up. I didn’t understand these things, not really.

Do you think that was a generational thing? There is a whole generation of strong working women who didn’t know at the time that they were living the feminist ideal. Do you think you were part of that?

Yes, I do. I think that’s absolutely true.

In our interview, Troy was a ferociously articulate and quite passionate critic of the current war in Iraq, and indeed the impulse behind the military imperialism that is so much a part of modern warfare generally. Is his antiwar, pro-peace stance something that might have originated with you and his father, Tom Hayden?

We never proselytized. Our politics certainly took us away a lot, and he could have gone in the opposite direction out of rebellion, but he has his feet squarely on the ground. I learn from him all the time. All the time.

What struck me the most, especially coming from a man, is his view that in these violent times, what the world needs is to become more “feminine” and less “masculine.” What are your own thoughts on gender in the context of social constructs, particularly violence?

I’m 65 years old, and it’s taken me a long time, but I’ve come to see gender as the core, central issue facing humanity. It informs everything. If you deal with this issue, which is older than agriculture, it’ll be the last bastion. And if we don’t deal with it, we’re not going to survive as a species. Because from that issue of gender emanates violence, hierarchy, homophobia—all of the social ills we deal with. We call them many names, but they come back to this one notion: that men are above women. Anything that challenges that notion is scary. You can trace any issue back to hierarchy, patriarchy, and power.

Michael Moore certainly addressed American culturally ingrained violence with stunning prescience in Bowling for Columbine.

I sat next to Michael Moore the other night, and he said, “I watched Columbine for the umpteenth time, and it suddenly hit me. I’d left out the gender issue!” I said, “Hello! That’s why I wanted to sit next to you tonight.” [Laughs] But my theory is, you can’t put everything into one film. There should be a whole other film about it. But he said, “Hey, guys—the violence? It’s male.” Suicides are women and gays, violence is men. You start looking at it in a new way, and it’s such a change in paradigm.

But violence is so often subject to group sanction, meaning that if enough people—specifically men—are violent, it’s thought of as a virtue rather than a vice. It’s thought of as an example of male strength.

That’s why I do a lot of work with Eve Ensler. And of course, Troy has become an honorary “vagina warrior.” [Laughs] I’m sure he told you about that?

He told me that he’d just returned from an enlightening tour of Afghanistan with Eve. As North Americans, we so often forget that the true measure of the evolution of human culture needs to be taken in places other than the West. Have you noticed that happening elsewhere?

What I see happening is—and I hope it’s not wishful thinking—a groundswell going on everywhere in the world that seems to be the opposite of patriarchy. I wish I had another word to use besides patriarchy, because it sounds so rhetorical. We’ll just call it “the vagina-friendly ethic” [Laughs]. It’s rising. Whether it’s at the critical mass yet, I don’t know, but it’s getting there. Eve Ensler is one of the people on the cutting edge of this. I’ve traveled with her to other countries. It is amazing what is happening, and it’s not just women. It’s women and what she calls “vagina-friendly men.” With what’s happening in the world today, these guys could be shooting themselves in the foot. If the structure that is waging the wars—and cutting back on the caring, giving institutions—collapses, we’re going to be ready with a whole new paradigm.

It’s interesting, isn’t it, when you take away all the gender-based prohibitions—for instance, the way we act, the way we dress, the way we relate to one another—what’s left is something extraordinarily personal and unique.

We just finished our G-CAPP conference [Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention]. We had a workshop called “Faith and Sex,” or something like that. There was a wonderful Baptist minister who talked about androgyny. He cited research that showed that the most resilient people in the world are androgynous. They accept both their masculinity and their femininity. He had a graph that showed that 10% of people are totally homosexual, and 10% are totally heterosexual, and the other 80% are somewhere in the middle. And the healthiest people are right smack in the middle. I knew this intuitively, but I think it’s so interesting that there is now scientific research to prove it. The different degrees on the spectrum are fascinating, and the more it’s accepted, the healthier the society is.

2003-05-12T15:11:00.000-04:00
Check out this Bush resume my homegirl Diana sent me over email. Read a few when you get a chance.

George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
202-456-1111
president@whitehouse.gov

Past work experience:

Ran for congress and lost.

Produced a Hollywood slasher B movie.

Bought an oil company, but couldn't find any oil in Texas, company went bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock.

Bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took land using tax-payer money. Biggest move: Traded Sammy Sosa to the Chicago White Sox.

With fathers help (and his name) was elected Governor of Texas. Accomplishments: Changed pollution laws for power and oil companies and made Texas the most polluted state in the Union. Replaced Los Angeles with Houston as the most smog ridden city in America. Cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas government to the tune of billions in borrowed money. Set record for most executions by any Governor in American history.

Became president after losing the popular vote by over 500,000 votes, with the help of my fathers appointments to the Supreme Court.

Accomplishments as president:

Attacked and took over two countries.

Spent the surplus and bankrupted the treasury.

Shattered record for biggest annual deficit in history.

Set economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any 12 month period.

Set all-time record for biggest drop in the history of the stock market.

First president in decades to execute a federal prisoner.

First president in US history to enter office with a criminal record.

First year in office set the all-time record for most days on vacation by any president in US history.

After taking the entire month of August off for vacation, presided over the worst security failure in US history.

Set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips than any other president in US history.

In my first two years in office over 2 million Americans lost their job.

Cut unemployment benefits for more out of work Americans than any president in US history.

Set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a 12 month period.
Appointed more convicted criminals to administration positions than any president in US history.

Set the record for the least amount of press conferences than any president since the advent of television.

Signed more laws and executive orders amending the Constitution than any president in US history.

Presided over the biggest energy crises in US history and refused to intervene when corruption was revealed.

Presided over the highest gasoline prices in US history and refused to use the national reserves as past presidents have.

Cut healthcare benefits for war veterans.

Set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously take to the streets to protest me (15 million people), shattering the record for protest against any person in the history of mankind. ( http://www.hyperreal.org/~dana/marches/)

Dissolved more international treaties than any president in US history.

My presidency is the most secretive and un-accountable of any in US history.

Members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in US history. (the 'poorest' multi-millionaire, Condoleeza Rice has an Chevron oil tanker named after her).

First president in US history to have all 50 states of the Union simultaneously go bankrupt.

Presided over the biggest corporate stock market fraud of any market in any country in the history of the world.

First president in US history to order a US attack and military occupation of a sovereign nation.

Created the largest government department bureaucracy in the history of the United States.

Set the all-time record for biggest annual budget spending increases, more than any president in US history.

First president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from the human rights commission.

First president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from the elections monitoring board.

Removed more checks and balances, and have the least amount of congressional oversight than any presidential administration in US history.

Rendered the entire United Nations irrelevant.

Withdrew from the World Court of Law.

Refused to allow inspectors access to US prisoners of war and by default no longer abide by the Geneva Conventions.

First president in US history to refuse United Nations election inspectors (during the 2002 US elections).

All-time US (and world) record holder for most corporate campaign donations.

My biggest life-time campaign contributor presided over one of the largest corporate bankruptcy frauds in world history (Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron Corporation).

Spent more money on polls and focus groups than any president in US history.

First president in US history to unilaterally attack a sovereign nation against the will of the United Nations and the world community.

First president to run and hide when the US came under attack (and then lied saying the enemy had the code to Air Force 1)

First US president to establish a secret shadow government.

Took the biggest world sympathy for the US after 911, and in less than a year made the US the most resented country in the world (possibly the biggest diplomatic failure in US and world history).

With a policy of 'dis-engagement' created the most hostile Israeli-Palestine relations in at least 30 years.

Fist US president in history to have a majority of the people of Europe (71%) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and stability.

First US president in history to have the people of South Korea more threatened by the US than their immediate neighbor, North Korea.

Changed US policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts.

Set all-time record for number of administration appointees who violated US law by not selling huge investments in corporations bidding for government contracts.

Failed to fulfill my pledge to get Osama Bin Laden 'dead or alive'.

Failed to capture the anthrax killer who tried to murder the leaders of our country at the United States Capitol building. After 18 months I have no leads and zero suspects.

In the 18 months following the 911 attacks I have successfully prevented any public investigation into the biggest security failure in the history of the United States.

Removed more freedoms and civil liberties for Americans than any other president in US history.

In a little over two years created the most divided country in decades, possibly the most divided the US has ever been since the civil war.

Entered office with the strongest economy in US history and in less than two years turned every single economic category heading straight down.

Records and References:

At least one conviction for drunk driving in Maine (Texas driving record has been erased and is not available).

AWOL from National Guard and Deserted the military during a time of war.

Refuse to take drug test or even answer any questions about drug use.

All records of my tenure as governor > of Texas have been spirited away to my fathers library, sealed in secrecy and un-available for public view.

All records of any SEC investigations into my insider trading or bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and un-available for public view.

All minutes of meetings for any public corporation I served on the board are sealed in secrecy and un-available for public view.

Any records or minutes from meetings I (or my VP) attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and un-available for public review.

For personal references please speak to my daddy or uncle James Baker (They can be reached at their offices of the Carlyle Group for war-profiteering.)

2003-05-09T15:01:00.000-04:00
When I lived in Los Angeles I could rely on the radio for wisdom. Sometimes a radio station's playlist and what I needed to know came together so beautifully that I thought there must be a GOD that controls the randomness of this.

For example: Waking up and to the song "I'm Real" by Jennifer Lopez always started my day out well. See, for me, being real is just like breathing.

These days the subway is my book of quotes and sometimes if I am in tune with the movement of it all I will hear snippets of conversations, and in those words dropped I hear insight, wit, prophecy, and knowledge.

"We are front and center stage in our life's play every day."

I heard this just as I finished a section in the book I am reading The Lovely Bones. It is told from the perspective of a teenage girl who was brutally raped and murdered. She is telling the story from her heaven. In the section that I was reading between 72nd Street and 34th Street she looking back to at the one instance where she saw her mother stripped of all of her roles to reveal a truer self. She is expressing sadness that this would be the only time she would see her mother this way.

As I began to drift away in thinking about my Mom and feeling like I am missing moments with her while I am in NYC, I was brought back to the 1 train with this man's comment. Make the most of my play. Take some time out this weekend to have a quality conversation with my Mom this weekend.

2003-05-09T11:26:00.000-04:00
Into the Sunset
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Chutzpah, according to the classic definition, is when you murder your parents, then ask for sympathy because you're an orphan. But what do we call it if after you are placed with foster parents, you try the same thing all over again?

I ask this question in light of the tax-cut package the House is expected to pass today — a package that relies on exactly the same bait-and-switch tactics used to sell the 2001 tax cut. Since the scam involved in the 2001 tax cut remains one of the wonders of modern political economy, it is a measure of our leaders' contempt for the intelligence of the public — or maybe for the press — that they think they can use the same tricks a second time.

Here's the story: in 2001, as now, some swing senators insisted on a budget resolution limiting the size of any tax cut. No problem. House-Senate negotiators pushed through a huge tax cut anyway, "saving" several hundred billion dollars by making the whole thing expire in the 10th year. Among other things, this "sunset clause" implied that heirs to large estates would pay no tax if their parents died in 2010, but would face significant taxes if their parents made it into 2011. At the time I suggested that it be renamed the Throw Momma from the Train Act of 2001.

Needless to say, the bill was silly by design. The administration didn't intend to compromise: it fully expected to get the sunset clause repealed in a future Congress. And President Bush was soon out there ridiculing the way the tax cut was programmed to expire, implying that the expiration date was imposed by scheming liberals, when in fact it was a trick perpetrated by his own Congressional allies.

Now Congress is voting on more tax cuts. This time we're already running a record budget deficit, and the long-run prospect is bleak. Still, the administration claims to be making a concession by agreeing to scale back its $726 billion tax cut to a mere $550 billion.

So how does the House bill, which is broadly similar to the administration's proposal, stay within that $550 billion limit? Sunset clauses! Many of the provisions would supposedly expire in 2005, others in 2012. Otherwise, it's a bigger tax cut than the administration proposed. And the sunset clauses, like those in the 2001 tax cut, are clearly a mere gimmick: as soon as a tax cut becomes law, the administration will begin demanding that the whole thing be made permanent.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that the true cost of the House bill, without the sunset scam, would be $1.1 trillion over the next decade. You know, $550 billion here, $550 billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money.

The new tax cut plan echoes the 2001 scam in other ways. In 2001 a tax cut that delivered about 40 percent of its benefits to the richest 1 percent of families was marketed as a tax break for ordinary folks. The same is true this time. In fact, the extent to which the House bill favors the rich is breathtaking: the typical family would get a tax break of only $217 next year, but families with incomes above $1 million would get an average of $93,500 each. The center estimates that over the next decade, 27 percent of the tax cut — about the share that goes to the bottom 90 percent of the population — would go to these very high-income families, who comprise a mere 0.13 percent of the population.

Finally, as in 2001, we're being told that this tax cut will create lots of jobs. But why should we believe that? It's hard to find an independent economist who thinks that the Bush proposal would create the 1.4 million jobs claimed by the administration — and as I've explained in this column, even that many jobs would be a poor payoff for a tax cut that big.

And bear in mind that Bush-style tax cuts now have a track record. Of the 2.1 million jobs lost over the past two years, 1.7 million vanished after the passage of the 2001 tax cut.

Nonetheless, the odds are that this scam, like the scam of 2001, will succeed. The tax cut will be passed, and the budget will plunge even deeper into the red. And one day we'll realize that international investors are treating us like a banana republic — that they won't finance our trade deficit unless they are paid very high rates of interest (have I mentioned that the dollar has just fallen to a four-year low against the euro?) — and everyone will wonder why.

2003-05-08T12:18:00.000-04:00
You know I am obsessed with polling. Arianna has some great points - the polling industry is facing some huge challenges regarding its respondents. When I worked at a DC polling firm and had to observe calls it became apparent just the kind of people who would sit and listen to a twenty minute poll. Would you? Probably not. I would, but I LOVE polls. And that was before caller ID. I can only imagine how low the response rate is now with people just not answering the phone for unknown numbers. Bush is going to go down in a big way. You have to believe it. Republicans want you to think that there is no chance for Bush to lose so Dems think anything they do is a waste of time. Bush can lose but we are going to have to work HARD for it. Last night I went to a Howard Dean meetup.

Dont be lazy. Now is the time to act. Research the candidate you would like to support and give them some of your time and money. Its the only way to get W out of office!

The 77-percent solution
While Karl Rove crows over Bush's postwar approval rating, the latest numbers are lower than you'd think.
By Arianna Huffington

May 7, 2003 | "Seventy-seven percent." For weeks now, those three little words have served as the ultimate discussion stopper. A verbal knockout punch. A conversational coup de grâce. The final number as final word.

Whether offered up on TV talk shows or tossed across dining room tables, that magic number -- the president's robust postwar job approval rating -- has been as effective at quelling any disagreement with the Bush administration's selectively bellicose foreign policies or its suicidal tax cuts as a laser-guided bunker buster bomb.

Seventy-seven percent. It's Bush's flak jacket. A Kevlar stat that has cloaked him in an aura of invincibility. An aura that was only augmented by Operation Photo Op, his 2G tail-hook landing on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, floating just off the perilous coast of San Diego, and by the sight of his Democratic challengers squabbling amongst themselves in South Carolina -- desperately and pathetically trying to get the audience to picture them slipping into the role of dive-bombing top gun-in-chief. The idea being, I suppose, that it was all about the presidential flight suit, and not the man inside it.

Seventy-seven percent: The president is triumphant. Seventy-seven percent: The president can do no wrong. Seventy-seven percent: End of discussion. End of democratic debate.

Or so the president and his handlers fervently hope. Only it's not. It's just the beginning.

For starters, majorities can be -- and very, very often have been -- dead wrong. For instance, "Macarena" held the top spot on the Billboard singles chart for 14 straight weeks. Need I say more? And I'm not even pointing out to the president that a majority voted against him in the last election.

But let's put aside for the moment the ludicrousness of basing anything on increasingly inaccurate opinion polls (With their plummeting response rates, laughably small samplings and precision-flouting margins of error, these things are becoming less reliable than Rob on "Survivor: The Amazon") and take a closer look at the latest numbers. You'll see that the president isn't flying anywhere near as high as Karl Rove would like us to believe.

For one thing, in the latest Newsweek poll, the president's approval rating has already slumped to 65 percent -- a 12-point drop since the post-fall-of-Baghdad euphoria that goosed him to the much bandied-about double 7's. And even that figure pales in comparison to the 89-percent rating his father sported after the first Gulf War -- and Ol' 41 hadn't even toppled a single statue of Saddam, let alone an entire murderous regime.

When you break the numbers down further, you discover that the current President Bush is on even shakier electoral ground -- standing astride a partisan chasm that threatens to topple his own monuments. Following Desert Storm, both Republicans and Democrats felt good about the job George the Elder had done: he had a stratospheric 96-percent approval rating among his fellow Republicans and, even more importantly, an 80-percent rating among members of the opposition party, a spread of only 16 points. George the Junior, on the other hand, is facing a massive 51-point difference of opinion: Ninety-seven percent of his party members approve of his efforts, but less than half of Democrats -- 46 percent -- feel the same way.

Even after 9/11, Afghanistan, and the fall of Saddam, America is as polarized as it was during the days of dangling chads, scrubbed ballots, and endless recounts. And it's no accident: The administration's policies have sliced the body politic in two, and, as an added bonus, dramatically turned the majority of the civilized world against us.

So much for Bush's incessant campaign claims that he was going to be "a uniter not a divider."

The instability of the president's putative popularity becomes even more apparent when the subject of the polls is switched from the war in Iraq to the floundering economy here at home. Only 49 percent of Americans approve of Bush's handling of the economy, and more than half think that the president is not paying enough attention to the issue -- which is a big problem for the White House, since a majority of those polled cite the economy as their top concern. I'm sure Team Bush wishes the rest of us were paying as little attention to the economy as he is.

It's no wonder Rove is struggling so mightily to make 2004 about little more than picking a cockpit-ready commander in chief. But being president entails a lot more than making tail-hook landings and ordering last-minute bombing runs on restaurants and mosques where Saddam is purported to be hiding. It requires vision and leadership -- and the ability to come up with a way to deal with 6-percent national unemployment that doesn't include hammering Congress to pass yet another tax cut for the rich or repeating the word "jobs" close to three dozen times in a single speech, as the president did two weeks ago.

But even if you put all that aside and focus exclusively on the "endless war" the administration seems determined to wage -- or at least determined to campaign on -- the White House's reliance on polling seems destined to blow up in all of our faces.

Can you think of anything more preposterous -- and dangerous -- than determining matters of war and peace based on public opinion surveys? Yet all indications are that Bush and chief strategist Rove are chronic poll watchers and takers. A scary thought when you consider how consistently unreliable polls turn out to be.

Take the case of a Los Angeles Times poll conducted during the early days of the Iraq invasion. According to the survey, which was based on the responses of 745 people obviously lacking caller ID, 50 percent of Americans were in favor of expanding the fighting in the Middle East to include Iran if it continued to develop nuclear weapons. Pretty impressive. And utterly dubious. Just one week after the L.A. Times' headline-grabbing findings, a Gallup poll on the same subject came up with wildly contradictory results, determining that a whopping 69 percent of Americans opposed an invasion of Iran -- even if it was proven to be developing WMD or aiding terrorists.

So which was it? Were Americans gung-ho to take on Iran or did the thought send a shiver up our collective spine? And what if the Wolfowitzes of the world had used the first set of numbers to convince Karl Rove that launching a preemptive strike against Iran would be a good political move? Would the Gallup findings have then led the president to make an apologetic call to the ruling ayatollahs in Tehran: "Sorry, fellas, my bad. But that's polling for ya!"

It's bad enough taking a poll to determine if the public is in favor of requiring school kids to wear uniforms; it's downright Strangelovian to ask them if they are in favor of attacking a sovereign nation.

Even if your approval rating is 100 percent.

2003-05-07T17:42:00.000-04:00
Once again my man Byrd is keeping it real - taking Bush to task on the '04 campaign stop on the USS Abraham Lincoln. See comments below.

"President Bush's address to the American people announcing combat victory in Iraq deserved to be marked with solemnity, not extravagance; with gratitude to God, not self-congratulatory gestures," Sen. Robert Byrd, D- West Virginia, said in a sharply worded speech delivered on the Senate floor. "American blood has been shed on foreign soil in defense of the president's policies. This is not some made-for-TV backdrop for a campaign commercial."

Byrd's speech was the most pointed and stinging commentary about the matter from a lawmaker.
"As I watched the president's fighter jet swoop down onto the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, I could not help but contrast the reported simple dignity of President Lincoln at Gettysburg with the flamboyant showmanship of President Bush aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln," Byrd said.

Byrd, who has been a persistent and vocal critic of Bush's policies toward Iraq, said a "salute" to America's warriors was appropriate, but he added, "I do question the motives of a desk-bound president who assumes the garb of a warrior for the purposes of a speech."

Also gots to send out much love to the honorable man from Califas Mr. Waxman for checkin' W. on this. See article from cnn.com below.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The White House on Wednesday strongly defended President Bush's national address last week from an aircraft carrier, rejecting Democratic criticism that the president's dramatic arrival on the USS Abraham Lincoln was little more than a campaign event for a president up for re-election in 2004.

Some Democrats (the ones with balls) have focused on the way Bush chose to arrive on the carrier on Thursday. A Navy jet carrying Bush made a tailhook landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln -- the first such landing for a sitting president. They've called on the White House to provide an analysis of how much the landing cost, and they want to compare it with what a helicopter landing would have cost.

Several senior White House officials told CNN there was a minimal difference between the cost of Navy jet landing or one with a Marine or Navy helicopter.

The officials said the Navy recommended the jet as the safest mode of travel to the aircraft carrier because it offered the option to eject if the aircraft missed the deck on its approach for landing.

These officials, however, said the administration will not release documents or offer specific details of the cost analysis now that Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman of California is seeking a General Accounting Office investigation of the costs.

In an interview with CNN, Waxman said Bush used the troops as a "political prop for his re-election campaign" and called on the Bush campaign to reimburse taxpayers for the costs.

Costs and other details of transporting the president are routinely kept private by the White House, the administration officials said.

During the Clinton administration, congressional Republicans frequently complained about the costs of presidential travel, and the GAO, in response to inquiries, provided rough estimates. A Clinton trip to Africa, for example, was one criticized by Republicans and analyzed by the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress.

2003-05-06T10:32:00.000-04:00
Here is Paul Krugman. I like Krugman because when I read his columns he is as disgusted with the direction of the country as I am. I guess it makes me feel less crazy to know that I am not the only one who wants to spit when they see W on TV playing on the boat. And that fucking flight suit -- it really looks like they stuffed his pants.

Man on Horseback
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Gen. Georges Boulanger cut a fine figure; he looked splendid in uniform, and magnificent on horseback. So his handlers made sure that he appeared in uniform, astride a horse, as often as possible.

It worked: Boulanger became immensely popular. If he hadn't lost his nerve on the night of the attempted putsch, French democracy might have ended in 1889.

We do things differently here — or we used to. Has "man on horseback" politics come to America?

Some background: the Constitution declares the president commander in chief of the armed forces to make it clear that civilians, not the military, hold ultimate authority. That's why American presidents traditionally make a point of avoiding military affectations. Dwight Eisenhower was a victorious general and John Kennedy a genuine war hero, but while in office neither wore anything that resembled military garb.

Given that history, George Bush's "Top Gun" act aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln — c'mon, guys, it wasn't about honoring the troops, it was about showing the president in a flight suit — was as scary as it was funny.

Mind you, it was funny. At first the White House claimed the dramatic tail-hook landing was necessary because the carrier was too far out to use a helicopter. In fact, the ship was so close to shore that, according to The Associated Press, administration officials "acknowledged positioning the massive ship to provide the best TV angle for Bush's speech, with the sea as his background instead of the San Diego coastline."

A U.S.-based British journalist told me that he and his colleagues had laughed through the whole scene. If Tony Blair had tried such a stunt, he said, the press would have demanded to know how many hospital beds could have been provided for the cost of the jet fuel.

But U.S. television coverage ranged from respectful to gushing. Nobody pointed out that Mr. Bush was breaking an important tradition. And nobody seemed bothered that Mr. Bush, who appears to have skipped more than a year of the National Guard service that kept him out of Vietnam, is now emphasizing his flying experience. (Spare me the hate mail. An exhaustive study by The Boston Globe found no evidence that Mr. Bush fulfilled any of his duties during that missing year. And since Mr. Bush has chosen to play up his National Guard career, this can't be shrugged off as old news.)

Anyway, it was quite a show. Luckily for Mr. Bush, the frustrating search for Osama bin Laden somehow morphed into a good old-fashioned war, the kind where you seize the enemy's capital and get to declare victory after a cheering crowd pulls down the tyrant's statue. (It wasn't much of a crowd, and American soldiers actually brought down the statue, but it looked great on TV.)

Let me be frank. Why is the failure to find any evidence of an active Iraqi nuclear weapons program, or vast quantities of chemical and biological weapons (a few drums don't qualify — though we haven't found even that) a big deal? Mainly because it feeds suspicions that the war wasn't waged to eliminate real threats. This suspicion is further fed by the administration's lackadaisical attitude toward those supposed threats once Baghdad fell. For example, Iraq's main nuclear waste dump wasn't secured until a few days ago, by which time it had been thoroughly looted. So was it all about the photo ops?

Well, Mr. Bush got to pose in his flight suit. And given the absence of awkward questions, his handlers surely feel empowered to make even more brazen use of the national security issue in future.

Next year — in early September — the Republican Party will hold its nominating convention in New York. The party will exploit the time and location to the fullest. How many people will dare question the propriety of the proceedings?

And who will ask why, if the administration is so proud of its response to Sept. 11, it has gone to such lengths to prevent a thorough, independent inquiry into what actually happened? (An independent study commission wasn't created until after the 2002 election, and it has been given little time and a ludicrously tiny budget.)

There was a time when patriotic Americans from both parties would have denounced any president who tried to take political advantage of his role as commander in chief. But that, it seems, was another country.

2003-04-28T14:00:00.000-04:00
Good morning, I am now in San Francisco but just wanted to share this picture of Christina Aguilera with my boss, Joan M. Garry.

2003-04-23T21:26:00.000-04:00
My west coast food tour beginning in LA is going splendidly.

2003-04-22T20:56:00.000-04:00
Dont forget to get (buy from Target or Best Buy for $9.99, pay more money and support an independent retailer, or just download it) the Madonna album today!

Hors de Combat
by Richard Goldstein

She's the ultimate quick-change artist, with a style that can absorb any trend and an image to match. She's gone from material girl to S/M maitresse, from power diva to contented mother. I'm not talking about Hillary Clinton in the mind of the angry white male. This is Madonna.

Under all her convolutions lies a core persona, some would claim. In the pomo pantheon, Madonna is the emblem of desire in all its variations. But what's kept her on top of the pops for more than twenty years is her ability to select the variation that fits the theme of the moment. Madonna's great gift is staying ahead of the curve without getting truly out of line. That's why it's stunning to see her burned by the promotional video for her upcoming album, American Life.

Madonna's chameleon instincts have been failing her lately. Sales of her music have slipped, and she's made some terrible acting choices (such as starring in last year's ridiculed remake, Swept Away). In these straits, a sex goddess can always fall back on provocation, but Madonna chose to walk a much trickier line by attaching her erotic energy to an antiwar statement. The result was a wet dream for Matt Drudge.

This video may be "the most shocking antiwar, anti-Bush statement yet to come from the show-business industry," drooled the dean of Internet factoids. From Drudge's description, you'd think Madonna had put a bullet through the President's unimpeachable head. The closest she came to that is lobbing a grenade at a man in a Bush mask who uses it to light his cigar. But that sort of fantasy is treason these days, and with visions of demonized Dixie Chicks dancing in her head, Madonna withdrew the offending video.

That was embarrassing enough, but did she have to say she was acting "out of sensitivity and respect to the armed forces, who I support and pray for"? This was a little like hearing Trent Lott praise affirmative action--not exactly a credible gesture of repentance. Now Madonna seems headed for icon limbo.

Meanwhile, the contraband video is circulating on the web. This may be one of those telling moments when the promo outlasts the product, and maybe it should, since the video is one of the best Madonna has ever made. Some of its mock violence looks eerily like the nightly news. But unlike the "real" thing, it bristles with ambiguity, deftly locating the hidden connections between sex and war--and exploding them. If you want to understand the erotics of contemporary combat, this video makes a good primer.

But pop culture isn't down with ambiguity at the moment. Irony is the new Communism, which is why an artist like Madonna can't get her message across. Nothing in her career prepares her for a climate where every intention must be clear and earnest. She has no experience with optimism, the official affect of the Let's Roll Generation. She can rap, she can vogue, she can do bondage and ballads, but one thing Madonna can't be is clean-cut. In order to plug into the present, she will have to play the Marlene Dietrich camp-follower role in a remake of Morocco, running off into the desert after some latter-day Gary Cooper. It's come to that.

2003-04-22T12:32:00.000-04:00
What would Tuesday be without an op-ed from Krugman on my blog. Call me crazy or idealistic but it makes me feel good to read truth in our newspapers. In a Fox News World it brings a smile to my over-it face.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
By PAUL KRUGMAN

id you know that President Bush's economic plan will create 1.4 million jobs? Oh, and did I mention that the plan will create 1.4 million jobs? And don't forget, the plan will create 1.4 million jobs.

Republican politicians are obviously under instructions to push that job number. On the Sunday talk shows some of them said "1.4 million jobs" so often that it sounded like an embarrassing nervous tic.

Of course, there's no reason to take that number seriously. Basically, the job-creation estimate came from the same place where Joseph McCarthy learned that there were 57 card-carrying Communists in the State Department. Still, let's pretend that the Bush administration really thinks that its $726 billion tax-cut plan will create 1.4 million jobs. At what price would those jobs be created?

By price I don't just mean the budget cost; I also mean the cost of sacrificing other potential pro-employment policies on the altar of tax cuts. Once you take those sacrifices into account, it becomes clear that the Bush plan is actually a job-destroying package.

Not that the budget cost is minor. The average American worker earns only about $40,000 per year; why does the administration, even on its own estimates, need to offer $500,000 in tax cuts for each job created? If it's all about jobs, wouldn't it be far cheaper just to have the government hire people? Franklin Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration put the unemployed to work doing all kinds of useful things; why not do something similar now? (Hint: this would be a good time to do something serious, finally, about port security.)

The answer is that we can't have a modern version of the W.P.A. because, um . . . because tax cuts are essential to promote long-run economic growth. Yes, that must be it. Just look at a new study by the Congressional Budget Office, now headed by an economist handpicked by the Bush administration. It concludes that the Bush plan may have either a positive or a negative effect on long-run growth, but that in any case the effect will be small. Wait, that's not the answer we wanted. Quick, find another expert!

Meanwhile, the United States is in effect about to run a W.P.A. program in reverse. That is, as a nation we're about to reduce spending on basic needs like education, health care and infrastructure by at least $100 billion, maybe more. And these spending cuts — the result of the fiscal crisis of the states — amount to a job destruction program bigger than any likely positive effects of the Bush tax cut.

Until recently it has been hard to get people excited about the states' worst fiscal crisis since the Great Depression. For about two years state governments were able to use fancy financial footwork to put off the full effects, and the public probably regarded warnings about looming catastrophe as exaggerated. But now, as Timothy Egan reported yesterday in The New York Times, states are "withdrawing health care for the poor and mentally ill. They are also dismissing state troopers, closing parks and schools, dropping bus routes, eliminating college scholarships and slashing a host of other services." Not to mention unscrewing every third light bulb in Missouri government offices. (Honest.)

Aside from their cruelty and their adverse effect on the quality of life, these cuts will be a major drag on the national economy. So if the administration really cared about jobs, it would provide an emergency package of aid to state governments — not to pay for new spending, but simply to maintain basic services. How about $78 billion — the same sum just allocated for the Iraq war?

Oh, never mind. Anything that would distract from the tax-cut message is out of the question. In fact, rather than compromise on its goal of maximum long-run tax cuts for the wealthy, the administration now says that it's willing to phase tax cuts in gradually — making them even less effective as an economic stimulus.

So when you take the policy consequences into account, it's clear that the administration's tax-cut obsession isn't just busting the budget; it's also indirectly destroying jobs by preventing any rational response to a weak economy. In its determination to stay on message, the administration is also determined not to do anything that would actually help ordinary families.

But did I mention that the Bush tax plan will create 1.4 million jobs?

2003-04-21T16:17:00.000-04:00
A Tale of Two Fridays
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon, a k a the International Trust for Historic Preservation, has once more shown the world its deep cultural sensitivity.

Franklin Graham, the Christian evangelist who has branded Islam a "very wicked and evil" religion, was the honored speaker at the Pentagon's Good Friday service.

After Kenna West, a Christian singer, crooned, "There is one God and one faith," Mr. Graham told an auditorium of soldiers in camouflage, civilian staffers and his son, a West Point cadet: "There's no other way to God except through Christ. . . . Jesus Christ is alive because he is risen, and friends, he's coming back, and I believe he's coming back soon."

When Muslim groups complained that the Pentagon was "endorsing" his attacks on Islam, Mr. Graham asked for a photo op with Muslim Pentagon employees. They declined.

Muslims suspicious that America is on a crusade against Islam were inflamed to learn that Mr. Graham is taking his missionary act to Iraq. They are still scorched by his remarks to NBC News after 9/11: "It wasn't Methodists flying into those buildings, and it wasn't Lutherans. It was an attack on this country by people of the Islamic faith."

He wrote in his last book that Christianity and Islam were "as different as lightness and darkness," and recently told the Sunday Times of London, "The true God is the God of the Bible, not the Koran."

Workers from Mr. Graham's Christian relief organization, Samaritan's Purse, were in Jordan, waiting to inveigle Iraqi infidels with a blend of kitchen pantry and Elmer Gantry.

Treating Operation Iraqi Freedom as a lucky break for Jesus, Mr. Graham told the religious Web site Beliefnet: "We are there to reach out to love them and to save them, and as a Christian I do this in the name of Jesus Christ."

The 50-year-old son of Billy Graham has close connections to the president, who was in charge of evangelical outreach during his father's '88 campaign and who pressed war in Iraq by calling liberty "God's gift to humanity."

Both scions "recommitted" to Jesus Christ after periods of rebellion. Franklin Graham gave the prayer at W.'s inaugural. The president said Billy Graham "planted a seed in my heart" to stop drinking and embrace Jesus.

In Baghdad, it was Bad Friday. On the Islamic holy day, thousands of Iraqis marched through downtown, shouting for America to "leave our country." Looters, continuing their rampage, stole vials of polio virus from a public health laboratory and set the Information Ministry on fire.

Mullahs were happy to talk — and balk — after suffocating under Saddam. "You are masters today," Sheik Ahmed al-Kubeisy lectured America in one Baghdad mosque. "But I warn you against thinking of staying. Get out before we force you out." (Isn't this how Osama got started?)

Back here, the neo-cons and war planners were too busy gloating to worry about the ambient sound of civilizations clashing.

Rummy, once a Bechtel Iraqi pipeline booster and now busy planning to load American military bases into Iraq, seemed almost perversely determined to act as though the vandalizing of relics of the birth of civilization was insignificant, something only sissies could cry over.

"It's the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase," he said, "and you see it 20 times and you think, my goodness, were there that many vases? Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?"

The Pentagon could easily have saved the national museum and library if they had redeployed the American troops assigned to guard Ahmad Chalabi, the Richard Perle pal, Pentagon candidate and convicted embezzler who is back in Iraq trying to ingratiate himself with the country he left 40 years ago.

Instead of hectoring those who expressed any doubt about the difficulty of occupying Iraq, the conservatives should worry about their own self-parody: pandering to the base by blessing evangelical Christians who want to proselytize Muslims; protecting their interests by backing a shady expat puppet; pleasing their contributors by pre-emptively awarding rebuilding contracts to Halliburton and Bechtel; and swaggering like Goths as Iraq's cultural heritage goes up in flames.

Talk about a baptism by fire.

2003-04-18T12:00:00.000-04:00
Grettings to my sponsors!

I am at the La Guardia airport using a wirelessly connected laptop provided to me free of charge by IBM. So I guess this blog is sponsored by IBM as well!

I just got distracted with a chat with two IBM reps talking about the new J-Lo video. Of course I had to add my dos centavos, "She looks good"

I wish I had a xanax - flying today has got me a little stressed. I think I may have a tylenol PM - that could do the trick. Its so funny the music at this IBM station sounds just like the opening theme music from My So Called Life. Oh Claire.

Okay I am heading over to the gate now on my way to Nashville and then to LA. I hear the weather in LA is going to be a high of 70 and low of 55. BEAUTIFUL!

Also much love to all my readers in Frisco, La Puente, and the Persian Gulf. I think thats all of you right. And of course my future baby' daddy in Jersey. Love you baby.

2003-04-17T09:39:00.000-04:00
Why The Anti-War Movement Was Right
By Arianna Huffington

The Bible tells us that pride goeth before the fall. In Iraq, it cameth
right after it.

From the moment that statue of Saddam hit the ground, the mood around
the Rumsfeld campfire has been all high-fives, I-told-you-sos, and
endless smug prattling about how the speedy fall of Baghdad is proof
positive that those who opposed the invasion of Iraq were dead wrong.

What utter nonsense. In fact, the speedy fall of Baghdad proves the
anti-war movement was dead right.

The whole pretext for our unilateral charge into Iraq was that the
American people were in imminent danger from Saddam and his mighty war
machine. The threat was so clear and present that we couldn't even give
inspectors searching for weapons of mass destruction -- hey, remember
those? -- another 30 days, as France had wanted.

Well, it turns out that, far from being on the verge of destroying
Western civilization, Saddam and his 21st century Gestapo couldn't even
muster a half-hearted defense of their own capital. The hawks' cakewalk
disproves their own dire warnings. They can't have it both ways. The
invasion has proved wildly successful in one other regard: It has
unified most of the world -- especially the Arab world -- against us.

Back in 1991, more than half-a-dozen Arab nations were part of our
Desert Storm coalition. Operation Iraqi Freedom's "coalition of the
willing" had zero. Not even the polygamous potentates of Kuwait -- whose
butts we saved last time out and who were most threatened by whatever
threat Iraq still presented -- would join us. And, I'm sorry, but
substituting Bulgaria and the island of Tonga for Egypt and Oman is just
not going to cut it when it comes to winning hearts and minds on the
Arab street.

In fact, almost everything about the invasion -- from the go-it-alone
build-up to the mayhem the fall of Saddam has unleashed -- has played
right into the hands of those intent on demonizing our country. Islamic
extremists must be having a field day signing up recruits for the holy
war they're preparing to wage against us. Instead of Uncle Sam wants
you, their recruiting posters feature a different kind of patriotic
image: an American soldier ill-advisedly draping the American flag over
Saddam's face.

The anti-war movement did not oppose the war out of fear that America
was going to lose. It was the Bush administration's pathological and
frantic obsession with an immediate, damn-the-consequences invasion that
fueled the protests.

And please don't point to jubilant Iraqis dancing in the streets to
validate the case for "pre-emptive liberation." You'd be doing the
Baghdad Bugaloo too if the murderous tyrant who'd been eating off golden
plates while your family starved finally got what was coming to him. It
in no way proves that running roughshod over international law and
pouring Iraqi oil -- now brought to you by the good folks at Halliburton -- onto the
flames of anti-American hatred was a good idea. It wasn't before the
war, and it still isn't now. The unintended consequences have barely
begun to unfold.

And the idea that our slamdunk of Saddam actually proves the White House
was right is particularly dangerous because it encourages the
Wolfowitzes and the Perles and the Cheneys to argue that we should be
invading Syria or Iran or North Korea or Cuba as soon as we catch our
breath. They've tasted blood.

It's important to remember that the Arab world has seen a very different
war than we have. They are seeing babies with limbs blown off, children
wailing beside their dead mothers, Arab journalists killed by American
tanks and bombers, holy men hacked to death and dragged through the
streets. They are seeing American forces leaving behind a wake of
destruction, looting, hunger, humiliation, and chaos.

Who's been handling our war PR, Osama bin Laden? The language and
imagery are all wrong. Having Tom DeLay gush about our "army of virtue"
at the same time we're blowing up mosques is definitely not sending the
right message to a Muslim world already suspicious that we're waging a
war on Islam.

Neither is Ari Fleischer's claim that the administration can't do
anything to keep Christian missionaries -- including those who have
described the Islamic prophet Muhammad as a "demon-possessed pedophile"
and a "terrorist" -- from going on a holy crusade to Baghdad. You think
the Arab world might take that the wrong way? If there is one thing that
could bring Sunnis and Shiites together, it's the common hatred of
evangelical zealots who denigrate their prophet.

And it doesn't help to have the American media referring to Jay Garner,
the retired general Don Rumsfeld picked to oversee the rebuilding of
Iraq, as "viceroy." It reeks of colonial imperialism. Why not just call
him "Head Bwana?" Or "Garner of Arabia?" I didn't realize the Supreme
Court had handed Bush a scepter to go along with the Florida recount.

The powerful role that shame and humiliation have played in shaping
world history is considerable, but something the Bush team seems utterly
clueless about. Which is why the anti-war movement must be stalwart in
its refusal to be silenced or browbeaten by the gloating "I told you so"
chorus on the right. On the contrary, it needs to make sure that the
doctrine of preemptive invasion is forever buried in the sands of Iraq.

Especially as the administration, high on the heady fumes of Saddam's
ouster, turns its covetous eyes on Syria. I give it less than a week
before someone starts making the case that President Assad is the next,
next Hitler.

2003-04-16T15:00:00.000-04:00
Check this out. Joaquin sent it to me from The Nation. Its a letter from the Baseball Hall of Fame to the actor, acitvist and star of baseball movie Bull Durham - Tim Robbins. Now that I have learned some html I have been italics happy. Enjoy!

National Baseball Hall of Fame April 7, 2003

Mr. Tim Robbins

Dear Mr. Robbins:

The President of the United States, as this nation's
democratically-elected leader, is constitutionally bound to make
decisions he believes are in the best interests of the American
people. After months of careful deliberations, President Bush made
the decision that it is in our nation's best interests to end the
brutal regime of Saddam Hussein, and to disarm Iraq of deadly weapons
which could be used against its enemies, including the United States.
In order to accomplish this, nearly 300,000 American military
personnel are in harm's way at the moment. From the first day we
opened our doors in 1939, The National Baseball Hall of Fame and
Museum--and many players and executives in Baseball's family--has
honored the United States and those who defend our freedoms.

In a free country such as ours, every American has the right to his
or her own opinions, and to express them. Public figures, such as
you, have platforms much larger than the average American's, which
provides you an extraordinary opportunity to have your views
heard--and an equally large obligation to act and speak
responsibility. We believe your very public criticism of President
Bush at this important--and sensitive--time in our nation's history
helps undermine the US position, which ultimately could put our
troops in even more danger. As an institution, we stand behind our
President and our troops in this conflict.

As a result, we have decided to cancel the April 26-27 programs in
Cooperstown commemorating the 15th anniversary of Bull Durham.

Sincerely,

Dale Petroskey President

Tim Robbins

April 9, 2003

Dear Mr. Petroskey,

As an American and as a baseball fan, I was dismayed to read your
letter canceling my appearance at the Baseball Hall of Fame due to my
public criticism of President Bush. I had been unaware that baseball
was a Republican sport. I was looking forward to a weekend away from
politics and war to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of Bull
Durham. I am sorry that you have chosen to use baseball and your
position at the Hall of Fame to make a political statement. I know
there are many baseball fans that disagree with you and even more
that will react with disgust to realize baseball is being
politicized.

As an American who believes that vigorous debate is necessary for the
survival of a democracy, I reject your suggestion that one must be
silent in time of war. To suggest that my criticism of the President
puts the troops in danger is absurd. If people had listened to that
twisted logic we'd still be in Vietnam. I must remain skeptical of
the war plans of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, all of whom have never
been in battle, one of whom skirted service in Vietnam for a cushy
stateside job. It does not surprise me that these men, in their
current federal budget have cut $844 million dollars from Veteran's
health care. Yes, let's support the troops. For Life.

I wish you had, in your letter, saved me the rhetoric and talked
honestly about your ties to the Bush and Reagan Administrations. You
are using what power you have to infringe upon my rights to free
speech and by taking this action hope to intimidate the millions of
others that disagree with our president. In doing so, you expose
yourself as a tool, blinded by partisanship and ambition. You invoke
patriotism and use words like freedom in an attempt to intimidate and
bully. In doing so, you dishonor the words patriotism and freedom and
dishonor the men and women who have fought wars to keep this nation a
place where one can freely express one's opinion without fear of
reprisal or punishment. Your subservience to your friends in the
administration is embarrassing to baseball and by engaging in this
enterprise you show that you belong with other cowards and ideologues
in the Hall of Infamy and Shame.

Long live democracy, free speech and the '69 Mets; all improbable
glorious miracles that I have always believed in.

Sincerely,

Tim Robbins

2003-04-15T10:06:00.000-04:00
How do I love Paul Krugman...let me count the ways...

Behind Our Backs
By PAUL KRUGMAN

As the war began, members of the House of Representatives gave speech after speech praising our soldiers, and passed a resolution declaring their support for the troops. Then they voted to slash veterans' benefits.

Some of us have long predicted that the drive to cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy would lead to a fiscal dance of the seven veils. One at a time, the pretenses would be dropped — the pretense that big tax cuts wouldn't preclude new programs like prescription-drug insurance, the pretense that the budget would remain in surplus, the pretense that spending could be cut painlessly by eliminating waste and fraud, the pretense that spending cuts wouldn't hurt the middle class.

There are still several veils to remove before the true face of "compassionate conservatism" is revealed, but we're getting there.

I've always assumed that at some point the American people would realize what was happening and demand an end to the process. Now, though, I'm not so sure, and that wartime vote illustrates why.

A digression: we have entered a new stage in the tax-cut debate. Until now, the Bush administration and its allies haven't made any effort to explain how they plan to replace the revenues lost because of tax cuts. Now, however, party discipline is starting to crack: a few Republicans in the House and Senate, and many erstwhile supporters on Wall Street are beginning to notice how much we're looking like a banana republic.

That House budget was a halfhearted attempt to assuage those concerns; for the first time, the Republican leadership went beyond generalities about cutting spending to a list of specific cuts.

But the result wasn't very convincing: it still contained several dollars in tax cuts for every dollar of spending cuts. Furthermore, the list of cuts — in child nutrition, medical care for children, child-care assistance and support for foster care and adoption (leave no child behind!) — was clearly designed to suggest that the budget can be balanced on the backs of the poor, without any significant cuts in programs that benefit the middle class.

Aside from its mean-spiritedness, this suggestion is simply false: our deficits are too large, and our current spending on the poor too small, for even the most Scrooge-like of governments to offer additional tax cuts for the rich without raising taxes or cutting benefits for the middle class.

So it's not too surprising that the House budget failed to win over the doubters, though it's unclear what will happen next. In a bizarre piece of parliamentary maneuvering, wavering senators agreed to vote for a budget resolution that would allow $550 billion in tax cuts, in return for a gentlemen's agreement from Bill Frist and Charles Grassley that the actual sum won't exceed $350 billion.

I'm no expert on this, but given the underhanded tactics that were used to push tax cuts through in 2001 — the Senate's cap on the 10-year tax cut was evaded by making the whole thing expire after 9 years — I suspect that the spirit, if not the letter, of this agreement will somehow be violated.

But back to the amazing spectacle of the war's opening, when the House voted to cut the benefits of the men and women it praised a few minutes earlier. What that scene demonstrated was the belief of the Republican leadership that if it wraps itself in the flag, and denounces critics as unpatriotic, it can get away with just about anything. And the scary thing is that this belief may be justified.

For the overwhelming political lesson of the last year is that war works — that is, it's an excellent cover for the Republican Party's domestic political agenda. In fact, war works in two ways. The public rallies around the flag, which means the President and his party; and the public's attention is diverted from other issues.

As long as the nation is at war, then, it will be hard to get the public to notice what the flagwavers are doing behind our backs. And it just so happens that the "Bush doctrine," which calls for preventive war against countries that may someday pose a threat, offers the possibility of a series of wars against nasty regimes with weak armies.

Someday the public will figure all this out. But it may be a very long wait.

2003-04-09T12:26:00.000-04:00
Good morning Snoop Bloggy Blog readers, I wanted to share with you an email exchange I had this morning with a friend serving our country on a ship. I thought it was a rare chance to hear a real voice since most military perspectives we see on television are either retired generals handpicked by Rummy to repeat the rehearsed spin (come on, you must have memorized it by now: the outcome is inevitable...the Iraqi people will be liberated from this evil dictator blah blah blah) or soldiers mugging for Katie Couric on the Today show. Read it below, my words are in italics, his are straight (pun intended).

The only bad thing about the new assignment is that I am not finding the time to PT as I should. I am going to work out a work schedule in next day so that I have a grasp of the day. Now that I have everything settled and under control, I should end up with a lighter workload.

I wish I could tell you more about the kids on the ship. Most of them have escorts, but often times they are extended family members escorting them b/c their parents have been killed or missing. And the injuries are just horrific, people should realize that we are the ones hurting most of the civilians and they're not simple things you can put a band-aid on. You're talking about limbs being blown off, misfires that hit kids "by accident," We are seeing a lot of Phantam Pain. The ward crew helps them, but there isnt any way they can provide the same amount of care as you would with someone you can fully communicate with.

A few moments ago, as I was sitting here at my desk (which is next to the door) one of the Iraqi Escorts walked by, an older gentlemen, nice guy, waved hello at me, of course I waved back. That was a nice feeling to be recognized by him and for him to wave.......interesting moment, ya know. The juxtaposition of it all.

I have a few ideas about the fan room but I guess I will have to wait to talk to you about them face to
face. I love that you are online all the time now. Are you on AOL instant messenger as well?

Shit, I just got an email from a bunch of drag queens that are mad at me.
They are pissed because GLAAD would not let them work the red carpet. Always drama here. (I go on to write more gay stuff but I thought it would be indulgent to include it all)

AOL Instant Messenger is blocked by grand Dept. of Defense. It doesnt work
in DC either. We only email. Oh well, I know it seems slow. But anyways.

Yup. I understand the Drag queen thing.......

(Damn I love writing about this shit on a Military Email account.)

Does it make you feel liberated...like an Iraqi?

Bad joke?

Still gotta be careful about the conversation on government email. Although
Iraq may be liberated, there are those who still live under opression. ya know.

Very interesting email. Thank you for sending it to me. I cant wait to sit
down over mug of Espresso Mint Mocha and talk it all out. Then follow the
mocha with several vodka tonics.

What is PT? Personal time?

Can I anonymize the email and put in on the blog? Have you been following
Snoop Bloggy Blog lately?

Ruben

The mint mocha sounds good. the vodka tonics sound better. damn, i've been sober for a long time......I am one clean machine right now. PT=Physical Training, working out. Got it? Yes, you can put it in your blog.....funny moment huh? It was interesting. Never in my life did i imagine being waved hello to by an Iraqi POW aboard a US Navy Ship. Interesting.

(By the way, sometimes the Iraqi's think I am Arab. Interesting huh? The
Moors and Spain. yup, we all are.)

2003-04-05T17:07:00.000-05:00
Is anyone else sick of the Democrats acting like they have no balls?

Give me a fucking break, these Republicans act like high school bullies calling someone out with an absolutely ridiculous accusation and then saying it loudly and over and over until the mere act of questioning the accuser's motives euqates you with the accused.

Its time...get ready people...2004 is around the corner...dig into your pocketbooks, volunteer some time, but we have got to make it happen. Lets get them out of the White House and Congress!!

Read on from a salon article:

Give 'em hell, Kerry
The presidential candidate -- and decorated war veteran -- fires back at his GOP critics. Will the rest of the Democratic Party take his lead and fight fire with fire?

By Joan Walsh

April 4, 2003 | Watch closely, people, because this is how it works: A Democrat says something vaguely controversial. Last March, for instance, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle asked President Bush about his goals in Afghanistan. In October, former Vice President Al Gore criticized the push for war with Iraq. And just a few weeks ago, Daschle again -- the poor sucker -- suggested that Bush's failures of diplomacy made war inevitable.

And they're off! The GOP's snarling attack dogs slip their leashes and take their victim down. They go for the soft white meat of the throat. They won't be happy until he's politically dead or at least maimed, silenced for a good long while. Republicans said Daschle's questions about Afghanistan gave "aid and comfort to the enemy," and the party sponsored TV ads linking the South Dakota Democrat to Saddam Hussein. They smeared Gore as a "San Francisco Democrat" (that's where he gave the speech), and Bill Bennett insisted his remarks were "political suicide." Daschle got off easy last time -- instead of comparing him to the Butcher of Baghdad, Republicans merely called him French. And in all three instances, other Democrats were mostly silent in the face of the attacks.

It's happening again right now, and almost nobody's trying to stop it.

I took a shot at Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry three weeks ago for declaring, on the eve of war, that he'd mute his criticism of President Bush while troops were in harm's way. When he finally spoke out Wednesday -- telling New Hampshire Democrats, "What we need now is not just a regime change in Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but we need a regime change in the United States" -- I wondered why he immediately tried to backpedal from using the term "regime change."

Now I know. It's starting to look like I was wrong, and Kerry was right: If Republicans have their way, criticizing the president during wartime may turn out to be political suicide. Kerry's candidacy is lying in an alley right now. The usual suspects have worked him over: Tom DeLay ("desperate and inappropriate"), John Podhoretz ("It's unfair, it's ugly and it's disgusting"), Andrew Sullivan ("Kerry is now indistinguishable from the most hardcore anti-war leftists" -- Really, Andrew? Even "million Mogadishus" Nicholas De Genova?). The normally shrewd Keith Olbermann wondered aloud on MSNBC Thursday night whether Kerry's run for president can be saved. Yet Democrats aren't thundering to defend him.

Luckily the decorated Vietnam war veteran is defending himself. After first seeming to back away from his "regime change" quote, when Republicans came after him, Kerry came out swinging. "I'm not going to let the likes of Tom DeLay question my patriotism, which I fought for and bled for in order to have the right to speak out," he told a teachers' group. (That's a veiled reference to the fact that Delay not only sat out Vietnam, he blamed minorities for taking up all the available places in the military.) And in an interview with AP on Friday, Kerry kept it up: "The Republicans have tried to make a practice of attacking anybody who speaks out strongly by questioning their patriotism. I refuse to have my patriotism or right to speak out questioned. I fought for and earned the right to express my views in this country." Finally, a Democrat who has the guts to fight back!

The outrage over Kerry's remarks is ridiculous, and dangerous. It serves to show how narrow and bland our political debate has become. Let's look at what Kerry said: He didn't call for a coup d'état. He didn't say Bush should be impeached. He didn't say he should be tried for war crimes. He made a sort of joke about "regime change" -- at least it was characterized as a joke the first time he said it, several weeks ago at a convention of California Democrats, though no one pounced then.

With hindsight, at least, I might not have used the term "regime change" myself. It's maybe a little too flip -- and it predictably inflamed GOP loyalists, who are understandably sensitive to the fact that our president didn't win the popular vote.

But now House Speaker Denny Hastert is suggesting wartime is the wrong time to criticize Bush, period. "What we need is for this nation to pull together, to support our troops and to support our commander in chief," Hastert said. If only he'd told that to his buddy Tom DeLay when DeLay went after President Clinton during the Kosovo invasion. Here's DeLay at the time: "We have a president I don't trust, who has proven my reason for not trusting him: He had no plan. We have a civil war that was falsely described as a huge humanitarian problem, when in comparison to other places, it was nothing."

(And while we're talking war-related double standards: Imagine if any network besides Bush favorite Fox News had an embedded correspondent who revealed his unit's whereabouts on national television, and whose employers didn't pull the reporter immediately once the government asked it to. The GOP attack dogs would be feasting on the network's carcass already. Yet Geraldo Rivera remains in Iraq, continuing to serve up his gung-ho blather.)

We've seen a terrifying shrinking of the terrain of political discourse, if Kerry's wan remark can trigger the pile-on it has, without any real defense from other Democrats. Let me be clear: I'm not calling this a police state. I'm not comparing anyone to Saddam. No one is coming in the night to lock up dissidents. If people are being silenced, it's because they're being intimidated by political bullies, and we collude in our own intimidation. It wouldn't work nearly as well if liberals stood up and fought back. But mostly, they don't.

All morning I searched to find someone of national political stature who was publicly defending Kerry -- and found almost nothing. His chief liberal rival for the Democratic nomination, Howard Dean, pointedly chose not to whack him, which is not quite the same as defending him, but let's be grateful for small blessings. "I have not criticized Sen. Kerry for that, nor am I going to," Dean told reporters. "It certainly would be unusual for me to line up with Tom DeLay, and I don't intend to start now." Yet Dean's campaign director called Kerry's remark "flabbergasting" in the New York Post, and he derided it as an effort to pander to the antiwar vote.

I called Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle's office on Friday to see if Daschle had any comment on Kerry's plight. So far, no one has called me back. I e-mailed the folks at MoveOn.org, which raised money for the congresspeople who voted against Bush's Iraq resolution last October, but haven't yet gotten a reply. Apart from former Georgia Sen. Max Cleland, who introduced Kerry at a dinner in Atlanta Thursday night, I haven't yet seen any prominent Democrat stand up and defend him. Cleland, of course, knows Republican thuggery firsthand: The Vietnam veteran who lost an arm and both legs in combat lost his Senate seat to draft-avoiding Republican Saxby Chambliss last year, in a vicious campaign that suggested Cleland didn't care about national security.

On Thursday night, Kerry reminded his audience of the way the GOP smeared Cleland. "I watched what they did to Max Cleland last year," Kerry said. "Shame on them for doing it then and shame on them for trying to do it now."

Shame on them is right. And shame on Democrats and the antiwar left if they leave Kerry standing out there by himself.

2003-04-02T11:50:00.000-05:00
From SF Examiner:

Note : There will soon a be a link to this blog on my site. Sometimes it takes a little while for my template to be updated.

Mysterious scribe captivates cyberspace with Baghdad blog

RACHEL KONRAD, Associated Press Writer Saturday, March 29, 2003
------------------------------------------------------------------------

(03-29) 03:02 PST SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) --

Every day, tens of thousands of people turn to the Web seeking updates from a mysterious scribe whose detailed accounts of life in besieged Baghdad have made him a cyberspace celebrity.

Little is known for sure about Salam Pax, whose nom de plume means "peace" in Arabic and Latin. But his Web journal -- ostensibly written from his Baghdad home -- vividly criticizes the authoritarian rule of Saddam Hussein and the U.S.-British war on his nation.

"Houses near al-salam palace ... have had all their windows broke, doors blown in and in one case a roof has caved in," Salam wrote in his journal. "I guess that is what is called 'collateral damage' and that makes it OK?"

Salam's Web log, or "blog," has become so popular that the company that hosts it upgraded his account last weekend gratis so he could continue writing and posting photos. Thousands of e-mails -- from fans as well as skeptics who believe he's a hoax -- have paralyzed his mailbox.

Salam's journal and others focused on the war have boosted the profile of the so-called blogosphere, which includes more than 1 million blogs on everything from wireless networking to sex. American and British soldiers, German anti-war advocates, and even human shields are providing unique slants on the conflict in their "warblogs."

But few are as intriguing as Salam, who went silent this week, even before U.S. bombs knocked out telecommunications in Baghdad. Fans are concerned for the safety of the normally prolific pundit. His last posting was Monday.

Several e-mails from The Associated Press to Salam bounced, and his provider, Google, doesn't share information about individual bloggers for privacy reasons. Salam has mentioned in his blog the need to protect his identity, refusing to send people his phone number or other details.

According to his blog -- and intelligence from other bloggers and journalists -- Salam is a 28- or 29-year-old Iraqi architect and native Arabic speaker who spent his formative years in Europe.

Raised as a Muslim, he seems to be a secularist. As a gay man living under a repressive regime, he pokes fun at fundamentalism with a wry, profane wit.

He also ridicules the Bush administration: "How could 'support democracy in Iraq' become to mean 'bomb the hell out of Iraq'? ... Nobody minded an undemocratic Iraq for a very long time, now people have decided to bomb us to democracy? Well, thank you! how thoughtful," he wrote.

Dozens of online discussion forums buzz with speculation. Fans worry Saddam's henchmen got wind of Salam's sardonic accounts of life in Baghdad and his description of Iraqi leaders as "freaks."

One particularly cybersavvy Salam-seeker tested the code behind the Internet address of his blog, called "Where is Raed?" and determined it most likely hailed from Iraq. Other readers insist descriptions of the price of tomatoes and damage from bombings are too detailed to be faked.

Some bloggers don't care if he's a hoax. They think his writings chronicle a conflict too often obscured by breathless war reporters, generals and politicians. They identify with his cross-culturalism, educated sarcasm and middle-class sensibilities.

"Salam's writings captured a palpable sense of anxiety and frustration -- Baghdadis running to the local bakeries and dealing with the price gouging of bread, police standing guard around town trying to keep order," said Andy Carvin, a Washington blogger who regularly checks Salam's site. "He serves as a real-time storyteller who's trying to capture a moment in history for the world to see. ... He's humanizing the experience of war, as good storytellers do."

2003-04-02T10:29:00.000-05:00
Read an op-ed by my future baby' daddy:

Why Bush Will Lose in 2004
By Joaquin R. Tamayo, Jr.

1 April 2003

For all his shortcomings, you have to admire George W. Bush for one thing: he's a true team player, able to close a deal and, as we shall see, able to take a hit when his Party demands. It is for this reason that I predict today that the one-term Bush Family tradition will hold.

Noam Chomsky, iconoclast and revolutionary, postulates that politics is only interesting in its history and most likely future. Motive, he says, means nothing. And perhaps Chomsky is correct, from a social science perspective. If strategy and motive are one in the same, however, then motive is the only lens through which one may glean precisely what role the Republican Party plays in American politics today.

From a historical perspective, Republicans have never really forgiven FDR and his New Dealers for the wound inflicted on the Party some 60 years ago. Never mind that the political backlash engendered by the Great Depression was completely self-inflicted, as far as political wounds go; you can’t blame Democrats for the Republicans' reflexive obtuseness. Then came world war, which allowed Democrats, after having enticed Hitler into getting rid of himself, to further enamor the country and the world of their pragmatic internationalism. The Democratic Party not only entitled the American public to a financially secure future, it entitled the world to a long desired vision of peace.

The American Century was, therefore, the Democratic Century. Even when Democrats did not occupy the Oval Office, Republicans were never really successful at selling their obtuseness on a local level. The electorate tolerated moderate, Establishment-type Republican presidents who didn’t do much to disrupt the Democratic order of the world. But when it came to the Power of the Purse, even all those Reagan Democrats were wise enough to keep the Democrats' charge in Congress secure. What Democrats didn't learn from their decades in power, however, was that there is nothing quite so terrible as the wrath of a Republican scorned.

For those of us who exist in a constant state of surreal exasperation at what has become of the United States and the world in the last two years, my best guess is that Bill Clinton and his posse of New Democrats bear the most responsibility. Clinton’s failure to win a clear majority of the electorate in 1992 (and 1996) mobilized radical Republicans into launching an attack on their more moderate, deal-making leadership. Convinced that Bush, Sr.'s style of accommodation with Democrats would lead to political insignificance, Newt Gingrich and his wily, frothing-at-the-mouth ideologues orchestrated the greatest political revolution in 20th century American political history. Out were the Ivy League patricians and in were the Sons of the Confederacy. After two years of Clintonian failure, marginal Republican radicalism became in 1994, if you believed Gingrichian rhetoric, the new Mandate of Heaven that would reshape the globe.

And reshape the globe they did. It’s instructive to conceive of the New Bush World Order as something of an alternate universe. Even if we were to transport ourselves back to the old world, things wouldn’t be quite the same. And even if, as I predict, a Northeastern Democrat takes the White House in 2004, the Republican Elephant Trap has been set and Democrats will have little choice but to step into it.

Let’s be honest: George W. Bush is the most powerful rubber stamp this nation has ever seen. Who will contest that the world vision being hammered into place by our war machine is anything but the product of Bush’s imagination? The Supreme Court hired a pliant party operative, a yes-man, to do the bidding of party luminaries who were blessed with decades of time to build a party infrastructure and formulate a political strategy that would push the nation to the edge only to see Democrats flounder in their efforts to pull it back.

Republican fortunes since the election of Richard Nixon are nary the result of an honest effort to create a more perfect Union. Republicans win when they are successful at discrediting Democrats and Democratic efforts at facilitating the nation’s peaceful transition to a majority-minority Republic. Nixon had his Southern Strategy. Reagan had his Welfare Queens. Bush, Sr. had Willie Horton. And W., well, his strategy was two fold. First Bush maligned John McCain and his adopted South Asian daughter in South Carolina, the racial slander courtesy of Karl Rove. And after being the friendly dunce failed to sway the nation, he had Jeb and Kathryn Harris in Florida and a U.S. Supreme Court that would be damned if a Democrat was allowed to bring it back to reality.

We live today in unprecedented times. Sure, Rutherford B. Hayes, Republican of Ohio, also lost the popular vote, but back then Britain was calling the shots. These days, democratic legitimacy is more real in a civics textbook than it is in practice at the highest levels. These days, the liberals have become conservative—the Democrats as the Party of fiscal responsibility?—and the conservatives have become radicals bent on proving Hobbes right: life in this world really can be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Indeed, the Bush Administration has proven that objective exceedingly easy.

So, when Bush loses, what do Democrats do? Not much, I guess. The economic pie the Democrats shall inherit will be measurably smaller than the one Clinton handed off to Bush. Budget deficits will hinder Democratic objectives and tempt the Party to do what Republicans say it does best: tax and spend. Because where else will Democrats get the money for universal health care, universal Head Start, or even to fully fund vital national security concerns? How shall Democrats recoup the nearly $2 trillion in tax giveaways to the nation’s least needy citizens? How shall Democrats govern internationally when America as a nation is viewed with such unremitting suspicion around the world? My cynical self is telling me that short of a revolution, they can’t. The Republicans have set a trap and they only needed George W. Bush and four years to do it.

Dissenters to this logic may write this off as conspiracy theory, as the ruminations of a Democrat gone native. But think about this for a moment: what makes Republicans, or Americans for that matter, so historically exceptional that a political party would not conspire to ensure the impotence of its opposition? Politics is what it is, and if you don’t like it, then that’s another issue altogether. Don’t pretend, however, that we have somehow earned a historical reprieve from Mother Nature not to repeat the mistakes of millennia of human history. And as far as Republican motives are concerned, call it conspiracy, call it sabotage, or call it smart politics. But whatever you do, don’t call it American.

2003-04-01T12:23:00.000-05:00
Tragedy in Iraq

Last night tragedy struck outside Najaf, Iraq at a military checkpoint operated by the US 3rd Infantry Division. A four-wheel-drive vehicle approached the checkpoint and failed to stop when ordered. According to military officials the soldiers from the 3rd ID first fired warning shots into the air, and then into the truck's engine block. When this failed to stop the van they fired into the body of the vehicle itself.

A Washington Post writer at the scene reported, however, that as the vehicle approached Captain Ronny Johnson ordered his troops to fire a warning shot. They failed to do so immediately, and he urged them to fire at its radiator. They again did nothing. He then shouted at them, "Stop fucking around!"

At this point the truck had grown much closer, and no warning shots had been fired, according to the reporter. At this point Captain Johnson radioed "Stop him, Red 1, stop him!"

This time, the reporter says, the troops responded. At least half a dozen 25mm rounds were fired into the truck. Captain Johnson then screamed "Cease fire! You just fucking killed a family because you didn't fire a warning shot soon enough!"

The Toyota truck that was racked with 25mm rounds contained fifteen Iraqi civilians. Ten of them, including five children who appeared to be under five years old, were killed instantly by high-explosive munitions.

"It was the most horrible thing I've ever seen, and I hope I never see it again," an Amry medic on the scene told William Branigin, the Washignton Post reporter on the scene.

Despite the reports of the WaPo reporter, US Central Command continues to insist that "The driver ignored repeated warnings" and that shots were fired at the truck only as a "last resort". They attempt to lay the blame on the Iraqis for using civilian vehicles as suicide bombs.

It's true that the Iraqi use of irregular forces is partially to blame for the death of this family — if the Iraqis weren't making use of irregular forces then it wouldn't be necessary for the military to so carefully defend themselves against civilian vehicles. Even so, if the Washington Post reports are true then the responsibility for this disaster lies squarely on the shoulders of those who were involved on the ground.

The Department of Defense and CENTCOM must now prove to the world — Iraq in particular — that it is not like Israel. An immediate, thorough investigation must be begun. An honest investigation. If it turns out that the soldiers on the ground did not act improperly then the evidence of this must be made public. Otherwise they must be brought before courts marshall and tried according to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. They must be given a fair trial and convicted or acquitted soley on the basis of the evidence.

Anything less will only serve to convince the Iraqis that we are an evil occupying power.