Dameocrat Blog

Walker raising taxes on poor middle class and student.

2011-04-19T06:39:00.004-05:00

Low and middle income people would lose tax credits worth about $49.4 million over two years, the new Legislative Fiscal Bureau report said.

Those affected most by Walker’s proposal would include low-income families who qualify for the earned income tax credit program, and low-income homeowners who receive tax rebates under the homestead tax credit.

In addition to eliminating these tax credits, Walker also has proposed a spate of new fee increases. The “bulk of the fee increases are for tuition at University of Wisconsin campuses, totaling more than $105 million over two years.”

To the extent the teabag candidates like Ryan and Walker actually attracted working class voters, it would be pretty much over now with their taxes. Thank goodness the Democrats in Wisconsin are not Center-Rightists like Mario Cuomo,Bill Clinton, and Barak Obama, so Wisc does have an alternative. Democrats lost in Wisconsin because of a free market fundamentalist, citizen united, funded jihad against Feingold. Also the national party did not run a candidate against Ryan despite his district being Democratic leaning.

Daily Kos: Tea party fizzle across the nation

2011-04-18T19:40:00.002-05:00

Daily Kos: Tea party fizzle across the nation:

"Only 300 people (including a horde of Palmetto political operatives) attended the event in downtown Columbia, S.C. – which is a generous estimate in our book. That attendance figure – confirmed by other media outlets – amounts to less than one-tenth the size of multiple crowds that have gathered at the S.C. State House in recent years in support of parental choice.
It’s also roughly a tenth the size of the crowd that attended this same event in 2009.

Nevada:
The police estimate of 250 attendees in Carson City was far short of the record 2,000 who attended a similar, but much more rowdy rally in front of the Legislative Building on Tax Day in 2009.
In Las Vegas, police estimated the crowd at about 250 people. Two years ago, the Tax Day rally drew from 1,500 to 2,000 people at Sunset Park."

I wonder if all those baggers with the keep the governments hand off my social security signs, were just badly misinformed liberal seniors. They were scaremongered into joining from some sort robocall campaign. Now that Ryan has outed the true teabag agenda as being privatization of medicare and social security the audience has dried up.

Carmakers' next problem: Generation Y - Business - Autos - msnbc.com

2010-11-19T18:02:00.003-06:00

By Allison Linn Senior writer

Meet Natalie McVeigh, the auto industry’s latest headache.

At 25 years old, McVeigh lives in Denver and has two good jobs, as a research analyst and an adjunct professor of philosophy. What she doesn’t have — or want — is a car.

A confluence of events — environmental worries, a preference for gadgets over wheels and the yearslong economic doldrums — is pushing some teens and twentysomethings to opt out of what has traditionally been considered an American rite of passage: Owning a car.

“There’s kind of almost every force working against the young driver right now,” said Karl Brauer, senior analyst and editor-at-large at Edmunds.com, an automotive research website.".........

They are probably just figuring out the cars are too expensive and will be yet another item that will put them into debt. Gadgets like ipads, ipods, and iphones, aren't nearly as budget busting. You can't use them when you're driving either.

British students raise hell over student fee hikes. Nick Clegg eats crow over broken promises.

2010-11-10T13:50:00.002-06:00

This is wonderful news! Students in Britain held a 50,000 strong protest in front of Conservative and Liberal-Dem headquarters at the Millbank building. The protest were held to protest 300% fee hikes at the nations universities. It has turned into a riot, with student taking over the building and barn fires built. Anger was particularly strong toward Liberal-Dem Nick Clegg who campaigned heavily on college campuses promising not to raise such fees. The students are accusing him of being a Tory mole. From the Guardian.

The NUS president said the march was the biggest student demonstration in generations, telling protesters: "We're in the fight of our lives ... we face an unprecedented attack on our future before it has even begun.

"They're proposing barbaric cuts that would brutalise our colleges and universities."

This "miserable vision" would be resisted, he said, imploring students to take their protests to their constituencies and adding: "This is just the beginning ... the resistance begins here."

Protesters who attacked the Millbank building used their banners to light a bonfire in the outside forecourt. Police drafted in the Territorial Support Group riot squad.

Nick Clegg is out there speaking to the student, admitting he "had to break his promise," and now it looks like the kids will target liberal Dem mps(members of parliament). From the torygraph

Standing in for David Cameron at Prime Minister’s Question Time, he conceded that he had “not been able to deliver the policy that we held in opposition” after abandoning a pledge to scrap university fees altogether.

Instead, the Liberal Democrats last week signed up to Coalition plans to allow institutions to charge up to £9,000 a year.

Mr Clegg made his admission as student protesters outside Parliament waved placards accusing him of “conning” voters.

It's easy for the American media to ignore the French since they don't speak English, so apathetic and uneducated Americans often don't know protest is even an option in a democracy, or that it is something responsible citizens do. They don't and can't ingnore protests in England. This is being well covered on cnn, fox, and msnbc.

Granted they are naturally focusing on the violence, but it is likely the protests would be outright ignored if it weren't happening. The million person antiIraq marches were ignored by the media and the Labor Party. Boycotts and civil disobedience would be preferable but the anarchist property destruction is preferable to pathetic marching and chanting which the establishment does not pay attention to, since it doesn't cost the establishment anything.

Lets hope 500,000 more protesters turn out tomorrow and let's hope it spreads to the States.

Bloomberg: Stop Blaming The Chinese, America - Gothamist

2010-11-06T16:42:00.000-05:00

Bloomberg: Stop Blaming The Chinese, America - Gothamist

“I think in America, we’ve got to stop blaming the Chinese and blaming everybody else and take a look at ourselves...There’s a country on the other side of the world that is taking their taxpayers’ dollars, and trying to sell subsidized things so we can buy them cheaper, and have better products, and we’re going to criticize that?"

He continued the tirade against his home country, accusing America of favoring uneducated and unworldly politicians. “If you look at the U.S., you look at who we’re electing to Congress, to the Senate—they can’t read,” he said. “I’ll bet you a bunch of these people don’t have passports. We’re about to start a trade war with China if we’re not careful here, only because nobody knows where China is.

He really doesn't see a problem with American workers competing with slave labor in China. He really doesn't see how this could harm the economy if our workers have to compete with low wage labor, and we end up losing our jobs and our industry. BTW, most Americans don't have passports, and if we have to race to the bottom with Chinese wage slaves we never will. Should they lose their right to vote and be assumed illiterate? This is the view of America's center-right political elites however, including Obama, and most of his administration.

Obama hasn't learned a thing.

2010-11-06T13:54:00.002-05:00

Pete Rouse Plots Comeback for Obama Administration - NYTimes.com

He hired yet another advisor that loathes traditional democrats.

“If we’d had our druthers,” Mr. Rouse said, “starting out with a $787 billion spending program that people don’t think benefited them, that reinforced the idea of big-spending liberal, isn’t the option we would have chosen, but it was what was called for.”
Mr. Rouse, 64, avoids the public stage as much as Mr. Emanuel savored it. Despite his decades on Capitol Hill, where he was called the 101st senator, C-Span producers searching their archives found no interview he has given nor footage of any public event where he spoke. In his office, he displays none of the classic Washington vanity pictures of himself with famous politicians.

This isn't a messaging problem. This is a problem of governing philosophy! Obama and his people are ashamed to be democrats. He cares more about not looking like a real democrat than about the interests of the country. What a mistake we made in electing him. If he is so ashamed to govern as a democrat why didn't he become a republican? If the democrats don't primary him successfully, I'm voting independent, green, social democrat left in 2012, anything but for him.

Ralph Nader was right!

2010-01-15T15:05:00.002-06:00

While it is true that our system has a winner take all voting system, which means the candidate with the most votes wins irrespective of whether they have even 50% of the vote, and it is true that by voting 3rd party the candidate you least like might win, it doesn’t mean you are not having any effect. You can still use your third party vote to purify the major party of a corrupt candidates, which can make a difference in the long run. Also if enough people vote for the third party it can replace one of the two major parties which is what happened in the 1850’s with the republicans replacing the whigs. Third parties can also win. Look at Jessie Ventura.

It is true that you can agitate to change the voting system, but you must go through politicians that were successful with the old way to get something new. Not a likely prospect in my view.

It is true that you can technically run primary challenges, and get some changes, but if those are so easy to run, why hasn’t anyone run them on a mass scale, that I believe is needed to get reall changes? In reality there are tremendous structural barriers to runnng any kind of primary fight, otherwise people would do more than talk and threaten them. This talk of running primaries has been happening for ten years, and nobody in the final analysis does them.

The people who voted Nader in 2000 may not have helped but they didn’t hurt anything either. The war probably would have happened either way. Lieberman was Al Gore’s pick for vp. Martin Peretz was Al Gore’s mentor. Many dlcers like Gore voted for the Iraq war resolution including Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and John Edwards. Obama claimed he would have voted against the resolution, but Obama has claimed to be for, or against many things, that didn’t pan out in reality, because of his commitment to dlc policies. For instance, during the campaign, Obama claimed to be against mandates and excise taxes on cadillac plans. How did that work out in reality. He claimed to be against fisa but voted for it. He claimed to oppose corporate lobbying, and the revolving door, but hired a bunch of Goldman Sachs employees to serve him in his administration. He also claimed to be against the Iraq war, but never missed an opportunity to vote for war funding.

Nader voting changed nothing, in my view, but it did offer and opportunity to vote for someone who told the truth. I so wish I hadn’t bought the lesser evil bs and wasted my vote on Gore, than Kerry and now Obama. The democrats have mislead people for far too long. Obama proves Nader was completely correct, and those of us who sympathized with Nader literally wasted 8-9 years working our butts off for democrats who hates us, and think we are idiots.

While it is true that Lieberman is a leader of these bad dems, it is not true, that lessor dems like Coakley who take money from the insurance companies, and who support mandates bare no responsibility. By only targeting the big sharks, you let little sharks like her off the hook and they continue to vote for the wrong things. You partisans claim that not giving them a 60th seat will be permission to move to the right, but they are already moving to the right so it looks like the mere act of putting right leaning dems in office is permission enough. You claim we don’t vote for Coakley we wont’ have another shot at reform for a generation, yet we are suppose to believe you will come back and improve the bill later on? Come on! We aren’t self-defeating. We are beaten down by corruption! Beating us more won’t help!

US considers use of nuclear weapons against Iran - Yahoo! News

2006-04-10T05:23:00.000-05:00

US considers use of nuclear weapons against Iran - Yahoo! News: "WASHINGTON (AFP) - The administration of
President George W. Bush is planning a massive bombing campaign against
Iran, including use of bunker-buster nuclear bombs to destroy a key Iranian suspected nuclear weapons facility, The New Yorker magazine has reported in its April 17 issue.

The article by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said that Bush and others in the White House have come to view Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a potential Adolf Hitler.

'That's the name they're using,' the report quoted a former senior intelligence official as saying.

A senior unnamed
Pentagon adviser is quoted in the article as saying that 'this White House believes that the only way to solve the problem is to change the power structure in Iran, and that means war.'

The former intelligence officials depicts planning as 'enormous,' 'hectic' and 'operational,' Hersh writes.

One former defense official said the military planning was premised on a belief that 'a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government,' The New Yorker pointed out."

This is the same sort of thinking that lead to the Iraq war. These people said the Iraqis would throw roses at us and welcome us a liberators. They didn't. Of coarse, it is much more likely that this will rally the Iranians behind the mullahs and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

I don't believe even Bush is stupid enough to fall for that a second time, so I am no longer willing to believe he fell for it the first time. There is an alterior motive here, and I don't know what it is.

I am guessing Bush is just serving his military industrial complex friends by putting the nation on a collision coarse with virtually everyone on the planet. Even the Brits won't put up with this. Everyone will be hurt by this action other than people who live in non electrified cabins and ride bicycles all year round. This will most certainly make the price of oil go higher, and hasten China's switch to Euros. It is bat shit crazy.

More Than 500,000 Rally in L.A. for Immigrants' Rights - Los Angeles Times

2006-03-26T14:19:00.000-06:00

If the Democrats don't recruit these working class Latinos they are truely lost.

More Than 500,000 Rally in L.A. for Immigrants' Rights - Los Angeles Times: "More Than 500,000 Rally in L.A. for Immigrants' Rights
By Teresa Watanabe and Anna Gorman, Times Staff Writer
2:51 PM PST, March 25, 2006

Joining what some are calling the nation's largest mobilization of immigrants ever, hundreds of thousands of people boisterously marched in downtown Los Angeles Saturday to protest federal legislation that would crack down on undocumented immigrants, penalize those who help them and build a security wall on the U.S. southern border. Spirited crowds representing labor, religious groups, civil-rights advocates and ordinary immigrants stretched over 26 blocks of downtown Los Angeles from Adams Blvd. along Spring Street and Broadway to City Hall, tooting kazoos, waving American flags and chanting 'Si se puede!' (Yes we can!). The crowd, estimated by police at more than 500.000, represented one of the largest protest marches in Los Angeles history, surpassing Vietnam War demonstrations and the 70,000 who rallied downtown against Proposition 187, a 1994 state initiative that denied public benefits to undocumented migrants.

The marchers included both longtime residents and the newly arrived, bound by a desire for a better life and a love for this county.

Arbelica Lazo, 40, illegally immigrated from El Salvador two decades ago but said she now owns two business and pays $7,000 in taxes annually.

Jose Alberto Salvador, 33, came here illegally just four months ago to find work to support the wife and five children he left behind; in his native Guatemala, he said, what little work he could find paid only $10 a day. 'As much as we need this country, we love this country,' Salvador said, waving a stick with both the American and Guatemalan flag. 'This country gives us opportunities we don't get at home.'"

If only the antiwar movement could pull off a demonstration that big from out of the blue, we'd kick ass.

As Nick Miroff points out the Latin American left are doing by far the best job countering the influence of the Bushistas. Bush has truely united them. He is doing a better job of uniting them than Che ever dreamed of.

Has Latin America ever had such a unifying figure?

At political rallies, his visage is held aloft as a beacon to regional independence and self-determination. He's helped forge new trade partnerships to spur economic growth and alleviate poverty. And his leadership has fanned a gale-force electoral trend that's sweeping the hemisphere to topple one pro-Washington government after the next.

Who is this grand inductor of Latin American leftism? Venezuelan fireball Hugo Chavez? Blue-collar Brazilian Lula Ignacio da Silva? Bolivia's coca-farmer-cum-president, Evo Morales?

¡Epa! It's George W. Bush, the accidental revolutionary............

The macroeconomic proposals of the Washington consensus have not been working," says Guillermo Delgado, professor of Latin American Studies at UC Santa Cruz. "That model was supposed to create prosperity and, after so many years, such prosperity has not been seen and class polarization has grown deeper."

Sensing an opportunity, new social and political movements in the region began marshalling their forces. Then George W. Bush came along, combining Yankee hubris with a Che-worthy radicalizing touch.

Bush has since presided over one of the most significant political re-alignments in the history of the Western Hemisphere. By this summer, every major Latin American nation but Colombia is likely to be run by elected leaders with stronger backgrounds in Marx than free markets. If Cold War-era "domino theory" has been a bust in the Middle East, it's working with textbook precision in Latin America.

Of coarse the modern dlc democrats are perpetually antiworking class. Remember how they reacted to the transit strike? They will probably ignore this just as they willfully ignore the peace protesters, and marginalize antiwar candidates.

Those of us in the antiwar movement could throw a monkey wrench into the system by courting this energetic and vital immigrant group. I doubt Cegelis could have lost if we did that. What potential might Ned Lamont have if he appeals to this group.

Shia Death Squads Target Iraqi Gays

2006-03-26T08:18:00.000-06:00

I am pretty sure that ordinary Americans didn't have this in mind, when they they attempted to install a Democracy in Iraq.

Shia Death Squads Target Iraqi Gays: "Shia Death Squads Target Iraqi Gays

Three Years On, Americans Ignore Pleas of Repression Even Worse than Saddam’s

BY DOUG IRELAND

Courtesy OutRage! London

Left, Ammar, aged 27, was abducted and shot in back of the head in Baghdad by suspected Badr militias in January 2006. Right, Haydar Faiek, aged 40, a transsexual Iraqi, was beaten and burned to death by Badr militias in September 2005.

Following a death-to-gays fatwa issued last October by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani,death squads of the Badr Corps have been systematically targeting gay Iraqis for persecution and execution, gay Iraqis say. But when they ask for help and protection from U.S. occupying authorities in the Green Zone, the secure area officialdom has carved out within Baghdad, gays Iraqis are met with indifference and derision.

“The Badr Corps is committed to the sexual cleansing of Iraq,” said Ali Hili, a 33-year-old gay Iraqi exile in London who, with some 30 other gay Iraqis who have fled to the United Kingdom, five months ago founded the Abu Nawas Group there to support persecuted gay Iraqis. The group is named for a revered eighth-century classical poet of Arab and Persian descent known throughout Middle East cultures and famous for his poems in praise of same-sex love."

This apparently follows a fatwa given by the supposedly moderate Iranian cleric Ayatollah Sistani.

The Ayatollah Sistani, the 77-year-old Iranian-born cleric who is the supreme Shia authority in Iraq, is revered by SCIRI as its spiritual leader. His anti-gay fatwa—available on Sistani’s official Web site—says that “people involved” in homosexuality “should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing.”

Apparently Badr Corp, isn't just killing them when they find them either. They are actually entraping them, in what gay advocates are calling systematic "sexual cleansing"

“Badr Corps agents have a network of informers who, among other things, target alleged immoral behavior,” Hili continued. “They kill gays, unveiled women, prostitutes, people who sell or drink alcohol, and those who listen to Western music and wear Western fashions.”

“Badr militants are entrapping gay men via Internet chat rooms,” Hili said. “They arrange a date, and then beat and kill the victim. Males who are unmarried by the age of 30 or 35 are placed under surveillance on suspicion of being gay, as are effeminate men. They will be investigated and warned to get married.

“Badr will typically give them a month to change their ways. If they don’t change their behavior, or if they fail to show evidence that they plan to get married, they will be arrested, disappear, and eventually be found dead. The bodies are usually discovered with their hands bound behind their back, blindfolds over their eyes, and bullet wounds to the back of the head.”

This result, of the Shia taking over, if we toppled Saddam, was both predictable and predicted. This is not worth any American life. Iraqis clearly do not want a "liberal democracy," at this point in time, and it is impossible for a foreign power to install one. Maybe one day they will want a liberal democracy, but we only put off that day when we associate Liberal Democracy with oil imperialism in the minds of the muslim world. Needless the say the christian fundamentalist, defence contractors, oil men, and other right wingers that pushed America into the war have no empathy for gays either. This callousness to the gays of Iraq, proves they weren't fundamentally motivated by a concern for Human Rights.

Another Israeli talking point dies! - Yahoo! News

2006-03-09T14:49:00.000-06:00

Olmert sees permanent Israeli borders by 2010 - Yahoo! News: "In one of two interviews published by Israeli media on Thursday ahead of March 28 elections that his Kadima party is expected to win, Olmert said the controversial security barrier Israel is building in the West Bank would largely follow the final borders.

Olmert said the barrier's final route could change depending on circumstances, the Haaretz newspaper said. Israel officially calls the barrier a security measure while Palestinians dub it a land grab meant to pre-empt any future border negotiations.

In a separate interview with the Jerusalem Post, Olmert said within the next four years he intended to 'get to Israel's permanent borders, whereby we will completely separate from the majority of the Palestinian population.'

He made similar comments to Haaretz."

For years, the Israelis, the Republicans and the establishment Democrats like Hillary Clinton have been telling us it was a security barrier only, and that the wall wouldn't follow the final border. They also chastized the Hague because of its objection to the wall. This admission makes them look like fools.

New York's two senators, Democrats Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer, joined Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Gillerman, in front of UN headquarters on Friday to denounce the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on the West Bank separation fence.

"It makes no sense for the United Nations to vehemently oppose a fence which is a non-violent response to terrorism rather than opposing terrorism itself," Clinton said to a crowd of about 100 people.

Democratic presidential nominee Senator John Kerry said he was disappointed with the court's decision. Kerry said Israel's separation fence was a legitimate measure in view of its security needs and its wish to defend itself against terrorist attacks.

The National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abe Foxman, said, "We thought for a moment the court would rise above prejudice, but as it turns out, it didn't." The ruling was meant to be a critical moment not only for Israel but also for the court's legitimacy, Foxman added.

Well the talking point that it is a security fence rather than a land grab officially died today, just as the talking point that there was no partner for peace died the other day when Yuval Diskin admitted that Arafat didn't start the intifada.

City Pages - Bin Laden's Game

2006-02-18T15:39:00.000-06:00

Remember Osama?

City Pages - Bin Laden's Game: "CP: Can you talk about the role that the Iraq war has played in his recruiting successes?

Scheuer: I have to tell you, Sir, I'm not an expert on Iraq. I don't know what the threat was from Saddam.My own judgment is, as a nation-state [Saddam's Iraq] was probably containable. But our invasion of Iraq broke the back of our counter-terrorism policy, because it validated in the Islamic mind so much of what bin Laden had said through the past decade. He said, Americans will do anything to defeat a strong Muslim government. We took Saddam out. He said we would take on and defeat any Muslim state that threatened Israel. I think Iraq is an indication of that being true, from their perspective. He said we would occupy their sanctities and try to destroy their religion. From the Islamist's perspective, we occupy all three of their sanctities now—the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, and Jerusalem. The Israelis hold Jerusalem, but increasingly in the Islamic world, Americans and Israelis are viewed interchangeably. He said we were going to try to take all the oil from the Muslim world. And certainly the view predominates that one of the reasons we went to Iraq was oil.

And so, in terms of perception, the Iraq war was a validation of what bin Laden had said. In addition, bin Laden and Zawahiri are not trained Islamic clerics or jurists. The argument was always made that they had no authority, therefore, to declare a jihad. Well, when we invaded Iraq, it was kind of a textbook example of an event that necessitates jihad in the Islamic world. Now, any number of well-credentialed clerics and jurists and scholars have authorized jihad against the United States around the world, because we invaded a Muslim land. In my view, the invasion of Iraq accelerated the transformation of al Qaeda from a man and an organization into a philosophy and a movement.

We're at the point where it's still very important to kill—preferably to kill, or else to capture—Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri. But because of Iraq, our problem is far from over if that happens."

Michael Scheuer is an ex cia analyist. He has written a book called "Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam and the Future of America"

This is the Real Outrage

2006-02-14T16:49:00.000-06:00

Tariq Ali, the writer of "Clash of Fundamentalisms," makes a some good points
.

This is the Real Outrage: "But the cartoon depicting Muhammad as a terrorist is a crude racist stereotype. The implication is that every Muslim is a potential terrorist. This is the sort of nonsense that leads to Islamophobia.

Muslims have every right to protest, but the overreaction was unnecessary. In reality, the number of original demonstrators was tiny: 300 in Pakistan, 400 in Indonesia, 200 in Tripoli, a few hundred in Britain (before Saturday's bigger reconciliation march), and government-organised hoodlums in Damascus burning an embassy. Beirut was a bit larger. Why blow this up and pretend that the protests had entered the subsoil of spontaneous mass anger? They certainly haven't anywhere in the Muslim world, though the European media has been busy fertilising the widespread ignorance that exists in this continent.

How many citizens have any real idea of what the Enlightenment really was? French philosophers did take humanity forward by recognising no external authority of any kind, but there was a darker side. Voltaire: 'Blacks are inferior to Europeans, but superior to apes.' Hume: 'The black might develop certain attributes of human beings, the way the parrot manages to speak a few words.' There is much more in a similar vein from their colleagues. It is this aspect of the Enlightenment that appears to be more in tune with some of the generalised anti-Muslim ravings in the media.

What I find interesting is that these demonstrations and embassy-burnings are a response to a tasteless cartoon. Did the Danish imam who travelled round the Muslim world pleading for this show the same anger at Danish troops being sent to Iraq? The occupation of Iraq has costs tens of thousands of Iraqi lives. Where is the response to that or the tortures in Abu Ghraib? Or the rapes of Iraqi women by occupying soldiers? Where is the response to the daily deaths of Palestinians? These are the issues that anger me. Last year Afghans protested after a US marine in Guantánamo had urinated on the Qur'an. It was a vile act and there was an official inquiry. The marine in question explained that he had been urinating on a prisoner and a few drops had fallen accidentally on the Qur'an - as if pissing on a prisoner (an old imperial habit) was somehow more acceptable."

Why oh why can't the muslim world launch a world wide protest movement over these issues?

Haaretz - Israel News - Brainwashed by intelligence people

2006-02-13T18:40:00.000-06:00

This story probably won't stop the hasbara people from making the claim that Arafat launched the last intifada, but many Israeli officials privately acknowledge this is not true, which means unilateral disengagement and the idea that there is "no partner for peace," is also bunk. Just read the comments by former Shin Bet agent Yuval Diskin.

Haaretz - Israel News - Brainwashed by intelligence people: "Brainwashed by intelligence people
By Akiva Eldar

American and Israeli parents found out in recent days that their governments are sending their sons to kill and be killed in inane wars. Paul Pillar - until recently, the CIA's national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia - publicly declared that President George Bush had tweaked assessments in order to justify the war in Iraq. On the same day almost, Israel's Channel 10 aired parts of a lecture in which Shin Bet security service chief Yuval Diskin asserted that the riots in the territories were not premeditated, and that 'an Arafat-devised contingency plan did not spark them off.'

These statements undermine claims by political and military officials that the intifada was a stage in a plan by Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat to crush the Oslo Accords on the way to the destruction of Israel. Diskin's statements also cast much doubt on the argument that the Palestine Liberation Organization is not, and never has been, a partner, and that since September 2000, Israel has been waging a just and unavoidable war."

It goes without saying that the government and the ruling party, which has thrived magnificently on the no-partner theory, did not make a big fuss of the bomb dropped by the Shin Bet chief. And even the left-wing opposition waived the elections gift it received from the head of the organization responsible for intelligence assessments in the territories.

Diskin is not the first to challenge the basic premise on which Israel's peace and security policy has rested ever since Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount. He was preceded by Major General (res.) Amos Malka, head of Military Intelligence at the time of the start of the intifada. In June 2004, Malka told Haaretz that MI did not have a shred of evidence to indicate that Arafat had initiated the riots.

This means that the late Sharon's Kadima party platform is based on bunk. There are indications of a revolt against Olmert within the ranks of Kadima by another former Shin Bet agent Avi Dichter. As reported by Jpost, Dichter largely concurred with Diskin.

"It was not at all a political statement, it was a professional statement," he told Israel Radio.

"It is totally clear that when Yuval Diskin is invited to the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, he is essentially being invited to the program 'Meet the Press,' since all of his comments will be publicized after that, but with alterations as each Knesset member relates them. Therefore, I am convinced that when he spoke in Eli, just like when Ami Ayalon spoke in the past in yeshivas... I'm sure Yuval took into consideration that what he said would be published. I'm sure he was fully aware," Dichter emphasized.

Dichter is also on record opposing further unitateral withdrawals.

n his first interview with an Israeli newspaper since he entered politics, Dichter said he would accept any portfolio offered to him in a prospective Kadima-led government and explained why the road map was the best diplomatic solution for Israel.

Speaking at party headquarters in Petah Tikva, Dichter said the perception among the public that Kadima would withdraw from much of Judea and Samaria regardless of what happens with the Palestinians was incorrect.

Dichter, a supporter of the Gaza Strip disengagement plan, said the West Bank was different from Gaza.

"The Palestinians haven't enforced any of the many plans that we signed with them," he said. "We have time. We are not in a hurry. We're not going to try to end the problem without solving it. We're not going to withdraw from the West Bank unilaterally just because it was done in Gaza."

EPA says abused, mentally handicapped, and orphaned children can be used as pesticide lab rats!

2006-02-12T16:09:00.000-06:00

News flash: Bush appointees in action again!

Organic Consumers Association - Educating for Health, Justice, and Sustainability: "Despite receiving over 50,000 letters from citizens, Congress, and EPA's own scientists opposing the proposed rule, the EPA has published a new federal regulation that will continue to allow observational studies of chemical and pesticide exposure on human subjects. On August 2, 2005, Congress had mandated the EPA create a rule that permanently bans chemical testing on pregnant women and children, without exception. But the EPA's newly proposed rule, is ridden with exceptions where observational chemical studies may be performed on children in certain situations like the following:

1. Children who 'cannot be reasonably consulted,' such as those that are mentally handicapped or orphaned newborns, may be studied. With permission from the institution or guardian in charge of the individual, the child may be studied.

2. Parental consent forms are not necessary for studies with children who have been neglected or abused.

3. Chemical studies on any children outside of the U.S. are acceptable."

According to the San Francisco Chronicle

Toward the end of the Clinton administration, the EPA briefly stopped accepting industry data from pesticide experiments on humans. But the agency resumed considering that data after Bush took office in January 2001. Then, in a lawsuit brought by the pesticide industry, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in 2003 that the EPA cannot refuse to consider data from manufacturer-sponsored human exposure tests until it develops regulations on them.

Agency officials said last November that in the meantime it would consider each study on a case-by-case basis. But Congress stepped in last year to impose a moratorium after Boxer and Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., demanded that the EPA cancel an industry-backed pesticide study in which the families of 60 children in Duval County, Fla., would receive children's clothes, a camcorder and $970 for participating.

Microsoft: No security updates for 98, ME after July 2006!

2006-02-10T21:32:00.000-06:00

Several interesting news items related to this.

Quote:
Microsoft Clarifies Support for Windows 98, Windows Millennium

Microsoft announced a clarification in extended security update support for Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Windows Millennium (Me) Editions for critical security issues. Windows 98 and Windows 98 Second Edition support was scheduled to end on January 16, 2004. The continual evaluation of the Support Lifecycle policy revealed, however, that customers in smaller and emerging markets needed additional time to upgrade their product. Therefore, critical security updates for Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Windows Me will be provided on the Windows Update site through June 30, 2006.

Key Dates:
• Paid incident support for Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Windows Millennium Edition (Me) is available through June 30, 2006.
• Critical security updates will be provided on the Windows Update site through June 30, 2006.
• Customers may request non-critical security fixes for Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, Windows Me, and the most current version of their components until June 30, 2006 through typical assisted-support channels.
• Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Windows Me downloads for existing security issues will continue to be available through regular assisted-support channels at no charge until June 30, 2006.
• No-charge incident support and extended hotfix support for Windows 98 and Windows 98 Second Edition ended on June 30, 2003.
• No-charge incident support and extended hotfix support for Windows Me ended on December 31, 2003.

Microsoft is already leaving these customers high and dry for the WMF security flaw, according to cnet.

Quote:
Windows 98, ME users left vulnerable to WMF bug?
January 5, 2006 5:17 PM PST

Microsoft on Thursday rushed out an update to address a serious security flaw in Windows. Patches are available for Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003, but Microsoft left out Windows 98 and Windows Millennium Edition.

The flaw lies in the way the OS software handles Windows Meta File images. Microsoft deems the issue "critical" only for Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, the problem is not as big for Windows 98 and Windows ME because it is harder to exploit on those OSes, the company said in its MS06-001 security bulletin..

Experts from iDefense, F-Secure and SANS agree that no attacks that target the older Windows versions have surfaced. Yet that might only be a matter of time, said Mike Murray, director of vulnerability and exposure research at nCircle, a vulnerability management company in San Francisco.

Releasing a patch for Windows 98 and Windows ME would be the right thing to do, according to Murray. "Even Microsoft acknowledges that the vulnerability exists in those OSes, someone will figure out how to exploit it," he said. .......

Here is someone in the reply section.

Quote:

MS is wrong not to support 98
Reader post by: Bill Dautrive
Posted on: January 8, 2006, 2:51 PM PST
Story: Windows 98, ME users left vulnerable to WMF bug?

Why?

Simple. Around 50% of the windows world is using something other then XP. So why would that mean that MS should still support it?

The intenet is an extremely dangerous place and MS is the primary reason for it. With so many older MS OS's out there unprotected, it causes serious problems for everyone.

No one should have to pay to have problems that MS neglected fixed. We are not talking features here, but security problems that are the fault of Microsoft. All these people using the lame car anology are missing the point and clearly lack understanding of the issues. Even if a 1950 whatever is found to be defective, how many are on the road, how many has 100% original parts? That anology does not even come close to fitting this situtation, stop being ignorant.

Bottom line: These are serious security issues that came about through incompetance and negligence on Microsofts part. Asking anyone but Microsoft to pay for this is beyond ignorant.

Korea is responding by trying to go linux.

Quote:

The nation's six ministries including the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) convened of late to discuss ways of reducing dependence on Microsoft, the world's biggest software maker.

``We agreed to cut down on our heavy reliance on Windows while promoting open-source programs such as Linux as an alternative,'' an MIC official said.

As action plans, the six ministries agreed to make Internet banking services and programs dealing with public grievance operable on a Linux-empowered system. Up until now, the programs could be run only through Windows.

``To secure broad-based adoption of non-Windows programs, the government will evaluate ministries regarding how much they brace for open-source programs,'' the official said.

But, is the linux community offering an alternative to these former customers of Microsoft? Afterall, while there may be distros designed to work on older legacy computers, none of them are designed to be as easy to use as windows 98. Problems include, having to mount the disk drive from the command line, no control panels for easier customization on many of their light windows managers, like fluxbox and icewm, and the greater difficulty encountered when installing a linux program. I can untar tarballs, but I can never configure one. make and "make install" never work. Also the more feature rich Guis like KDE and Gnome are often to resource intensive to work quickly with anything under Pentium 3 or AMD K6-3. They both need at least 256 mb of memory to operate at a good clip. The typical windows 98 system, was Pentium I-MMX or Pentium II with 64-128 mb of memory.

According the same article more asinine members of the linux community are probably gearing up to infect these people with viruses in July.

Quote:
`Windows 98 is still widely used. Some people would replace their programs with advanced systems like Windows 2000 and XP. But some will continue to bank on Windows 98 even after this July,'' Seung Jae-mo, the researcher at the Korea Information Security Agency, said.

He expected hacking and virus attacks would rage in the latter half of this year as global crackers would launch full-throttle attacks on Windows 98-outfitted computers that will not be updated regularly.

I personally feel the efforts of all those code vigilantes would be better spent creating an "easy to use" distro for older computers, but what do I know?

According to Wikipedia, small business customers of Microsoft who can't pay for an upgrade to xp are being offered a thin client but the program is getting no advertising from Microsoft, and it is not being offered to home users of of Win 98 and ME. There is a something like a thin client being offered developing countries called "Windows XP Starter Edition," but Microsoft is not offering this to home users in the developed countries and we may not be able to afford the latest thing either.

Yes, I am biased because I am a "Win 98" user. I switched to feather as a dual boot, but I don't find it easy to use, and I started out with a DOS system, so I am not ignorant of command lines like most 98 people. The heavier distros just run way slow. I have tried "Debian Woody" with KDE and and "Red Hat 7.3" with Gnome. Neither Gnome nor Kde were much easier to use than Feather's Fluxbox despite the more familiar appearance. They still made it difficult to install programs, and there plug n play wasn't nearly as good as Feathers. They also didn't have easy to use control panels though the control panels existed.

"Windows 3.1" and 95 users were left in the cold in 2002.

This didn't harm 3.1 users as much since the hackers focused on 32 bit Windows after 95 was invented, but most any virus that involved NT/Xp will harm 95, 98, and ME.

Sober Virus harmed 95 users badly. I remember having to work on a number of friends computers as a result of it.

Anyhoo, if you want to keep your computer safe after this time. Here are your alternatives.

Install an antivirus program, and keep it updated. If you have one of those thirty day trials and you let it expire, you should purchase it. If you can’t afford it, use a free alternative like AVG.

Get, a spyware program and keep it updated. Many are offered free. I personally like the spyware checker on my cousins’ yahoo toolbar. My personal favorite is “Spyware Search and Destroy.”

Only use “Internet Explorer” if you have to. It will save you tons of headaches. Otherwise, use Firefox or Opera, Netscape, or some other browser completely unrelated to IE. Opera is now completely free. Firefox now has a user agent switcher extension, which makes Internet Explorer only websites(bill paying and online banking mostly) think you are using Internet Explorer. Opera has this feature built in. If you must use IE, out of necessity or bad habit, please tweak the security setting to ask for prompts before downloading unsigned active x controls. I personally set Firefox and Opera to erase cookies when I close my browser. I make exceptions for frequently visited sites like my.yahoo. I believe you can do this with Internet Explorer as well.

Don’t use “Outlook Express.” It is the “kick me” sign of the internet. It automatically executes attachments when you open an email. The majority of viruses are made to take advantage of this feature. “Sober Virus” took advantage of this then it raided the address book of Outlook. I personally use Thunderbird. It is just much safer then OE, and it has a really good spam filter, which learns over time and becomes better the more you use it. There are many other good free email programs out there that you can try. The M2 client on Opera is really cool. It threads your email just like google mail does. Pegasus is my old standby. Using webmail, like yahoo, google, mail.com, is also very safe. If you must use Outlook Express, turn off the setting that automatically opens attachments. This may or may not help. Some viruses turn them on, even when they are off. It is the most popular email program so hackers make most of their viruses for it. Not using it is the best and most inexpensive way to protect yourself.

Like it or not, you probably need a firewall these days. I personally use a freeware program called “Tiny Personal Firewall,” but it involves a lot of good guessing as far as what to let through and what to refuse. Basically I let traffic through if I have just opened a new program, and it is obviously related to that program. I have heard "Zone Alarm" is easier to use, but whenever I tried it, I found it too resource intensive.

Radical alternatives: Get rid of Windows 98/Me. This means installing a light distro of Linux. hat means many new things to learn, and some greater difficulty in certain areas.

Light distro to look at.

“Feather Linux”: This is my old favorite thus far. It is quick. It does plug and play very well for a Linux distro, and set up my dsl modem really easily. It installs in less than 10 minutes generally. You update it with a program called apt-get. You will need to install “Open Office” if you want a word processor with a dictionary. The dictionary in Abiword doesn’t work. The nicest feature of Feather is that it automatically mounts floppy drives. This distro has to be burned. The only drawback is its use of a desktop "windows manager" called Fluxbox. It is very quick, and light, but it is not easy to use if you are used to Windows. Instead of having a "Start Menu" you access all your programs from the right click of your mouse. It has no control panel for easy customization. You have to use configuration scripts.

“Damn Small Linux” a.k.a. DSL. It is similar to feather, but I haven’t tried it much. This distro can be purchased as well as burned. It uses the Icewm windows manager. Icewm is like Windows 9x, only it doesn’t have a control panel for customization. Like Feather and Luit, DSL uses Tiny X server instead of xorg or xfree86. This means it can be used on very old computers, including 386 DX so long as they have at least 24 Mb of memory. These specs don’t apply to the programs in the package necessarily. Firefox will always require at least 64 mg of memory and at least Pentium MMX or greater. The same goes for Open Office. Fortunately nearly all Win98/ME computers should do just fine with these specifications, but if you have lessor specs there are alternatives, which can be searched for at debian.org. Siag, and Ted or good WP suites for low resources systems, and link2, with the graphics switch links2 -g, is an amazing little browser. DSL has hacked version of Dillo, which runs on very low system resources. They modified it to handle frames and Javascript.

“Luit Linux.” Basically "Damn Small" with XFCE. XFCE is very easy to use for a light desktop. It has a control panel and is generally easy to customize, and figure out, relative to Icewm and Fluxbox.

BTW, Feather, DSL and Luit are all live CDs. This means they will run from the cd rom. This is great because, you can try them out, set them up, and experiment with them, before you install them on your hardrive. This is a great advantage, from a configuration standpoint.

Xubuntu: Ubuntu with XFCE desktop. This is what I am currently using. XFCE is a very light desktop, with some very easy-to-use features. It is not offered as a separate distro. You have to order the Ubuntu CDs, then you need to do a server install of Ubuntu, then you install the xubuntu-desktop with apt-get from the command line. There are instructions for this at the Ubuntu website. If you have dial-up, downloading the Xubuntu desktop may take as much as ten hours. If you have highspeed, it will take two or less. The next distro will be out sometime in June and by then they may offer Xubuntu as a separate distro. Let’s cross our fingers, because this will really benefit dial-up users. I like XFCE a lot. It is very light and feature rich with an easy to understand control panel. Xubuntu doesn’t use tiny x though. Tiny X makes it possible for Feather, DSL and Luit to go on computers as old a 386DX with 24 Mb of memory. Xubuntu probably won’t go that far, but it works just fine on the MMX/Pentium II era machines. The biggest advantage of this distro is the Ubuntu community, which is extensive and helpful. It also helps that you can get the installation disks for free and without a cd burner, or shipping fees. If you go their website, you will likely get sent several installation disks rather than just one. I think Ubuntu developers want you to share this distro with your friends.

All four of these distros are based on Debian. The default desktop of Ubuntu is Gnome. It will operate pretty slowly, on most Pentium I and II computers. It can be tweaked some by using hdparm, but I don’t like it very much. I upgraded my hardrive from 4 Gb to 30Gb three years ago, so I installed a dual boot of 98 and “Debian Linux.” A dual boot configuration is a good thing if you are scared of getting rid of 98 completely. Admittedly I couldn’t get the winmodem dial up working on my first install of Debian Linux, so keeping 98 was handy. Buying a larger disk drive to accommodate both is fairly inexpensive. You can probably buy a 30 Gb hardrive for less than 20 dollars on Ebay nowadays. That is more than enough to accomodate Windows 98 and Linux, yet it is cheap because today it is considered a dinky diskdrive.

Do your research before you install Linux. You should get a manual for your distro online, or from the library or bookstore. The Ubuntu community has a lot online. This is why I have started to using Ubuntu. Pay particular attention to the problem of Windows specific dial up modems. When I first installed Debian, I had to get an external modem, because I just couldn’t get my winmodem to work. If you have an internal modem, it is probably a winmodem. Cable and DSL modems that are connected to a USB hub, rather than an ethernet adapters are also a drag. They aren’t well identified by Linux at all. I have no experience with wifi. Ubuntu has a quick start guide that should help if you are new to Linux.

There are some promising new distros on the horizon that could benefit 98/ME users. I am currently paying close attention to "STX Linux," a Slackware-based distro, that employs the “Equinox Desktop.” This desktop looks and feels very much like “Windows 98". It even has a really good control panel. They just came out with their first full release a month ago. They claim that it runs on a 486DX with 32 megabytes of memory. I’ll be paying close attention to the buzz on this one, but I currently don’t know any users.

Mepis has a very good reputation among former Windows users. They have been beta testing a light version for a while now. Unfortunately, it appears they are using KDE which in my experience runs slower than Gnome on my AMD K6 II.

Some people are also making a distro called Ubuntu lite, but it is in beta testing now. It will employ Equinox or Icewm.

Anyway, there's a run down of your alternatives, as I see them. I will be following this story in the future.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Danish paper pursues Holocaust cartoons

2006-02-08T11:07:00.000-06:00

Now Flemming Rose, thats Flem for short,(cough, cough) is coordinating with the Iranian paper that is publishing the inflammatory protocols cartoons.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Danish paper pursues Holocaust cartoons: "Danish paper pursues Holocaust cartoons

John Plunkett
Wednesday February 8, 2006

The Danish paper responsible for the original caricatures of the prophet Muhammad is set to stoke the row further by running cartoons satirising the Holocaust.

Flemming Rose, the culture editor of Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, said today he was trying to get in touch with the Iranian paper, Hamshari, which plans to run an international competition seeking cartoons about the Holocaust.

'My newspaper is trying to establish a contact with the Iranian newspaper, and we would run the cartoons the same day as they publish them,' Mr Rose told CNN.

Article continues
The Danish editor was also defiantly unapologetic about the original publication of 12 cartoons - one of which featured the prophet wearing a turban shaped as a bomb - in his paper five months ago."

Flem is an old cold warrior like Rummy and Cheney.

Flemming Rose - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2006-02-08T01:55:00.000-06:00

Flemming Rose - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Flemming Rose" the man who published those cartoons depicting Mohammed as a suicide bomber, has some disturbing ties to campus watch, and seems to be obsessed with the "clash of civilizations".

According to the Wiki article

There is some controversy over whether political ideology informed Flemming Rose’s decision to publish the offending cartoons. Allegations of ties to neo-conservative thought abound, but so far have not been lucidly substantiated. In 2004, he travelled to the USA to visit the Neoconservative Daniel Pipes and subsequently wrote and published a generally positive account of Daniel Pipes, which has been held up as apologetic by certain critics. Rose does not comment on Pipes’s ideology in the profile.

He was certainly providing an echo to Daniel Pipes, when he made this statement.

"About the question of integration and how compatible is the religion of Islam with a modern secular society – how much does an immigrant have to give up and how much does the receiving culture have to compromise."

The paper that published this appears to have refused a similar cartoon about Jesus.

Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that have caused a storm of protest throughout the Islamic world, refused to run drawings lampooning Jesus Christ, it has emerged today.

The Danish daily turned down the cartoons of Christ three years ago, on the grounds that they could be offensive to readers and were not funny.

In April 2003, Danish illustrator Christoffer Zieler submitted a series of unsolicited cartoons dealing with the resurrection of Christ to Jyllands-Posten.

Zieler received an email back from the paper's Sunday editor, Jens Kaiser, which said: "I don't think Jyllands-Posten's readers will enjoy the drawings. As a matter of fact, I think that they will provoke an outcry. Therefore, I will not use them.

New Orleans seeks foreign aid!

2006-02-07T16:54:00.000-06:00

IOL: Nagin looks for helping hands from overseas: "Nagin looks for helping hands from overseas

February 07 2006 at 01:07AM

By Michael Depp

New Orleans - Shortcomings in aid from the United States government are making New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin look to other nations for help in rebuilding his hurricane-damaged city.

Nagin, who has hosted a steady stream of foreign dignitaries since Hurricane Katrina hit in late August, says he may seek international assistance because US aid has not been sufficient to get the city back on its feet.

'I know we had a little disappointment earlier with some signals we're getting from Washington but the international community may be able to fill the gap,' Nagin said when a delegation of French government and business officials passed through on Friday to explore potential business partnerships.

Jordan's King Abdullah also visited New Orleans on Friday and Nagin said he would encourage foreign interests to help redevelop some of the areas hardest hit by the storm."

Uhg! It is like living in developing country!

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Brothers in arms - Israel's secret pact with Pretoria

2006-02-07T05:26:00.000-06:00

Second part of the two part series on Israel and Apartheid.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Brothers in arms - Israel's secret pact with Pretoria: "srael's critics say that as the threats to the Jewish state receded it came more and more to resemble the apartheid model - particularly in its use of land and residency laws - until the similarities outweighed the differences. Liel says that was never the intent.

'The existential problems of Israel were real,' he says. 'Of the injustice we did, we're always ashamed. We always tried to behave democratically. Of course, on the private level there was a lot of discrimination - a lot, a lot. By the government also. But it was not a philosophy that was built on racism. A lot of it was security-oriented.'

Goldreich disagrees. 'It's a gross distortion. I'm surprised at Liel. In 1967, in the six day war, in this climate of euphoria - by intent, not by will of God or accident - the Israeli government occupied the territories of the West Bank and Gaza with a captive Palestinian population obviously in order to extend the area of Israel and to push the borders more distant from where they were,' he says.

'I and others like me, active after the six day war on public platforms, tried desperately to convince audiences throughout this country that peace agreements between Israel and Palestine [offer] greater security than occupation of territory and settlements. But the government wanted territory more than it wanted security."

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Worlds apart

2006-02-07T05:25:00.000-06:00

Excellent two part article from the guardian about whether Israel's treatment of the Palestinians can be compared to Apartheid.

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Worlds apart: "As far back as 1961, Hendrik Verwoerd, the South African prime minister and architect of the 'grand apartheid' vision of the bantustans, saw a parallel. 'The Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state,' he said. It is a view that horrifies and infuriates many Israelis.

A prominent Israeli political scientist, Gerald Steinberg, responded to an invitation to appear on a panel at a Jerusalem cultural centre to debate 'Is Israel the new apartheid?' by denouncing the organiser, a South African-born Jew, for even posing the question.

'As you are undoubtedly aware, the pro-Palestinian and anti-semitic campaign to demonise Israel focuses on the entirely false and abusive analogy with South Africa. Using the term 'apartheid' to apply to Israel's legitimate responses to terror and the threat of annihilation both demeans the South African experience, and is the most immoral of charges against the right of the Jewish people to self-determination,' he replied.

Many Israelis recoil at the suggestion of a parallel because it stabs at the heart of how they see themselves and their country, founded after centuries of hatred, pogroms and ultimately genocide. If anything, many of Israel's Jews view themselves as having more in common with South Africa's black population than with its oppressors. Some staunch defenders of Israel's policies past and present say that even to discuss Israel in the context of apartheid is one step short of comparing the Jewish state to Nazi Germany, not least because of the Afrikaner leadership's fascist sympathies in the 1940s and the disturbing echoes of Hitler's Nuremberg laws in South Africa's racist legislation.

Yet the taboo is increasingly challenged. As Israel's justice minister, Tommy Lapid, said, Israel's defiance of international law in constructing the West Bank barrier could result in it being treated as a pariah like South Africa. Malaysia's prime minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, has called for a campaign against Israel of the kind used to pressure South Africa."

CALIFORNIA / Bush gets bill slashing foster care aid / State, 8 others in West affected by federal cutback

2006-02-05T15:10:00.000-06:00

Republicans screw abused children to pay for tax cuts on the wealthy.

CALIFORNIA / Bush gets bill slashing foster care aid / State, 8 others in West affected by federal cutback: "A bill awaiting President Bush's signature includes provisions to cut off federal foster care benefits for hundreds of California children living with low-income relatives after being removed from the homes of abusive or neglectful parents.

If the cutback survives an expected court challenge, the reduction in aid will be substantial. In the Bay Area and other high-cost regions, for example, a woman providing foster care for grandchildren ages 7 and 10, who now gets $1,315 a month, would receive $723, the amount of a conventional welfare grant.

The higher aid total was ordered by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco in a March 2003 ruling that was binding in California and eight other Western states. The ruling said children who are placed with grandparents or other family members can receive federal aid based on their new foster parents' low incomes.

The government had argued that the aid should be based on the incomes of the parents from whose homes the children were removed.

Tucked into the federal Deficit Reduction Act, which won final passage Wednesday on a largely party-line vote of 216-214 in the House, is language declaring that the appeals court ruling was wrong and that long-standing federal law bases eligibility solely on the parents' incomes."

MyDD :: Direct Democracy for People-Power

2006-01-29T20:12:00.000-06:00

"Three Card Monty" Washington style!

MyDD :: Direct Democracy for People-Powered Politics: "You Don't Get Points for Trying"

I'm going to get a lot of flack for this post, but here goes.

A filibuster is an extreme action that requires robust public support. We do not have this support. It's that simple. I'm all for keeping Alito off the court, and a filibuster until after the SOTU is a good idea. But it's very important for the netroots to understand what's happening here. This last-minute campaign to get Senators to switch their votes, after it became crystal clear that we do not have the votes to filibuster, is a classic example of 'get points for trying' politics. It's a way for Senators to get credit from the left-wing of the party without having to actually do anything or stop anything. The reality is that this fight was lost two months ago, when Senators decided that going on Christmas break was more important than preparing to defend the constitution, and PFAW and Alliance for Justice decided that releasing 150 page documents was a good way to build public pressure against Alito's confirmation

By all means, call your Senators. Don't stop. Don't let up. But don't forgive the party leadership and our groups for this travesty. People for the American Way has been preparing for this fight for years. And then they didn't show up. The same is true with NARAL, and the Alliance for Justice. I honestly don't know why they are funded anymore - that's how bad this failure has been. And Senators - including DiFi, HRC, Kerry, and Obama - have revealed themselves to be craven fair weather fans who expect others to do the work of standing up for Democratic values for them. Think about it for a moment. John Kerry called for a filibuster from Switzerland two hours after it became public that there were not enough votes for a filibuster. That is atrocious. Tinman points out on Breaking Blue the essential point:

If he was serious about it he would have stayed in Washington, held press conferences, lobbied his colleagues and tried to generate as much attention as possible. Since it was just a PR stunt, it wasn't necessary for Kerry to change his travel plans................

And don't delude yourself, this is intentional. The attitude that the insiders have towards us is that we are a stupid ATM set up to feed their ineffectiveness. Witness uberinsider telling us the truth about where we fit in:

"The bloggers and online donors represent an important resource for the party, but they are not representative of the majority you need to win elections," said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic lobbyist who advised Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. "The trick will be to harness their energy and their money without looking like you are a captive of the activist left."

Hebron for Beginners - by Ran HaCohen

2006-01-29T19:45:00.000-06:00

Hebron for Beginners - by Ran HaCohen: "The Reality

Two beautiful stories indeed; alas, both of them miss reality. Remember that the squatters could take over the wholesale market simply because the Palestinian merchants had been driven out. The market had been closed by Israel in 1994 as a confidence-destroying measure following the Goldstein massacre, in which a Jewish settler murdered 29 Palestinian worshippers in the Patriarchs’ Tomb in Hebron (apropos 'killing and taking possession'). In the Hebron Agreement of 1997, Israel pledged to return the market to the Palestinians and let it be reopened; a wall should have separated it from the settlers’ homes. However, Israel respects treaties only in extremely exceptional cases, and Hebron is not such a rare exception.

Both the nationalist and the liberal stories are wrong on the most crucial point: they both err to believe that Israel intends to give the market back to the Palestinians. Israel has nothing of the kind in mind. All Israel needs now is a good show that looks like the liberal fantasy; especially on the eve of the general elections, it is desirable to be portrayed as a resolute, moderate, and law-abiding government. But it’s the nationalist, colonialist fantasy that is being realized. In a combined effort of Israel’s government, police, army, and settlers, Israel had a major success in ethnically cleansing Hebron’s center of its Palestinian inhabitants. Reopening the market might revive trade at the heart of the city and reverse Israel’s achievement.

What’s the solution? Attentive Ha’aretz readers could find it out just days before the issue got to the headlines (Jan. 5, 2006):

'The Defense Ministry has terminated the lease with the Hebron municipality that enabled the Palestinian merchants to work in the city’s wholesale market. This means that the merchants from the wholesale market will not be able to return to their shops even if the Israel Defense Forces do evict the settlers squatting there.'"

"The Israeli Peace Process" =sick joke, and a waste of time.

I would tell the Israelis to get better leaders but we need to get them too. The vast majority of Politicians in the world are little more than con artists.

Booman Tribune ~ Beware! Iran to Have Bomb in a Few Months!

2006-01-23T17:54:00.000-06:00

The neocons are trying to scare us into another unnecessary war.

Booman Tribune ~ Beware! Iran to Have Bomb in a Few Months!: "Beware! Iran to Have Bomb in a Few Months!

by Steven D
Mon Jan 23rd, 2006 at 06:05:23 PM EST
Hey, that's not me talking. And it sure isn't the CIA, because they believe Iran is at least ten years away from having a bomb.

No, that's respected (ahem) conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer last week in an seemingly off the cuff comment while bemoaning the stupidity, timidity and general credulity of the European countries who, until recently, have been negotiating with Iran regarding the resumption of its nuclear program. As we now know, those talks failed to stop Iran from resuming the enrichment of its uranium supplies, an essential step in making a bomb (although Iran denies that is their intent). Check out this column of his originally published January 18, 2006 to see what I'm talking about:

Ah, success. Instead of being years away from the point of no return for an Iranian bomb, as we were before we allowed Europe to divert anti-proliferation efforts into transparently useless talks, Iran is probably just months away.

(Emphasis added)"

Apparently this meme was started by a man named Kenneth Timmerman. He is a reporter for Dick Scaife's American Spectator magazine, and a leader of the Foundation for Iranian Democracy a probable neocon front organization. Two years ago he reported that WMD had been found in Iraq. He has little credibility and neither does Krauthammer, but that is hasn't stopped the press and the mainstream democrats from echoing his ideas. Let's hope the peace movement has more backbone this time around.

Cyril Neville says no to N'awlins

2005-12-19T18:07:00.000-06:00

Looks like the Nevilles will opt out of "New" New Orleans unless the rebuilding includes more black ownership.

Cyril Neville says no to N'awlins: "Entertainment Archive

Cyril Neville says no to N'awlins

December 15, 2005

BY DAVE HOEKSTRA Staff Reporter

During a heartfelt conversation before embarking on the train journey, Neville explained he and his wife, Gaynielle, have bought a home in Austin, Texas..

'Would I go back to live?' Neville asked. 'There's nothing there. And the situation for musicians was a joke. People thought there was a New Orleans music scene -- there wasn't. You worked two times a year: Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest. The only musicians I knew who made a living playing music in New Orleans were Kermit Ruffins and Pete Fountain. Everyone else had to have a day job or go on tour. I have worked more in two months in Austin than I worked in two years in New Orleans..........................

'I am not a fish,' he said. 'I cannot live under 6 feet of water. In the 9th Ward and Gentilly they are going to do mass buyouts, bulldoze everything and make it green space. In my estimation, those are golf courses and other places where African-American people won't be welcome. There's nothing wrong with my house except that water destroyed everything we had in it. The foundation is fine. The house is still there. Same thing with our neighbors. So what are they talking bulldozing?".....................

"People are talking to me, but some of the people I know went through much more than I did. There are 3,000 children missing in New Orleans. [The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children places the figure at 1,300.] Hundreds of bodies are waiting to be identified. The people of New Orleans have been scattered to the four winds. Their lives were determined by people in Washington and Baton Rouge before the storm hit. Without African Americans having ownership, economic equity and the same type of things the French Quarter gets -- like tax cuts -- the city will never be the same. The 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th Wards should have their own tourist commission. Build our own hotels and restaurants in those areas. The key is ownership. Then I would think about going back and living there. But we're still practicing American democracy. How can we ever bring it to somebody else?"

It is a good read. He is currently on tour with Arlo Guthrie. A twelve day Amtrack journey from Chicago to New Orleans, to raise money for Katrina victims.

Married women lose the right to vote on Arizona!

2005-11-06T16:51:00.000-06:00

Isn't this against the 19 Amendment or something?

Eligible to Vote in Arizona? Prove It - Los Angeles Times: "Proposition 200, which voters approved last year, requires Arizonans to prove U.S. citizenship to register to vote and to show a photo ID at the polls.

The law put this border state at the edge of a nationwide push to tighten screening at the polls: fifteen states now require ID at polling places, but no other state requires documentation of citizenship in order to register.

It's a movement that advocates say is long overdue to prevent election fraud, but which critics say will decrease voter turnout and has already disenfranchised thousands of Arizona voters.

In Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, more than 10,000 people trying to register have been rejected for being unable to prove their citizenship. Yvonne Reed, a spokeswoman for the recorder's office, said Friday that most probably are U.S. citizens whose married names differ from their birth certificates or who have lost documentation.

Reed said she hoped the number of rejected voters would shrink as election officials explained the new requirements. But, she said, 'there will be an amount of people who we will not be able to get on the rolls because of not being able to find the right documents or just losing interest.'"

Actually since married women are much more likely to vote republican than unmarried women, it would be poetic if this disenfranchises a bunch of republican women.

Why the Dems Need James Carville to Take a Long, Long Vacation

2005-11-05T18:50:00.000-06:00

Hey Democrats! Now that we know Matalin is working for Cheney, please don't take campaign advise from this man!

Why the Dems Need James Carville to Take a Long, Long Vacation:
That's all in the past. Now, as one of Dick Cheney's most trusted first-term advisors, one of eight founding members of the White House Iraq Group, a witness in front of the Plamegate grand jury, and a close friend of Scooter Libby ("The man you pray you get seated next to at a dinner party," she recently cooed), Matalin is a central player in all this.

"And it has hopelessly handcuffed Carville. Check out this exchange from his appearance on The Situation Room this week:

BLITZER: Should the vice president hold a news conference or grant an interview and answer the tough questions that are being asked out there?

CARVILLE: I've got a better idea. Why doesn't the president get out and have one? Harry Truman didn't say the buck stops with the Vice President. The buck stops with the President.

[snip]

I think the first step is not the Vice President -- [it's] the President of the United States standing up, answering to the American people, answering people's questions... The Vice nothing. There aren't no Vices around here. There's one man in charge of this country and that is George W. Bush."

"The Vice nothing"? "There are no Vices around here"? The buck doesn't stop with the Vice President? Are you kidding me? The Vice President's office is Ground Zero on Plamegate -- and on the Bush administration's push for war. It was Cheney who regularly stormed over to the CIA, knocking heads and twisting arms to get the intel he wanted. It was Cheney who set the Plamegate ball rolling by demanding info on the bogus claims of a Niger/Iraq uranium connection. It was Cheney who led the media charge in selling the war with his unwavering claims that Saddam had the ability to "subject the United States...to nuclear blackmail." It was Cheney who helped foster the bogus impression that there was an al-Qaeda/Saddam connection -- continuing to tout the "Atta met with Saddam's reps in Prague" story long after it had been shot down by the FBI. It was Cheney's office that opened its arms to Chalabi after the CIA soured on him. It was "Cheney's Cheney," Scooter Libby, who wrote the original draft of Colin Powell's shameful UN speech. And it was Cheney's office that took the lead in the administration's efforts to discredit Joe Wilson and his wife.

Memo to Carville: If you can't talk about Dick Cheney, then you can't talk about Plamegate. Or about the war -- and the lies and deceptions the administration used to sell it to the American people. And if you can't talk about Plamegate and the war, you should not be talking at all from the Democratic side of the aisle.

Arrianna piles on with this quote!

I think Democrats have a great opportunity to show that they're going to stand up for the interests of working people, going to stand up for the interests of middle-class people and get away from the machine gun lobby and the anti-Family Medical Leave and all of these other decisions here.

Were in the middle of the Plame investigation, the President has a 35% approval rating and he still wants to focus on domestic issues. Come on? He is clearly too compromised to advise Democrats on this matter. Frankly he was during the Kerry campaign as well.

Smoking Gun on Manipulation of Iraq Intelligence? 'NY Times' Cites New Document

2005-11-05T17:46:00.000-06:00

The New York Times Drops a Bomb Shell

Smoking Gun on Manipulation of Iraq Intelligence? 'NY Times' Cites New Document: "Tomorrow, in its print edition, The New York Times starts to answer the question, with reporter Douglas Jehl disclosing the contents of a newly declassified memo apparently passed to him by Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

It shows that an al-Qaeda official held by the Americans was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the basis for its claims that Iraq trained al-Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to this Defense Intelligence Agency document from February 2002.

It declared that it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, 'was intentionally misleading the debriefers' in making claims about Iraqi support for al-Qaeda's work with illicit weapons, Jehl reports.

“The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi's credibility,” Jehl writes. “Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi's information as ‘credible’ evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons."

We also have more evidence Democrats are finally starting to move on Bush!

Broadcasting & Cable: The Business of Television

2005-11-04T13:02:00.000-06:00

Broadcasting & Cable: The Business of Television: "The Corporation for Public Broadcasting Board of Directors said Thursday that embattled former board chairman Ken Tomlinson has resigned.

The board has been reviewing a CPB Inspector General's report--called for by a pair of congressmen--on Tomlinson's relationship with the board stemming from Tomlinson's attempts to add more conservative programming.

The board said in a statement: '[F]ormer chairman Kenneth Y. Tomlinson has resigned from the CPB board. The board does not believe that Mr. Tomlinson acted maliciously or with any intent to harm CPB or public broadcasting, and the board recognizes that Mr. Tomlinson strongly disputes the findings in the soon-to-be-released Inspector General’s report.

'The board expresses its disappointment in the performance of former key staff whose responsibility it was to advise the board and its members.

'Nonetheless, both the board and Mr. Tomlinson believe it is in the best interests of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that he no longer remain on the board."

Score one for Bill Moyers and Link TV. They have been broadcasting the speech Bill Moyers gave in May to the "National Conference on Media Reform" in St Louis.

Exerpt of speech

We didn’t know this a year ago. We just learned it from The New York Times two weeks ago that last year Mr. Tomlinson had spend ten thousand dollars to hire a contractor who would watch my show and report on political bias. That’s right. He spent ten thousand dollars of your money to hire a guy to watch “NOW” to find out who my guests were and what my stories were. Ten thousand dollars. Gee, Ken, for two dollars and fifty cents a week, you could pick up a copy of TV Guide on the newsstand. A subscription is even cheaper, and I would have sent you a coupon that can save you up to sixty-two percent. Or, for that matter, Ken, all you had to do was watch the show. You could have made it easier with a double Jim Beam, your favorite. Or you could -- mine, too. We have some things in common. Or you could go online, where the listings are posted. Hell, Ken, you could have called me collect, and I would have told you who we were having on the show.

[break]

The public paid for that study, but Ken Tomlinson acts as if he owns it. Let’s see it. You can watch my bias. You can watch my mistakes. You can watch everything I do right there on the air. We have the funders listed, everything is there, it’s all listed. But he won’t do it. In a May 10th op-ed piece in Reverend Moon’s conservative Washington Times, Ken Tomlinson maintained he had not released the findings because public broadcasting is such a delicate institution he did not want to, (quote), “damage public broadcasting’s image with controversy.” Where I come from in Texas, we shovel that kind of stuff every day.

As we learned this week, that’s not the only news Mr. Tomlinson tried to keep to himself. As Dr. Wilson indicated, and as reported by Jeff Chester’s Center for Digital Democracy, which the Human Center for Media and Democracy also support, there were two public opinion surveys commissioned by CPB, but not released to the media, not even to PBS and NPR. According to a source who talked to Salon.com, the first results were too good and Tomlinson didn’t believe them. After the Iraq war, the board commissioned another round of polling, and they thought they’d get worse results, but they didn’t.

This is the man, by the way, who was running the Voice of America back in 1984 when a fanatic named Charlie Wick was politicizing the United States Information Agency of which Voice of America was a part. It turned out there was a blacklist of people who had been removed from the list of prominent Americans sent abroad to lecture on behalf of America and the USIA. What’s more, it was discovered that evidence as to how those people were chosen to be on the blacklist, more than seven hundred documents, had been shredded. Among those on the blacklist of journalists, writers, scholars and politicians were dangerous left wing subversives like Walter Cronkite, James Baldwin, Gary Hart, Ralph Nader, Ben Bradley, Coretta Scott King and David Brinkley.

They did it as part of their fundraising drive. They probably broadcasted it every day for an entire week. Even offered it in DVD form as a gift for being a sustaining member. Needless to say there is a lot of overlap between Link TV and Now viewers.

"Moral Disaster of Monumental Proportion Reconciliation Act"

2005-11-04T11:05:00.000-06:00

Are the Democrats finally getting feisty? Today Senator Frank Lautenberg (D)New Jersey, introduced an amemendment to change the name of the Republican "Deficit Reduction and Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 2005" to the "Moral Disaster of Monumental Proportion Reconciliation Act"!

The post quotes him as saying,

"'Let's call this bill what it is -- a moral disaster,' explained Lautenberg. 'This bill would close the door of opportunity and cut critical services to the poor, elderly, sick and hungry.'

Senators had yet to vote on the amendment as of this post, but given the Republican majority in the Senate the name change seems to have little chance of passage.

The overall bill being debated in the Senate is aimed at making cuts in spending on entitlement programs in order to offset the massive federal costs incurred for the clean-up of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita along the Gulf Coast. Democrats have massed in opposition to the cuts, which they insist disproportionately disadvantage the nation's poorest and most infirm citizens."

I really was shocked at the level of gall it would take to make the poor pay for this. However the Democrats have let other things like this slide, so I no longer expect anything from them.

Joe Biden: "Antiwar Democrats are elitists, unpatriotic, and out of touch with America

2005-11-03T08:17:00.000-06:00

I guess Joe isn't reading the polls!

SEN. JOE BIDEN, D-Del., made some interesting comments during his Manchester stop Tuesday night. He said too many Democrats were elitist and even unpatriotic, and he blamed them for helping Republicans paint the entire party as out of touch with America.

Biden noted that some Democrats had even questioned why he wore an American flag pin on his lapel.

The senator has been refreshingly honest about his run for the Democratic nomination for President in 2008. Further honest comments like those he made Tuesday night might hurt his chances within a party lurching increasingly to the left. But the Democrats need to hear them.

The anti-American left has seriously damaged the party, and unless more high-profile Democrats take them on, theirs will continue to be the minority party in America.

I think he made the part about the American flag pin up!

According to the latest polls Bush's approval rating is at 35%. His favorability rating is 33%. If the Democratic party nominates him or someone like him it is truly dead, dead dead!

ABC News:

2005-10-28T10:40:00.000-05:00

I know I am on everyones shit list because I dislike kos, but I do cover issues hardly anyone else gives a shit about. Here is just one issue that I think the Democrats should prioritize that is absolutely not on the kossack or mainstream Democratic agenda. For years the republicans have been able to undercut social programs by portraying the poor as morally inferior. They have even gotten mainstream economics departments at Universities to put out this kind of stuff. The mainstream news often reports these kinds of "spun" statistics without recongnizing that they are really carefully disguised op/eds, rather than careful research.

ABC News: Church-going boosts economic well-being: study:

"'Doubling the frequency of attendance leads to a 9.1 percent increase in household income, or a rise of 5.5 percent as a fraction of the poverty scale,' Jonathan Gruber of the economics department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote in his study.

'Those with more faith may be less 'stressed out' about daily problems that impede success in the labor market and the marriage market, and therefore are more successful,' Gruber wrote in the study, which was released by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Top Stories

Could it be the opposite is true? Maybe a 9.1 percent increase in household income, or a rise of 5.5 percent as a fraction of the poverty scale actually leads to a doubling of church attendence. Maybe less stress in one job and marriage and more personal success also leads to more church attendence.

Living in a community with complementary ethnic groups that share the same religion increases the frequency of going to a house of worship, he said in the paper titled 'Religious Market Structure, Religious Participation, and Outcomes: Is Religion Good for You?'

According to this study you also need to strenuously avoid contact with other religious and ethnic groups to be successful, particularly if you are white.

Such visits correlate to higher levels of education and income, lower levels of welfare receipt and disability, higher levels of marriage and lower levels of divorce, the study said."

Could it be that higher levels of education and income, more wealth and better health, not to mention better marriages also lead to more church attendence?

This appears to be one of those "the rich are morally superior to the poor spin jobs" that often masks itself as hard science. It is sad MIT is subsidizing it.

Daily Kos: John Bolton: Crazy Von Mustache is Baaa-acccck!

2005-09-30T14:32:00.000-05:00

Fear Exceeded Crime's Reality in New Orleans - New York Times

2005-09-29T16:02:00.000-05:00

No rapes have been reported to the police. Neither have any shootings at helicopters.

Fear Exceeded Crime's Reality in New Orleans - New York Times: "In an interview last week with The New York Times, Superintendent Compass said that some of his most shocking statements turned out to be untrue. Asked about reports of rapes and murders, he said: 'We have no official reports to document any murder. Not one official report of rape or sexual assault.'

On Sept. 4, however, he was quoted in The Times about conditions at the convention center, saying: 'The tourists are walking around there, and as soon as these individuals see them, they're being preyed upon. They are beating, they are raping them in the streets.'

Those comments, Superintendent Compass now says, were based on secondhand reports. The tourists 'were walking with their suitcases, and they would have their clothes and things taken,' he said last week. 'No rapes that we can quantify.'

Rumors Affected Response

A full chronicle of the week's crimes, actual and reported, may never be possible because so many basic functions of government ceased early in the week, including most public safety record-keeping. The city's 911 operators left their phones when water began to rise around their building."

I am betting crony controlled fema spread them to cover their asses. Afterall fema would constantly announce on cnn it was suspending operations based on these reports.

Daily Kos: Intentional negligence by Fed Gov?

2005-09-08T15:46:00.000-05:00

Daily Kos: Intentional negligence by Fed Gov?: "Intentional negligence by Fed Gov?
by contrapunktus [Subscribe]
Thu Sep 8th, 2005 at 14:27:12 CST

Just a thought:

* contrapunktus's diary :: ::
*

Is it possible that this administration is, in a perverted way, content with their response to Katrina? After all, it does prove the long held republican contention that government doesn't work. I won't be surprised to see an effort to further centralize the emergency response branches of the federal government, �la the Patriot Act.Perhaps even an effort to privatize the services that should be, and should have been rendered by FEMA and DHS with some good old no-bid contracts.

In a way, the republicans are apparently correct. The government really DOESN'T work, at least not when they are in charge of it."

How many have died?

2005-09-08T14:49:00.000-05:00

ABC15.com: Phoenix and Arizona News, Live Weather, Web Cams and More: "Congressman reports more than 100 died in a warehouse, waiting for rescue

Posted: 09/07/2005 15:05:14

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Even as crews in New Orleans try to find and count the corpses that are decaying in the 90-degree heat, reports of the extent of the tragedy are starting to emerge.

A Louisiana congressman says more than 100 people died at a warehouse along a New Orleans dock. Congressman Charlie Melancon (muh-LAWN'-suhn) says they died as they waited for rescuers to take them to safety.

And a state lawmaker says 30 people died at a flooded-out nursing home just outside New Orleans. Nita Hutter says the staff had left the residents behind in their beds. A rescue that was supposed to take place never materialized."

This is just getting worse even after more than a week. The New York Times says fema has ordered 25,000 boby bags. The Tennessean interviewed a mortician named Dan Brukner working for the Disaster Mortuary Responce Team and he reported that he was told to expect up to 40,000 dead bodies in the three affected states.

Why the US Is Supporting Civil War

2005-08-29T11:34:00.000-05:00

Tom Hayden hits the nail on the head about Bush in the neocons.

Why the US Is Supporting Civil War: "There's a small practical problem with this revised vision. It is likely to intensify the war on two levels: Iraqis against the Americans and Iraqis against each other. I don't have a particular philosophical preference for centralized government, but the alternative in Iraq is a devolution to warring ethnic and religious fiefdoms under the control of the international market. Yoo, Brooks and Galbraith are silent on this untidy aspect of their scenario, with Yoo even reminding Americans that we had to go through the 'fiery experience' of civil war before becoming a nation. Leaving aside the fact that Americans threw the British out by force, that's a macabre future for Iraqis who were promised 'liberation.' Since the civil war will not be won militarily, the Administration will argue that the occupation must be permanent.

If this sounds mad, manipulative or both, what does it reveal about US intentions in Iraq?

It suggests that the American purpose has been to destroy Iraqi nationalism, as in the previous Baathist state and the continued de-Baathification policies.

It suggests that our 'best and brightest' want to weaken any future possibility of a strong Iraqi state with control of its own enterprises and resources.

It suggests that the US has chosen to ally itself with Islamic fundamentalism rather than a secular state with a centralized government.

It suggests that civil war against the Sunnis and any other 'diehards' is the US preference rather than a political settlement that brings the nationalist resistance, including the Sunnis, into negotiations rather than war.

This is the same strategy the Israelis chose decades ago when they directly and indirectly supported the Islamic religious groupings as preferable to the secular and 'Marxist' Palestinian Liberation Organization [PLO] two decades ago. That strategy contributed directly to the creation of Hezbollah and suicide bombers.

It is the same strategy that led the US to support the mujahadeen, the embryonic Al Qaeda, against the secular, pro-Russian Afghan government. In 1998, two years before 9/11, Zbigiew Brzezinski flippantly dismissed critics of the policy this way:

Question: And neither do you regret having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists?

Answer: What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?

Question: 'Some agitated Muslims'? But it has been said that repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today...

Answer: Nonsense... [Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, Jan. 15-21, 1998]

The US opposes independent nationalism from Iraq to Venezuela. It prefers to weaken independent states to diminish their military potential in either the Middle East or Latin America, and to break down what are described as 'protectionist' barriers to the 'free trade' model of Halliburton or Wal-Mart.

In seeking to impose both Pentagon dominance and a neo-liberal economic model on the world, the US is prepared to accept alliances with religious forces that insist on strict censorship and punishment of freedom of association and belief. For Bush and the neo-conservatives, it seems, freedom for American investors can't wait, but women - their rights 'are not critical to the evolution of democracy.'"

Katrina warning

2005-08-28T13:43:00.000-05:00

Ok people get out now. If you know a poor person that needs a ride. Take them with. The superdome is 9 feet below sea level.

CATASTROPHIC HURRICANE APPROACHING NEW ORLEANS REGION

NHC WARNINGS:

Hurricane Warnings :
NORTH CENTRAL GULF COAST FROM MORGAN CITY LOUISIANA EASTWARD TO THE ALABAMA/FLORIDA BORDER...INCLUDING THE CITY OF NEW ORLEANS AND LAKE PONCHARTRAIN.

Tropical Storm Warning & Watches: A TROPICAL STORM WARNING AND A HURRICANE
WATCH HAVE BEEN ISSUED FROM EAST OF THE ALABAMA/FLORIDA BORDER EASTWARD TO DESTIN FLORIDA...AND FROM WEST OF MORGAN CITY TO
INTRACOASTAL CITY LOUISIANA.

A TROPICAL STORM WARNING IS ALSO IN EFFECT FROM DESTIN FLORIDA TO INDIAN PASS FLORIDA AND FROM THE INTRACOASTAL CITY LOUISIANA WEST TO CAMERON, LOUISIANA.

NOTE: My Advisory Service is for Informational Purposes only -- You are STRONGLY urged to follow the directions of all Emergency management, Police and Governmental Agencies in your area as it relates to the protection of lives and property - regardless of what my Storm Updates may imply.
*******************************

CURRENT POSITION / NOTEWORTHY REPORTS PAST HOUR

KATRINA LOCATED 26.1N / 88.1W or 290 miles SSE of Gulfport, MS. - 275 miles SSE of downtown New Orleans - and 240 miles SSE of Port Eads at the southern tip of the Mississippi Delta. Katrina is heading just north of DUE Northwest at 9Kts (10 MPH) over the past 2 hours

RECON Reports:

Pressure 907mb ( DOWN 42MB IN 24 HRS)
MAX Flight Level wind 166KTS - SUSTAINED SURFACE WINDS 175MPH - GUSTS TO 200MPH.

EYEWALL DIAMETER IS STEADY AT 22NM
CREW REPORTS 'PERFECT STADIUM EFFECT'

Hurricane Katrina is now as strong as Hurricane Camille in 1969 - but this storm is larger, and will cause more extensive damage, and if it strikes New Orleans at 'just the right angle' - will no doubt MAY lead to the greatest loss of life from a land falling hurricane in nearly 100 years.

The exact track - and even the exact intensity of Katrina at landfall is still simply too difficult to predict with the type of precision everyone would like. As discussed extensively over the past few days, the overall environment surrounding Katrina was expected to become as conducive to the development of a CAT 5 hurricane that scientists are able to determine. One o the biggest 'unknowns' - and lowest skill forecast - are for storm intensity. Ironically, this is especially true when trying to forecast intensities in the near-term -- 24 hours or less.

Unlike Track forecast accuracy, which improves as the time of landfall approaches, intensity forecasts exhibit only slightly better skill than pure chance, when in the 0-24 hour outlook period. MANY factors come into play that
cause this, including the fact that we still do not know 'everything' we need to know about how hurricane work.

As a result, one of the biggest changes that occur with a hurricane that affect intensity are the eye wall replacement cycles - also talked about extensively in the past 2 days. There is no real telling when an eye wall replacement cycle will start, or how long it will last. However, the first signs of it are normally when the eye diameter starts shrinking to near or below 10NM.

Last night, when Katrina bean intensifying rapidly, the eye was 40NM across. Even around 2AM, the eye had only shrunk to 38NM, yet the pressure had already fallen to 935mb. I have never seen (in 35 years of watching) a storm
of such intensity, with such a large eye. 5 hours later, we find an eye that is 22NM across, and the pressure has fallensome 28mb -- and the winds responded immediately by increasing to a strong CAT intensity.

The question is - will the eye continue to shrink over the coming hours (which by the way would cause the winds to increase even more all things being equal) -- and then cause the storm to enter an eye wall replacement cycle. What could be a 'fooler' is that the eye might get down to around 15NM-18NM and then start to re-cycle. We are in uncharted territory in this regard. The '10NM or less rule of thumb' may not apply to what is about the most intense hurricane in recorded history (in the Atlantic basin). In any event, once the eye wall goes through regeneration, the pressure will rise, and the maximum winds will decrease as the developing outer eyewall will be of much greater diameter. A replacement cycle can run from 6 to 18 hours. Another possibility, is that Katrina may start doing a different variation on the theme - that is - rapid eye wall cycling. VERY intense hurricanes have done this before.

IVAN went through this type of rapid cycling while in was in the Caribbean. This is where the eye shrinks to near 5-8NM while a new wall forms at around 15NM. This replacement cycle lasts for 2-4 hours -- and the period of slightly higher
pressure, and lower winds is relatively brief. This may have the highest probability of happening. No doubt this entire process is related to why historically, Atlantic basin Hurricanes rarely can maintain CAT 5 intensity for very long periods.

By the time a 12 or 18 cycle completes, the storm is many times in an area that is not as favorable for re-intensification.
Either the water temps are cooler, or the vertical shears are a bit higher, or the storm is closer to land. There is only a
VERY REMOTE possibility that Katrina will not have at least 1 eye wall replacement during the next 24 hours.

Below are some recent Buoy reports (about 1 hour ago). Note that the storm surge from Katrina is NOT the same thing as sea swell or wave heights. The storm surge is totally different, and relates to how much the entire ocean rises above normal
tidal height. Similar to a Tsunami. ON TOP of the storm surge, will be the wind driven waves. These wave heights are what are being shown below, and will be what I pass along as the storm approaches. IVAN produced a wave height of 70 feet that destroyed an oil platform. Katrina, IF IT MAINTAINS ITS CURRENT INTENSITY, will cause wave heights of 80-100 feet over the open ocean -depending on just how fast the storm is moving by any given area at the time. The full force winds of 175mph, and gusts to 200mph is likely only occurring across an arcing shaped rectangular area roughly 5 miles wide by 30 miles long, adjacent to the NE portion of the eyewall. That is the area where the 80-100ft waves would
be occurring. Assuming Katrina cuts across the Delta with the TRUE CENTER passing over Borne at it's current intensity, a 24-28 foot storm surge will hit the Delta and the Bay St. Louis area, where wind driven waves will be about 50 feet.

Because of the extraordinary nature of this event -- my updates will vary considerably from 'normal'. Only highly relevant images and analysis will be provided. I will attempt to issue 1 'Major Update' around 8PM CDT tonight.

To maximize peoples ability to see 'the whole story' - my blog postings will tend to be 'updates' only to each post - versus starting an entirely new post. An update to this Advisory with the latest computer model run data will be sent in about 1 hour.

Steve Gregory

BUOY REPORTS

42001 180NM South of Southwest Pass, LA Winds N 37Kts Gust 47Kts 20 foot sea swells
42007 - 22NM SSE of Biloxi, MS Winds E 25Kts Gust 29Kts / 12 foot sea swells
42039 (115NM ESE Pensacolal) Winds E 27Kts Gust 37Kts / 19 foot sea swells
42040 (64NM South of Dauphin Island) Winds ENE 25Kts Gust 33Kts / 17 ftoot sea swells

AlterNet: A Different Take on Disengagement

2005-08-27T18:28:00.000-05:00

Disengagement was all a show folks. They just did it to make the likelyhood of leaving the West Bank look impossible to the Israeli majority.

AlterNet: A Different Take on Disengagement: "If Ariel Sharon had been willing to negotiate a genuine peace agreement with the Palestinians in which Israel withdrew to the 1967 border (with slight border modifications along the lines suggested by Yossi Beilin in the Geneva Accord of 2003), one part of that agreement could have allowed all settlers to stay in their homes in Gaza and the West Bank as long as they agreed to be law-abiding citizens of the Palestinian state that would be governing that area. If they were not willing to give up their Israeli citizenship and live in peace with their neighbors, they could voluntarily leave their homes and return to Israel. That is the same choice that Arabs faced once Israel was established in a land that they once governed. It should have been the choice offered to Israeli settlers as well.

There never had to be the horrible scene of people being dragged from their homes.

So why did it happen? Because Ariel Sharon's entire plan -- as explained to the Israeli public by his assistant, Dov Weisglass -- was to sacrifice the settlers of Gaza precisely in order to have the painful images that dominated the media, so that Sharon could argue 'Of course no one can ask us to do this kind of thing to the 300,000 settlers in the West Bank, given the pain everyone has seen us go through in Gaza.'

As Sharon's aides tried to tell the settlers, the Disengagement was intended to preserve the Occupation, not undermine it. And so, Sharon is moving ahead to finish construction of the Separation Wall and cut off from the West Bank the 150,000 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem (not to mention many other Palestinians living in proximity to the Wall), expropriate more and more Palestinian land, and 'create facts' on the ground that will be hard to change.

There are some who celebrate this Gaza withdrawal as the first step in the process of dismantling settlements. Rabbi Lerner asks them the following: 'At what point, how many years from now, while the Occupation continues of much of the West Bank, will you acknowledge that this was simply another part of the scheme that Sharon has--to hold on to close to 50 percent of the West Bank while offering Palestinians a state that will be neither economically nor politically viable, a state that, when they refuse it, or when they accept it and then ask for more, will be used as 'proof' that nothing will ever satisfy them?' So, Rabbi Lerner argues, we should understand that all the pain was part of an elaborate ruse--and though the immediate victims are the Gaza settlers, the real victims are all the peoples of Israel and Palestine who will have to endure the ongoing suffering that the continuation of the Occupation guarantees."

The only problem for Sharon is that it isn't working. Most of the Israeli public supports more disengagement from the West Bank settlements. They were also offended by the behavior of the settlers, because of the way they exploited their kids and because of their harassment of the soldiers.

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Britain heads for clash with US

2005-08-27T09:26:00.000-05:00

Britain rebels against our hired asshole at the UN John Bolton. As documented in yesterdays diary he also intends to derail the nuclear non proliferation treaty and work to stop global warming.

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Britain heads for clash with US: "A draft of that plan had included a review of progress on the UN's millennium development goals - poverty eradication targets set in 2000 for completion by 2015 - and the introduction of reforms aimed at repairing the damage done to the UN's reputation by Iraq, Rwanda and the Balkans.

Article continues
But it was revealed this week that Mr Bush's new ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, was seeking 750 changes to the 36-page draft plan to be presented to a special summit in New York on September 14 to 16. Mr Bolton's amendments, if successful, would leave the plan in tatters......

The concern in British and other international circles is that the American objections, if adopted, would severely undermine the UN summit, the biggest-ever gathering of world leaders......

A source close to the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan said it was too early to declare the UN plan dead. "Bolton wants to knock down the plan and start from scratch," the source said. "He will find that his opinions are not shared by most of the rest of the world."

The president of the UN general assembly, Jean Ping from the Gambia, has been working on the draft, covering issues of poverty, climate change, genocide, small arms, the creation of a permanent UN peacekeeping capability and reform of the UN management structure, for the past year.........

U.S. Wants Changes In U.N. Agreement

2005-08-26T18:26:00.000-05:00

News of our hired asshole at the UN John Bolton!

U.S. Wants Changes In U.N. Agreement: "The United States has only recently introduced more than 750 amendments that would eliminate new pledges of foreign aid to impoverished nations, scrap provisions that call for action to halt climate change and urge nuclear powers to make greater progress in dismantling their nuclear arms. At the same time, the administration is urging members of the United Nations to strengthen language in the 29-page document that would underscore the importance of taking tougher action against terrorism, promoting human rights and democracy, and halting the spread of the world's deadliest weapons..........

The proposed changes, submitted by U.S. Ambassador John R. Bolton, touch on virtually every aspect of U.N. affairs and provide a detailed look at U.S. concerns about the world body's future. They underscore U.S. efforts to impose greater oversight of U.N. spending and to eliminate any reference to the International Criminal Court. The administration also opposes language that urges the five permanent members of the Security Council not to cast vetoes to block action to halt genocide, war crimes or ethnic cleansing.

These changes are so hypocritical. Where to start. For one thing you can't seriously want to halt the spread of WMD then halt provisions that call for greater progress to be made dismantling nukes. If you are serious about tackling genocide, why in the world would you want to kill the ICC? They were the one that tried Milosevic. This is all meant to support American Unilateralism and exceptionalism.

The Bush adminstration neoconservatives hate the ICC because it might take a look at Abu Ghraib for instance, and because it has taken issue with the wall and the settlements in Israel. They also want to halt the dismantlement nuclear weapons because they are trying to rebuild America's arsenal. In fact they are testing them again after Kennedy banned nuclear testing. In this spirit they have rejected the nuclear non proliferation treaty. This is one of the reasons we have no leverage over the Iranians, who have signed it. Putting the millenium goals, foreign aid to poor countries, and the global warming issue on hold is just a way to be venial and extra stupid, arrogant and assholish. Neocons consider meaness a virtue. That is what unilaterism is in essence, being an asshole and getting away with it.

Bolton would have been refused the position at the UN if this were a sane and responsible administration. He is one of the guys that lied us into the Iraq war.

The Blog | Max Blumenthal: Hitchens Tries S&M | The Huffington Post

2005-08-25T11:37:00.000-05:00

Max Bluenthal gives the most thorough run down, of Christopher Hitchens and his hypocracy that I have ever seen.

The Blog | Max Blumenthal: Hitchens Tries S&M | The Huffington Post: "Take hitching July 12, 2001 column for the Nation magazine eulogizing Israeli peace activist Israel Shahak. Here, Hitchens makes practically the same points he condemns Sheehan for supposedly making (sentiments that I don't necessarily disagree with, but which are nonetheless hypocritical for Hitchens to now denounce):

Only the other day, I read some sanguinary proclamation from the rabbinical commander of the Shas party, Ovadia Yosef, himself much sought after by both Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon. It was a vulgar demand for the holy extermination of non-Jews; the vilest effusions of Hamas and Islamic Jihad would have been hard-pressed to match it. The man wants a dictatorial theocracy for Jews and helotry or expulsion for the Palestinians, and he sees (as Shahak did in reverse) the connection. This is not a detail; Yosef's government receives an enormous US subsidy, and his intended victims live (and die, every day) under a Pax Americana.

Hitchens' expressed his opinion of Zionism more explicitly in a barely coherent November 14, 2001 op-ed for the Guardian, called 'Ha, ha, ha to the pacifists.' Accusing 'the peaceniks' of harboring a conciliatory attitude towards radical Islamic terrorists, Hitchens wrote:

Come Yom Kippur I tend to step up my scornful remarks about Zionism. Whatever happened to the robust secularism that used to help characterise the left? And why is it suddenly only the injured feelings of Muslims that count?

Hitchens criticism of Sheehan is, of course, rooted in his role as a Hoover Institute-funded cheerleader for the failed policies of his newfound neocon fantasist friends. If we harken back to the days of the Clinton administration, however, we'll see how Hitchens took a decidedly different tack on US foreign policy."

Raw Story: Exclusive: Downing Street reporter dissects pre-war Iraq intelligence

2005-08-25T10:37:00.000-05:00

How Tony Blair stovepiped and misinterpreted intellegence analysis to scare the shit out of Britons!

There was of course nothing sub-conscious about the way in which the 45-minute claim was hardened up. The source did not specify the precise context for this timing and no-one in either British spy agency MI6 or the JIC Current Intelligence Group on Iraq seemed to know.

But among military intelligence experts on artillery and missile systems, the figures rang some very loud bells. They appeared to be straight out of the old Soviet artillery and rocket troops manual. The most likely systems the Iraqis would use to deliver chemical or biological weapons were all Soviet-made mortar, artillery and missile systems.

These included the al-Hussein surface-to-surface missile. This was an Iraqi version of the Scud missile, which was the Soviet army-level surface-to-surface missile system. In common with all other Soviet workers, Red Army troops were given 'norms' for the time it should take them to perform particular tasks. The 'norm' for the time it should take for warheads to be moved from a forward storage site to the missile firing point and the missile to be ready to fire was 45 minutes.

more......

t is not clear whether the Prime Minister spotted the 45-minute claim when it first landed on his desk in the shape of the original CX report from MI6. But it had certainly caught his eye in the days following its first mention in a draft of the dossier circulated on Sept. 9, 2002. At this stage it was only mentioned twice and, since it was not qualified, couched in very cautious terms. The Sept. 9 draft said the intelligence merely 'suggested' Iraq could deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes.

But amid the confusing, and often uncertain, intelligence reports on Iraq it was a detail that Mr Blair and his advisers, not least Alastair Campbell, his Director of Communications, knew the public would understand. Despite the conclusions of the Intelligence and Security Committee, there is no doubt that as far as Campbell and Blair were concerned, it was the sound bite that would sell the war to some of the many people who remained unconvinced, not least a large number of backbench Labour MPs. It would only take Saddam 45 minutes to fire his chemical or biological weapons.

Put at its simplest, as Campbell knew the tabloid headline writers would, British bases in Cyprus were '45 minutes from doom.'

Blair got a boost in the polls since the recent bombings in London. People approve of this deportation of radical clerics, but this hasn't translated into approval for the war, so this boost is likely temporary. In the meantime there is still an impeachment movement going on.

No Proof Found of Iran Arms Program

2005-08-23T11:36:00.000-05:00

Bolton fabricates evidence of WMD against Iran!

No Proof Found of Iran Arms Program: "Traces of bomb-grade uranium found two years ago in Iran came from contaminated Pakistani equipment and are not evidence of a clandestine nuclear weapons program, a group of U.S. government experts and other international scientists has determined.

'The biggest smoking gun that everyone was waving is now eliminated with these conclusions,' said a senior official who discussed the still-confidential findings on the condition of anonymity.........

Iran has long contended that the uranium traces were the result of contaminated equipment bought years ago from Pakistan. But the Bush administration had pointed to the material as evidence that Iran was making bomb-grade ingredients........

John R. Bolton, now U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, served as the administration's point man on nuclear issuesduring President Bush's first term. He suggested during congressional testimony in June 2004 that the Iranians were lying about the contamination.

"Another unmistakable indicator of Iran's intentions is the pattern of repeatedly lying to and providing false and incomplete reports to the IAEA," Bolton said. "For example, Iran first denied it had enriched any uranium. Then it said it had not enriched uranium more than 1.2 percent. Later, when evidence of uranium enriched to 36 percent was found, it attributed this to contamination from imported centrifuge parts.".......

Bolton was also central to the frabrication of evidence against Iraq! From the famous report "The Stove Pipe" by Seymour Hersh

A few months after George Bush took office, Greg Thielmann, an expert on disarmament with the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, or INR, was assigned to be the daily intelligence liaison to John Bolton, the Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control, who is a prominent conservative. Thielmann understood that his posting had been mandated by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who thought that every important State Department bureau should be assigned a daily intelligence officer. “Bolton was the guy with whom I had to do business,” Thielmann said. “We were going to provide him with all the information he was entitled to see. That’s what being a professional intelligence officer is all about.”

But, Thielmann told me, “Bolton seemed to be troubled because INR was not telling him what he wanted to hear.” Thielmann soon found himself shut out of Bolton’s early-morning staff meetings. “I was intercepted at the door of his office and told, ‘The Under-Secretary doesn’t need you to attend this meeting anymore.’ ” When Thielmann protested that he was there to provide intelligence input, the aide said, “The Under-Secretary wants to keep this in the family.”

Eventually, Thielmann said, Bolton demanded that he and his staff have direct electronic access to sensitive intelligence, such as foreign-agent reports and electronic intercepts. In previous Administrations, such data had been made available to under-secretaries only after it was analyzed, usually in the specially secured offices of INR. The whole point of the intelligence system in place, according to Thielmann, was “to prevent raw intelligence from getting to people who would be misled.” Bolton, however, wanted his aides to receive and assign intelligence analyses and assessments using the raw data. In essence, the under-secretary would be running his own intelligence operation, without any guidance or support. “He surrounded himself with a hand-chosen group of loyalists, and found a way to get C.I.A. information directly,” Thielmann said.

In a subsequent interview, Bolton acknowledged that he had changed the procedures for handling intelligence, in an effort to extend the scope of the classified materials available to his office. “I found that there was lots of stuff that I wasn’t getting and that the INR analysts weren’t including,” he told me. “I didn’t want it filtered. I wanted to see everything—to be fully informed. If that puts someone’s nose out of joint, sorry about that.” Bolton told me that he wanted to reach out to the intelligence community but that Thielmann had “invited himself” to his daily staff meetings. “This was my meeting with the four assistant secretaries who report to me, in preparation for the Secretary’s 8:30 a.m. staff meeting,” Bolton said. “This was within my family of bureaus. There was no place for INR or anyone else—the Human Resources Bureau or the Office of Foreign Buildings.”

FOXNews.com - U.S. & World - Robertson Calls for Chavez's Assassination

2005-08-23T07:50:00.000-05:00

As the dailykos version of the story read: Radical Cleric issues fatwa to kill the President!

FOXNews.com - U.S. & World - Robertson Calls for Chavez's Assassination: "VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson (search) suggested on-air that American operatives assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (search) to stop his country from becoming 'a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism.'

'We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability,' Robertson said Monday on the Christian Broadcast Network's 'The 700 Club.'

'We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator,' he continued. 'It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.'

Chavez has emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of President Bush (search), accusing the United States of conspiring to topple his government and possibly backing plots to assassinate him. U.S. officials have called the accusations ridiculous.

'You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it,' Robertson said. 'It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war ... and I don't think any oil shipments will stop.'"

There are several problems with this proposal.

1)One Chavez isn't a dictator. He has been elected three times already. The last time was a recall election monitored by the Carter Center, which Jimmy Cater himself declared legimate. He won by close to 60% of the vote. Unlike Ohio 2004 and Florida 2000, the devices used in this election left a paper trail.

2)The coup wasn't popular. If it was, Chavez wouldn't have won the recall that occured after the coup. Also isn't is stupid to have a coup when you can just recall someone who is unpopular? Maybe the reason they had a coup was because they knew the people weren't really on their side?

3)Chavez has only threatened to stop oil shipments if there is an attempt on his life. His successors are actually the ones that vowed to do this. By threatening Chavez, you are making this event more likely. You are also proving him absolutely right in his fear that the US is trying to kill him.

4)Isn't Robertson suppose to believe in the 10 commandments. You know, "Thou shall not kill! Though shall not steal! Though shall not lie!" Looks to me like you have broken several here Pat! You are killing Chavez, just because he wants to govern his own country and because you want to take his oil instead of having to buy it lawfully, and you are lying to justify it. You are nothing but a big time thug Pat!

Because of this argument you Pat, have actually convinced me of the necessity of putting the 10 commandments up in the classrooms of all the red states!

43 service women have died for Islamic theocracy.

2005-08-21T21:03:00.000-05:00

Spc. Carrie L.French, 19

That's right 43 lost their lives for rule by the clerics. We will install "Iranian style Democracy". Islam will now be the primary source of law in the Constitution as oppose to a source. The clerics will dominate family law, divorce, inheritance and child custody. Women won't have a secular alternative. All laws in Iraq can be nullified by the Clerics under the Constitution. The administration is twisting arms for this atrocity.

According to the Guardian

There are currently 138,000 US troops in Iraq, including 25,000 marines. President Bush has repeatedly denied that the US intends to "cut and run", leaving Iraq to the insurgents. "Our troops know that they're fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere to protect their fellow Americans from a savage enemy," the president said yesterday in his weekly radio address.

Conservative Shias, dominant in the Iraqi government, had clashed with Kurds and other minorities who wanted Islam to be "a" rather than "the" main source of law.

According to Kurdish and Sunni negotiators, the US ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, proposed that Islam be named "a primary source" and supported a wording which would give clerics authority in civil matters such as divorce, marriage and inheritance.

If approved, critics say that the proposals would erode women's rights and other freedoms enshrined under existing laws. "We understand the Americans have sided with the Shias. It's shocking. It doesn't fit with American values," an unnamed Kurdish negotiator told Reuters. "They have spent so much blood and money here, only to back the creation of an Islamist state."

Dozens of women gathered in central Baghdad yesterday to protest against what the organiser, Yanar Mohammad, feared would be a "fascist, nationalist and Islamist" constitution. "We are fighting to avoid becoming second class citizens," she said.

A Bush supporter had this to say on MTP.

GERECHT: I think it's important to remember that in the year 1900, for example, in the United States ... women did not have the right to vote. If Iraqis could develop a democracy that resembled America in the 1900s, I think we'd all be thrilled. I mean, women's social rights are not critical to the evolution of democracy. We hope they're there. I think they will be there. But I think we need to put this into perspective.

Excuse me, but the American constitution was changable because it was not beholden to religious law. The founders were 18 century secularists, with 18th century views on women but they were secularists, never the less. Iraqi women will have to arm themselves and overthrow the government to get change.

MyDD :: Second Bowers Blogopshere Memo to the Democratic Establishment

2005-08-21T12:03:00.000-05:00

Being against the war plays well with the Democratic base. Remember these people actually vote in primaries.

MyDD :: Second Bowers Blogopshere Memo to the Democratic Establishment:

"However, while I don't have a blanket answer, like many others who spend their days amongst the netroots, I have known for some time exactly how a prospective Democratic nominee could move his or her numbers without running a single ad of any kind. Actually, it is rather simple: offer a real plan to get out of Iraq.

Don't believe me? Look at three candidates from the first two Dailykos community 2008 straw polls, Clinton, Feingold, and Edwards, who have been battling it out for a distant second behind Clark. You can find the June poll here and the July poll here.

June July
Clinton 36.8% 37.0%
Feingold 35.6% 35.5%
Edwards 27.6% 27.5%

(Note: Percentages reflect the percentages of votes each candidate received from the combined total of Clinton, Feingold and Edwards votes)

Clinton, Feingold and Edwards had nearly identical, and static, support among the netroots in these two polls. Now, look at the numbers in the August straw poll, one day after Feingold declared that he supported a timeline with fixed dates and a real plan for withdrawal:

August
Feingold 53.0%
Clinton 25.0%
Edwards 22.0%

(Note: numbers as of this writing)

Now that is what I call moving numbers. One single policy proposal completely altered the way the netroots saw these three candidates in relative terms. And that is in one day, with one policy. There is, quite simply, nothing else a candidate could do to move support in the netroots as quickly as this, period.

* * *"

The Blog | Cenk Uygur: The War Against Fundamentalism | The Huffington Post

2005-08-21T11:29:00.000-05:00

It's fundamentalism stupid!

The Blog | Cenk Uygur: The War Against Fundamentalism | The Huffington Post: "have a simple answer – fundamentalism. Muslim fundamentalists believe it is their moral duty to fight a jihad against the West. They are guided by their strict, literal reading of the Koran (helped along by hateful imams who select the worst parts of the Koran).

But we are not just aligned against Muslim fundamentalists. The problem is broader than that. It is Jewish fundamentalists like the Gaza settlers and Christian fundamentalists like Tom DeLay who want to drive us further into this conflict. They also rely on their absurd interpretations of their religious texts.

The Jewish settlers who are being removed from the Gaza Strip this week believe God promised them that piece of land over two thousand years ago. Because of this belief they are not concerned by the 1.3 million Palestinians who happen to live there. People who are willing to walk all over the rights and property of other people because of their own religious beliefs are dangerous, not just to the people they oppress – but to all of us.

They drive us deeper and deeper into wars with no end. How can the Palestinians stop fighting if they are occupied by people who think they have no rights because God is not on their side? Of course, this will lead to conflicts that spiral out of control.

The problem is we are too polite and we are not willing to call people what they are – crazy. If you think Santa Claus, Barney the Purple Dinosaur or Yahweh promised you some land over two thousand years ago because you were specially selected by him as his chosen people – you are nuts!"

There is one fundamentalism this author doesn't recognize though.

I’ll go further. A culture that does not promote democracy where citizens are empowered to make their own decisions is wrong. A culture that is opposed to science and evolution is wrong.

Now, that sounds like I’m saying American culture is better than most of the other cultures in the world. That is mostly right. The neocons think the United States can dominate the world if we impose our democracy on other countries through invasion. I think we can prosper together in a world where we fight to impose our culture on others. Not through bloody invasions but through the power of our ideas.

There isn’t a country in the world that can withstand invasion by Levi’s, Nike, McDonald’s, American movies and Paris Hilton porn. The neocons think we can bomb Iran into a democracy (I honestly have never heard of a dumber and more counterproductive idea). I think we flood young Iranians with cell phones, laptops and television dishes, then sit back, relax and enjoy the show.

Imposing low wage McDonalds and Wal-Mart on the rest of the world will make fundamentalism worse by making it more ignorant and poor. Paris Hilton porn is only acceptable because she is rich and really had a choice about it. Many poor women, are more or less forced into porn and prostitution by poverty, and debt slavery. Market Fundamentalism wants to view women's body parts as a commodity, and that isn't a good thing either.

Daily Kos: Feingold stands apart: Target date for withrawal will work Review of his MTP appearance

2005-08-21T10:18:00.000-05:00

Daily Kos: Feingold stands apart: Target date for withrawal will work: "1. It's a false argument to think that a target date for withdrawal is a recipe for failure. In truth, most success in the effort so far has resulted from setting targets: the sovereignty transfer; the elections; and the constitution (which even with the delays, is still part of a timeline)

2. Not setting a target actually makes matters WORSE, since it gives Osama a continuing recruiting tool, augmenting terrorist numbers

3. The Democratic leadership - Reid, Biden, Hillary - have fallen into the same trap they did when the war resolution was first debated (Iraq wasn't one of the 45 listed nations where Al Qaeda had a presence). They are simply intimidated by the White House.

4. In any case, a target isn't a deadline; it's a middle and flexible ground for goal setting. Staying the course is simply unacceptable.
[i]
Whatever one thinks of these opinions, there is no question that Feingold offers a clear alternative to the Democratic leadership."[/i]

Exactly, why do we want a scaredy-pants dem to lead the party. Biden and Hillary are both considered contenders for the Democratic nomination.

The Swift Boating of Cindy Sheehan - New York Times

2005-08-21T08:51:00.000-05:00

by Frank Rich

The Swift Boating of Cindy Sheehan - New York Times: "The most prominent smear victims have been Bush political opponents with heroic Vietnam r�sum�s: John McCain, Max Cleland, John Kerry. But the list of past targets stretches from the former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke to Specialist Thomas Wilson, the grunt who publicly challenged Donald Rumsfeld about inadequately armored vehicles last December. The assault on the whistle-blower Joseph Wilson - the diplomat described by the first President Bush as 'courageous' and 'a true American hero' for confronting Saddam to save American hostages in 1991 - was so toxic it may yet send its perpetrators to jail.

True to form, the attack on Cindy Sheehan surfaced early on Fox News, where she was immediately labeled a 'crackpot' by Fred Barnes. The right-wing blogosphere quickly spread tales of her divorce, her angry Republican in-laws, her supposed political flip-flops, her incendiary sloganeering and her association with known ticket-stub-carrying attendees of 'Fahrenheit 9/11.' Rush Limbaugh went so far as to declare that Ms. Sheehan's 'story is nothing more than forged documents - there's nothing about it that's real.'

But this time the Swift Boating failed, utterly, and that failure is yet another revealing historical marker in this summer's collapse of political support for the Iraq war.

When the Bush mob attacks critics like Ms. Sheehan, its highest priority is to change the subject. If we talk about Richard Clarke's character, then we stop talking about the administration's pre-9/11 inattentiveness to terrorism. If Thomas Wilson is trashed as an insubordinate plant of the 'liberal media,' we forget the Pentagon's abysmal failure to give our troops adequate armor (a failure that persists today, eight months after he spoke up). If we focus on Joseph Wilson's wife, we lose the big picture of how the administration twisted intelligence to gin up the threat of Saddam's nonexistent W.M.D.'s."

Let's hope they can't make the shit stick in the American mind, however since the public was turning against the war without Sheehan, I am not sure I wanted this effort. As the great James Wolcott points out.

No one doubts her pain, sorrow, sincerity, and commitment. But I worry that if she insists on staying in Crawford, Texas to meet the president again, Camp Casey might attracts all sorts of "undesirable elements" that could damage her cause and provoke a column from Richard Cohen of the Washington Post arguing she's in danger of losing her "credibility." And I think that we would all agree that when it comes to being the conscience of journalistic liberalism inside the Beltway, no one has a nattier beard than Richard Cohen.

Daily Kos: Feingold on Meet the Press

2005-08-21T06:52:00.000-05:00

This should be good.

Daily Kos: Feingold on Meet the Press: "Feingold on Meet the Press
by peacenik23 [Subscribe]
Sun Aug 21st, 2005 at 01:34:43 CST

For the past while, a lot of us have been unhappy with the Dems on sunday morning talk shows. Too much Biden and Lieberman, too little Dean and Feingold. Well that all should change this morning with Senator Feingold appearing on Meet the Press.

'With the casualty count mounting in Iraq and protesters continuing to shadow President Bush, the debate over America's involvement in Iraq has dominated the news. Should the U.S. set a deadline for withdrawing American troops? Yes, says Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), who, in an exclusive interview on this Sunday's 'Meet the Press,' will discuss his decision to be the first U.S. Senator to offer a specific date -- December 31, 2006 -- as the target for the complete withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.'

(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3898804/)"

Finegold is a Presidential hopeful and one the first Senators to offer up a time table for withdrawal.

In a telephone interview from Wisconsin, Feingold said he has heard a wave of public disenchantment at 15 town hall meetings so far during the August recess, leading him to propose a Dec. 31, 2006, deadline.
"There's a deepening feeling of dismay in the country about the way things are going in Iraq," Feingold said. He rejected Bush's assertion that a deadline would make it easier for insurgents to simply hang on. "I think he's wrong. I think not talking about endgames is playing into our enemies' hand."

The White House had no comment, except to point to Bush's past statements rejecting a withdrawal timetable, a position shared by Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.). "Like other members of the caucus, he's been calling for some benchmarks from the administration to measure progress," Reid spokesman Jim Manley said, "but he is opposed to setting a date certain for withdrawal, concerned that would undercut the troops."

He has true spine, because he has to know he will be attacked for it. Look at what the republicans did to the war protesters, John Kerry and now Cindy Sheehan. I want a President with a spine of steel! I don't think anyone will fall for the wishy washy dem being more electable, dlc line of bull at the next round of Presidential primaries.

Bush will `go on with life'

2005-08-14T19:54:00.000-05:00

Bush says not meeting with Sheehan "is necessary for him to go on with my life."

Bush will `go on with life': "'But,' he added, 'I think it's also important for me to go on with my life, to keep a balanced life.'

The comments came prior to a bike ride on the ranch with journalists and aides. It also came as the crowd of protesters grew in support of Sheehan, the California mother who came here Aug. 6 demanding to talk to Bush about the death of her son Casey. Sheehan arrived earlier in the week with about a half dozen supporters. As of yesterday (Saturday) there were about 300 anti-war protesters and approximately 100 people supporting the Bush Administration. In addition to the two-hour bike ride, Bush's Saturday schedule included an evening Little League Baseball playoff game, a lunch meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a nap, some fishing and some reading. 'I think the people want the president to be in a position to make good, crisp decisions and to stay healthy,' he said when asked about bike riding while a grieving mom wanted to speak with him. 'And part of my being is to be outside exercising.'

On Friday, Bush's motorcade drove by the protest site en route to a Republican fund-raising event at a nearby ranch.

As Bush rolled by, Sheehan held a sign that said, 'Why do you make time for donors and not for me?'"

This last part says it all. Remember, this stuff is now being reported in the overwhelmingly probush Southern media!

The Raw Story | Senate Intelligence chairman quietly 'fixed' intelligence, and diverted blame from White House over Iraq

2005-08-11T16:59:00.000-05:00

The scandal widens to include the intelligence committee.

The Raw Story | Senate Intelligence chairman quietly 'fixed' intelligence, and diverted blame from White House over Iraq: "Senate Intelligence chairman quietly 'fixed' intelligence, and diverted blame from White House over Iraq

Larisa Alexandrovna

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush issued an order to the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Department, and his cabinet members that severely curtailed intelligence oversight by restricting classified information to just eight members of Congress.

'The only Members of Congress whom you or your expressly designated officers may brief regarding classified or sensitive law enforcement information,' he writes, 'are the Speaker of the House, the House Minority Leader, the Senate Majority and Minority Leaders, and the Chairs and Ranking Members of the Intelligence Committees in the House and Senate.'

The order is aimed at protecting 'military security' and 'sensitive law enforcement.'

But what was said to be an effort to protect the United States became a tool by which the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Pat Roberts (R-KS) ensured there was no serious investigation into how the administration fixed the intelligence that took the United States to war in Iraq or the fabricated documents used as evidence to do so.

Timeline: How Roberts helped fix pre-war intelligence
Coupled with limited access to intelligence documents, RAW STORY has found that Roberts and a handful of other strategically-placed Washington players stymied all questions into pre-war intelligence on Iraq and post-invasion cover-ups, including the outing of a CIA covert agent, by using targeted leaks and artfully deflecting blame from the White House."

Unfortunately, this list of eight would include Democratic minority leaders Daschle and Gephardt, followed by Pelosi, and ranking Democrats Jay Rockefeller, and Nancy Pelosi followed by Jane Harmon.

Over 100 Groups Urge President to Enforce Anti-Prostitution Policy to Aid Sexually Exploited Women and Children

2005-08-09T20:41:00.000-05:00

This headline should read "Liberals stupidly allow Bush to frame aids education as pro-sex trafficking.

Over 100 Groups Urge President to Enforce Anti-Prostitution Policy to Aid Sexually Exploited Women and Children: "diet diet
News at eDiets relations

Over 100 Groups Urge President to Enforce Anti-Prostitution Policy to Aid Sexually Exploited Women and Children

WASHINGTON, Aug 8, 2005 (U.S. Newswire via COMTEX) -- In a joint letter to President Bush, over 100 women's, health and policy organizations have urged him to protect victims of human trafficking and 'stand firm on legislation and policies that require groups receiving certain federal grants to provide written assurance that they oppose prostitution.'

The letter brings into sharp focus a contentious debate over how to best aid prostituted persons and sex trafficking victims. Some governments and groups favor the so-called 'harm reduction' approach that emphasizes supplying sexually exploited persons with condoms and trying to teach negotiating skills. The U.S. government instead promotes an abolitionist approach that opposes prostitution as inherently harmful and degrading and actively supports the rescue and restoration of sexually exploited individuals, most of whom are women and children.

The U.S. policy-supporting letter was delivered by the Christian Medical Association ( CMA, http://www.cmda.org ) to President Bush's domestic policy advisor, Claude Allen. The letter counters the contentions of some activist groups, expressed in a letter sent to Mr. Bush in May, calling for the President not to enforce the anti-prostitution pledge policy, which was passed by Congress (the United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act of 2003) and signed into law.

Consistent with that law, President Bush issued a National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD-22) that asserted, 'Our Policy is based on an abolitionist approach to trafficking in persons... . The United States Government opposes prostitution and any related activities, including pimping, pandering, or maintaining brothels as contributing to the phenomenon of trafficking in persons.'"

Of coarse the harm reduction approach in no way endorses sex trafficking(actually sex slavery} but by focusing on legalization, rather than the fact that Bush isn't allowing them to give information about safe sex, the people who oppose Bush on this make it look that way.

2005-08-03T17:22:00.000-05:00

A little post on the undercovered events taking place in Israel right now. This involves the disengagement protests at a place called Kfar Maimon.

Haaretz - Israel News - At Kfar Maimon the State of the Faithful was founded: "On Wednesday morning many scores of them listened to a lesson by Rabbi Yehoshua Shapira, the head of the hesder yeshiva (combined Torah study and military service program) in Ramat Gan and one of the most charismatic figures in the eyes of the national religious youth, who explained the parallel between the individual and the nation. According to Hasidic thought, he said, the individual is made up of the anima (the physiological aspect, which is common to all animals), the spirit (the abilities that are common to all human beings) and the soul (the spiritual quality that exists only in Jews). The anima comes to the individual at birth, whereas the spirit enters him only when he reaches the age of mitzvoth (the age of commandment observance, 13 for males). The difficulty of reconciling these forces is the reason for tshe self-destructive tendencies in adolescence. The same development exists in the collective, explained Shapira. The national organism has an 'anima' - it is the state. The state has to see to the material needs of the nation. The state was born in 1948, but the second stage of its development occurred in the Six-Day War. The connection to the Divine presence opened the heart to the 'spirit,' which is supposed to enter into the existing political structures, which are equivalent to the anima. And here is the rub: He is not disappointed with Sharon, as he has no faith in any secular leader. 'I do not believe in a leader who does not come from the beit midrash (religious study house). There cannot be a man of the anima who leads the Jewish people in the era of the spirit. The spirit can come only from the beit midrash.' The difficulties that the Jewish people have faced are stages of maturation, of the birth of the spirit from within the anima, which also entail the danger of confusion and self-destructive tendencies. The disengagement plan is an example of this.

The unwillingness to recognize a secular leadership and the demand for a 'believing' leadership were expressed in the past in groups like Moshe Feiglin's Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish leadership). Now, with the disappointment with Sharon and the secular right as a whole, this line is gathering momentum, and similar things were heard at Kfar Maimon from rabbis like Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, the rabbi of Safed.

As one of the settlement rabbis said to me, 'It could be that we will lose this battle (for Gush Katif), but we will certainly win the whole fight.' The big fight is for hegemony in the state, and religious Zionism is intending to take the place of secular Zionism, which has become tired and has collapsed."

I think it should be clear to everyone as of now that the settlers in Israel are religious extremists. Why the christian right in this country wants America to support a bunch of nutcases that don't believe gentiles have souls is beyond me? Is Pat Robertson an honorary Jew or something?

Daily Kos: GOP Unravels...in Texas

2005-07-26T20:04:00.000-05:00

Things are turning around in the Bush administrations home state of Texas as well!

Daily Kos: GOP Unravels...in Texas: "I'm talking about the stinging defeat suffered by the Texas GOP on the floor of the state House today. GOP leadership, helped to election by illegal corporate contributions, watched helplessly as the Democratic minority and a few frightened Republicans voted down bills that 1) raised taxes on the middle class; 2) Cut taxes for Big Insurance and other special interests involved in the scandal; 3) Stiffed school children and teachers under the guise of education reform.

This is no small matter. It should be pointed out that in the early 1970s, a political scandal called Sharpstown surfaced just ahead of a national political scandal called Watergate. By 1976, Jimmy Carter could carry Texas.

The talking points are simple: Texas Republicans are trying to raise taxes on middle class Texans and devastate public education so they can do what they were ordered to do when they accepted the illegal bribes: cut taxes for the people who paid the bribes.

Several corporations have been indicted. So have some staffers who were allegedly involved in the scheme. Tom DeLay, who lives off his aura of power, says he was powerless over a scheme that invoved his committee and its money and its contributers and that advanced his Congressional redistricting scheme. A grand jury, holding all the cards, is still meeting."

Of coarse our own congress operates on similar principles when you consider the bankruptcy bill and the energy bill!

Roberts Listed in Federalist Society '97-98 Directory

2005-07-25T09:53:00.000-05:00

Roberts Listed in Federalist Society '97-98 Directory: "Roberts has burnished his legal image carefully. When news organizations have reported his membership in the society, he or others speaking on his behalf have sought corrections. Last week, the White House told news organizations that had reported his membership in the group that he had no memory of belonging. The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today and the Associated Press printed corrections.

Over the weekend, The Post obtained a copy of the Federalist Society Lawyers' Division Leadership Directory, 1997-1998. It lists Roberts, then a partner at the law firm Hogan & Hartson, as a member of the steering committee of the organization's Washington chapter and includes his firm's address and telephone number.

Yesterday, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Roberts 'has no recollection of being a member of the Federalist Society, or its steering committee.' Roberts has acknowledged taking part in some Federalist Society activities, Perino said."

Ok, yeah, uh huh!

Anyway, I am of the mind that Roe is a goner, and that isn't entirely a bad thing. As Eric Alterman points out!

Anyway, the Roberts nomination seems to mean we should plan on saying goodbye to thirty-two years of life under “Roe,” which is not entirely a bad thing, even for pro-choice advocates. After all, Bush did terrific with unmarried women without college educations. It would be helpful, politically (and democratically) for them to learn just what it was they were voting for. There’s a much longer argument to be made here, about how judicially-created and enforced liberalism has weakened its cause and alienated its potential supporters while not gaining terribly much in real world terms. (I’m told much the same can be said for “Brown v. Board—at least the “with all deliberate speed” part of it too, but I’ve not yet read up on that argument, and it’s not nearly so germane.) The implications go far beyond that obviously. Roberts is only 50 and Bush is likely to get two more nominees. We may not recognize the Constitution when he’s done. In the meantime, I’ll stick to what I know, will cover the nomination fight if something extraordinary happens. If not, there’s plenty to keep us all busy.

There is nothing you can do to stop a frieght train, and that is what the Bush administration is. The damage done may lead to important reforms in the end! Particularly if it ends public complacency. I know many people who vote for Republicans based on the notion that the courts will protect them from the religious right. It isn't just working class women who don't have time to read newspapers, as Alterman would lead us to believe. It is also upper middle class married women. The so-called security moms. That will officially end once Roe is overturned.

Job Market in W.Va. Defies Efforts to Reform Welfare

2005-07-24T15:42:00.000-05:00

We should measure welfare reform on whether it succeeds in lifting the poor out of poverty. Not just on whether case loads are reduced! Hopefully this will be a priority for a restored Democratic congress, but given the New Democrat leanings of the modern Democrats somehow I doubt it.

Job Market in W.Va. Defies Efforts to Reform Welfare: "She has just turned 30, but her left ankle, crushed when her Dodge compact slammed into a cliff four years ago, keeps her limping, in pain and out of work. Just getting around is a job. She lives in a hollow where the roads twist like whirligigs and it takes half an hour to get to the grocery store -- 45 minutes if you end up behind a coal truck. But she no longer has a car, so she has to grab rides from relatives when she can.

Pedestrians and cars filled McDowell Street in downtown Welch, W.Va., in the 1970s, left. Since the coal boom ended, however, cities such as Welch have struggled with poverty and high rates of unemployment.
Pedestrians and cars filled McDowell Street in downtown Welch, W.Va., in the 1970s, left. Since the coal boom ended, however, cities such as Welch have struggled with poverty and high rates of unemployment. (West Virginia State Archive Via Associated Press)

Diamond received welfare, or Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), until the 60-month limit ran out. Nearly two years later, she began receiving disability checks, or Supplemental Security Income (SSI). She gets $479 a month and $160 in food stamps. Still, she says, she can barely afford the electric bills for her trailer or food for her 8-year-old daughter.

She believes this is how it will always be. 'I can't work at all,' she said, 'and there ain't no jobs here no how, except in the coal mines. There's nowhere else for me to go, neither. Without my family, I would not survive.'

In the Central Appalachian coal country, where the land is famously rich and the people famously not, welfare caseloads are down, but poverty still flourishes. Since the 1996 welfare reform law, or Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, took effect, the rolls in West Virginia have dropped from 38,404 to fewer than 10,000. In general, the law -- which sets a five-year limit for receiving welfare and requires recipients to get an education, take job training or perform community service -- is considered a success. But in West Virginia, many former recipients are worse off than before, according to research by West Virginia University.

Even as the Senate is considering reauthorizing the welfare reform act with stricter work requirements and more child care funding, a prime goal of the act -- moving welfare recipients into jobs -- remains elusive in rural West Virginia, according to the research, done in conjunction with the state Department of Health and Human Resources. A year after their checks stopped, 73.1 percent of former recipients were unemployed, 65.6 percent reported not being able to afford their basic utilities, and only a small proportion believed that their prospects for the future were good (11.3 percent) or excellent (3.1 percent), the researchers found."

Prostitution Puts U.S. and Brazil at Odds on AIDS Policy - New York Times

2005-07-24T15:27:00.000-05:00

Prostitution Puts U.S. and Brazil at Odds on AIDS Policy - New York Times: "But the Brazilian approach is anathema to many conservatives in the United States because it makes use of methods seen as morally objectionable. Brazil not only operates a needle and syringe exchange program for drug addicts but also rejects the Bush administration's emphasis on abstinence, being faithful and the controlled use of condoms, the so-called ABC approach, in favor of a pragmatism that recognizes that sexual desire can sometimes overwhelm reason.

'Obviously abstinence is the safest way to avoid AIDS,' Dr. Chequer said. 'But it's not viable in an operational sense unless you are proposing that mankind be castrated or genetically altered, and then you would end up with something that is not human but something else altogether.'

'If we increasingly focus the prevention of AIDS along these lines, we are generating carnage, a slaughter,' he said. 'It's not a realistic vision, and the epidemic is going to grow larger and larger.'

Brazil, of course, is not the only country to have been affected by the American policy. Senegal has one of the lowest H.I.V. prevalence rates in Africa, but has been cut off from the Bush administration initiative, public health experts said, because prostitution has been legal there since 1969. And in Central American countries like Guatemala, religious groups supported by American financing have distributed fliers to prostitutes urging them to adopt the ABC approach."

This article is very poorly written. I assume the sticking point is that the religious right doesn't want to give Prostitutes condom education.

Most women do this for money, not for sex. There is no reason to punish them with the aids virus just because they are trying to support themselves and their families. Prostitution is wrong, and I hate it but so is the grinding poverty that causes it.

I really think that some of the people who say the religious right actually likes people dying of aids are probably right. It is more imporatant to punish sex than save lives. My own conclusion is that the religious right are a bunch dullards and they make me ashamed to call myself a Christian!

CHINA FLOATS, AMERICA SINKS YUAN KICKS DOLLAR BUTT BY REJECTING "FREE MARKET"

2005-07-24T12:19:00.000-05:00

Ok people, Greg Palast is illustrates that the "Asian Tiger", China didn't get wealthy by adhearing to the free market philosophy of Milton Freidman, Tom Freidman, or George Bush. Neither did any of the other "Asian Tigers" but that is not within the scope of the article.

CHINA FLOATS, AMERICA SINKS
YUAN KICKS DOLLAR BUTT BY REJECTING "FREE MARKET": "Economics Lesson #2: Don't take economics lessons from George Bush. Or Milton Friedman. Or Thomas Friedman. What that means, class, is don't believe the big, hot pile of hype that China's zooming economy is the result of that Red nation's adopting free market economic policies.

If China is now a capitalist free-market state, then I'm Mariah Carey. China's economy has soared because it stubbornly refused the Free – and Friedman-Market mumbo-jumbo that government should stop controlling, owning and regulating industry.

China's announcement that it would raise the cost of the yuan covered over a more important notice that China would bar foreign control of its steel sector. China's leaders have built a powerhouse steel industry larger than ours by directing the funding, output, location and ownership of all factories. And rather than 'freeing' the industry through opening their borders to foreign competition, the Chinese, for steel and every other product, have shut their borders tight to foreigners except as it suits China’s own needs.

China won't join NAFTA or CAFTA or any of those free-trade clubs. In China, Chinese industry comes first. And it's still, Mssrs. Friedman, the Peoples’ republic. Those Wal-Mart fashion designs called, chillingly, 'New Order,' are made in factories owned by the PLA, the Chinese Peoples' Liberation Army.

In an interview just before he won the Nobel Prize in economics, Joe Stiglitz explained to me that China's huge financial surge -- a stunning 9.5% jump in GDP this year -- began with the government's funding and nurturing rural cooperatives, fledgling industry protected behind high, high trade barriers.

The free trade mantra dominant in most of the media is simply and unfounded Dogma. The only countries that have practices this are South American and African hellholes!

The Raw Story | Bloomberg reveals Rove, Libby gave false testimony

2005-07-22T06:19:00.000-05:00

The Raw Story | Bloomberg reveals Rove, Libby gave false testimony: "Bloomberg's Richard Keil will reveal tonight: 'Two top White House aides have given accounts to the special prosecutor about how reporters told them the identity of a CIA agent that are at odds with what the reporters have said, according to persons familiar with the case.' The story reflects one given written by Murray Waas for the American Prospect.
#

Lewis “Scooter'’ Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, told special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that he first learned from NBC News reporter Tim Russert of the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame, the wife of former ambassador and Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson. Russert has testified before a federal grand jury that he didn’t tell Libby of Plame’s identity.
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White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove told Fitzgerald that he first learned the identity of the CIA agent from syndicated columnist Robert Novak, who was first to report Plame’s name and connection to Wilson. Novak, according to a source familiar with the matter, has given a somewhat different version to the special prosecutor.

These discrepancies may be important because one issue Fitzgerald is investigating is whether Libby, Rove, or other administration officials made false statements during the course of the investigation. The Plame case has its genesis in whether any administration officials violated a 1982 law making it illegal to knowingly reveal the name of a CIA agent."

We have now expanded the leak investigation to include Lewis Libby. This might very well go all the way to Dick Cheney! I would not be at all surprised at this point if Cheney ended up on the witness stand!

Plame's Identity Marked As Secret

2005-07-21T14:24:00.000-05:00

Yet more evidence Rove screwed up!

Plame's Identity Marked As Secret: "Plame's Identity Marked As Secret Memo Central to Probe Of Leak Was Written By State Dept. Analyst

By Walter Pincus and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 21, 2005; A01

A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked '(S)' for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials.

Plame -- who is referred to by her married name, Valerie Wilson, in the memo -- is mentioned in the second paragraph of the three-page document, which was written on June 10, 2003, by an analyst in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), according to a source who described the memo to The Washington Post.

The paragraph identifying her as the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was clearly marked to show that it contained classified material at the 'secret' level, two sources said. The CIA classifies as 'secret' the names of officers whose identities are covert, according to former senior agency officials.

Anyone reading that paragraph should have been aware that it contained secret information, though that designation was not specifically attached to Plame's name and did not describe her status as covert, the sources said. It is a federal crime, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, for a federal official to knowingly disclose the identity of a covert CIA official if the person knows the government is trying to keep it secret."

Government Abandons Children to Big Food

2005-07-21T13:46:00.000-05:00

Corporate cronyism in the Bush era. FTC holds workshop on marketing junk foods in the schools then stacks it with corporate propagandists.

Government Abandons Children to Big Food: "The food industry works hard to keep the focus on self-regulatory mechanisms such as the Children's Advertising Review Unit, the industry-supported 5-person shop that cannot possibly monitor all the ways that children are bombarded with food marketing these days. Yet, Elizabeth Lascoutx, director of CARU, presented her organization as doing a stellar job of monitoring food ads, making several misleading statements in the process (which seems ironic for the head of an organization charged with monitoring deceptive advertising). For example, she said that McDonald's had agreed to alter an ad campaign to show healthier choices in their children's ads, when in fact, the company disagreed with CARU's determination that the commercials were misleading.

Coca-Cola also took the opportunity to misrepresent itself. Abigail Rodgers, vice president of 'Wellness Strategies and Communication' claimed that the company does not sell soda in elementary schools. Trouble is, a survey of Kentucky schools revealed that soda is sold in 44 percent of elementary schools. And Coca-Cola was a powerful lobbying force against four legislative attempts to pass a state bill to get soda out of schools. But Ms. Rodgers forgot to mention that, along with the other state bills Coca-Cola has helped kill or weaken, including those in California, New Mexico, Arizona, Connecticut, Indiana, and Oregon.

There was precious little opportunity for advocacy representation or public participation. Only a handful of panel slots were allotted to public health or children's advocates. Even then, their voices were drowned out by the likes of PepsiCo and Kraft, who were each given two separate opportunities to speak, an honor not bestowed on anyone else. Moreover, questions from the audience were tightly controlled by government officials, pre-screened by moderators. Only in response to pressure from advocates did the FTC alter the agenda at the last minute to include a brief 'open forum' at the very end of the day, after all the reporters and most attendees had already left. Clearly Uncle Sam was not interested in hearing from the public on this matter."

These people also falsely, appeal to the idea that their is something even remotely traditional about selling candybars and chips pop at school. Vending machines weren't there when I was a kid. Why assume children are educated about food nutrition? I would have had a candy bar every day if my parents or the schools would let me.

"Why Can't Foreign Lefties Learn to Be Objective Like Us?"

2005-07-20T15:43:00.000-05:00

Columnist Christian Christiansen takes the Chicago Tribune's Gary Marx to task for hypocrisy on the New Latin American network Telesur.

"Why Can't Foreign Lefties Learn to Be Objective Like Us?": "Nor, for that matter, does Marx explain why having leftist governments involved mean that the channel could not be of high quality. I spent a great deal of time in Sweden, where a 'leftist' (by U.S. standards)state has indirectly supported radio and television for the past 75 years. The last time I checked -- which is every day -- those news programs were objective and of a very high standard, unlike the consumption-cheerleading celebro-porn produced by many 'news' organizations in the United States. We ignore genocide in Darfur in favor of 24-hour Michael Jackson and The Runaway Bride, yet have the gall to critique the journalism of other nations?

Where Marx really makes his best joke, however, is when he asks whether or not Telesur will be able to criticize the Chavez government since the operation will be based on the grounds of Venezuela's state-run television station, Channel 8. In other words: will their journalistic integrity be compromised by political and economic pressures?

That a journalist from the Chicago Tribune would worry about conflicts of interest at Telesur -- or any other media outlet, for that matter -- really shows some major-league chutzpah. Perhaps it would benefit Marx to come back to the United States and do a little investigative reporting on the political economy of his own employer: the Tribune Company.

Let's start with what the company controls (from the Tribunecorporate website): 'Tribune Broadcasting owns and operates 26 major-market television stations and reaches more than 80 percent of U.S. television households. The group is anchored by Superstation WGN, which can be seen in more than 57 million homes outside Chicago via cable and satellite services. Nineteen Tribune stations are affiliates of the growing WB Television Network, in which Tribune holds a 22 percent equity investment.'"....

She is too nice in my view. This paper like most other mainstream outlets promoted the Iraq War an refused to criticize George W. Bush over it. It ignored the obvious lies and support the war through a pro war leaning editorial policy. The mainstream media in this country has no credibility, what so ever, when it comes to objectivity. In fact these slights at the new Telesur pretty obviously represent hawking the Bush administrations foriegn policy. That foreign policy includes hostility to social democratic regimes like Venezuela and Uraguay as well as authoritian Communist ones like Cuba. You can get put on Bush's hit list for destruction for persuing the same policies as Roosevelt and Kennedy. Furthermore if the corporate media is so free to criticize the President how do you account for the purging of Dan Rather?

This corruption by corporate money sadly extends to the modern Democratic Party, so many Democrats will parrot the antiChavez baloney as well.

George W. Strangelove and the Triumph of Nuclear Faith

2005-07-20T15:18:00.000-05:00

According to Norman Soloman of FAIR Bush has agreed to share nuclear technology with India.

It was a gift worthy of hell. "President Bush agreed yesterday to share civilian nuclear technology with India, reversing decades of U.S. policies designed to discourage countries from developing nuclear weapons," the Washington Post reported Tuesday. The lead was more understated in the New York Times: "President Bush, bringing India a step closer to acceptance in the club of nuclear-weapons states, reached an agreement on Monday with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to let India secure international help for its civilian nuclear reactors while retaining its nuclear arms."

No matter how the story was spun, it could only be read in the world's capitals as further proof that U.S. nuclear policies are grimly laughable -- thanks to policymakers in Washington who simultaneously decry and promote nuclear proliferation. And nowhere will the hypocrisy-laced ironies be more appreciated than in Tehran. .............

Touting the use of nuclear fission to generate electricity, American presidents have strived to make sharp rhetorical distinctions between atomic power and nuclear weapons technologies, despite their extensive overlap. Such reassuring distinctions now have wide credibility in Iran, as I found last month during conversations with Iranian political campaigners, clerics, bazaar merchants, shoppers, teachers and students. Almost all gave notably similar responses when asked whether their country should acquire nuclear energy.........."

A civil atomic pact, signed in 1957, initiated nuclear assistance from the United States to Iran. In 1972, President Richard Nixon urged the Shah to build nuclear power plants. The Shah fell in 1979, but after many delays the Islamic Republic resumed work on the nuclear plant near Bushehr, a project that is currently being denounced in Washington.

Isn't it kind of stupid to get after the Iranians, for developing nuclear technology when we are arming their regional enemies to the atomic teeth?

My Left Wing :: Part II: Women in Iraq: We invade and they lose their freedom

2005-07-20T12:07:00.000-05:00

SanJoseLady from "My Left Wing" asks what our invasion has done for Iraqi women. The answer may disturb you!

My Left Wing :: Part II: Women in Iraq: We invade and they lose their freedom: "The draft constitution emerging in Iraq will tie the rights of women to Islamic Law. What exactly does this mean? From the LA Times:

Under Islamic law, daughters inherit a lesser share of their fathers' wealth than sons do, and divorce is easy for men, who can simply say three times that they divorce a woman to accomplish it. Women, on the other hand, must go through an elaborate and often embarrassing presentation of domestic circumstances with a cleric.

Worse, this draft constitution seeks to remove the requirement that women hold at least a quarter of the seats in the National Assembly. Women now make up 31 percent of the seats, and if the 25 percent requirment is lifted there is a strong possibility that there will be few if any women elected to office in the new 'Democratic Iraq.'

If that isn't alarming enough, the Times article also points out that the emerging Iraqi government is theocratic, and there are clear indications that both Sunni and Shiite are comfortable with removing the secular laws that protected women under Saddam. Here is more from the Times article:

Some women in the assembly have begun to circulate a petition to change the new language, and Iraqi women's groups have begun to lobby to change the provisions. But they are expected to meet substantial resistance from clerics, both Shiite and Sunni, who have long wanted to reinstate the practice of resolving domestic matters in religious courts. Men on the committee supported the changes, arguing that it was more fair to eschew percentages. Some argued, somewhat disingenuously, that they would prefer a 50% quota but no one would accept that, so why have any number at all?

And then this:

Similar language on Islamic law is being added to every provision in the constitution after a push by Muslim clerics to emphasize Iraq's identity as an Islamic state.

There can be no 'Democracy' in Iraq if over half the population sees their rights reduced under a 'constitution.' Our invasion of Iraq has created the means to destroy secular law and replace it with religious law which will have grave effects for the women of Iraq and all of the Middle East.

From the International Herald Tribune:

If it holds, the shift away from the more secular and equitable language of the interim constitution would represent a victory for Shiite clerics and religious politicians, who now wield enormous power and had chafed at the influence exercised by the Americans over that earlier document.

The Americans had insisted that Islam be designated as just 'a source' of legislation, for example. Several writers of the new constitution say they intend to, at the very least, designate Islam as 'a main source' of legislation..................................."

Crooks and Liars

2005-07-19T12:50:00.000-05:00

and remember when Bush and Rummy used to think leaks were bad because they endangered troops?

Crooks and Liars: "Members from both parties objected strongly to Bush's highly unusual step of ordering that briefings with sensitive information be limited to eight of the 535 members of Congress. The memo cuts off numerous lawmakers cleared to receive classified information; it was signed by Bush on Friday following a report in The Washington Post that intelligence officials told lawmakers there was a '100 percent' likelihood of further terrorist strikes.

Bush, appearing in the Rose Garden with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, gave Congress a stern lecture. 'I understand there may be some heartburn on Capitol Hill,' he said. 'But I suggest if they want to relieve that heartburn, that they take their positions very seriously and that they take any information they've been given by our government very seriously.' He continued: 'I want Congress to hear loud and clear, it is unacceptable behavior to leak classified information when we have troops at risk.'

The tension between the two branches of government began last month, when Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned that those who divulged classified information could endanger the lives of American troops. The remarks were an apparent rebuke of Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), who said he had permission to reveal the information. At the same time, intelligence committee members were complaining that the administration's briefings were inadequate."

CIA Laws and Definitions

2005-07-19T12:39:00.000-05:00

Interesting research on the Law Rove is said to have broken. Note the part I have highlighted!

CIA Laws and Definitions: "CIA Laws and Definitions

50 U.S.C. � 421. Protection of identities of certain United States undercover intelligence officers, agents, informants, and sources

(a) Disclosure of information by persons having or having had access to classified information that identifies covert agent Whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent’s intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

(b) Disclosure of information by persons who learn identity of covert agents as result of having access to classified information Whoever, as a result of having authorized access to classified information, learns the identify of a covert agent and intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent’s intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

(c) Disclosure of information by persons in course of pattern of activities intended to identify and expose covert agents Whoever, in the course of a pattern of activities intended to identify and expose covert agents and with reason to believe that such activities would impair or impede the foreign intelligence activities of the United States, discloses any information that identifies an individual as a covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such individual and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such individual’s classified intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

(d) Imposition of consecutive sentences. A term of imprisonment imposed under this section shall be consecutive to any other sentence of imprisonment.

source:

Cornell Law School

It really doesn't look good for Rove!

The Washington Monthly

2005-07-19T12:25:00.000-05:00

Kevin Drum reminds us why the Whitehouse attacked Joe Wilson!

The Washington Monthly: "One of the advantages of living in Orange County is that I have plenty of centrist and conservative acquaintances, and one thing I've learned from them is that even among Bush's own supporters it was the possibility of Saddam getting hold of nukes that really scared them. Chemical and biological weapons were a bit of a yawn. Without nukes, even Bush sympathizers were skeptical about the whole Iraq adventure.

Since Karl Rove has much more sophisticated means of gauging public opinion than my occasional lunches with friends, he obviously knew this full well. And that means that he was hellbent on making a case in the SOTU that Saddam had an active nuke program. The problem is that even after sifting through every available rumor, analysis, and unconfirmed report, they were only able to come up with two meager pieces of evidence:

The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.

That's it. Uranium from Africa and aluminum tubes. It was pretty thin stuff.

But it turned out to be even thinner. Although conservatives insist with bilious disdain that the CIA was staffed by do-nothing bureaucrats afraid to follow the Iraqi WMD evidence where it led, the exact opposite was true. Although it's unclear how much of this was due to CIA culture and how much to White House pressure, the reality is that the CIA was far more bullish about Saddam's WMD programs than it should have been. They continued to report the uranium connection long after State Department analysts had made it clear that it was based on forged documents, and they continued to insist that the aluminum tubes were designed for centrifuges long after Department of Energy experts had conclusively debunked it."

Joe Wilson outed them on this claim so he had to be smeared.

An Empty Apology - New York Times

2005-07-18T15:27:00.000-05:00

Bob Herbert makes some very interesting observations on GOP chairman Ken Mehlman's apology for the “Southern Strategy”.

An Empty Apology - New York Times: "'Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization,' said Mr. Mehlman. 'I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong.'"...........

The Southern strategy meant much, much more than some members of the G.O.P. simply giving up on African-American votes. Put into play by Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon in the mid- to late 1960's, it fed like a starving beast on the resentment of whites who were scornful of blacks and furious about the demise of segregation and other civil rights advances. The idea was to snatch the white racist vote away from the Democratic Party, which had committed such unpardonable sins as enacting the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts and enforcing desegregation statutes....................

The important thing to keep in mind was how deliberate and pernicious the strategy was. Last month a jury in Philadelphia, Miss., convicted an 80-year-old man, Edgar Ray Killen, of manslaughter in the slaying of three civil rights workers - Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney - in the summer of 1964. It was a crime that made much of the nation tremble, and revolted anyone with a true sense of justice.....

So what did Ronald Reagan do in his first run for the presidency, 16 years after the murder, in the summer of 1980? He chose the site of the murders, Philadelphia, Miss., as the perfect place to send an important symbolic message. Mr. Reagan kicked off his general election campaign at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, an annual gathering that was famous for its diatribes by segregationist politicians. His message: "I believe in states' rights.".....

And in both of Mr. Bush's presidential campaigns, his supporters, especially his brother Jeb, the governor of Florida, have gone out of their way to prevent or discourage blacks from voting. In a particularly vile episode last year, Florida state troopers conducted a criminal investigation that zeroed in on black voter turnout efforts in Orlando. A number of people were indicted, including the mayor, Buddy Dyer, a Democrat who was then suspended from office.....

The “Southern Strategy” is a GOP effort began in the 1960s by Republican politicians like Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon, to try and attract disaffected whites to the Republican party, by taking advantage of their anger and the "Civil Rights" movement. It was largely successful in the South. The South was known as the Solid South because it voted Democratic all in lockstep every Presidential election from the Reconstruction onward. This was largely because of a reactionary pro-Segregation Wing of Democrats known formally as the Dixiecrats.

Senator Strom Thurmond, challenged the Presidential candidacy of Harry Truman as a Dixiecrat in 1948. He ran under the banner “Segregation Now! Segregation Tomorrow! Segregation Forever!” He also used the n-word many times in his speeches.

"I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigger race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches."

MP3 of quote

Later it turned out Thurmond had fathered a black child, as a teenager in the 1920s. The amnesiac press failed to make note of this in his obituaries. He had lead one of the longest filibusters in Senate history to prevent the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957". In the 1960s he resigned from the Democratic Party and joined the Republicans in protest of Lyndon Johnson's support of “The Civil Rights Act of 1964". This is when. Goldwater and Nixon started openly courting the Dixiecrats, and it has been a Republican tradition up to this very day. Now it is the Solid South because it votes Republican. This is largely because of the “Southern Strategy”

Daily Kos: The CIA's Plame/Brewster Jennings Damage Assessment Report

2005-07-18T10:42:00.000-05:00

Interesting observation on the damage the White House Leakers might have caused to Plame's CIA front Brewster Jennings and Associates.

Daily Kos: The CIA's Plame/Brewster Jennings Damage Assessment Report:

"Whenever there is a major intelligence f*ck-up, such as Aldrich Ames or Robert Hanssen, the CIA performs an exhaustive, meticulous damage assessment of the harm inflicted on our intelligence operations and national security.

Let's remind ourselves of the 18 month-long damage assessment the CIA conducted after catching Aldrich Ames:

"For the past year and a half, an independent team of Intelligence Community analysts and operations officers has conducted a Damage Assessment of the actions of Aldrich Ames, who, while a CIA Directorate of Operations officer from 1985 to 1994, committed espionage for Soviet (and later Russian) intelligence. This Damage Assessment, commissioned by my predecessor, is now complete.

[snip]

The damage which Aldrich Ames did to his country can be summarized in three categories:

-- By revealing to the Soviet Union the identities of many assets who were providing information to the United States, he not only caused their executions, but also made it much more difficult to understand what was going on in the Soviet Union at a crucial time in its history;

-- By revealing to the Soviet Union the way in which the United States sought intelligence and handled assets, he made it much more difficult for this country to gather vital information in other countries as well;

-- By revealing to the Soviet Union identities of assets and American methods of espionage, he put the Soviet Union in the position to pass carefully selected 'feed' material to this country through controlled assets;

The damage done by Aldrich Ames is documented in the Damage Assessment Report which I have submitted to the intelligence committees. I endorse the Report. I have also made this painstaking work of many months available to other agencies of government so that damage control actions can be taken."

You can bet your bottom dollar that the CIA has conducted a painstaking, meticulous damage assessment of the harm caused by Rove and his co-conspirators, which led to the loss not just of Valerie Plame as an agent, but of Brewster-Jennings as a front company and the use of any agent ever who worked for that Brewster Jennings front.

This damage assessment report is presumably still classified. But you can bet Fitzgerald hauled its authors into the grand jury room, and whatever harm was done to our national security because of Rove's malignancy -- Fitzgerald knows about it."

Congressman Apologizes for Hitler Remark - Yahoo! News

2005-07-17T13:29:00.000-05:00

Congressman Apologizes for Hitler Remark - Yahoo! News: "

The New Jersey Republican made the remark on a radio talk show this past week, describing his recent visit to the Naval Base in Cuba. Muslim terrorists, he said, were more evil than Hitler.

'Hitler, in his philosophy, was, you know, he hated Jews, he was murdering Jews, and there were some people he liked. But he never went to the level that these people are going to,' LoBiondo said.

A caller objected to the statement only a few minutes later.

'You're right. You're right. I was wrong. I should not have used that and I apologize,' LoBiondo responded."

Sounds like excessive use of the word Nazi, wasn't the only, or most important reason this statement was stupid. He clearly doesn't believe in the concept of "innocent until proven guilty". He just states outright that the suspects are terrorists. It has already been shown numerous ti mes that many of the detainees at Guantanamo were found innocent and released. It has been shown in numerous articles that many of the current detainees are probably innocent, but they are not being given trials, let alone fair trials. Torture can make people confess to things they didn't do. This is why the constitution guarantees the right to a fair and speedy trial, and the right not to be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. In Congressmen LoBiondo's head such Constitutional principles are unimportant when we are dealing with Arabs! Excessive metaphor usage, is not that league!

NO QUARTER: Niger Mischief

2005-07-17T13:05:00.000-05:00

Pat Lang on the reason Joe Wilson was smeared by the Bush administration. It is called the Niger Document! This is what Wilson wrote about in The New York Times article, that got Rove and co in a big snit!

NO QUARTER: Niger Mischief: "Among the various items brought to mind by present history is the question of the Niger Document. This was the paper which turned up in the hands of Italian intelligence which purports to establish saddens drive to buy semi-refined Uranium ore in Niger. This document seems to be well established as a forgery planted on the Italians. Was the US government involved? I know of nothing at this point that would demonstrate that.

The newsmedia have worked on this story for years now and several have well documented the result. A major TV news magazine hired me last year to help them look for those who knew the truth in this matter. They succeeded. A national wire service did the same thing without my help and has the result. The same is true of two other national news publications.

It is very clear now that this document was forged by a couple of the shadowy ex-government characters who dwell in the environs of Washington and was planted in Italy on the basis of the personal contacts of one of them with the intention of influencing the debate over Iraq in this country. How do I know that? Well, I just do in the way that intelligence officers learn things. Good sources, multiple sources, first person accounts, probabilities, that is how one learns things. Could I swear to it in court? No. Intelligence conclusions are not things that can be sworn to in court."

If she is correct, that means this story is going to get much bigger, before it is over!

Rove was first source on CIA agent - Time reporter - Yahoo! News

2005-07-17T11:56:00.000-05:00

What Mathew Cooper said to the Grand Jury" according to Time as relayed by Yahoo News!

"Rove was first source on CIA agent - Time reporter - Yahoo! News: "So did Rove leak Plame's name to me, or tell me she was covert? No. Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes. Did Rove say that she worked at the 'agency' on 'WMD'? Yes,' Cooper wrote in Time's current edition.

'When he said things would be declassified soon, was that itself impermissible? I don't know. Is any of this a crime? Beats me,' Cooper wrote.

He also wrote that he was not certain what Rove meant by commenting he had already said too much."

Mirror.co.uk - News - EXCLUSIVE: WAS IT SUICIDE?

2005-07-16T11:45:00.000-05:00

Were the London suicide bombers duped? Very interesting report from the British Mirror website.

Mirror.co.uk - News - EXCLUSIVE: WAS IT SUICIDE?: "The evidence is compelling: The terrorists bought return rail tickets, and pay and display car park tickets, before boarding _ a train at Luton for London. None of the men was heard to cry 'Allah Akhbar!' - 'God is great' - usually screamed by suicide bombers as they detonate their bomb.

Their devices were in large rucksacks which could be easily dumped instead of being strapped to their bodies. They carried wallets containing their driving licences, bank cards and other personal items. Suicide bombers normally strip themselves of identifying material.

Similar terror attacks against public transport in Madrid last year were carried out by recruits who had time to escape and planned to strike again.

Bomber Hasib Hussain detonated his device at the rear of the top deck of a No 30 bus, not in the middle of the bottom deck where most damage would be caused."

A Quarter of a Million Dollars Per Settler - by Charley Reese

2005-07-16T11:21:00.000-05:00

Some scathing commentary from Charley Reese.

A Quarter of a Million Dollars Per Settler - by Charley Reese: "A Quarter of a Million Dollars Per Settler
by Charley Reese

The state of Israel – which, the last time I checked, was both a foreign and a sovereign nation – wants the American taxpayers to cough up $2.2 billion in addition to our regular $3 billion-or-so annual subsidy to pay for the withdrawal from Gaza.

Unless the American people raise hell about this, it's a done deal. In Washington, whatever Israel wants, Israel gets. Nevertheless, there are several reasons why the American people should rebel at the latest brazen attack on our treasury by Israel and its American supporters.

First, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided unilaterally to withdraw from Gaza. This was in lieu of following the president's peace plan, which Sharon has ignored from the very beginning. Where is it written, on stone or parchment or paper, that the head of a foreign government can decide to do something unilaterally and automatically send the bill to the American taxpayers? We will derive no benefits at all from the withdrawal.

Furthermore, Sharon's adviser spilled the beans in an Israeli newspaper interview. The withdrawal from Gaza is not part of any peace plan. It was just an excuse to put off serious peace negotiations. Sharon will remove about 8,000 settlers from Gaza who are a pain in the government's rear end anyway, shut down four tiny settlements on the West Bank, and that's it. As Sharon's adviser admitted, there won't be any serious negotiations with the Palestinians until they 'turn into Finns.'"

I would normally agree with Charlie on matters relating to the funding of Israel, but I think he is being unpragmatic, and far too cynical. First of all disengagement, even if it was not negotiated, will be of practical benefit to the US. Many polls of people in the middle east show that the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank is the number one complaint against the US on the part of the Arab world. Al Qaeda definately brings this up whenever they have made pronouncements in public. Getting Sharon to leave by any means necessary will definitely dry up potential Al Qaeda recruts.

Another thing Charlie is failing to comprehend is that Sharon completely miscalculated the affect settler violence would have on the Israeli middle. Sharon believed that it would cause them to think disengagement wasn't worth the trouble, so they would give up on disengaging from the rest of the occupied territories in the west bank. Instead, settler radicalism has inspired so much contempt from the mushy middle, that it wants to uproot the rest of settlers too.

Secondly, our capitulation to Israel is not just a result of weak willed politicians. There are definately bad political consequeces if you don't give aipac what it wants. The Israeli lobby has run several successful primary challenges against those who opposed their projects. Ed Hilliard, and Cynthia McKinney come to mind. There was a reason Fritz Hollings didn't denounce AIPac until he announced retirement from the Senate. Anyone, who proposed a cut in aid to Israel can expect his/her political career to die a nasty death. The pro-Israel lobby will tell its voters that the politician doesn't support Israel, and an opponant will be funded generously. It isn't primarily Conservative Jews who will finance your opponant. They are a dinky minority, within a dinky minority. It is the religious right, inspired by a belicose "Christian Zionsim" who can command the money and votes of at least 25% of the population. .

Finally, no-one asked us ordinary folks whether we wanted to support the settlements in the first place, and frankly the vast majority of us didn't complain about it either, so why should we get in a snit now that they are at least beginning to disengage? I for one and happy to pay for them to leave if I don't have to finance the settlements in the future!

FOX Carolina The Ten O'Clock News Christian Exodus Planned For South Carolina

2005-07-16T09:02:00.000-05:00

Strange story! I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, I would not like this if I were South Carolinian. On the other hand, it would be undoubtedly good for the rest of the country to lose some of their Religious Right types to South Carolina. Afterall, the state's politics have already been taken over by "Christian" Conservatives, more or less, and it can't get any worse than it presently is.

FOX Carolina The Ten O'Clock News Christian Exodus Planned For South Carolina: "Plans to reform our government to more Christian-like principals are in the works and we may feel the effects, right here in the Upstate. That is because South Carolina has been chosen as the place for hundreds, even thousands of Christians to move to, in hopes of impacting the government. But people who live here have mixed opinions about the Christian Exodus.

Denise Collins-Bennett lives in Florence, SC and says, 'I guess it's great to have more Christian groups moving here.'

Here, is South Carolina: the chosen location for the Christian Exodus, a non-profit group organizing Christians to move to the Palmetto State to concentrate the number of Christians in one location with the intent to influence how the state governs. A plan that some residents say we need.

'I think it's fantastic, I think we need more of that actually. I don't know which direction our government is heading in, but I think they need Christian influence, it would go a long way, I really think so,' says Mauldin resident, Reggie Brow"

Gay Marriage Critics Are Misguided, by Gene C. Gerard - Democratic Underground

2005-07-16T07:27:00.000-05:00

Just to clarify matters: High divorce rates correlate more strongly to lack of education than Gay marriage!

Gay Marriage Critics Are Misguided, by Gene C. Gerard - Democratic Underground: "

However, contrary to the arguments put forward by Mr. Dobson and others, the divorce rate is not increasing due to the demand by gays and lesbians for marital rights. The culprit appears to be far less sinister, and much more pervasive. According to Steven P. Martin, Ph.D., a professor of sociology at The University of Maryland-College Park, who just released a monumental study of divorce in America over the last 30 years, the divorce rate is directly correlated to a lack of education, especially among women.

Dr. Martin’s study demonstrates that from 1970 to the 1990s, divorce rates declined by approximately one-half among recipients of a bachelor’s degree. By contrast, divorce rates were high and remained essentially constant among women without a bachelor’s degree. For some time now, social scientists have known that less educated people tend to have higher rates of divorce than the national average. Dr. Martin’s analysis demonstrates just how accurately education is correlated to the success and stability of marriage.".............

Given the results of this study, those who are concerned about the institution of marriage should be criticizing the Bush administration for cuts in education, rather than gay marriage advocates. In February, the Bush administration announced severe cuts in federal funding for Pell Grants. Since 1973, Pell Grants have been the principal form of federal funding for low-income college students. The grants are only available to those demonstrating financial need. The average recipient of a grant comes from a family whose parents have a combined annual income of less than $35,000.

The Bush administration will eliminate Pell Grants for approximately 90,000 low-income students, affectively preventing them from completing their education. Another 1.3 million students will suffer a reduction in the amount of their grants. The Department of Education predicted a savings of $300 million as a result of the reductions. The cuts will be devastating in 2008, which is predicted to be the largest high school graduating class in American history. .............

I don't know why this should shock anyone. The idea that allowing gays to marry will harm other married people is completely irrational anyway!

There is another correlation the study ignored. For instance, isn't it rather likely that women without bachelors degrees are more likely to be poor than women who have them? Let's face it, the working class make much less money than they did in the 60s when a high percentage had union jobs, and the minimum wage was much higher than it is presently.

AMERICAblog: Because a great nation deserves the truth

2005-07-15T18:04:00.000-05:00

Oh boy! According to America Blog Novak's story appears to contradict Roves!

AMERICAblog: Because a great nation deserves the truth: "Today's big story is that Rove supposedly never gave Valerie Plame's name to Novak - but rather that Novak mentioned Plame was CIA and Rove said 'yeah I heard that too,' or something to that effect.

In fact, here's what Novak said in his first interview that we know of just after he leaked Plame's name in print:

Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the information. 'I didn't dig it out, it was given to me,' he said. 'They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it.'

Read that again. I didn't dig it out, it was given to me - they gave me the name. That does not jibe with Rove's anonymous buddy telling the NYT that it was Novak who first brought up Plame as CIA and NOT Rove."

As America Blog observes the only way this does not contradict Rove is if there were two leakers and not one!

The Nation | Lookout | Aristide in Exile | Naomi Klein

2005-07-15T05:53:00.000-05:00

The Great Naomi Klein shows that the overthrow of Aristide was an attempt to force unpopular privatization down the throats of the Haitian people.

The Nation | Lookout | Aristide in Exile | Naomi Klein: "A few weeks ago I visited Aristide in Pretoria, South Africa, where he lives in forced exile. I asked him what was really behind his dramatic falling-out with Washington. He offered an explanation rarely heard in discussions of Haitian politics--actually, he offered three: 'privatization, privatization and privatization.'

CONTINUED BELOW
The dispute dates back to a series of meetings in early 1994, a pivotal moment in Haiti's history that Aristide has rarely discussed. Haitians were living under the barbaric rule of Raoul Cedras, who overthrew Aristide in a 1991 US-backed coup. Aristide was in Washington and despite popular calls for his return, there was no way he could face down the junta without military back-up. Increasingly embarrassed by Cedras's abuses, the Clinton Administration offered Aristide a deal: US troops would take him back to Haiti--but only after he agreed to a sweeping economic program with the stated goal to 'substantially transform the nature of the Haitian state.'

Aristide agreed to pay the debts accumulated under the kleptocratic Duvalier dictatorships, slash the civil service, open up Haiti to 'free trade' and cut import tariffs on rice and corn in half. It was a lousy deal but, Aristide says, he had little choice. 'I was out of my country and my country was the poorest in the Western hemisphere, so what kind of power did I have at that time?'

But Washington's negotiators made one demand that Aristide could not accept: the immediate sell-off of Haiti's state-owned enterprises, including phones and electricity. Aristide argued that unregulated privatization would transform state monopolies into private oligarchies, increasing the riches of Haiti's elite and stripping the poor of their national wealth. He says the proposal simply didn't add up: 'Being honest means saying two plus two equals four. They wanted us to sing two plus two equals five.'"

Unfortunately, the poor in the world don't get a better break even with New Democrats, like Bill Clinton!

THE NEWS BLOG

2005-07-14T22:46:00.000-05:00

Steve Gilliard debunks yet another spin!

THE NEWS BLOG: "Bob Somersby makes this wrong, but interesting argument

Did King Karl know that Plame was covert? Let's note one key point for the record: Under terms of the most relevant statute, it isn't clear that Plame really was such an agent. (Under terms of this statute, a 'covert' agent is someone 'who is serving outside the United States or has within the last five years served outside the United States.' It isn't clear that Plame qualifies.) At any rate, if Rove didn't know that Plame was covert, it isn't clear that he committed a crime--and no one has really begun to show that he had such knowledge. But so what? This hasn't stopped the triumphalist liberal web from aping the pseudo-con world of the 90s. In that decade, everything Clinton did was a crime, and every bit of 'evidence' 'proved' it. This produced a decade of sheer stupidity--a decade the liberal web starts to match.

Why is it wrong?

Because unless Joe Wilson is lying, and her collegues as well, she was a NOC (non-official cover) agent. Her resume didn't list CIA as her employer, but a front based in DC. I mean, a lot of her activities as a NOC are in the public record.

Salon.com | Rove's war

2005-07-14T22:08:00.000-05:00

Sidney Blumenthal persuasively debunks two lies from the Rove apologists. 1)It was Cheney, not Plame that recommended Wilson be sent to Niger!

Salon.com | Rove's war: "When the Italian report on Niger uranium surfaced, Vice President Cheney's office contacted the CIA's counter-proliferation office to look into it. Such a request is called a 'tasker.' It was hardly the first query the task force had received from the White House, and such requests were not made through the CIA director's office, but directly. Plame's colleagues asked her if she would invite her husband out to CIA headquarters at Langley, Va., for a meeting with them, to assess the question.

It was unsurprising that the CIA would seek out Wilson. He had already performed one secret mission to Niger for the agency, in 1999, and was trusted. Wilson had also had a distinguished and storied career as a Foreign Service officer. He served as acting ambassador in Iraq during the Gulf War and was hailed by the first President Bush as a 'hero.' Wilson was an important part of the team and highly regarded by Secretary of State James Baker and National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft. Wilson was also an Africa specialist. He had been a diplomat in Niger, ambassador to Gabon and senior director for Africa on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration. (I first encountered Wilson then, and we have since become friends.) No other professional had such an ideal background for this CIA mission."

Two)The fact that Rove didn't give Plame's name to Novak doesn't mean he didn't betray her identity!

Washington, meanwhile, is an echo chamber of Rove's agents. His lawyer, Robert Luskin, has trashed Cooper: "By any definition, he burned Karl Rove." RNC chairman Ken Mehlman has appeared on talk shows, given newspaper interviews and circulated a three-page memo of talking points to Republican surrogates. In one brief statement, for example, Mehlman said: "The fact is Karl Rove did not leak classified information. He did not, according to what we learned this past weekend, reveal the name of anybody. He didn't even know the name ... He tried to discourage a reporter from writing a story that was false."

Mehlman's farrago of lies and distortions may be a fair representation of Rove's fears. Is it "the fact" that Rove didn't leak classified information? Plame's identity of course was classified. That is why the CIA referred the matter to the Department of Justice for investigation. But is Mehlman disclosing yet another Rove worry? The prosecutor can indict under any statute, including simply leaking classified information. Is Rove afraid of being indicted under that law, not just the one that makes it a crime to identify Plame? Mehlman raises a further Rove anxiety. No, Rove didn't "reveal the name." But the law doesn't cite that as a felony; it only specifies revealing the "identity" as a crime. It says nothing about a "name." Rove revealed "Joe Wilson's wife." That qualifies as an "identity." By the way, Plame did not go by the name of Plame, but Wilson -- in other words, Mrs. Wilson, or "Joe Wilson's wife." Rove seemed to know that much -- her identity.

Leak of Agent's Name Causes Exposure of CIA Front Firm (washingtonpost.com)

2005-07-14T16:00:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post finally reports on the real damage done when Rove outed Plame. Really people if this isn't illegal activity it ought to be!

Leak of Agent's Name Causes Exposure of CIA Front Firm (washingtonpost.com): "The leak of a CIA operative's name has also exposed the identity of a CIA front company, potentially expanding the damage caused by the original disclosure, Bush administration officials said yesterday.

The company's identity, Brewster-Jennings & Associates, became public because it appeared in Federal Election Commission records on a form filled out in 1999 by Valerie Plame, the case officer at the center of the controversy, when she contributed $1,000 to Al Gore's presidential primary campaign.
spacer

After the name of the company was broadcast yesterday, administration officials confirmed that it was a CIA front. They said the obscure and possibly defunct firm was listed as Plame's employer on her W-2 tax forms in 1999 when she was working undercover for the CIA. Plame's name was first published July 14 in a newspaper column by Robert D. Novak that quoted two senior administration officials. They were critical of her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, for his handling of a CIA mission that undercut President Bush's claim that Iraq had sought uranium from the African nation of Niger for possible use in developing nuclear weapons........

The inadvertent disclosure of the name of a business affiliated with the CIA underscores the potential damage to the agency and its operatives caused by the leak of Plame's identity. Intelligence officials have said that once Plame's job as an undercover operative was revealed, other agency secrets could be unraveled and her sources might be compromised or endangered.

TPMCafe || Politics, Ideas & Lots Of Caffeine

2005-07-13T01:52:00.000-05:00

Ok, I am posting this because of the many untruthful claims the republicans have been making about Valerie Plame. They keep saying that she was not undercover, so Rove and Novak did nothing wrong. This is patently untrue. They not only outed Plame, they outed all the operatives that worked for Plame. Her company "Brewster Jennings and Associates", was a CIA front. It was supposed to infiltrate groups, smuggling nuclear materials to places like Israel and Pakistan. They damaged National Security badly even if no laws were technically broken. Anyway, read it straight from former CIA operative Joe Wilson if you don't believe me.

"For starters, Valerie Plame was an undercover operations officer until outed in the press by Robert Novak. Novak's column was not an isolated attack. It was in fact part of a coordinated, orchestrated smear that we now know includes at least Karl Rove.

Valerie Plame was a classmate of mine from the day she started with the CIA. I entered on duty at the CIA in September 1985. All of my classmates were undercover--in other words, we told our family and friends that we were working for other overt U.S. Government agencies. We had official cover. That means we had a black passport--i.e., a diplomatic passport. If we were caught overseas engaged in espionage activity the black passport was a get out of jail free card.

A few of my classmates, and Valerie was one of these, became a non-official cover officer. That meant she agreed to operate overseas without the protection of a diplomatic passport. If caught in that status she would have been executed.

The lies by people like Victoria Toensing, Representative Peter King, and P. J. O'Rourke insist that Valerie was nothing, just a desk jockey. Yet, until Robert Novak betrayed her she was still undercover and the company that was her front was still a secret to the world. When Novak outed Valerie he also compromised her company and every individual overseas who had been in contact with that company and with her."....

The Big Lie About Valerie Plame