Thoughts of a Political and Economic Junkie

The Shift - A Changing America

2005-02-22T11:49:00.000-05:00

In an article in the Toronto Star today, DAN DUNSKY speaks about the political changes taking place in the United States. The political climate in the United States is taking a turn as dramatic and possibly as important as it did when FDR made radical changes in the role of government in Americans lives. W. has made proposals and the Democrats can only offer reasons why we should not believe W., but in no way offer any alternatives. Why does W. appear to be so successful in making dramatic policy changes in the US? Because no one is making any alternative recommendations. We are living in a country dominated by one party. This party shares only one thing in common with its past, its name. That is it. Honestly, the republicans should be called the W.'s because the policies are not historical republican nor or they historically American. What we have now is a president who takes care of his cronies in the top 1% of the country, and the other 99% allows this to happen with glee. W.'s policies are so archaic in nature, that we are moving back to the age of robber barons and 70 hour work weeks with little compensation and little to no benefits. Fat cats run supreme and the common man has no power; the corporate world rules. With this new vision of America is slowly moving to fascism. Plain and simple. Capitalism to its logical extreme is fascism. Think about, everything will be about branding. The corporate world will control America through their sponsorship. Nothing will happen without a corporate sponsor. A yeah or nay from a company can make or break families and cities and economic devastation will simply be part of the economy. Europe will rule the US, or at least try to and the US will one day say, what the hell happened? How did America become a fascist state? How did Europe usurp our economic power? Why am I paying 5 dollars for a gallon of gas? I will have one word for them in response: W.

White House refusing to pay POWs

2005-02-16T11:59:00.000-05:00

The White House refusing to pay American POWs tortured by Saddam during the 1991 Gulf War from a $1 billion settlement already awarded from lawsuit filed in 2002. W. claims that Iraq isn't a rogue nation anymore and consequently, the POWs should not be compenstated. White House Turns Tables on Former American POWs. Apparently Iraq needs money more then Americans do.

Something to brighten up your day

2005-02-15T12:02:00.000-05:00

Rove Met With Saudis After 9/11 to help smooth our relations with Saudi Arabia. I guess that few remember that 15 of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis. Funny, I was under the impression that United States government did not negotiate with terrorists?

President Bush, making the world a safer place

2005-02-10T09:01:00.000-05:00

N. Korea Announces It Has Nuclear Weapons This headline should scare anybody who reads it. It scares me to no end. The United States refused to talk with North Korea. Now the world is paying for the Bush administrations policies. It is beginning to get serious now. Bush administration said Iraq is a looming threat. Guess what, that is no longer the case. What is so freighting is the reason North Korea says it needs nuclear weapons, "'We ... have manufactured nukes for self-defense to cope with the Bush administration's ever more undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the (North),' the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency." Makes you feel all nice and cozy inside. Condi seems to be working her way around the wrong part of the world.

Oh, let's not forget about Iran. Remember the axis of evil? I believe Iran and North Korea were part of that. Bush: World Must Speak with One Voice on Iran Nukes It is nice that Bush has decided to include the world in the nuclear problem that we all have. Iran today made a promising statement today, "Iran, facing mounting U.S. pressure over its nuclear program, promised Thursday a "burning hell" for any aggressor as tens of thousands marched to mark the 26th anniversary of its Islamic revolution." Problem is no one in the Bush administration is directly dealing with the problems. No one in the Bush administration is likely to tell Bush about the real issues. There is a grave nuclear threat that looms. Two countries who do not like our current administration have the capacity to change our way of life forever. Nuclear threat is now greater than any other time in the history of our country. The world needs to act together to take care of this concern. Bush needs to do something different: be diplomatic. Nuclear weapons are not something to be a cowboy about. Unless you are riding one, remember Dr. Strangelove?

Bush's bloated budget is this the new republican party?

2005-02-09T20:21:00.000-05:00

It is phenomenal how much Bush wants to control the American people and what they do behind closed doors. I was always under the [mis]conception that the republican party wanted government to stay out of the American peoples lives. That doesn't seem true anymore. Bush is "proposing new federal accountability and testing requirements for all public high schools, after imposing similar mandates on grades three through eight during his first term. To limit lawsuits against businesses and professionals, he is proposing to put a federal cap on damage awards for medical malpractice, to force class-action cases into federal courts and to help create a national settlement of outstanding asbestos-related cases." On the cultural and social aspects, Bush wants to push "a constitutional amendment to outlaw same-sex marriage in the states and continuing to define and expand the federal government's role in encouraging religious groups to help administer social programs such as community drug-rehabilitation efforts." The most concerning part of the Bush budget is the deficits.

Bush's $2.57-trillion budget for 2006 if it goes unscathed through congress, would be more than a third larger than the 2001 budget he inherited four years ago. With his proposed budget, spending and deficits appear to be the norm. The republicans use to say all democrats knew how to do is tax and spend. The republicans have come up with a different schema, reduce taxes, spend more, and just borrow against the future of every living (and to be born) American. What a plan indeed. The government spent $2.3 trillion and ran a $412 billion deficit in 2004, compared with the $1.8 trillion it spent and the $86 billion surplus it ran in the final full year of the Clinton administration. Let's remember here, Bush inherited a budget surplus in his first term which he promptly blew with a tax cut for the rich. There is a lot to be concerned about with deficits. Most substantially, inflation. The failing dollar may increase revenues, but it is a sign of the times. A lack of trust in the US treasury. Does anyone remember the republicans of old? Jefferson and states rights please exit stage right, Hamilton and stong federal government, please enter stage left. Here is a good article on what use to be the republican party.

It is one thing to cut taxes and increase spending, but reducing benefits to veterans of all people is just shameful. There is an inherent danger in using public taxes to fund controversial domestic issues. There is also a danger in not including 70 billion dollars in funds for Iraq and other special projects in your budget. If companies acted the way the federal government does, they would likely have to declare bankruptcy. Bushes unsound economic polices are not good for us or our children.

The State of Union

2005-02-01T20:06:00.000-05:00

The State of the Union

"The President shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." Article II, Sec. 3, U.S. Constitution

When George Washington delivered the first annual message to Congress on January 8, 1790 in New York to the Senate and House, he was well aware of the historical importance of this single speech. For the next 112 years, no President delivered their state of the union in person until Woodrow Wilson. I am not sure when the state of the union became a pep rally. Over 55 times this speech, any minor sound bite by the president is followed by incessant clapping and cheers.

With W.'s speech, one gets the impression that his speech writers have learned what made Reagan such a well respected president: rheortic. What they seem to lack though is a very basic understanding of facts and "truth". His speech set out a mighty domestic agenda that outlines his continual hopes of putting America back into the depths of its darker days. These darker days are when Darwinism was not taught in schools, the word homosexual was not used in the same sentence as family, if spoken at all. He longs for the days before science was able to actually help us at all. What about God? I don't know what Bush is not a scientologist. And most certainly before the days of abortion. While all his socio-cultural czar tirades are nothing more than fancy wishes of less curious days, what really concerned me about his speech is what he wants to do to social security.

Social Security

FDR created social security as a security blanket for the poorest Americans. FDR said social security is "to act as a protection to future administrations of the Government against the necessity of going deeply into debt to furnish relief to the needy--a law to flatten out the peaks and valleys of deflation and of inflation--in other words, a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide for the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness." Under Bush what will happen? The greatest corruption in government, ever.

Before I explain the corruption, let's first understand what Bush is proposing.

The current system of social security invests in Treasury Bonds which earns about 4 percent on average. According to the Social Security Administration, "Presently, Social Security collects more in taxes than it pays in benefits. The excess is borrowed by the U.S. Treasury, which in turn issues special-issue Treasury bonds to Social Security. These bonds totaled $1.5 trillion at the beginning of 2004, and Social Security receives more than $80 billion annually in interest from them. However, Social Security is still basically a "pay-as-you-go" system as the $1.5 trillion is a small percent of benefit obligations." Right now, social security is OK. But, we have the baby-boomers about to retire. Even the social security administration knows reform is needed. In The Future Of Social Security, one of the sections says, Social Security must change to meet future challenges. It is agreed that reform is needed. The question is how to reform the system.

Bush Administration Proposal

W. is proposing that "workers could invest as much as 4 percent of their wages subject to Social Security taxation in a limited assortment of stock, bond and mixed-investment funds. But the government would keep and administer that money. Upon retirement, workers would then be given any money that exceeded inflation-adjusted gains over 3 percent." According to MSNBC, here is the low-down: "Under the system, the gains may be minimal. The Social Security Administration, in projecting benefits under a partially privatized system, assumes a 4.6 percent rate of return above inflation. The Congressional Budget Office, Capitol Hill's official scorekeeper, assumes 3.3 percent gains. If a worker sets aside $1,000 a year for 40 years, and earns 4 percent annually on investments, the account would grow to $99,800 in today's dollars, but the government would keep $78,700 -- or about 80 percent of the account. The remainder, $21,100, would be the worker's. With a 4.6 percent average gain over inflation, the government keeps more than 70 percent. With the CBO's 3.3 percent rate, the worker is left with nothing but the guaranteed benefit. If instead, workers decide to stay in the traditional system, they would receive the benefit that Social Security could pay out of payroll taxes still flowing into the system, the official said. Which option would be best is still unclear because the White House has yet to propose how severely guaranteed benefits would be cut for those with individual accounts." Essentially the government would become one of the largest investors in the stock market. W. would certainly be taking care of his friends. Can you fathom the amount of corruption that would take place over where to put these funds? The government would become the single largest investor in the stock market. The economic devastation on private individuals if the government were to sell large shares, or have a corrupt administration administering this program could cripple or ruin our economy. W. would be doing nothing more than making his wall street cronies even wealthier. The whole idea of the government investing in the stock market for individuals is insane. It sounds good, until you read the fine print. This proposal is simply allowing for the end of capitalism as we know it. The market would not be free. With government wielding its economic power in the stock market, we can all be assured the end is near for a free economy. W. is desperately trying to remove the democratic aspects of our government that allow us to maintain the delicate balance between democracy and capitalism. Democracy taken to its logical end is communism. Capitalism taken to its logical end is fascism. Together in the balance that America has worked so hard to create, it creates a system of freedom both economically and politically. W. is doing everything he can to move us towards the path of fascism. Between his social engineering and now his economic engineering, America may have finally met its match. God help the country who elects the village idiot, not once, but twice. Of course, at this point, we might just get what we deserve.

Jesse Helms, a continual embarrassment to North Carolina

2005-02-01T15:42:00.000-05:00

I cannot be the only one who misses Bill Clinton. His good times administration is still fresh on the minds of so many Americans. How we only wish that FDR had not run for that 4th term. Just like every republican wanted to re-elect Reagan again, every democrat only wished that we could have re-elected Clinton. However, it does not come as any surprise that Jesse Helms reminded the moral and ethical individuals at the U.N today about Clinton and his past. Helms cannot help but continually be a black eye on North Carolina. Unlike Thurmond, Helms is still alive and cannot seem to keep his mouth shut. Is it me, or does anyone remember when Helms threaten Clinton's life? He said that "[Clinton] better watch out if he comes down here. He'd better have a bodyguard." What would happen if any human being in this country said that about Bush? Of course the long history of Helms career, including being against civil rights, holding fellow party members hostage to his personal agenda, and being a voice and image of the past that many southerns long to have removed from our modern day lives is not exactly the most moral or ethical. Many times Helms has been on the wrong side of history. I have to believe that Helms will not be remembered favorably in history. As time goes by, Clinton will only be cast as a superman like president. Like Darrell Hammond said on SNL, "Next time you best bring Kryptonite." It was Clinton's enemies that vanished, not Clinton. As for Helms, he has always been an embarrassment to North Carolina, the south, and his party. Today he only reminded us that he was alive, and it is best to let sleeping dogs lie.

Congratulations W., but who else cares?

2005-01-31T19:03:00.000-05:00

Being able to pat oneself on the back, is something that each of us probably needs to do more often. Today, we know one person is doing that very happily; W. With Iraq having what appears to be a successful vote in Iraq yesterday, W. must be ecstatic. W.s administration admittedly had no idea what was going to happen. US soldiers (along with Iraq soldiers) locked down the country and border to secure the country for a what appears to be a successful vote. Preliminary numbers have come in that 8 million out of 14 million eligible voters voted yesterday. This is an excellent number for Iraq. Sadly, this number is higher than the US in our last election. Shame on you American for not voting. Of course Iraq didnt have W. as one of their candidates.

No one can dispute that what happened yesterday in Iraq was a good thing. What is easily disputed is whether or not the path that was taken to get to yesterdays vote was worth while. Over 1000 soldiers have died already, over 150 billion has been spent. There is a sense of deja-vu too. The US has seen how the hope of voting has worked in other wars. Take the vote that took place in Vietnam in 1967. In the NYT, 1967, U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote : Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror by Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times (9/4/1967: p. 2) WASHINGTON, Sept. 3-- United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting. According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong. The size of the popular vote and the inability of the Vietcong to destroy the election machinery were the two salient facts in a preliminary assessment of the nation election based on the incomplete returns reaching here. We all know what happened there.

Other individuals have made rather interesting observations concerning the eventual outcome of Iraq. In Fareed Zakarias article, Elections Are Not Democracy, he makes many wonderful observations concerning the current state of Iraq. Zakria is concerned about not only the fate of Iraq, but in essence the fate of democracy. Democracy is after all the tyranny of the majority. It may be called a democracy, but it is a tyranny. In order for a democracy to work, the minority, those who are ruled by the majority, must agree to be ruled. Iraqis think they can just vote someone out of office if they dont like their policies. While this may be true, another aspect of democracy they may not realize is that the pool of talent that lines up to be voted into office is limited; extremely limited. While Iraq may be voting, they have a long way to go. One of the most profound statements in the article sums up distinctly the current US state of Iraq: America is spending billions of dollars in Iraq and getting very little for it. To me that sums up the state of Iraq. Especially with Bush asking for more and more money, it is must be obvious to the American people that we are in a quagmire.

Democrats are asking for exit strategies, at this point, it would be nice to just have a strategy. I for one am not happy about Iraq. I believe the situation is for all intensive purposes nothing more than W.s attempt to take care of what his father could not. This is John Adams trying to do what his father could not, but with a 2nd term. Is there not anybody else who thinks sons of ex-presidents should not be allowed to run for president?

In the end, the Iraq elections gave 8 million Iraqis the chance to vote at least once in their lives. For W., well W. can pat himself on the back and say good job. It is very likely very few others will be doing the same. Much like Jimmy Carter was able to when he finally got the Mid-East peace accord signed. Carter accomplished this even though his advisers said it was a bad idea all along. Carter knew he was doing the right thing. W.'s advisers have wanted this ever since the 1st Gulf war. One thing for sure though, W. will not be getting the Noble Prize for Peace anytime soon......

Thoughts on Bush's administration paying the media to promote their policies

2005-01-31T14:44:00.000-05:00

At what point does a “democracy” stop being a democracy? Is it when people loose the right to vote? Is it when there is no separation of state from church? Or does a democracy simply loose its luster when the current federal administration pays, that is right, pays with tax payers money to columnists to be proxies for their administrations policies. The Bush administration since 9/11 has tried desperately to remove so many democratic ideals: freedom of speech, separation of church and state, even the power of Congress. A new low was reached when it has become apparent that the administration is paying columnists to toot the horn of the administrations more controversial policies.

It is well known that Fox news and Rush Limbaugh are mouth pieces of the republican party and any news that comes from these sources is definitely slanted. What is less known, and even more troubling is that the Bush administration is paying columnists, of which only two have been identified so far, to propagate Bush policies in the media. These columnists did not disclose they were being paid by the federal government, nor did they openly admit to it. In accordance with all policies run out of the White House, Bush did not accept responsibility for these issues. The commentators were to blame, not Bush. As it should be said, if not already, God save the W.

It is beginning to feel more and more like the pendulum of this country is moving to a place where it will not move left for a long long while. Presidents have been surreptitiously elected since the beginning of our country. Washington was the perfect fit for our country. He was tall, quiet, well liked, and not very talkative. He was exactly what we needed as our 1st president. Other instances are sprinkled throughout our history. With Carter Americans wanted a genuine president who was likable; someone who would restore the greatness of the presidency. This of course happened with Reagan, who lead the United States in defense spending and out spent the USSR. Kennedy was the perfect fit after Eisenhower. The country was youthful and revitalized. Over and over, US presidents have been able to come in and do what the country needed done at the right time. Over and over I have tried to figure out how Bush has been able to do that same thing. And for once, it doesn’t make any sense. The country is intensely divided into two factions, and the pendulum as it were, is so far right, that it may be lost for a long time. When the pendulum does move back though, it will come heavy, quickly, and strongly to the left. It will be youthful again, and America will be ready to embrace the hardships that it must take head on. America will need to restore its image over seas, our budget, finances, taxes, social security, and civil rights. Liberty may be excessive, but now it appears to be lost amongst fear and war mongering.

The media shapes how Americans think and ultimately act. Policies are driven by media. Actions are driven by the media. So when it comes to free speech and paying the media, all of us should be concerned about our rights, the use of our tax dollars, and liberty (and freedom of speech). Even “Steve Rendall, an analyst with the independent media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), said [concerning Bush administration paying the media] "The real offence here is that readers or radio listeners are being defrauded in a sense lied to," he said. "They believe they are reading the words or hearing the opinion of an independent pundit but they are being propagandized to by a covert government agent." He added: "Mr Bush says his policies can stand on their own but they apparently can not."

With a republican congress, it is no wonder that no committee has been formed to review these policies. It is also not surprising that the media is not really hounding Bush on this issue. Again, I will ask the same question, at which point does a “democracy” stop being a democracy?

Bush, the Modern Dictator.......of Democracy

2005-01-26T20:18:00.000-05:00

You have to love the new W. His 2nd inaugural speech had such memorable lines like "America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom and make their own way." and "All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: The United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you." Bush continues on with nonsensical statements like "History has an ebb and flow of justice, but history also has a visible direction set by liberty and the author of liberty." I found his speech to have no value except to say to the world that I, George Walker Bush, believe so much in what my advisors say and in my own ambition and destiny in this world, that I don't have to have a policy that makes any sense or actually exists. I am loved. I have earned political capital. People like me. Well W., the world beckons you and your new found policies. Let's start with Sudan. Remember Sudan? Slavery has consistently been a problem. Genocide is still prevalent there. However, Sudan does not have oil or any other precious metals. Are we likely to take action? The article Bush's Delicate Dilemma On Darfur sheds some light on this subject.....Oh by the way, there was rally on MLK day concerning this issue, did you hear about it on the national news or from the Bush administration? Rally at UN Against Sudan Genocide a Success; MLK Day Rally Across From UN Draws Diverse Crowd of New Yorkers

One other aspect of Bush's 2nd inaugural speech I love, is his insistence that other countries become democracies, now. Although he claims that he will not force his hand on the democratic issue, there exists a lot of evidence to the contrary. For instance:
Bush Tells Iran to Stay Out of Iraq Vote or Bush Urges Iraqis to Vote, Lowers Expectations. I guess all Iraq's are excited to vote when billboards are up posted that say 'You Vote, You Die.' On this, a sad day, the largest single amount of Americans have lost their lives for democracy in Iraq. All the while, there are so many countries and oppressed people in the world, waiting, wondering, when is W. going to come and help me? When is W. going to send American troops to help us fight for our libery? Who is going to dye for their freedom today? W. has positioned himself in a no win situation. America is not seen as the liberators that Bush or Cheney pictured when we went into Iraq. W. cannot start dictating to the world: become a democracy or else. Else what? You are going to do nothing? Americans are content to put up with a lot from their government as long as they can enjoy their Lexus's, Kobe beef and fine wines. Hell, as long as they have a job and food, Americans are content. Our indifference towards our government is appalling. Apathy sucks. The world though will not take W.'s demands lightly; I also have a feeling they will not take his inaugural address seriously either, unless that is, they have a large stash of oil.

Update:

Nice article in the The American Conservative

Hunger for Dictatorship
War to export democracy may wreck our own.

http://www.amconmag.com/2005_02_14/article.html

Churchill and the Lack of Modern Leadership

2005-01-26T11:46:00.000-05:00

In the article, The Churchill Doctrine, Daniel Mandel reminds us of a few things. One, Churchill is a legend to all of us. His name is symbol of strength, leadership, courage, and colonial Britain. What few may know about him though is how he became who he is known to be. Churchill was not a successfully man until World War II. Churchill was not liked by his peers through most of his life. As a young man he was a soldier and he always remained one in thought and action throughout his career. Knowing that he was always destined for greatness, Churchill believed firmly that he would be a success. Even in the 10 years that he was not active politically, he still believed firmly that he would have an impact on the world. Churchill was in his 60's and 70's during this time. When he was called up to service again during World War II, he knew this was his chance. Churchill certainly made the most of it. Up until the day he died, he always believed in the old guard and old Britain. Although his mother was American, he always believed in the aristocracy that was his birth right through his father. Growing up in the days when Britain was at the height of its power, he never lost sight of that period, that snapshot of time. Through the course of his life though, Britain changed dramatically. Churchil the man never changed. It was as Prime Minister that he had delivered of the most memorable speeches of his life and the 20th century. It was through these speeches that Churchill saw and warned the world of upcoming disasters. No one seemed to listen to him then, and certainly have not taken heed to his words and thoughts in the world we live in today. The article above ended with these words: "It will then be for you, for the Americans, to preserve and maintain the great heritage of the English-speaking peoples. It will be for you to think imperially, which means to think always of something higher and more vast than one own national interests." There is no one like Churchill alive today. These words are haunting America right now. No one is saying aloud to the world, watch out for Islamic extremists. Watch out for the decline of America as a super power. Watch out for self imposed segregation. Watch out for imposing economic crisis. Has anyone paid attention to what has been going on for the last 4 years? Is this the nihilism that Nietzsche warned us about? Has the unabombers manifesto never been read? Is anyone paying attention? Does anyone care? Is indifference that prevalent? I think the answer to that question is obvious. The real question is when is there going to be real leadership that truly takes care of our concerns not only as a nation, but as a race of human beings who all have one thing in common: our desire to make this world better for our children.

The Rice Factor

2005-01-26T09:05:00.000-05:00

Someone asked me after W. Was re-elected which was worst, Gonzales taking over the Department of Justice or Rice taking over as Secretary of State. Without hesitating I answered Rice taking over as secretary of state. He looked befuddled and disagreed. He thought Gonzales would be much worst then Rice. What I think he failed to realize is that anybody is better than Ashcroft. Ashcroft led one of the largest infringements of our constitutional rights since the Civil War. What is even more disturbing is that none of these rights have been restored yet. The Patriot Act is still infringing on every aspect of our lives. Gonzales only affects the citizens in the United States. Rice has a far greater reach and her actions will have a lasting impact. Anything that Gonzales does can be restored with the next administration. Rice's actions abroad will be remembered for generations. These generations may not forget what she may do either.

Why is Rice so bad? Politically, our image abroad has never been worst. Powell was thought to have brought some independent thought to the Bush administration. He had many leftovers in the state department from the Clinton administration. There was no "cleaning house". Rice is without question a yes woman. She is W's sidekick. There is no independent thought outside of the Bush doctrine. Rice is very likely to clean house and put in yes people below her. Little W's pushing paper and making policies. It is a scary thought. All of these cowboys running around making proclamations, speaking bushisms, doing incredible harm. Cowboys do not make good friends. They are loners, self-determined individuals who believe that there are three ways of doing things, my way, my way, or my way. No ifs ands or buts. What the United States needs is an policy makeover. That will not happen with Rice. It will certainly not happen with Bush still in office.

What really gets my goat is the way the republicans do not want to hear any dissident voices. In the article the Democrats Slam Rice, But Senate Approval Assured "A group of Senate Democrats opposing the nomination of Condoleezza Rice as U.S. secretary of state on Tuesday accused her of deceiving Congress and called her an architect of blunders in the Iraq war.

But Republicans, jumping to Rice's defense, said Democrats were grandstanding since Rice was certain to be confirmed in the post by a full Senate vote on Wednesday." What I don't understand is why shouldn't the Democrats have their voice? What is wrong with them going on record and publicly asking Rice the tough questions that should have been asked before going to war. Before 1000's of soldiers lives were lost. Before billions and billions of dollars were spent abroad instead of at home. There was not a person in the Clinton administration that was not hounded or grilled incessantly when they went to capitol Hill to be confirmed by the republicans in office. The surgeon general had to step down over comments on masturbating, yet in the Bush administration, no heads have rolled at all (unless you said NO to Bush, then you were politely showed were you can speak). Not over 9/11, not over the war in Iraq, not over the greatest budget deficits in our history, not over the election, not over the Patriot Act; no heads rolled. All of these things are seen as positives in Bush world, although each of them has had dire consequences in our lives today and we will be living with these consequences for years to come. No one knows the impact that Bush will have on our republic or economy or world presence. The fact is we are loosing ground quickly. The falling dollar, high debt, and lack of a moral and political compass is eroding the United States power and prestige. Even Blair, Bush's lap dog so the U.K. press have said came out today and said, the "U.S. Needs to Integrate With World." Four more years of Bush and his cronies may do enough damage to bring our great republic to its knees. Lets hope that I am wrong.

As an afterthought, Rice was confirmed today. 13 senators voted against her. There has not been that many senators against a Secretary of state since Henry Clay was appointed in 1825. John Quincy Adams was elected president via the House when Clay was the Speaker of the House. There has always been rumors that a silent deal was brokered, likely so Clay could be the speaker. Ironically, John Quincy Adams was the son of John Adams our 2nd president. Much like Bush I and Bush II both Johns had mediocre presidential at best. John II tried desperately to accomplish something, anything to make up for his father's failed presidency. However, John II's presidency was even worst. Nothing happened for 4 years. It is true, history repeats itself.....

In the Shadow of a Giant

2005-01-25T19:41:00.000-05:00

There are many lingering questions that will have a tremendous impact on our lives as Americans in the next few years. These questions are who will W. choose to replace Greenspan and who will he recommend to replace Chief Justice Rehnquist. This question is raised not only in the context of the Chief Justice he chooses, but in who he will nominate to the Supreme Court. These two individuals will have a tremendous impact on our lives over the next quarter century.

The article The Greenspan Succession reminds us of the quiet importance of Greenspan. During the dot com boom, his words could make the market sink or explode. His absence and lack of public addresses have allowed the market to be languid this month. Greenspan has been a towering figure in American economic policy since 1987 and has guided the country though the greatest economic boom of the 20th century. He was someone who thought independently of those in office until W. took office. The article mentioned above has mentioned the change in Greenspan:

"Yet President Bush, as you may have noticed, only appoints yes-men (or yes-women). This is most obvious on the national security front, but it's equally true with regard to economic policy. The current Treasury secretary has no obvious qualifications other than loyalty. The new head of the National Economic Council apparently got the job because he is a Bush classmate and fund-raiser.

Of course, Mr. Greenspan himself has become a Bush yes-man. The chairman acted as a stern father figure, demanding fiscal rectitude, when Democrats held the White House. But he turned into an indulgent uncle when Mr. Bush took office. First, he urged Congress to cut taxes in order, he said, to prevent an excessively large budget surplus. Then, when surpluses were replaced by huge deficits, he supported a highly irresponsible second round of tax cuts."

What is disturbing is that if Greenspan retires and W. has the option of replacing him, the United States will be in an economic quagmire not seen since the 20's. Poor money management hurts the country. When the United Nations declares that the U.S. must spend less or risk global shock something needs to change and quickly. "The United States cannot rely on a falling dollar alone to tame its soaring trade deficit but must also cut government spending and save more or risk delivering a dangerous shock to the world economy, U.N. forecasters warned on Tuesday.

Without such additional steps, the world economy could suffer an "abrupt and globally damaging correction," according to the latest report on world economic prospects from the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs." The United Nations giving the United States economic advise is the equivalent to Bill Clinton calling William Bennett a moral man. However, the alarms the United Nations are sounding are real. The United States is heading down a path of economic disaster. The question is how soon will it happen and how bad will it be?

Currency Concerns

2005-01-24T20:44:00.000-05:00

With headlines like Central banks shift reserves away from US and Stocks Tumble to New 2005 Lows, Techs Hit it is a wonder that the Wall Street Journal could have an article entitled The Economists' President or how Sound policies and principles drive the Bush economy. What I don't seem to understand is how conservatives can still think that Bush's economic policies are working. There is no end to the economic disaster that could take place in this country if consumer confidence wanes or foreign investments are pulled out of the United States. It is so critical that we continue to drive foreign investment not only in our currency but in our real estate, bonds, and stock market. January has not been a good month for stocks. It has not been a good month for anything so far. All over the UK today, it has been noted that the 24th of January is considered to be the worst day of the year. It seems that way anyway. Cash will be king this year. Unfortunately the best cash to have is the Pound followed by the Euro, and in a distant third the good old American dollar. Hamilton would not be happy with the beginnings of 2005 and neither am I.

Beware of the 2nd Term

2005-01-21T20:47:00.000-05:00

On the front page of the Wall Street Journal is an article entitled “Bush Promises Aggressive Push for Democracy” in which the 1st line is President Bush asserted to the world that time is running out for regimes that flout the basic tenets of democracy….” I guess that none of his advisors have made him aware of his administrations flouting of democracy in this country. From the election, to the Patriot act, the repression of the media, to the war on a sovereign country, no other President in our history has done more to tarnish the image of the United States in the world nor has divided the country so strongly and passionately as W.

Looking back at the history of the country, very few presidents have had success in their second terms. Only 16 presidents have had 2nd terms. Most notably, Lincoln was assassinated, Roosevelt was unable to push through legislation, Wilson had the Republican congress which did not pass the League of Nations resolution (which could have helped been a tremendous boost to the United States and its power in the world), Eisenhower allowed the Russians to pull ahead of the United States in the race for space, Nixon, well we all know what happened to him, Reagan had Iran Contra, and Clinton, Clinton had the Lewinsky scandal. 2nd terms have not been kind to American presidents. The Christian Science Monitor has a good article on this very subject.
It is very difficult for me to think about four more years of Bush. Politically, I almost feel like a recovering addict. I have to keep reminding myself to take one day at a time. The political pendulum rocks back and forth. The country goes from liberal to conservative, depending on the American people’s mood and general economic position. This makes it surprising that W. was re-elected. The election discussion has been debated by better individuals than me. Eventually the country will be back in a progressive mood again when economically we are in shambles; Americans cannot travel abroad without being hissed or booed at, our purchase power is severely weakened by the dollar, individuals are afraid to speak out against the administration, and more money has gone to Iraq then to some states, America will be ready again for a progressive leader. What America needs and will need is a strong leader. American needs strong progressive leader that will re-new the modern American commitment to the world and to the American people.

God has always been in America. Lincoln’s greatest speeches all had mentions of God in them. No President though has ever tried to legislate God into politics as Bush wanted to from the minute he got into office. The moral right needs to be stricken from politics. If an organization wants to be political, it can not be religious (it cannot be a non-profit organization.) The job of the government is not to be moral, it is to legislate and protect the property and individual rights of its citizens.

The Republicans have lost sight of this very simple and straightforward concept of government. Big government, big budgets, big wars, little rights, little taxes, and little opposition has replaced what was the “Reagan revolution” of little government and smaller budgets. Truth be known, Clinton was more Reagan than Reagan was it fact. Clinton reduced the size of the federal work force, reduced budget spending, balanced the budget, governed over one of the biggest economic booms in our history, all the while having the great peace time in the history of our country. The Republicans were so disappointed they could not re-elect Reagan to a 3rd term. Every since W. was elected, I have been disappointed that we could not have Clinton for a 3rd term or a 4th term. I bet Clinton was too……

There is an End in sight to the Evil FCC Reign of Powell

2005-01-21T14:30:00.000-05:00

With the announcement of FCC Chairman Powell to Resign in March, the radio and television community can only be ecstatic. With Powell’s reign, he has allowed 1. “Powell led the Republican-dominated FCC in easing decades-old rules governing ownership of newspapers and television and radio stations. The commission approved changes in 2003 that allow individual companies to own TV stations reaching nearly half the nation's viewers and combinations of newspapers and broadcast outlets in the same community.” This only encouraged what has become a one sided media that is not allowed to speak badly of Bush without consequences, note The Bush Rule of Journalism. What Powell will be known for most is the complete and utter blatant violation of the 1st amendment. “Powell is perhaps best known for overseeing a dramatic crackdown on broadcast indecency that began before the infamous "wardrobe malfunction" during singer Janet Jackson's Super Bowl halftime performance last February.” Since the Super Bowl, the FCC has used Janet Jackson as a means (much like Bush has used 9-11 for his agenda in Iraq) for cracking down on anything they don’t think is moral or worthy of listening too. Unfortunately, no one in the Bush administration disagrees with him. What it does show is the complete lack of respect for this country and the freedom of speech that it was founded on. Morality does not belong in public policy. If it did, we would be fighting wars in Sudan where slavery is still allowed, and not Iraq. No, what it amounts to is an imposed protectionism on what they think the American people should be allowed to watch. Never mind the V-Chip or parents? Parents….It is up to parents, not the FCC to regulate what their kids should or should not see or listen too. Howard Stern should be able to say and do as he pleases. No one, I repeat no one is forced to listen to him. Or for that matter, no one is forced to listen to the crap that spews from the mouths of the Fox news channel. Bill O’Reilly deserves much worst punishment then Howard Stern should ever receive. However, no matter how bad O’Reilly is, he is protected by the 1st amendment. And I do not have to listen to him, and neither should anyone else that does want to. Those who want to listen to him, they have that right. Knowing Bush he will probably put someone even worst and under-qualified as Powell is in that position. Things could get worst. But today, I am pleased that at least Powell will be on his way out the door, and hopefully the FCC will limit its moral conquest to rid the American people of what it deems inappropriate. You need the FCC has been cracking down when even Fox will not put something out because they are concerned about the FCC. We are all in serious trouble then.

As a follow up, Frank Rich writing for the New York Times has written a wonderful article that has articulated the last year, The Year of Living Indecently.

Know More, Get More

2005-01-21T13:26:00.000-05:00

Part philosopher, part businessman, Toby Hecht subscribes wholeheartedly to the idea that "knowledge is power" -- and he has built a business around applying this concept. As founder and CEO of The Aji Network (the name comes from an ancient Japanese strategy game that's also known as Go), Hecht and his four coaches teach students how to change the way they think about business and study it like they would medicine or law, developing a deep knowledge base of its fundamentals.

Draft No. 9

2005-01-20T22:47:00.000-05:00

What George W. Bush might have said—at least as our columnist jokingly imagines it

By Patti Davis

Newsweek

Updated: 6:21 p.m. ET Jan. 20, 2005

There were 22 drafts of President Bush’s Inaugural Address, according to news reports, the final one being approved as suitable for history’s long and indelible memory. Since every White House has its leaks, moles, spies and secret e-mailers, it was inevitable that an earlier draft—and accompanying commentary—would end up in the wrong hands. Fortunately those hands were mine, and it is my patriotic duty to make this draft public. We are still at this moment a free society, and I think I’m still protected by the First Amendment (though I’m not completely sure about that.)

Anyway, if you never hear from me again it’s because I was taken away in the middle of the night, put into some clandestine place, and am going through rigorous questioning as to where I got this draft. Please delete this link after you read it—you could be next. New Power Players

“My fellow Americans, I stand before you now as the proud winner of another four years. I have a mandate. In plain English, I can do whatever I darn well please.” (Note to Prez: a bit hostile, I think. Can we get the word freedom in as soon as possible?)

Economic Data Hint at Some Sluggishness

2005-01-20T22:43:00.000-05:00

Thu Jan 20, 3:40 PM ET Business - Reuters

By Andrea Ricci

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A closely watched survey of business activity in the U.S. mid-Atlantic region showed evidence of some slowing in the country's economic expansion on Thursday, but an index used to gauge future growth gave more hopeful signals.

The Philadelphia Federal Reserve (news - web sites)'s business activity index came in at 13.2 for January, marking the 20th consecutive month factories in the highly industrialized region of the United States expanded output. But the index was down from 25.4 in December, indicating that the pace of activity slowed considerably from the prior month.

The January reading also was the lowest in 18 months, and far lower than the 26.4 median forecast by economists.

In another report released on Thursday, the Conference Board (news - web sites), a private think tank, said its leading indicators index rose in December for the second straight month after five consecutive declines.

The index rose 0.2 percent to 115.4, a bigger increase than the 0.1 percent forecast by economists.

Alan Ruskin, research director at 4Cast in New York, said the day's data gave a hint that U.S. economic growth may not be a strong as people had hoped.

"On the growth side, the Philly Fed number certainly seemed soft," said Ruskin. "I am encouraged by some improvement in the leading indicators. But that needs to be watched closely because we haven't felt the full effects of the prior five months of declines.

"We just might have kicked off the year on the soft side," he added.

The second-term mission: to end tyranny on Earth

2005-01-20T22:41:00.000-05:00

From Gerard Baker in Washington

FOUR years ago he was the Accidental President, scion of a ruling family propelled into the highest office more by genetics and duty than by political zeal and ideological mission.
Victor, sort of, after a messy constitutional scrum left him in charge of a divided nation and holding a flimsy legitimacy, this apparently callow and unengaged new President seemed to match the times. America in January 2001 was fat, happy and self-absorbed with the trivia of the post-Cold War world.

Yesterday the transformation of George W. Bush from frat-boy-made-good to solemn champion of an urgent, messianic mission to transform the world was completed.

In his second inaugural address, delivered to tens of thousands in front of a snowy Capitol building in Washington, but pointedly directed at friends and enemies around the world, President Bush dedicated himself and the next four years to no less than the ending of tyranny on Earth.

Invoking the ghosts of Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, and at times borrowing their rhetorical voices, Mr Bush placed the current war in Iraq, and the wider War on Terror, as the natural successor to the struggles those predecessors fought to advance liberty — the Civil War, the Second World War and the Cold War.Indeed, he promised to match or even exceed those victories.

“America, in this young century, proclaims liberty throughout all the world, and to all the inhabitants thereof. Renewed in our strength — tested, but not weary — we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom.”

Acknowledging that he and his country had been called to duty by the “day of fire” in September 2001 that woke the US from its post-Cold War torpor, Mr Bush said that the task of promoting freedom was not just some worthy ideal. It was a goal on which America’s very existence depended. “We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.”

Nice speech but where's the strategy?

2005-01-20T22:40:00.000-05:00

From Elaine Monaghan in Washington

Rich Texans in cowboy hats and fur coats rubbed shoulders with student protesters in woolly hats and balaclavas as tens of thousands of people descended upon Washington to mark President Bush's inauguration today.

Away from the pomp and ceremony, an eery quiet enveloped the downtown area, the result of one of the biggest security shutdowns in the city's history.

While tens of thousands of supporters crammed the stands on Capitol Hill to hear the president deliver a passionate pledge to spread freedom throughout the world, a 100-block area of the capital had been closed to traffic.

The airport near the capital, just across the Potomac River from the celebrations and a short distance from the Pentagon, was closed.

Those commuters who, unlike government workers, had not been given the day off, crammed into underground trains in the morning rush hour, unable to get to work by car.

Visitors to the inauguration from across the country squeezed in beside them clutching blankets against the wintry cold. Mixed in with the familiar down jackets and winter boots, evidence of the many visitors from Mr Bush's home state of Texas could be seen.

"We believe God has honoured George Bush because George Bush has honoured God," said Kati Trawick of Houston, in a fur coat and dark glasses. "We are at a turning point in history," said her husband Ken, wearing a black cowboy hat. "We didn't choose this. It was imposed on us."

"He's one of the greatest presidents ever, and he will continue to prove it," said John Killoran, who had travelled from Syracuse, New York with his friend Mark Hillanbrand to attend the celebratations.

How Free Is the Free Press?

2005-01-20T22:39:00.000-05:00

Dr. James Zogby, jzogby@aaiusa.org

Just how free is the US’ “free press?” Does the absence of direct government control, by itself, create a “free press?” In a paper I recently presented at a conference organized by the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, I sought to make a contribution to this discussion by examining the influences that impact US media.

While there is no direct political influence or control of US media, such as may exist in societies with state-run media, there is, nevertheless, influence that “controls” coverage that can be subtle, but is at all times, pervasive and decisive.

Most US-based news organizations like to claim objectivity as their trademark, from Fox News’ claims to be “fair and balanced” to the New York Times boasting that it covers “All the news that’s fit to print.” While critics from both the right and the left argue that these networks and newspapers report the news with either a liberal or conservative slant, in fact, the forces that shape bias in media coverage run deeper and are more complex. Cultural, commercial and political influences have a profound impact on editorial decisions made by media outlets, as well as on the content of the information they dispense.

Major reporters, their editors, TV news presenters and commentators, and the government officials and other newsmakers they cover, form a very small circle in Washington DC and New York.

Analysts Note Gap Between Bush Rhetoric And Reality

2005-01-20T22:38:00.000-05:00

Analysts Note Gap Between Bush Rhetoric And Reality
Close Ties With Repressive Governments Are Cited

By Glenn Kessler and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 21, 2005; Page A25

President Bush's soaring rhetoric yesterday that the United States will promote the growth of democratic movements and institutions worldwide is at odds with the administration's increasingly close relations with repressive governments in every corner of the world.

Some of the administration's allies in the war against terrorism -- including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Uzbekistan -- are ranked by the State Department as among the worst human rights abusers. The president has proudly proclaimed his friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin while remaining largely silent about Putin's dismantling of democratic institutions in the past four years. The administration, eager to enlist China as an ally in the effort to restrain North Korea's nuclear ambitions, has played down human rights concerns there, as well.

Thoughts on Bush's 2nd Term

2005-01-20T19:01:00.000-05:00

With today's inauguration, I would like to reflect on America's future for the next four year's.

1. The dollar will continue be weak. The Euro and the EU are beginning to slowly take away the economic power of the US. With our imports greater than our exports, our national debt at an all time high, rising consumer and utility prices, and real estate prices at an all time high, our economy is headed into a tail spin. Bush wants to reduce taxes and has already made more billionaire's then ever before. The middle class will become squeezed and the Right will have their morals as they ponder how they will eat and survive. At least they know they will go to a better place.

2. Iraq will define Bush's presidency. Be it good or bad, history will tell.

3. With many of the old guard on Bush's staff gone, inadequate, youthful, (hopefully not optimistic) staff will only make worst an already bad situation that is United States image here and abroad. No one will do more to incur disdain than Condi Rice. Colin Powell was the only individual in the Bush administration that could, I said could be respected. He lost it rather quickly in this administration when he went before the UN and testified about Iraq.

4. If the 1st two weeks of the year have been any indication of how the stock market will perform, we are in trouble. Deep trouble. Airlines are close to collapse. Software companies are getting hit hard. Companies that make their numbers consistently go down in value while companies that have up-beat news and little profits continuously move up? Strange..... At least dividends are not taxed as much. However, few companies pay dividends now, they rather keep the money to grow.

5. I cannot say when it happened, but it has. The media is losing its "liberal" bias minute by minute. With Fox being a blowhorn for Bush, NBC is not far away from moving to the right. A Republican controlled Congress, President, and media can mean only one thing: there are very few individuals controlling much of the money, real estate, and power in this country. A consolidated plutocracy will squeeze the poor, ruin the middle class, and do so with a smile and expect thank you's. Just like in Animal House with Kevin Bacon being spanked to enter the fraternity, SMACK, thank you Sir, may I have another?

6. The threat of Iran and North Korea needs to be dealt with diplomatically and not use Iraq as an example. This could have dreadful consequences for the world.

7. What does this mean? It means that if you are White, rich and Republican, your life will only get better. If you are poor and moral, why you deserve every last bit of what happens to you, you elected Bush in the 1st place. The middle class are likely to be squeezed out. It ends up being the have not's and the haves, the exploited and the exploiters. Until a more progressive government comes back into power to reduce our debt, be fiscal responsible, repair international relations, change the tax code to be more equal, give us back our liberty by undoing the Patriot act, and finally just simply listen to others and not be so damn stubborn (which will make W.'s 2nd term have much corruption but with no one to report it, no Senate to damn it, it will only be history that will let it be known how dreadfully unAmerican, hateful, stupid, and pathetic this administration has been, i.e. Harding) we will live in a dark time in American history. God Speed America. Let us get through this dark hour as painlessly and quickly as possible.

GEORGE WASHINGTON'S FAREWELL ADDRESS

2005-01-20T17:49:00.000-05:00

Link to Complete Text of Washington's Farewell Speech

ABSTRACT

Washington's Farewell Address to the Nation appears in its entirety in this issue of the Independent Chronicle. Although it is by all accounts the most famous and best-known of Washington's speeches, it was never actually delivered orally by Washington. By his own arrangement it first appeared in a newspaper at Philadelphia. It was published seven days later in The Independent Chronicle.

The Chronicle, published in Boston by Thomas Adams and Isaac Larkin, was the leading New England voice of the Republican party. Its pages contained a number of outspoken contributors who could be counted on to regularly issue vigorous assaults on the Federalists. In Boston since 1776 the newspaper carved out a distinguished journalistic career for one hundred years.

Washington's Farewell Address was similar to one he had prepared at the end of his first term, when he had considered retiring from office. Toward the close of his first term in 1792 James Madison prepared notes to be used by Washington in formulating a valedictory speech. Madison submitted a draft but it was set aside when Washington abandoned his plans for retirement.

In May 1796 he took Madison's notes and wrote a first draft for the new address. Washington showed his manuscript to Alexander Hamilton and asked him to revise it. For the next four months various drafts were sent back and forth between Washington and Hamilton. Finally, Hamilton read his version of the address to John Jay for criticism, discussing the work paragraph by paragraph. The result, rewritten again by Washington in a final version, and admittedly a collaborative effort, nonetheless embodies the thoughts, ideas and principles of the retiring president.

Describing the farewell address in his book on the life of Washington, Henry Cabot Lodge wrote "...no man ever left a nobler political testament."

In his Address Washington announces his planned withdrawal from politics "after forty-five years of my life dedicated to its (America's) service." He then sets forth his reasons against running for a third term. As if to bolster his argument, he states: "While choice and prudence invite me to quit the political scene, patriotism does not forbid it."
In his address Washington:

***Extolls the benefits of the federal government. "The unity of government...is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence...of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize."

***Warns against the party system. "It serves to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the

Public Administration....agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one....against another....it opens the door to foreign influence and corruption...thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another."

***Stresses the importance of religion and morality. "Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice?"

***On stable public credit. "...cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible...avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt....it is essential that you...bear in mind, that towards the payments of debts there must be Revenue, that to have Revenue there must be taxes; that no taxes can be devised, which are not...inconvenient and unpleasant..."

***Warns against permanent foreign alliances. "It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world..."

***On an over-powerful military establishment. "...avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments, which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to Republican Liberty."

In saying farewell to the new nation he helped create Washington pointed out that ".......the name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism..."

To the great soldier, statesman and leader of his country...no tribute could be more fitting.

Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address

2005-01-20T17:47:00.000-05:00

Washington, D.C.
March 4, 1865

At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention, and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it--all sought to avert it. While the inaugeral [sic] address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war--seeking to dissole [sic] the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.

One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!" If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope--fervently do we pray--that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether"

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan--to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.

Conservatives Pick Soft Target: A Cartoon Sponge

2005-01-20T15:22:00.000-05:00

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Published: January 20, 2005

ASHINGTON, Jan. 19 - On the heels of electoral victories barring same-sex marriage, some influential conservative Christian groups are turning their attention to a new target: the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants.

"Does anybody here know SpongeBob?" Dr. James C. Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, asked the guests Tuesday night at a black-tie dinner for members of Congress and political allies to celebrate the election results.

SpongeBob needed no introduction. In addition to his popularity among children, who watch his cartoon show, he has become a well-known camp figure among adult gay men, perhaps because he holds hands with his animated sidekick Patrick and likes to watch the imaginary television show "The Adventures of Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy."

Now, Dr. Dobson said, SpongeBob's creators had enlisted him in a "pro-homosexual video," in which he appeared alongside children's television colleagues like Barney and Jimmy Neutron, among many others. The makers of the video, he said, planned to mail it to thousands of elementary schools to promote a "tolerance pledge" that includes tolerance for differences of "sexual identity."

Inaugural costs decried on LI

2005-01-20T09:48:00.000-05:00

BY MARTIN C. EVANS
STAFF WRITER

January 19, 2005, 8:48 PM EST

In November, Jeanette Urbina's soldier son telephoned from Iraq with a simple request.

It was cold there, Army Spc. Wilfredo F. Urbina told her. Could she send him a sweater?

Three days later he was dead. An explosive device had sliced into the Humvee he was in while he was patrolling in Baghdad.

Wednesday, parents of several Iraq veterans said they are angry that more than $17 million will be spent on security for Thursday's inaugural festivities for President George W. Bush, while troops he sent to war still lack sufficient armor to keep them alive.

"What is the life of a soldier worth?" asked Jeanette Urbina, of Baldwin, whose son was killed Nov. 29. "Is one or two thousand dollars too much to ask? They are fighting for democracy and freedom. They need more protection."

"How dare he," said Dorine Kenney, of Bay Shore. Her son, Spc. Jacob S. Fletcher, was killed in Iraq Nov. 13, 2003, when a bomb detonated near a bus he was riding in.

George Bush, master of delusion

2005-01-20T09:47:00.000-05:00

Alchemy is the purported science of turning base metals into gold. It does not exist. Political alchemy is the ability to turn hard failures into gossamer triumphs. It does exist. The inauguration of President Bush for a second term proves it.
The President, of course, does not see it that way. He proclaims himself at the top of his game: ruler of the free world, liberator of Iraq and magnificent chief of the Grand Old Party. Most important, in his view, is that his view is shared by the American people. His reelection was no mere mandate, since, you will recall, he claimed that the last time, when he scratched out a win in Florida by only several hundred votes. No, this victory is a mandate of Rooseveltian dimensions. With precisely this sort of self-assurance, Napoleon crowned himself Emperor of France.

In reality, Bush's view of the American people is not shared by the American people. In fact, a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found Bush with what you might call a negative mandate. Only 45% said they wanted the country to go in the direction Bush wants, and on Iraq - the No. 1 issue for most Americans - 58% disapproved of the way he has handled what to him is a grand triumph.

The 60-day war is now in its second year, and the chorus of those urging a pullout grows louder and louder. Even former Mayor Ed Koch says it's time for the U.S. "to declare victory and ... bring our troops home." Koch, a Democrat who supported Bush's reelection, also supported the war and, oddly, still does. Still, he wants out.

Where in Washington, D.C. is Sun Myung Moon?

2005-01-19T11:46:00.000-05:00

Here is how Rev. Moon, Washington Times owner and self-declared Messiah, manages to appear in the second paragraph of a Washington Post story about huge donations, while remaining almost completely invisible as a major Bush patron. Writes private investigator Larry Zilliox:
The list of donors found at the Bush 2005 Inaugural Committee web site includes a maximum $250,000 donation from the Washington Television Center. http://www.inaugural05.com/donors.
The Washington Television Center is a Unification Movement Closely Associated Entity controlled by Moon through a series of shell and operating companies. This is the name for the office building at 650 Massachusetts Ave., NW in Washington, DC that houses Atlantic Video, Inc. and Nostalgia Network, Inc. also known as GoodLife TV which recently changed its name to AmericanLife TV.

The Moon organization purchased the building in mid 1991 in the name of the Washington Television Center, L.P. The managing partner at the time of purchase was a Delaware corporation known as WTC Realty, Inc. The officers and directors of WTC Realty, Inc. are Moon followers who have included Dong Moon Joo President of News World Communications, Inc. the publisher of the Washington Times.

The 2004 Property Record for the District of Columbia shows the current owner of 650 Massachusetts Ave. as the Washington Television Center C/O US Property Development Corp. Dong Moon Joo is listed as President US Property Development Corp. in the latest corporate filing made by the company with the Virginia State Corporation Commission.

According to commercial credit reporting service Dun & Bradstreet US Property Development Corp is a subsidiary of One Up Enterprises, Inc. which in turn is a wholly owned subsidiary of Unification Church International a for profit company formed in Washington, DC in 1977.

In the following article Dong Moon Joo notes that attendees of a World Media Association function plan to visit the Washington Television Center. The Washington Television Center has been a show piece of Moon's Washington, DC media and real estate conglomerate for some time. http://www.wmassociation.com/proceedings/21wmc/joo.html

Rice Acknowledges Some Bad Iraq Decisions

2005-01-19T11:41:00.000-05:00

Wednesday, January 19, 2005 10:55 a.m. ET

By Saul Hudson and Arshad Mohammed

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice said on Wednesday the Bush administration made some bad decisions in Iraq and was unprepared for stabilizing the country in a rare acknowledgment of mistakes.

But Democrats complained the Republican President Bush's administration was unwilling to learn from its mistakes to change policies in Iraq, be candid about the cost of continued deployment and develop a better exit strategy.

"We have made a lot of decisions in this period of time. Some of them have been good, some of them have not been good, some of them have been bad decisions, I am sure," Rice told the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"We didn't have the right skills, the right capacity, to deal with a reconstruction effort of this kind," she said on the second day of hearings on her confirmation, which is expected to be easily approved by the Republican-led Senate.

Rice's acknowledgment of mistakes followed criticism her testimony on Tuesday belied the reality on the ground, where a raging insurgency has repeatedly delayed the training of Iraqi forces who would eventually take over from U.S. troops.

Rice declined to predict for senators when U.S. forces would return home but asserted there had been progress in training Iraqis to eventually replace the 150,000 American troops.

Democrats, who accused the Bush administration of misleading the country into war and sending too few troops into Iraq to stabilize it, called for more candor.

"We've all got to be honest also with the world, otherwise we'll do terrible damage beyond what we've already done to our credibility," the committee's ranking Democrat, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, said.

He complained the administration's inability to learn from its mistakes limited its options and ability to respond to other major foreign policy challenges.

Airbus unveils its superjumbo, European leaders hail lead over US

2005-01-18T13:49:00.000-05:00

Wednesday January 19, 12:44 AM
Airbus unveils its superjumbo, European leaders hail lead over US

Airbus unveiled the world's biggest passenger jet in a glitzy ceremony at which the leaders of France, Britain, Germany and Spain hailed Europe's victory over the United States as the new king of the commercial skies.

The huge A380 superjumbo, which can carry up to 840 people on its two full decks, supersedes the ageing 747 by US rival Boeing as the biggest civilian aircraft ever made.

When it is put into service early next year, it will become the flagship of many airline fleets and offer unprecedented amenities on long-haul services, including, in some cases, gyms, bedrooms and bars.

For the countries that backed the 10.7-billion-euro (14-billion-dollar) development cost, the plane -- hidden behind an immense black curtain until its unveiling -- stood as a prominent symbol of European cooperation.

"Good old Europe has made this possible," German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder told a packed hall in Airbus's headquarters in Toulouse, southwest France.

That was a barely-veiled barb recalling the US dismissal of France, Germany and other EU states in 2003 as "Old Europe" because of their opposition to the war on Iraq.

The Bush Rule of Journalism

2005-01-18T13:07:00.000-05:00

By Robert Parry
January 17, 2005

“Don’t take on the Bushes” is becoming an unwritten rule in American journalism. Reporters can make mistakes in covering other politicians and suffer little or no consequence, but a false step when doing a critical piece on the Bushes is a career killer.

The latest to learn this hard lesson are four producers at CBS, who demonstrated inadequate care in checking out memos purportedly written by George W. Bush’s commanding officer in the Texas Air National Guard in the early 1970s. For this sloppiness, CBS fired the four, including Mary Mapes who helped break last year’s Abu Ghraib torture scandal.

A painful irony for the CBS producers was that the central points of the memos – that Bush had blown off a required flight physical and was getting favored treatment in the National Guard – were already known, and indeed, were confirmed by the commander’s secretary in a follow-up interview with CBS. But even honest mistakes are firing offenses when the Bushes are involved.

By contrast, journalists understand that they get a free shot at many other politicians who don’t have the protective infrastructure that surrounds the Bush family. Take for example the case of reporters for the New York Times and the Washington Post who misquoted Al Gore about his role in the Love Canal toxic waste clean-up.

Tape reveals JFK fuming over civil rights

2005-01-18T09:01:00.000-05:00

The Associated Press
Updated: 2:11 a.m. ET Jan. 17, 2005BOSTON - On the afternoon of May 4, 1963, President Kennedy wasn’t in a mood to mince words.

As he met in the White House with members of a liberal political group, he fumed when one of them mentioned the Associated Press photo splashed above the fold of that day’s New York Times. The now-iconic photograph showed a police dog attacking a black teenager in Birmingham, Ala.

Birmingham had been aboil with civil rights demonstrations for weeks. Hundreds of black children had marched to protest segregation, and Police Commissioner Bull Connor ordered officers to disperse them with fire hoses and dogs.

“There’s no federal law we could pass to do anything about that picture in today’s Times. Well, there isn’t,” Kennedy snapped. “I mean, what law can you pass to do anything about police power in the community of Birmingham? There is nothing we can do.”

The tape of his meeting with 20 members of Americans for Democratic Action was released by the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston to coincide with Martin Luther King Day on Monday.

Iran Says It Has Military Might to Deter Any Attack

2005-01-18T08:57:00.000-05:00

By Paul Hughes

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran has the military might to deter attacks against it, its defense minister said in remarks published Tuesday, one day after President Bush (news - web sites) said he would not rule out military action against Iran.

Ali Shamkhani said the Islamic Republic, which has seen U.S. forces topple regimes in neighboring Afghanistan (news - web sites) and Iraq (news - web sites) in the last three years, did not fear attack.

"We are able to say that we have strength such that no country can attack us because they do not have precise information about our military capabilities due to our ability to implement flexible strategies," the semi-official Mehr news agency quoted Shamkhani as saying.

"We can claim that we have rapidly produced equipment that has resulted in the greatest deterrent," he said, without elaborating.

Iran last October announced successful trials of its Shahab-3 ballistic missile with a range of 1,250 miles, putting parts of Europe, as well as Israel and U.S. bases in the Gulf, within its reach.

Bush said Monday that Washington would not rule out military action against Iran, which he labeled in 2002 an "axis of evil" member alongside Iraq and North Korea (news - web sites), if it was not more forthcoming about its suspected nuclear weapons program.

Iranian officials said they were unconcerned about the threats of military action, which seemed to suggest Washington was eager to tackle Iran in Bush's second term.

Loathing Is Not Enough

2005-01-18T08:54:00.000-05:00

By Ralph R. Reiland
Published 1/18/2005 12:05:53 AM

This column is about helping the Democrats. And it's not because I like higher taxes, more lawsuits, more government waste or a more shamefaced approach to foreign policy. It's just that we're better off with two strong parties -- or as economists like to say, we're better off with competition than monopoly.

And competition, to be effective, must be vigorous. More and more, however, what the Democrats have tossed into the ring has been puny, both in terms of candidates and public policy initiatives.

As a consequence, we're seeing a mounting monopolization of power by one party, or as Walter Shapiro described the situation in his recent commentary in the Los Angeles Times: "Now the Democrats face the bleak prospect of controlling no governmental entity larger than the state of Illinois, unless, of course, liberals still consider Bush buddy Tony Blair an honorary member of their downwardly mobile party."

None of this happened overnight. Shapiro, from the perspective of covering the last seven presidential campaigns, points to Reagan's election in 1980 as the pivotal event in the degeneration of the Democratic Party. "The benchmark election that destroyed the party's belief in its own destiny was 1980, when incumbent President Carter carried only six states and the Republicans gained 12 Senate seats to take control of a chamber of Congress for the first time since the early 1950s. This was the moment when the Democrats lost their half-century claim to be the natural governing party of the United States."

More significantly, that was also the moment when the big guns in the Democratic Party began a four-year detour in exactly the opposite direction from where the rest of the nation was heading. By those who saw themselves as the "natural" governing elite, Reagan was time and again painted as either dumb or a warmonger, or evil, or all three.

The Depressed Press

2005-01-17T14:36:00.000-05:00

The media's handwringing and narcissism are threatening our mission to act as counterweight to government power. By WILLIAM SAFIRE

Washington - America's quality media are now wading through the Slough of Despond. Our self-flagellation, handwringing and narcissism threaten our mission to act as counterweight to government power.

Hear the wailing: The bloggers are coming! The Bible-thumpers are cursing our secular inhumanism! The plumber judges are plugging our leaks! The Yahoo president ducks our questions and giggles at our gaffes! News is slyly slanted as bias rears its head!
Cheer up. Despite the recent lapses at CBS and previous mishaps at The Times and USA

Today, here's why mainstream journalism has a future.

1. On the challenge from bloggers: The "platform" - print, TV, Internet, telepathy, whatever - will change, but the public hunger for reliable information will grow. Blogs will compete with op-ed columns for "views you can use," and the best will morph out of the pajama game to deliver serious analysis and fresh information, someday prospering with ads and subscriptions. The prospect of profit will bring bloggers in from the meanstream to the mainstream center of comment and local news coverage.

On national or global events, however, the news consumer needs trained reporters on the scene to transmit facts and trustworthy editors to judge significance. In crises, large media gathering-places are needed to respond to a need for national community.

2. On resentment of media elitism by awakened cultural and religious voices: They're not crazies. Their opinions on stem cells and same-sex marriage are newsworthy and not an assault on church-state separation. Protests at "wardrobe malfunction" and campaigns against state-sponsored gambling are neither bluenosed nor repressive.

But there is no need for sensible seculars in mainstream media to feel an urgent call to get right with religion. It's O.K. to say "Merry Christmas" at the end of a newscast without worrying about equal greeting for Ramadan and Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and all the rest.

3. On judges jailing journalists for refusing to reveal sources: Mainstream media have good reason to be angry about being unfairly jumped on, and no reason to be depressed and docile for fear of seeming self-interested. If the press can't promise sources that we won't rat on them, coverage would cease to be robust and uninhibited; government and corporate corruption would go unreported.

But why should mainstream media be alone in resisting this nationwide judicial assault on the people's right to know wrongdoing? Where is the legal profession, which should not only see danger in an unrestrained judiciary, but would be next in line to lose much of its own privilege of confidentiality with clients? Where are consumer groups, often reliant on whistleblower revelations in newspapers? And where are the preachers who may be threatened with contempt of court for not testifying about penitents engaged in peculation?

4. On mainstream media's feeling that President Bush doesn't give a hoot about what we say or write: That's his loss more than ours. He may deliver an uplifting second Inaugural Address, but still does not appear thoughtful or adept at answering questions.

The reason: Bush holds quarterly, rather than the traditional monthly, news conferences. This lack of regular rehearsal costs him familiarity with issues, and costs his administration the discipline of deadlines for suggested answers. As the debates showed, Bush gets better with practice. He is not as good as he thinks he is when winging it.

5. On widespread suspicion of political bias in news coverage: Here's the good news: Bad news is newsier than good news. Even when media try to be "fair and impartial," they can be expected to annoy rather than please the party in power. That's because clean government needs a snooping adversary, not a cheerleader; the Outs need help from the press to hold the Ins accountable.

Today that media bias is undeniably liberal. That's natural when conservatives are the Ins; five years ago, the bias often ran the other way. As future elections near, that tilt must disappear from news pages to let the voters do the tilting. Some mainstreamers flopped on necessary election evenhandedness in 2004 and should be grimly thankful for a corrective kick in the teeth from other media, bloggers and righteous right-wingers.

Get out of that Slough, counsels Worldly-Wiseman: Pulitzer-quality journalism lies just ahead.

est and Werner Erhard

2005-01-17T13:52:00.000-05:00

Werner Erhard's est [Erhard Seminar Training and Latin for "it is"] was one of the more successful entrants in the human potential movement. est is an example of what psychologists call a Large Group Awareness Training program.

The first est seminar was held in October, 1971, at the Jack Tar Hotel in San Francisco with nearly 1,000 in attendance. Erhard and est were known for training people to get "It", a concept taken from author, teacher and expert communicator Alan Watts. At the time Erhard arrived in the Bay Area, Watts was teaching his version of Zen to small groups on his houseboat in Sausalito. Erhard, like Watts, would teach people to "Get It." Watts, however, did most of his teaching through books. His seminars were small. Erhard would not teach through books, but in large hotel ballrooms to hundreds at a time.

(Writing about a program that no longer exists and that was taken by hundreds of thousands of people is risky, to say the least. Clearly, the experiences of those who took the program varied greatly. Whatever I say that resonates with one group of participants will seem false to another group. What follows is an attempt to reflect the background and the experience of est, but the reader should realize that whatever I say will be inadequate, perhaps even false, for some participants.)

est adopted, in part, the Zen master approach, which was often abusive, profane, demeaning, and authoritarian. (One of my favorite Zen stories is of the master who asks his disciple a series of questions. No matter what the disciple answers, the master hits him with a stick. Even contradictory answers are met with the stick.) While many participants did not perceive the training as particularly abusive, some were not used to the discipline requested of them. Some have claimed that one typically abusive approach was the requirement of extraordinary bladder control in est training. Participants were advised not to leave the room, even to go to the toilet, during training. According to one est participant, however, "bathroom breaks were scheduled at regular and reasonable intervals....Two or three rows at the back of the room were reserved for those who required more frequent bathroom breaks (and I think either some sort of documentation or personal insistence were required to qualify). No one was ever physically required to stay in the room at any time" (personal correspondence). (This aspect of est training was humorously ridiculed in the movie "Semi-Tough" (1978) with Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristoferson.) In any case, one should expect some sort of discipline and required order for this kind of training. Having people come and go as they please is distracting and not conducive to the concentration necessary for such a program.

'Blink': Hunch Power

2005-01-17T11:51:00.000-05:00

Blink is about the first two seconds of looking--the decisive glance that knows in an instant. Gladwell, the best-selling author of The Tipping Point, campaigns for snap judgments and mind reading with a gift for translating research into splendid storytelling. Building his case with scenes from a marriage, heart attack triage, speed dating, choking on the golf course, selling cars, and military maneuvers, he persuades readers to think small and focus on the meaning of "thin slices" of behavior. The key is to rely on our "adaptive unconscious"--a 24/7 mental valet--that provides us with instant and sophisticated information to warn of danger, read a stranger, or react to a new idea. This book can be purchased on Amazon.com Blink. Here is a link to the New York Times Review of the book.

The Joy Bucks Club

2005-01-17T10:56:00.000-05:00

By GARY RIVLIN

Published: January 16, 2005

Atherton, Calif.

TOBY HECHT wants to make you rich. Not run-of-the-mill, drive-a-Lexus, McMansion-owning rich. But villa-by-the-sea, nary-a-financial-worry-in-the-world rich.

One of his disciples, Jonathan Lee, the founder of Corio, a business applications company traded on the Nasdaq, said he was "beyond skeptical" when he first learned about Mr. Hecht, a Silicon Valley-based guru to the aspiring wealthy. Now, however, Mr. Lee credits Mr. Hecht with helping to catapult him into the net-worth stratosphere. "I'm a deca," Mr. Lee said, meaning he is a decamillionaire, with a net worth above $10 million.

Mr. Hecht invites people to "apply" to pay him $7,500 to $30,000 a year to attend long-weekend workshops and complete homework assignments by e-mail. Roughly 1,400 students have finished a 24-month program in the 17 years since Mr. Hecht created what he calls his Aji Network. His promotional materials say students have seen annual incomes soar by an average of 80 percent during the program's two years.

"People try to figure me out, but it's not easy," said Mr. Hecht, 54, a former disco instructor with iridescent blue eyes and a preternaturally upbeat demeanor. "I think one problem is that to my knowledge no other business out there is making the kind of offer I make to my customers," he added, a claim hard to fathom for anyone who has spent at least part of a sleepless night captivated by infomercials.

Anti-Bush Bracelets Say, 'Count Me Blue'

2005-01-15T19:40:00.000-05:00

Fri Jan 14, 7:21 PM ET

By ELIZABETH LeSURE, Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK - After spending 10 days in London with friends who were outspoken about their disdain for President Bush (news - web sites)'s policies, Berns Rothchild came home wishing she had a way to show the world she didn't vote for him.

"I sort of felt ashamed, and didn't really want to be associated with being an American," said Rothchild, who lives in New York City and voted for John Kerry (news - web sites).

Her mother had a suggestion: bracelets, inspired by the Lance Armstrong Foundation's popular "LIVESTRONG" bands, that would signal opposition to Bush.

Thousands of miles away, two women in Idaho had the same idea. So did a woman in Kansas. The result? At least three separate bracelet ventures targeting left-leaning citizens who want to wear their political affiliation on their wrists — and at least one competitor bearing the opposite message.

Rothchild, 35, is selling blue bracelets that say "COUNT ME BLUE," while Laura Adams, of Fairway, Kan., offers blue bracelets that say "HOPE." The McKnight family, of Moscow, Idaho, is even more direct; their black bracelets proclaim: "I DID NOT VOTE 4 BUSH."

"It's kind of like saying, 'This is my tribe,'" said Adams, 43, a Kerry supporter, who was inspired by her 14-year-old stepson's yellow Lance Armstrong band.

It's unlikely the wristbands will ever have the widespread appeal of the bands created by the Lance Armstrong Foundation, which have sold about 31 million so far to raise money for cancer research. Brenda McKnight, 40, said her family has sold roughly 4,000, and Adams said she has sold about 3,300. Rothchild has sold about 500 since her Web site launched Monday.

But all three ventures also have the aim of raising money for a variety of organizations.

Rothchild, who is selling the bracelets on the Web in packages of 10 for $20, plans to give part of her profits to UNICEF (news - web sites), and Adams has donated money from the sale of her $3 bracelets to Save the Children and Habitat for Humanity.

The McKnights are auctioning their bracelets on eBay and selling them for $3 each on their Web site, where buyers can vote for one of six organizations that will receive a portion of the proceeds.

So far only McKnight said she has received e-mails criticizing the bracelets as unpatriotic. But Rothchild said her venture has spawned a counter-protest — from her Republican father.

John Rothchild, a Miami Beach, Fla., resident who voted for Bush, has invested in 5,000 "COUNT ME RED" bracelets.

He has hired his daughter's boyfriend, who created her Web site, to create his, which he launched this week.

"Now we're sort of having a father-daughter competition to see who can sell more," Berns Rothchild said.

Iraq a new terror breeding ground

2005-01-14T09:41:00.000-05:00

War created a haven, CIA advisers reportBy Dana Priest

Updated: 10:41 p.m. ET Jan. 13, 2005Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of "professionalized" terrorists, according to a report released yesterday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director's think tank.

Iraq provides terrorists with "a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills," said David B. Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats. "There is even, under the best scenario, over time, the likelihood that some of the jihadists who are not killed there will, in a sense, go home, wherever home is, and will therefore disperse to various other countries."

Low's comments came during a rare briefing by the council on its new report on long-term global trends. It took a year to produce and includes the analysis of 1,000 U.S. and foreign experts. Within the 119-page report is an evaluation of Iraq's new role as a breeding ground for Islamic terrorists.

• In cafe debate, a victory for elections
• Issues on national security
• More news on Iraq

President Bush has frequently described the Iraq war as an integral part of U.S. efforts to combat terrorism. But the council's report suggests the conflict has also helped terrorists by creating a haven for them in the chaos of war.

"At the moment," NIC Chairman Robert L. Hutchings said, Iraq "is a magnet for international terrorist activity."

Before the U.S. invasion, the CIA said Saddam Hussein had only circumstantial ties with several al Qaeda members. Osama bin Laden rejected the idea of forming an alliance with Hussein and viewed him as an enemy of the jihadist movement because the Iraqi leader rejected radical Islamic ideals and ran a secular government.

Bush described the war in Iraq as a means to promote democracy in the Middle East. "A free Iraq can be a source of hope for all the Middle East," he said one month before the invasion. "Instead of threatening its neighbors and harboring terrorists, Iraq can be an example of progress and prosperity in a region that needs both."

Iraq was a mistake in reason, says Sen. Kennedy

2005-01-14T09:15:00.000-05:00

Leading liberal voice in Congress talks to Chris Matthews about the end of WMD search, cabinet nominations, and the Dems post-inauguration plan
TRANSCRIPT
MSNBC
Updated: 10:15 a.m. ET Jan. 13, 2005WASHINGTON, D.C. - In an interview scheduled to air on Hardball, Wednesday at 7 p.m. ET, Sen. Edward Kennedy talked to MSNBC's Chris Matthews about the end of the search for WMD in Iraq, President Bush's cabinet nominations, as well as the Democrats' plan post-inauguration.

Bush regrets language that hurt diplomacy

2005-01-14T09:14:00.000-05:00

President says ‘Bring ’em on’ left wrong impression
The Associated Press
Updated: 8:41 a.m. ET Jan. 14, 2005
WASHINGTON - President Bush says he now sees that tough talk can have an “unintended consequence.”

During a round-table interview with reporters from 14 newspapers, the president, who not long ago declined to identify any mistakes he’d made during his first term, expressed misgivings for two of his most famous expressions: “Bring ’em on,” in reference to Iraqis attacking U.S. troops, and his vow to get Osama bin Laden “dead or alive.”

“Sometimes, words have consequences you don’t intend them to mean,” Bush said Thursday. “’Bring ’em on’ is the classic example, when I was really trying to rally the troops and make it clear to them that I fully understood, you know, what a great job they were doing. And those words had an unintended consequence. It kind of, some interpreted it to be defiance in the face of danger. That certainly wasn’t the case.”

On July 2, 2003, two months after he had declared an end to major combat in Iraq, Bush promised U.S. forces would stay until the creation of a free government there. To those who would attack U.S. forces in an attempt to deter that mission, Bush said, “My answer is, Bring ’em on.”

Pentagon reveals rejected chemical weapons

2005-01-13T22:51:00.000-05:00

15 January 2005
From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
THE Pentagon considered developing a host of non-lethal chemical weapons that would disrupt discipline and morale among enemy troops, newly declassified documents reveal.

Most bizarre among the plans was one for the development of an "aphrodisiac" chemical weapon that would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other. Provoking widespread homosexual behaviour among troops would cause a "distasteful but completely non-lethal" blow to morale, the proposal says.

Other ideas included chemical weapons that attract swarms of enraged wasps or angry rats to troop positions, making them uninhabitable. Another was to develop a chemical that caused "severe and lasting halitosis", making it easy to identify guerrillas trying to blend in with civilians. There was also the idea of making troops' skin unbearably sensitive to sunlight.

The proposals, from the US Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, date from 1994. The lab sought Pentagon funding for research into what it called "harassing, annoying and 'bad guy'-identifying chemicals". The plans have been posted online by the Sunshine Project, an organisation that exposes research into chemical and biological weapons.

Spokesman Edward Hammond says it was not known if the proposed $7.5 million, six-year research plan was ever pursued.

U.S. powerless to dollar's plunge?

2005-01-13T19:59:00.000-05:00

The not-so-almighty dollar will keep deflating, analysts say, pushing prices up for U.S. consumers.
January 13, 2005: 5:16 PM EST
By Aaron Smith, CNN/Money contributing writer

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The not-so-almighty U.S. dollar will continue to lose strength as the trade deficit widens, and there is little or nothing that the government can do about it, according to analysts.

The impact on the American consumer will be felt most by travelers overseas, said David Wyss, chief economist for Standard & Poor's, who expects the dollar to fall 10 percent by the end of the year.

"Your next European vacation is going to cost a lot more, and you're going to see lot more European tourists running around New York," said Wyss.

Even the consumers who stay at home will see prices climb on some, but not all, foreign imports as a result of November's $60.3 billion trade deficit, which is mostly comprised of trade with Europe, Japan and China, according to analysts. The ballooning deficit causes the dollar's value to shrink in foreign markets, resulting in higher prices on foreign goods.

Americans could face rising prices on imported cars, and possibly on American cars too, though that would come later. "Even a Chrysler has some imported parts in it and because these Toyotas are a little more expensive, Ford might be charging more," said Wyss.

While prices on Japanese imports are expected to climb, prices on any product bearing a Made in China label will likely be unaffected because the Chinese government keeps its currency fixed, said Wyss, despite the trade deficit with China.

China comprises more than a quarter of the trade deficit, according to Ashraf Laidi, chief currency analyst with MG Financial Group, nearly doubling the European Union's share of 13 percent.

Andy Borowitz: Bush Accuses Saddam of Telling the Truth

2005-01-13T14:14:00.000-05:00

Evildoer Knowingly Came Clean on WMD's, President Charges
By: Andy Borowitz
Published: Jan 13, 2005

Just hours after confirming that the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was over, President George W. Bush leveled his harshest charge ever at Saddam Hussein, accusing the former Iraqi dictator of "knowingly telling the truth" about not possessing WMD in the months leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

"After years of lying about his weapons, Saddam Hussein willfully decided to tell the truth about them," Mr. Bush said. "His treachery knows no bounds."

After Mr. Bush excoriated Saddam for his "wanton truth-telling," he added that "thanks to the work of our coalition, Mr. Saddam Hussein will never be free to tell the truth again."

Mr. Bush argued that even though the stated reason for invading Iraq no longer applied, preventing the former Iraqi strongman from telling the truth in the future was "reason enough" to go to war.

"In the wrong hands, the truth can destabilize regions and even destroy entire civilizations," Mr. Bush said. "In that respect, the truth itself is a weapon of mass destruction – one that Mr. Saddam Hussein will never be able to use again."

The president concluded his remarks with tough words for North Korea's Kim Jong-Il, whom Mr. Bush accused of telling the truth about his own weapons program.

Naming Mr. Kim a member of what he called "The Axis of Veracity," Mr. Bush urged the North Korean madman to cease and desist telling the truth and to "join the community of truth-fearing nations."

Elsewhere, organizers of this weekend's tsunami telethon confirmed that Fox's Bill O'Reilly would participate but would not be allowed anywhere near the telephones.

Fake Love Tokens Fool Flies

2005-01-13T13:04:00.000-05:00

By Jennifer Viegas

Jan. 11, 2005 — Females among many insects and animals, including humans, enjoy receiving gifts during courtship, but a new study on flies reveals that males can woo their intendeds with worthless, fake love tokens, even if such cheating is otherwise undocumented for the species.

By the time the female fly realizes her lover is a cheapskate and beats him off with her wings, the male already has mated with her and leaves with his faux present to find another partner.

The finding, published in the new issue of Current Biology, suggests that male cheaters throughout the animal kingdom easily can fool present-loving females into affairs that could yield offspring carrying the male's genes.

Bush Warns Congress on Social Security

2005-01-12T14:30:00.000-05:00

Wed Jan 12, 9:03 AM ET Politics - AP

By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites) tried to increase pressure on members of Congress who are leery of his ideas to change Social Security (news - web sites) by telling them Tuesday they could be risking their jobs.

"I happen to believe people who have been elected to office who ignore problems will face a price at the ballot box," Bush said during a forum with voters who support his goal of creating private investment accounts to partly replace guaranteed benefits.

Democrats say that they, too, will make an issue of Social Security in the midterm elections. "Republicans should be worried," said Democratic National Committee (news - web sites) spokesman Jano Cabrera. "Whether Republicans are cutting benefits, raising taxes, or further exploding the budget deficit, Democrats intend to make Social Security a key issue in 2006."

Social Security is projected to start paying out more in benefits than it collects in taxes in 2018, according to Social Security trustees but will be able to pay full promised benefits until 2042. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (news - web sites) has projected the program will be solvent until 2052.

The president wants to revamp the government retirement program by letting younger workers divert some of their Social Security payroll taxes into personal investment accounts, although he has not provided details of his proposal. Many Democrats are unwilling to give Bush a chance to cut guaranteed benefits and question how setting up personal investment accounts will fix the system's solvency problem.

Top Court: Sentencing Rules Not Mandatory

2005-01-12T14:29:00.000-05:00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A divided U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) on Wednesday ruled that federal judges no longer have to abide by the controversial 18-year-old sentencing guidelines.

The 5-4 ruling was a blow for the U.S. Justice Department (news - web sites), which had defended the constitutionality of the federal sentencing guidelines that now apply to tens of thousands of criminal defendants each year. Thousands of cases nationwide have been on hold pending Wednesday's ruling.

The high court ruled that its decision in June, which struck down a similar sentencing system used in Washington state for violating a defendant's constitutional rights, also applied to the federal guidelines.

Justice Stephen Breyer (news - web sites) said in the court's opinion that the ruling meant the guidelines are no longer mandatory, making them only advisory for the sentencing judge.

Breyer said federal judges are not bound to apply the guidelines, only take them into account when sentencing a defendant.

In both cases before the Supreme Court a judge imposed greater sentences under the guidelines, based on the judge's determination of a fact that was not found by the jury or admitted by the defendant.

The guidelines, long criticized by criminal justice reform advocates for imposing overly harsh sentences on a mandatory basis, set rules for federal judges in calculating what punishment to give a defendant and attempt to reduce wide disparities in sentences for the same crime. They tell judges which factors can lead to a lighter sentence and which ones can result in a longer sentence.

Breyer said the U.S. Congress could act next.

"Ours, of course, is not the last word: The ball now lies in Congress' court. The national legislature is equipped to devise and install, long-term, the sentencing system compatible with the Constitution that Congress judges best for the federal system of justice," he wrote.

Bush and the Lord

2005-01-12T14:27:00.000-05:00

Wednesday, Jan 12, 2005; 12:47 PM

President Bush told the Washington Times yesterday he doesn't "see how you can be president without a relationship with the Lord."

"I fully understand that the job of the president is and must always be protecting the great right of people to worship or not worship as they see fit," Bush said.

"That's what distinguishes us from the Taliban. The greatest freedom we have or one of the greatest freedoms is the right to worship the way you see fit.

"On the other hand, I don't see how you can be president at least from my perspective, how you can be president, without a relationship with the Lord."

Bush has often said that he is a religious man who supports freedom of religion, but yesterday may be the first time he has so clearly suggested in his use of words that he harbors the feeling that these two principles are to some degree in conflict.

You don't use the "other hand" construction for two concepts that complement each other. And his suggestion that someone is not qualified to be president unless they are religious is sure to spark some further discussion.

AWOL Soldier Cites Army Inadequacies

2005-01-12T14:26:00.000-05:00

Wed Jan 12, 7:55 AM ET

By Scott Gold Times Staff Writer

HOUSTON — An Army National Guard soldier said Tuesday that the inadequate training and equipment he received had led him to abandon his unit rather than face deployment to Iraq (news - web sites).

"I guess I'm AWOL right now," Spc. Joseph Jacobo, 46, said in a telephone interview from the Los Angeles area.

Among his concerns, Jacobo said, was that he had been unable to find anyone at his Texas training base who could fix his M-4 assault rifle, the primary weapon he would carry in Iraq. The weapon jams, he said.

"They try to put old parts in new rifles," he said. "It doesn't work. We're having all kinds of problems with our automatic weapons."

Soldiers in Jacobo's Modesto-based National Guard unit — the 1st Battalion, 184th Infantry Regiment — went public late last month with concerns that they would suffer needlessly high casualty rates in Iraq because of poor training. Military officials have denied the soldiers' charges, voiced in an article in the Los Angeles Times.

Similar tensions have arisen in other units as the military, short on active-duty personnel, has given National Guard and Reserve soldiers increased combat responsibilities and lengthy overseas assignments.

The soldiers, who trained at the Army's Ft. Bliss Training Complex, said there were equipment problems, including trucks without adequate armor and a shortage of night-vision goggles. They also said they had received very little "theater specific" training to prepare them for conditions in Iraq. For example, the soldiers said they had learned nothing about convoy protection or guarding against insurgents' roadside bombs.

Airing their concerns publicly, Jacobo said, only seems to have made matters worse. He said soldiers who were suspected of having spoken to the newspaper were called "cowards" and "yellow-bellies" by their supervisors. Equipment woes were not addressed, commanders became more strict and morale reached new lows, he said.

"They didn't change anything," Jacobo said. "How are we supposed to have any pride?"

His unit is scheduled to deploy to Kuwait soon, possibly by the end of the week, and then onto Iraq. Jacobo said he has been absent without permission since Jan. 2, when the soldiers were supposed to return from a brief holiday leave.

Jacobo, who is married with two grown children, said he was staying with relatives. He has spent much of his adult life in the military, he said, including a six-year stint in the Marines that took him to Nicaragua. The message on his cellphone voicemail concludes, "Semper fi" — the Marine motto that is shorthand for semper fidelis, or "always faithful."

Jacobo said he decided to rejoin the National Guard last year because he believed in the Iraq mission.

"I just thought it was the right thing to do," he said.

CEO Approval Ratings

2005-01-12T09:17:00.000-05:00

Our CEO approval ratings lets you vote on the job performance of the country's most prominent business leaders, from Jeffrey Bezos to Craig Barrett to Rupert Murdoch. We've tracked the monthly approval ratings of 50 prominent corporate honchos, and have added ten new ones from the Internet and semiconductor sectors. Bookmark this page and come back throughout the month to see how these bosses are faring. Plus, compare how they stacked up last month. Be sure to vote--but remember you can vote only once per month for each CEO.

The CEO Approval Tracker is not a scientific poll and only reflects the opinions of those users who choose to participate. While it's not encouraged, technically adept users may be able to vote multiple times.

Dollar Schmollar

2005-01-12T09:16:00.000-05:00

Robyn Meredith, 01.11.05, 10:38 AM ET

DETROIT - Auto stocks are notoriously sensitive to exchange-rate swings, so the dollar's recent slide has hit non-U.S. auto stocks hard. But investors may be overselling European and Japanese auto stocks as the dollar falls, Citigroup Smith Barney says.

Why? Most non-U.S. automakers have added or expanded factories in America since the last time the dollar was weak, and, thus, they are less exposed when currencies swing the wrong way for them.

Citi says Toyota Motor (nyse: TM - news - people ), Honda Motor (nyse: HMC - news - people ) and Nissan Motor (nasdaq: NSANY - news - people ) are likely to be "strongly undervalued" by the market when the yen trades at 110 to the dollar and could still be undervalued even if the dollar drops as low as 80 yen to the dollar.

The world's auto executives gathered this week in Detroit for the annual North American International Auto Show, but most brushed off the effect of the weak dollar. The euro is trading at $1.30, while the yen has been hovering around 105 yen to the dollar.

"It used to be that vis-a-vis the yen, if it was down around 100, things looked pretty good for the domestic industry," says Bill Ford, Jr., chairman and chief executive of Ford Motor (nyse: F - news - people ). "Today, it is more complicated."

Five Ways To Fix The FDA

2005-01-12T09:15:00.000-05:00

Five Ways To Fix The FDA
Matthew Herper, 01.12.05, 6:00 AM ET

Five Ways To Fix The FDA

1. Pay Up

2. Power Up The FDA

3. Track Side Effects

4. Government-Funded Studies

5. Forget Labels

A quarter of every dollar Americans spend annually--some $1 trillion in total--is regulated by the FDA. From the start, the safety of medicines has been the agency's most sacrosanct calling. The FDA was founded after a 1937 incident in which a poisonous medicine killed 107 people, most of them children.

Since then, the FDA has become synonymous with drug safety. In a sense, "FDA approved" is the brand that the entire $216 billion U.S. drug market is founded upon. Dilute the confidence of the public in the agency, and many billions of dollars in current and potential sales vanish overnight.

That's exactly what's happening right now in the wake of the biggest drug withdrawal ever. Last September, Merck (nyse: MRK - news - people ) pulled Vioxx, its $2.5 billion arthritis drug, after it found that the drug doubled the risk of heart attack and stroke. Very worrisome but less conclusive evidence has also linked Celebrex and Bextra, both made by Pfizer (nyse: PFE - news - people ), to some heart risk. Celebrex and Vioxx have been on the market for five years.

It's possible that tens of thousands of heart attacks would have been prevented if these drugs had been subjected to more scrutiny. Did the FDA fall short? And if it's broken, how do we fix it?

A Nation of Faith and Religious Illiterates

2005-01-12T09:08:00.000-05:00

By Stephen Prothero, Stephen Prothero teaches at Boston University and is author of "American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon" (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2003).

The sociologist Peter Berger once remarked that if India is the most religious country in the world and Sweden the least, then the United States is a nation of Indians ruled by Swedes. Not anymore. With a Jesus lover in the Oval Office and a faith-based party in control of both houses of Congress, the United States is undeniably a nation of believers ruled by the same.

Things are different in Europe, and not just in Sweden. The Dutch are four times less likely than Americans to believe in miracles, hell and biblical inerrancy. The euro does not trust in God. But here is the paradox: Although Americans are far more religious than Europeans, they know far less about religion.

In Europe, religious education is the rule from the elementary grades on. So Austrians, Norwegians and the Irish can tell you about the Seven Deadly Sins or the Five Pillars of Islam. But, according to a 1997 poll, only one out of three U.S. citizens is able to name the most basic of Christian texts, the four Gospels, and 12% think Noah's wife was Joan of Arc. That paints a picture of a nation that believes God speaks in Scripture but that can't be bothered to read what he has to say.

U.S. Catholics, evangelicals and Jews have been lamenting for some time a crisis of religious literacy in their ranks. But the dangers of religious ignorance are by no means confined to those worried about catechizing their children or cultivating the next generation of clergy.

When Americans debated slavery, almost exclusively on the basis of the Bible, people of all races and classes could follow the debate. They could make sense of its references to the runaway slave in the New Testament book of Philemon and to the year of jubilee, when slaves could be freed, in the Old Testament book of Leviticus. Today it is a rare American who can engage with any sophistication in biblically inflected arguments about gay marriage, abortion or stem cell research.

Trade deficit reaches record $60B

2005-01-12T09:06:00.000-05:00

Government report shows November gap way above estimates.
January 12, 2005: 8:38 AM EST

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The U.S. trade deficit reached $60.3 billion in November, a new record, according to a government report released Wednesday.

The number was far above estimates. Analysts had expected a deficit of $54 billion, according to Reuters.

In October, the trade deficit was a revised $56 billion.

The trade balance is the difference between the nations imports over exports.

The trade deficit has been driving the dollar downward for months as foreign investors are concerned about the country's ability to finance the debt. The greenback fell sharply shortly after Wednesday's release.

Richard Clarke Lays Out His Dark Vision

2005-01-11T11:30:00.000-05:00

BY ELI LAKE - Staff Reporter of the Sun
January 11, 2005

WASHINGTON - In the next six years, Al Qaeda will launch terrible attacks on America's casinos, shopping malls, and rail lines. The federal government will intern tens of thousands of Muslims in remote facilities and issue national identification cards. The price of oil will spike to more than $80 a barrel, and rebel forces will launch a successful coup in Saudi Arabia. And one more thing: Iran will obtain an A-bomb.

That's the vision of the future in a lengthy cover story in the current Atlantic Monthly by former counterterrorism tsar Richard Clarke, who predicts the American economy - not to mention civil liberties - will decline precipitously after a second wave of attacks that he says Al Qaeda will launch this year.

Written as the transcript for a fictional lecturer, Roger McBride, giving a 10th annual September 11 address to the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Mr. Clarke drives his point home when he writes, "No one could stand here today, in 2011, and say that America has won the war on terror."

Mr. Clarke made headlines last year at the September 11 commission hearings when he said the White House was not sufficiently focused on Osama bin Laden in the eight months before September 11, 2001, and was too preoccupied with the dangers of Saddam Hussein. In those hearings, he said the current war in Iraq had distracted America's resources from its proper target, the terrorist organization Mr. bin Laden created out of the Mujahadeen who helped oust the Soviets from Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Since those hearings and the release of his 2004 book, "Against All Enemies," Mr. Clarke, who left the Bush administration in 2002, has been one of the loudest voices in Washington predicting that America's efforts to liberate Iraq will in fact create a new generation of Islamic terrorists.

Trouble in paradise?

2005-01-11T10:24:00.000-05:00

George W. Bush is planning to have a snazzy $40 million inauguration — but according to a story in Roll Call, his people are having trouble raising the cash. “Three lobbyists confirmed in interviews that senior inaugural fundraisers last week called Republican lobbyists and asked them to encourage potential corporate sponsors to buy ticket packages to inaugural events,” according to the article. Inauguration officials insist there’s no money-raising woes, but one anonymous Republican lobbyist told reporter Tory Newmyer, “They just said they hadn’t met their targets yet, and they were redoubling their efforts to raise money, encouraging people to buy packages.” . . .

In GOP, resistance on Social Security

2005-01-11T10:14:00.000-05:00

Few share Bush's sense of urgency, appetite for battleBy Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen

Updated: 11:30 p.m. ET Jan. 10, 2005Many Republicans are expressing reservations about the political wisdom of President Bush's vision for restructuring Social Security, as the White House today intensifies its campaign to restructure the entitlement program for the retired and disabled.

Bush, who relishes challenging the conventional wisdoms of Washington, has privately counseled Republicans that partially privatizing Social Security will be a boon for the GOP and has urged skeptics to hold fire until he builds a public case for change. But several influential Republicans are warning that Bush's plan could backfire on the party in next year's elections, especially if the plan includes cuts in benefits.

Little enthusiasm for overhaul
Most alarming to White House officials, some congressional Republicans are panning the president's plan — even before it is unveiled. "Why stir up a political hornet's nest .... when there is no urgency?" said Rep. Rob Simmons (Conn.), who represents a competitive district. "When does the program go belly up? 2042. I will be dead by then."

Simmons said there is no way he will support Bush's idea of allowing younger Americans to divert some of their payroll taxes into private accounts, especially when there are more pressing needs, such as shoring up Medicare and providing armor to U.S. troops in Iraq.

The Secret Lives of Just About Everybody

2005-01-11T10:10:00.000-05:00

January 11, 2005

By BENEDICT CAREY

ne mislaid credit card bill or a single dangling e-mail message on the home computer would have ended everything: the marriage, the big-time career, the reputation for decency he had built over a lifetime.

So for more than 10 years, he ruthlessly kept his two identities apart: one lived in a Westchester hamlet and worked in a New York office, and the other operated mainly in clubs, airport bars and brothels. One warmly greeted clients and waved to neighbors, sometimes only hours after the other had stumbled back from a "work" meeting with prostitutes or cocaine dealers.

In the end, it was a harmless computer pop-up advertisement for security software, claiming that his online life was being "continually monitored," that sent this New York real estate developer into a panic and to a therapist.

The man's double life is an extreme example of how mental anguish can cleave an identity into pieces, said his psychiatrist, Dr. Jay S. Kwawer, director of clinical education at the William Alanson White Institute in New York, who discussed the case at a recent conference.

But psychologists say that most normal adults are well equipped to start a secret life, if not to sustain it. The ability to hold a secret is fundamental to healthy social development, they say, and the desire to sample other identities - to reinvent oneself, to pretend - can last well into adulthood. And in recent years researchers have found that some of the same psychological skills that help many people avoid mental distress can also put them at heightened risk for prolonging covert activities.

"In a very deep sense, you don't have a self unless you have a secret, and we all have moments throughout our lives when we feel we're losing ourselves in our social group, or work or marriage, and it feels good to grab for a secret, or some subterfuge, to reassert our identity as somebody apart," said Dr. Daniel M. Wegner, a professor of psychology at Harvard. He added, "And we are now learning that some people are better at doing this than others."

Although the best-known covert lives are the most spectacular - the architect Louis Kahn had three lives; Charles Lindbergh reportedly had two - these are exaggerated examples of a far more common and various behavior, psychologists say. Some people gamble on the sly, or sample drugs. Others try music lessons. Still others join a religious group. They keep mum for different reasons.

And there are thousands of people - gay men and women who stay in heterosexual marriages, for example - whose shame over or denial of their elemental needs has set them up for secretive excursions into other worlds. Whether a secret life is ultimately destructive, experts find, depends both on the nature of the secret and on the psychological makeup of the individual.

Psychologists have long considered the ability to keep secrets as central to healthy development. Children as young as 6 or 7 learn to stay quiet about their mother's birthday present. In adolescence and adulthood, a fluency with small social lies is associated with good mental health. And researchers have confirmed that secrecy can enhance attraction, or as Oscar Wilde put it, "The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it."

In one study, men and women living in Texas reported that the past relationships they continued to think about were most often secret ones. In another, psychologists at Harvard found that they could increase the attraction between male and female strangers simply by encouraging them to play footsie as part of a lab experiment.

The urge to act out an entirely different persona is widely shared across cultures as well, social scientists say, and may be motivated by curiosity, mischief or earnest soul-searching. Certainly, it is a familiar tug in the breast of almost anyone who has stepped out of his or her daily life for a time, whether for vacation, for business or to live in another country.

BATTLE LESSONS What the generals don’t know.

2005-01-10T13:35:00.000-05:00

by DAN BAUM

Issue of 2005-01-17
Posted 2005-01-10

During the early weeks of the Iraq war, the television set in my office was tuned all day to CNN, with the sound muted. On the morning of April 3rd, as the Army and the Marines were closing in on Baghdad, I happened to look up at what appeared to be a disaster in the making. A small unit of American soldiers was walking along a street in Najaf when hundreds of Iraqis poured out of the buildings on either side. Fists waving, throats taut, they pressed in on the Americans, who glanced at one another in terror. I reached for the remote and turned up the sound. The Iraqis were shrieking, frantic with rage. From the way the lens was lurching, the cameraman seemed as frightened as the soldiers. This is it, I thought. A shot will come from somewhere, the Americans will open fire, and the world will witness the My Lai massacre of the Iraq war. At that moment, an American officer stepped through the crowd holding his rifle high over his head with the barrel pointed to the ground. Against the backdrop of the seething crowd, it was a striking gesture—almost Biblical. “Take a knee,” the officer said, impassive behind surfer sunglasses. The soldiers looked at him as if he were crazy. Then, one after another, swaying in their bulky body armor and gear, they knelt before the boiling crowd and pointed their guns at the ground. The Iraqis fell silent, and their anger subsided. The officer ordered his men to withdraw.

Can't wait until 2008!

2005-01-10T13:33:00.000-05:00

2008: Hillary for President!

Arrogance on the Hill

2005-01-10T13:24:00.000-05:00

January 10, 2005

WASHINGTON -- "We are looking more and more like the Democrats we replaced," a House committee chairman told me Wednesday. That comment came before he learned, to his surprise and sorrow, that the House Republican leadership had removed Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey as chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. The extraordinary purge buttressed the growing impression of arrogance as Republicans enter their second decade of power in the House.

The party's House leaders purportedly removed Smith, a tireless promoter of spending for veterans, to save money. But two days earlier, the same leaders pulled every string during a closed-door caucus to defeat reforms against pork barrel spending. Those disparate moves are united by a common purpose of making decisions from the top down. Smith was a committee chairman who did not take orders. The defeated spending reforms came from conservatives outside the leadership.

Obsession with centralizing authority by the leadership does not precisely fit the pattern set by Democrats during 40 years of ruling the House. But the new majority party resembles the old one in this sense: having long been in power, they act as though they are sure they will keep it forever. That attitude manifested itself in determination to get rid of Chris Smith.

Smith is derided by the leadership as a "liberal" who is in organized labor's pocket, but his voting record is moderately conservative. For 2003 (the most recent year for which evaluation is available), the American Conservative Union rated him 71 percent and his liberal rating from Americans for Democratic Action was 30 percent. Beginning his 13th term in the House, the 51-year-old Smith has been a hero in the pro-life movement and a dogged inquisitor into forced abortion in China.

Cardinal Says Bush Broke Iraq Promise

2005-01-10T13:21:00.000-05:00

Mon Jan 10, 9:49 AM ET

By FRANCES D'EMILIO, Associated Press Writer

VATICAN CITY - The Italian cardinal sent by Pope John Paul (news - web sites) II last year to try to dissuade President Bush (news - web sites) from invading Iraq (news - web sites) said Monday the president promised that the U.S. operation would be "quick."

Cardinal Pio Laghi visited Bush at the White House on March 5, 2003, to relay the pope's position that dialogue, not arms, should be used to resolve the crisis over Iraq, which the United States accused of harboring weapons of mass destruction.

"When I went to Washington as the pope's envoy just before the outbreak of the war in Iraq, he (Bush) told me: `Don't worry, your eminence. We'll be quick and do well in Iraq,'" Laghi told Italian Catholic TV station Telepace, which was broadcasting the pontiff's annual address to diplomats.

When the United States went to war in Iraq, Laghi called the attack on Baghdad "tragic and unacceptable."

"Unfortunately, the facts have demonstrated afterward that things took a different course — not rapid and not favorable," the prelate told Telepace. "Bush was wrong."

Laghi was the Vatican (news - web sites)'s first envoy to Washington in the 1980s and established a friendship with Bush's father, former President George H.W. Bush.

Powell worried about post-election Iraq

2005-01-09T19:58:00.000-05:00

Sun Jan 9, 2:58 PM ET Politics - AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) admitted he is worried about the future of Iraq (news - web sites) but said the United States could consider its mission there accomplished once a representative government and an Iraqi security force are in place.

Asked if he was concerned about elections deepening the conflict in Iraq, Powell said: "I think we all are worried about what's going to happen after the elections. But the elections are a necessary next step."

The January 30 vote will neither end the insurgency nor heal divisions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, but "those dangers don't go away by postponing or putting off an election," Powell said, according to an advance transcript of an interview with ABC's "This Week" program.

"We have to move in a direction where the Iraqi people have the opportunity to choose how they will be governed. What is the alternative to no election? Just continue going along with an appointed government? No, we need this election," Powell said.

He refused to consider a scenario in which the insurgency escalates due to Sunni Muslims feeling shut out of the election.

Newt Gingrich Open to Presidential Run

2005-01-08T22:18:00.000-05:00

Jan 8, 3:35 PM (ET)

By RON FOURNIER

WASHINGTON (AP) - Newt Gingrich is taking steps toward a potential presidential bid in 2008 with a book criticizing President Bush's policies on Iraq and a tour of early campaign states.

The former House speaker who led Republicans to power a decade ago said he soon will visit Iowa and New Hampshire to promote his book, try to influence public policy and keep his political options alive.

"Anything seems possible," including a White House race, Gingrich told The Associated Press.

The quotable and controversial former Georgia congressman, who now runs a consulting firm in Washington, is promoting, "Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America." He seemed to welcome the thought that a book tour will increase speculation about his political aspirations.

"It never hurts to maximize opportunities. That's the American tradition," Gingrich said. "If I can influence the reporters and political activists in Iowa and New Hampshire, they will influence the candidates."

Asked if he might be a candidate himself, Gingrich said. "For an Army brat from Pennsylvania who became the only Georgia Republican in the House and the first Republican Speaker of the House in 40 years, anything seems possible. I don't think it's very likely. On the other hand, if I have an impact on public policy and do it in a way that is exciting and positive, why wouldn't I want to do that?"

Gingrich said he hopes newspapers in Iowa and New Hampshire seize on issues raised in his book. "If that means that every candidate will be hit by those questions, at a minimum I have helped shape policy," he said.

General Warns of 'Spectacular' Iraq Plots

2005-01-08T07:21:00.000-05:00

Jan 7, 3:16 PM (ET)

By DUSAN STOJANOVIC

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A U.S. general warned Friday that insurgents may be planning "spectacular" attacks to scare voters in the three weeks before Iraq's landmark elections, and Shiite and Sunni religious leaders voiced sharply divergent views on whether the vote should be held at all.

Air Force Brig. Gen. Erv Lessel, who is deputy chief of staff for strategic communications in Iraq, said the United States has no intelligence indicating specific plots, but he said American leaders expected a rise in attacks.

He said the insurgents' biggest weapon was their ability to instill fear.

"I think a worst case is where they have a series of horrific attacks that cause mass casualties in some spectacular fashion in the days leading up to the elections," Lessel said.

(AP) Residents of the Iraqi city of Fallujah rally in the nearby village of Naimiyah, Friday, Jan. 7,...

"If you look over the last six months, they have steadily escalated the barbaric nature of the attacks they have been committing. A year ago, you didn't see these kinds of horrific things," he said.

In Washington, President Bush expressed optimism about the Jan. 30 elections, saying they will be "an incredibly hopeful experience," despite rising violence and doubts that the vote will bring stability and democracy.

"I know it's hard but it's hard for a reason," Bush said, adding that the insurgents are trying to impede the elections because they fear freedom. He acknowledged security problems in four of Iraq's 18 provinces.

The comments came amid an escalating insurgency ahead of the parliamentary vote believed to be led by minority Sunnis whose dominated the country during Saddam Hussein's regime. In the election - the first democratic vote in Iraq since the country was formed in 1932 - the Sunnis are certain to lose their dominance to the Shiites, who comprise 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million population.

Reflecting Shiites' demands to hold the vote as scheduled, and Sunnis' calls for a boycott or postponement, two senior religious leaders expressed sharply differing views during Friday prayers.

"We want all the Iraqis to participate, we also insist on holding the elections as scheduled and to put these elections behind us as a way to end the conflict in Iraq," Saadr Aldeen al-Qubbanji, a leader of a prominent Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said in the southern city of Najaf.

"We all want elections, but we are seeking fair and free elections," Sheik Mahmoud Al-Somaidie of the Sunnis' Association of Muslim Scholars said in Baghdad. "Those of us who are calling for postponement are seeking that for the benefit of the country. Elections have to be an Iraqi demand not the demand of the foreign countries."

Bevis Lake the butt of a joke?

2005-01-08T07:19:00.000-05:00

Census Bureau changes name to Butthead Lake

By Yoshiaki Nohara
Herald Writer

It can't be a coincidence.

A small lake southeast of Lake Stevens has two different names, Bevis and Butthead - almost identical to snickering characters in TV's "Beavis and Butt-head" show.

"That means someone is playing a joke, I think," said Ken Brown, a land surveyor with the state Department of Natural Resources.

Brown said the department calls it Bevis Lake. The U.S. Geological Survey uses that name on its topographic map.

But the U.S. Census Bureau calls it Butthead Lake in its records.

A popular cartoon on MTV in the mid-1990s, "Beavis and Butt-head" featured a pair of slacker teenagers who watch music videos on TV. When they aren't doing that, they're getting into trouble, whether it's messing with people's food at Burger World, where they work, or making bad jokes at school.

The 5.7-acre lake is in a forested area southeast of Lake Roesiger and north of Woods Creek Road.

It's not unusual that a lake has different names, Brown said. Different maps say different things, according to county or state records, for example.

But Brown suspects this case is not coincidence. He laughed when told the federal government's name for the lake.

Someone at the Census Bureau must have gotten bored and made a joke out of naming the lake, Brown said.

Feds paid pundit to push Bush policy

2005-01-08T07:14:00.000-05:00

Democrats demand Bush recover payment
Friday, January 7, 2005 Posted: 11:46 PM EST (0446 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration paid a prominent commentator to promote the No Child Left Behind schools law to fellow blacks and to give the education secretary media time, records show.

A company run by Armstrong Williams, the syndicated commentator, was paid $240,000 by the Education Department. The goal was to deliver positive messages about Bush's education overhaul, using Williams' broad reach with minorities.

The deal, which drew a fast rebuke from Democrats on Capitol Hill, is the latest to put the department on the defensive for the way it has promoted Bush's signature domestic policy.

The contract required Williams' company, the Graham Williams Group, to produce radio and TV ads that feature one-minute "reads" by Education Secretary Rod Paige. The deal also allowed Paige and other department officials to appear as studio guests with Williams.

Williams, one of the leading black conservative voices in the country, was also to use his influence with other black journalists to get them to talk about No Child Left Behind.

Tom Delay's Biblical Explaination for the Tsunami

2005-01-06T13:13:00.000-05:00

This (Tuesday) morning at 9am, C-SPAN had a live telecast of the 109th Congressional Prayer Service from a church on Capitol Hill. There were some sentiments shared about the recently-passed Bob Matsui and Shirley Chisholm, and, amidst the scripture readings, reminders from a few Congressmen about the Christian foundation of our government. Others spoke of the Asian tsunami tragedy.

Then Tom DeLay gets up to the pulpit, and -- striking a beautiful note in light of the 150,000 dead from the floods referenced by his colleagues -- lets loose with some Matthew 7, beginning at verse 21.

(Many thanks to ben for the heads up on the exact wording, and to DemWatch for directing us to this transcription of the reading and MP3.)

Saith DeLay:

"A reading of the Gospel, in Matthew 7:21 through 27.

Not every one who says to me, "Lord, Lord," will enter the kingdom of heaven; but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.

Many will say to me on that day, "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?

"Then I will declare to them solemnly, 'I never knew you: depart from me, you evil doers.'"

Everyone who listens to these words of mine, and acts on them, will be like a wise man, who built his house on a rock:

The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew, and buffeted the house, but it did not collapse; it has been set solidly on rock.

And everyone who listens to these words of mine, but does not act on them, will be like a fool who built his house on sand:

The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew, and buffeted the house, and it collapsed and was completely ruined."

He finishes reading, says nothing more, and sits back down.

Wise Man

Foolish Man

Bush's second term isn't beginning smoothly

2005-01-06T08:43:00.000-05:00

By BILL STRAUB
Scripps Howard News Service
January 05, 2005

WASHINGTON - President Bush's second term, which doesn't officially begin until his Jan. 20 inauguration, already is getting off to a rocky start.

Questions about the administration's speed in responding to the tsunami disaster, along with reservations about attorney-general nominee Alberto Gonzales and Bush's Social Security reform proposal, provide evidence that the nation's 43rd president won't benefit from the sort of honeymoon he had upon assuming office in January 2001.

The president, who spent the week after Christmas at his Crawford, Texas, ranch monitoring world affairs, also has yet to name a replacement for outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. Bush's first choice, former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, withdrew from consideration when questions arose about his background.

And there has been substantial disparagement of the president's desire to proceed with an inauguration extravaganza said to exceed $40 million at a time of catastrophe in Asia and war in Iraq.

At a news conference two days after his re-election victory over Democrat John Kerry, Bush said that "Americans are expecting a bipartisan effort and results" and expressed his intent to "reach out to everyone who shares our goals."

With the inauguration now just a couple of weeks away, it appears the president is falling short in that regard.

The White House has dismissed critics, rejecting their barbs as political business as usual.

Scott McClellan, the president's press secretary, said Bush "immediately began acting on" the U.S. response to the South Asian disaster - despite claims he stalled for three days after the event - and has pledged $350 million as an initial offering.

But to some that's not enough.

America's contribution is paltry given the nation's vast resources, according to James E. Jennings, president of Conscience International, which is sending a medical and public health team to Indonesia.

"While the American public has donated generously to victims of the Asian tsunami disaster, the U.S. government has been slow and parsimonious, offering far less than Japan," Jennings said. "Even though the U.S. is the world's wealthiest nation, many countries give more as a percentage of their GDP than the U.S. does, so it is fair to say that the wealthiest nation is indeed stingy in relation to its wealth, as former President Carter has frequently pointed out."

McClellan said the United States is prepared to provide more help "as needed."

"But they're continuing to assess conditions on the ground and what may be needed going forward, not only in the immediate term, but the longer term, as well, because this is going to be a long-term project," McClellan said. "...(T)he United States will be in this for the long haul, long after the media stops focusing on this at the top of the newscast or stops putting it on the front page of the papers."

Meanwhile, the administration is gearing up for a heated debate over Gonzales, the White House counsel who is Bush's choice to replace John Ashcroft as head of the Department of Justice. Critics are focusing on Gonzales' views of torture, noting that he approved a memo contending that the president "wasn't bound by laws prohibiting torture and that government agents who might torture prisoners at his direction couldn't be prosecuted by the Justice Department."

The memo stated the president has the authority "to approve almost any physical or psychological action during interrogation, up to and including torture." Liberal groups, like MoveOn.org, have called for Gonzales' defeat, although it appears he will prevail in his confirmation hearings before the Republican-controlled Senate.

McClellan said Gonzales is "a very trusted adviser of the president who has done an outstanding job in his role as counsel to the president."

"The policy of the administration has been very clear from the beginning that we adhere to our laws and our treaty obligations," McClellan said. "That's the policy that the president set and that's the policy he expects to be followed. And he made it very clear, previously, as well, that we do not condone torture and he would never authorize the use of torture."

But the biggest battle appears to be gearing up over Social Security and the president's initiative to permit younger workers to divert part of their payroll taxes to personal savings accounts. Bush has made reform the top domestic priority of his second term despite opposition from AARP, an advocacy group for older Americans, and Democrats, who already have launched an attack.

"The administration's plan represents a long, slow and painful death for Social Security," said Sen. John Corzine, D-N.J. "These cuts would undermine the reason we have Social Security in the first place, which is to help people maintain a reasonable and dignified standard of living in retirement. Under President Bush's plan, seniors would suffer much sharper drops in their income when they retired than they do today, and the promise of Social Security from its founding would be compromised forever."

French Elvis fans seem to fit with Little Rock's appeal

2005-01-06T08:42:00.000-05:00

LITTLE ROCK Little Rock, get ready for the invasion of the French Elvises.

Sixty members of the Paris Elvis Presley Fan Club have decided to take a day trip from Graceland in Memphis to Little Rock this Sunday to visit the Clinton library.

Skip Rutherford, president of the Clinton Presidential Foundation, said it just shows how the library is becoming a tourist hot sport. Rutherford said he expected a big grand opening, but not the immediate and sustained national and international tourism that has followed.

The Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau said today that the Clinton Library opening in November created enormous spikes in income for area hotels and restaurants and in city tax revenues.

Socrates Cafe participants gather to debate

2005-01-06T08:41:00.000-05:00

Kay Miller, Star Tribune
January 6, 2005 SOCVAR0106

"Is there a shortage of doubt?"

For weeks, LaForest Sherman has been trying to get his fellow philosophers at gatherings collectively called the Socrates Cafe to focus on that question. It has vexed him during weekend commutes between his home in Grinnell, Iowa, and his insurance job in Minnesota.

Lately Sherman, 63, has been frustrated by how ideologically polarized our nation has become. People seem so bound to their own beliefs that they refuse to entertain opposing points of view, he said.

"Have we lost the art of keeping an open mind?"

Sherman's question lies at the heart of what author Christopher Phillips had in mind eight years ago when he held the first of hundreds of informal Socrates Cafe groups nationwide. His quest: wresting philosophy from the ivory tower and returning it to the public square. The resulting talking circles became grist for Phillips' 2001 book, "Socrates Cafe."

Alex Bernstein and Dennis Schlutter discuss a point."I think this has the potential to change how people listen to each other," said Dennis Dienst, 45, a senior purchasing agent for TSI Inc. who lives in Golden Valley. "Democracy has to do with people being informed, and that means listening to things you don't want to hear."

Three years ago, Phillips traveled to Minnetonka to help ienst, Greg Castor and Ridgedale librarian Stephanie Steinwedel launch their own Socrates Cafe.

"The stuff we discuss has been across the board," said Steinwedel, 34, who helps run the library's public programs. "Some it has been classical philosophy: What is truth? What is beauty? What does it mean to be a friend?"

Inna Sicard makes her point.Almost every Thursday night, 20 to 25 people gather on the second floor of the Ridgedale library across from a Dunn Brothers coffee outlet to debate what's uppermost in their minds.

Newly Released Reports Show Early Concern on Prison Abuse

2005-01-06T08:39:00.000-05:00

By KATE ZERNIKE

Published: January 6, 2005

In late 2002, more than a year before a whistle-blower slipped military investigators the graphic photographs that would set off the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, an F.B.I. agent at the American detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, sent a colleague an e-mail message complaining about the military's "coercive tactics" with detainees, documents released yesterday show.

"You won't believe it!" the agent wrote.

Two years later, the frustration among F.B.I. agents had grown. Another agent sent a colleague an e-mail message saying he had seen reports that a general from Guantánamo had gone to Abu Ghraib to "Gitmo-ize" it. "If this refers to intell gathering as I suspect," he wrote, according to the documents, "it suggests he has continued to support interrogation strategies we not only advised against, but questioned in terms of effectiveness."

When the Abu Ghraib scandal broke last spring, officials characterized the abuse as the aberrant acts of a small group of low-ranking reservists, limited to a few weeks in late 2003. But thousands of pages in military reports and documents released under the Freedom of Information Act to the American Civil Liberties Union in the past few months have demonstrated that the abuse involved multiple service branches in Afghanistan, Iraq and Cuba, beginning in 2002 and continuing after Congress and the military had begun investigating Abu Ghraib.

Are we, the people, both dumb and stupid?

2005-01-06T08:37:00.000-05:00

Time was when "dumb" and "stupid" meant two entirely different things.
Dumb people were those unable or unwilling to speak, while the stupid ones were so stigmatized for their lack of intelligence.
Increasingly, in these unkind and ungentle days, the masses of America merge these disparate terms, donning the mantle of stupidity by engaging in the practice of dumbness, in the face of a growing oligarchy.
Our Founding Fathers envisioned a nation managed by true public servants who devoted only a portion of their time to running the government, supporting themselves by other pursuits at home.
They would, I'm sure, be horrified to witness the present system, wherein office holders and career bureaucrats hold and wield power almost comparable to the feudal lords of old and the warlords still in control of the Third-World-Going-On-Fourth.
Meanwhile we, of the silent (nee dumb) majority, express our outrage by wailing and eye-rolling at cocktail parties, water coolers and friendly local taverns, both before and after sending the political foxes back to their henhouses of power.
Witness the fact that very few Sinators and Reprehensibles failed in recent bids for re-election, returning many of them to lifetime fiefdoms on Crapitol Hill, with perks that would make a Crown Prince salivate with envy.
From these positions of influence and privilege, they are free to dispense favor to their supporters and punishment to their foes, with little accountability to the public and few consequences for misbehavior.
In this dark endeavor, they are abetted by an army of imbedded civil servants, who survive administrative changes like an infestation of governmental cockroaches.
With the reckless abandon of feckless heirs, trophy wives and drunken sailors on leave, the "ins" gorge themselves at the pork barrel, while simultaneously wringing their hands about excess spending and wasteful projects.
Pause here, please, to recognize that not a plugged nickel is expended by the government without Congressional approval, so disabuse yourself of the notion that the Executive Branch is solely responsible for deficits and commendable for surpluses.
The ravenous carnivores of both parties feast on public pork to ingratiate themselves with the homefolk and scratch the backs of fellow feasters.
And shed no tears for the few incumbents who lose at the polls. You'll shortly find them with cushy jobs in the lobbying legions or private industry, managing to 'get by' on three or more times their in-office incomes.

U.S. Probes Guantanamo Abuse Allegations

2005-01-06T08:34:00.000-05:00

Wed Jan 5, 6:07 PM ET

By FRANK GRIFFITHS, Associated Press Writer

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - The U.S. military command that runs the prison for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has opened an investigation into allegations of prisoner abuse outlined in recently released FBI (news - web sites) documents, officials said Wednesday.

But human rights groups on Wednesday called for an independent investigation into abuse at Guantanamo where 550 detainees from nearly 40 countries are accused of links to Afghanistan (news - web sites)'s ousted Taliban regime or al-Qaida terror network.

"Although more transparency is always welcome we're way past the point where internal inquiries can be considered sufficient," said Alistair Hodgett, a spokesman for London-based Amnesty International.

Documents published last month show that FBI agents sent to Guantanamo warned the government about abuse and mistreatment when the first prisoners arrived in 2002, more than a year before a scandal over mistreatment at Iraq (news - web sites)'s Abu Ghraib prison. One letter, written by a senior Justice Department (news - web sites) official and obtained by The Associated Press, suggested the Pentagon (news - web sites) failed to act on the FBI complaints.

Also last month, the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites) released e-mails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act in which the FBI accused military interrogators of posing as FBI agents and humiliating and abusing detainees. Techniques included inserting lit cigarettes in prisoners' ears and shackling them into a fetal positions for up to 24 hours, forcing them to soil themselves.

The U.S. Southern Command in Miami will begin the investigation this week and has assigned Army Brig. Gen. John T. Furlow to lead it, said Duany. A report on Furlow's findings and recommendations is expected to be submitted the first week of February to the command's top official, Army Gen. Bantz J. Craddock.

But Furlow has the option of requesting an extension for the investigation, Duany said. Once Craddock reviews the report, he will decide on the next steps to be taken, he said.

Furlow's investigation will focus on the FBI documents that came to light last month, but will not be limited to them if other allegations surface, Duany said. The general will interview military personnel and may speak to detainees as well, he said.

The ACLU released another batch of documents on Wednesday, including an internal FBI e-mail indicating that suspected prisoner abuses reported by nine FBI employees who had been stationed at Guantanamo Bay were being forwarded on to the Pentagon for investigation.

The e-mail said that 17 other employees witnessed what they considered to be mistreatment, but those incidents were determined by senior FBI officials to fall inside the Defense Department's "approved interrogation techniques." Most of the 478 FBI personnel who provided accounts of their Guantanamo Bay experiences reported no instances of prisoner abuse.

"These documents raise more questions than they answer," said Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU attorney. "Why did the FBI narrow its investigation? Did the FBI ever conduct follow-up interviews?"

An FBI spokesman said the cases were referred to the Pentagon for appropriate action.

Additional documents previously released by the ACLU and the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights — obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request — show a special operations task force in Iraq sought to silence Defense Intelligence Agency personnel who may have observed abusive interrogations.

Dem lays out case against Bush's Ohio win

2005-01-05T18:38:00.000-05:00

By MALIA RULON

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee protested President Bush's re-election Wednesday with a new report claiming serious election irregularities and "significant disenfranchisement" of voters in Ohio.

The report by Rep. John Conyers of Michigan says Congress should challenge the Electoral College vote when it is tallied Thursday in the House of Representatives and investigate all claims of voter problems in Ohio.

"We have found numerous, serious election irregularities in the Ohio presidential election," the report said. "There are ample grounds for challenging the electors from the state of Ohio."

Ohio's 20 electoral votes were critical for Bush's defeat of Democratic Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. A recount last week showed Bush winning Ohio by 118,457 votes over Kerry, according to an unofficial tally by The Associated Press.

The 102-page report titled "Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio?" lists such problems as unusually long lines, a shortage of voting machines in Democratic-leaning areas, confusion over provisional ballot rules and computer problems.

The report also contends there were widespread instances of intimidation and misinformation, improper purging of voter registration lists, a lack of inspection for about 93,000 ballots where no vote was cast for president, and vote totals not matching registration numbers or exit poll data.

"In many cases these irregularities were caused by intentional misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it involving Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio," the report said.

Huge returns needed to make up for cutback

2005-01-05T11:39:00.000-05:00

By David J. Roberts
Posted January 3 2005

In promoting his plan to create personal accounts under Social Security, President Bush is giving ominous warnings that Social Security faces "bankruptcy down the road" and that "the crisis is here."

His plan would allow younger workers to invest a portion of their payroll taxes -- possibly 4 percentage points of the 12.4 percent employer-employee tax -- in stocks or other investments. But if investing this small portion at plausible market-rate returns for safe investments could actually save us from this "crisis," then there must not be much of a crisis.

In fact, Social Security is facing serious long-term problems, but personal accounts could actually make those problems worse.

Most of the new money going into Social Security goes right back out to pay current benefits. Any excess goes into the trust funds, effectively invested in U.S. government bonds at market rates of interest. But, it is projected that around 2018, after many Baby Boomers retire, all the new money and more will be needed to pay full promised benefits. As planned, the trust funds will then start redeeming those bonds to cover the difference.

The Social Security trustees project that around 2042, the trust funds will be exhausted and new payroll tax revenue will cover about 73 percent of promised benefits. The Congressional Budget Office, on the other hand, estimates that the trust funds will be depleted around 2052, and that payroll taxes will then cover about 80 percent of promised benefits.

Under new rules, House can speak of the Senate

2005-01-05T09:32:00.000-05:00

JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press Writer

Tuesday, January 4, 2005

01-04) 14:51 PST WASHINGTON (AP) --

Tinkering with a tradition that goes back to Thomas Jefferson, House members in the new Congress will be able to refer to senators by name on the floor -- as long as they don't get too personal.

They will no longer have to speak of "the other body" or face admonishment from the chair when they slip up and utter the word "Senate" or name a senator.

"I felt that in the modern age the rule was antiquated," said Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Fla., who added the measure to a package of rule changes the House approved during its opening-day session. "We don't want ad hominem attacks, but we certainly want to cite the record."

The former speaker of the Florida House said he was surprised when he arrived in Washington and discovered that members could be reprimanded for even mentioning the Senate.

Feeney's provision stipulates that, while members will now be able to refer to the Senate or a senator's action, they are still prohibited from launching personal attacks on a senator.

Concerns about politics becoming too personal were among the reasons Jefferson, while serving as John Adams' vice president and president of the Senate, wrote his manual of congressional rules with instructions that members shouldn't refer to other members by name.

House Dems to Contest Electoral Vote Count

2005-01-05T09:30:00.000-05:00

ALAN FRAM

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - A handful of House Democrats plan a long-shot effort to snarl President Bush's formal re-election by preventing Congress from counting Ohio's pivotal votes when lawmakers tally the electoral vote on Thursday.

No one expects the action to undo Bush's victory. Instead, it seems likely to do little more than call attention to Election Day voting irregularities, a growing frustration for Democrats who blamed similar problems in Florida for Bush's 2000 defeat of Democrat Al Gore.

In a measure of the dispute's political delicacy, proponents are considered unlikely to find a senator who will co-sign the objection, which is required to force Congress to act on the challenge. Most Democrats are reluctant to launch a serious effort to undo the election, in which Bush outpolled Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., by more than 3 million votes nationally.

Even so, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., has sent letters to senators seeking their support for his plan to object to the counting of Ohio's 20 electoral votes, which gave Bush his November victory over Kerry. Some Ohio voters have complained of Election Day fraud, citing a shortage of voting machines at precincts with minority voters, unusually long lines and computer problems.

Field of Candidates for DNC Chairman Narrows to Four

2005-01-05T09:28:00.000-05:00

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 5, 2005; Page A02

The field of potential candidates for Democratic National Committee chairman shrank by two yesterday when former White House deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes and former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk announced they had decided not to enter the competition.

Kirk, the 2002 Democratic candidate for Senate in Texas, gave a boost to former House member and fellow Texan Martin Frost by endorsing his candidacy, while Ickes, a veteran party strategist, said he would defer supporting another candidate.

The decisions did only a little to clarify a contest that party leaders say remains wide open, with several Democrats energetically competing to succeed Terence R. McAuliffe and several others still trying to decide whether to run.

The battle for party chairman has taken on significance as an early indicator of the direction Democrats will take in the aftermath of John F. Kerry's loss to President Bush and the GOP's strengthened majorities in the House and Senate. The next party chairman will play an influential role, along with congressional leaders and governors, in determining where and when Democrats choose to confront Bush over the next two years and in organizing for the 2006 and 2008 elections.

Gonzales Helped Set the Course for Detainees

2005-01-05T09:14:00.000-05:00

By R. Jeffrey Smith and Dan Eggen, Washington Post Staff Writers

In March 2002, U.S. elation at the capture of al Qaeda operations chief Abu Zubaida was turning to frustration as he refused to bend to CIA (news - web sites) interrogation. But the agency's officers, determined to wring more from Abu Zubaida through threatening interrogations, worried about being charged with violating domestic and international proscriptions on torture.

They asked for a legal review -- the first ever by the government -- of how much pain and suffering a U.S. intelligence officer could inflict on a prisoner without violating a 1994 law that imposes severe penalties, including life imprisonment and execution, on convicted torturers. The Justice Department (news - web sites)'s Office of Legal Counsel took up the task, and at least twice during the drafting, top administration officials were briefed on the results.

White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales chaired the meetings on this issue, which included detailed descriptions of interrogation techniques such as "waterboarding," a tactic intended to make detainees feel as if they are drowning. He raised no objections and, without consulting military and State Department experts in the laws of torture and war, approved an August 2002 memo that gave CIA interrogators the legal blessings they sought.

Gonzales, working closely with a small group of conservative legal officials at the White House, the Justice Department and the Defense Department -- and overseeing deliberations that generally excluded potential dissenters -- helped chart other legal paths in the handling and imprisonment of suspected terrorists and the applicability of international conventions to U.S. military and law enforcement activities.

His former colleagues say that throughout this period, Gonzales -- a confidant of George W. Bush's from Texas and the president's nominee to be the next attorney general -- often repeated a phrase used by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to spur tougher anti-terrorism policies: "Are we being forward-leaning enough?"

But one of the mysteries that surround Gonzales is the extent to which these new legal approaches are his own handiwork rather than the work of others, particularly Vice President Cheney's influential legal counsel, David S. Addington.

Gonzales's involvement in the crafting of the torture memo, and his work on two presidential orders on detainee policy that provoked controversy or judicial censure during Bush's first term, is expected to take center stage at Senate Judiciary Committee (news - web sites) hearings tomorrow on Gonzales's nomination to become attorney general. The outlines of Gonzales's actions are known, but new details emerged in interviews with colleagues and other officials, some of whom spoke only on the condition of anonymity because they were involved in confidential government policy deliberations.

On at least two of the most controversial policies endorsed by Gonzales, officials familiar with the events say the impetus for action came from Addington -- another reflection of Cheney's outsize influence with the president and the rest of the government. Addington, universally described as outspokenly conservative, interviewed candidates for appointment as Gonzales's deputy, spoke at Gonzales's morning meetings and, in at least one instance, drafted an early version of a legal memorandum circulated to other departments in Gonzales's name, several sources said.

Conceding that such ghostwriting might seem irregular, even though Gonzales was aware of it, one former White House official said it was simply "evidence of the closeness of the relationship" between the two men. But another official familiar with the administration's legal policymaking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because such deliberations are supposed to be confidential, said that Gonzales often acquiesced in policymaking by others.

This might not be the best quality for an official nominated to be attorney general, the nation's top law enforcement job, the administration official said. He added that he thinks Gonzales learned from mistakes during Bush's first term.

In Plan to Reduce Deficit, White House Turns to Old Projections

2005-01-04T13:04:00.000-05:00

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

Published: January 2, 2005

WASHINGTON, Jan. 1 - To show that President Bush can fulfill his campaign promise to cut the deficit in half by 2009, White House officials are preparing a budget that will assume a significant jump in revenues and omit the cost of major initiatives like overhauling Social Security.

To make Mr. Bush's goal easier to reach, administration officials have decided to measure their progress against a $521 billion deficit they predicted last February rather than last year's actual shortfall of $413 billion.

By starting with the outdated projection, Mr. Bush can say he has already reduced the shortfall by about $100 billion and claim victory if the deficit falls to just $260 billion.

But White House budget planners are not stopping there. Administration officials are also invoking optimistic assumptions about rising tax revenue while excluding costs for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as trillions of dollars in costs that lie just outside Mr. Bush's five-year budget window.

The five-year plan, due in February, is likely to reaffirm previous predictions of a $217 billion surge in tax revenues in 2005, the biggest one-year jump on record, and almost $800 billion a year by 2009.

"We still believe we will see new economic growth, with revenues increasing as a share of G.D.P.," said Chad Kolton, a spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget, referring to the gross domestic product. "I think our numbers are very realistic because they are consistent with the best estimates of Wall Street and of the Congressional Budget Office."

Bush Asks Judge to Toss Ohio Election Suit

2005-01-04T10:01:00.000-05:00

ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS

Associated Press

COLUMBUS, Ohio - President Bush's re-election campaign asked the chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court on Monday to throw out a challenge of the election in this swing state, saying the case resembles "a poorly drafted script for a late night conspiracy-theory movie."

The court filing was made as the Rev. Jesse Jackson held a rally before hundreds of people in Columbus to support the challenge and urge the U.S. Senate to debate Ohio's results on Thursday when Congress is in joint session for the official tally of the electoral votes.

Thirty-seven Ohio voters who filed the challenge are asking Chief Justice Thomas Moyer to set aside the election results. Some of the voters are suspicious of Bush's victory over Sen. John Kerry, while others say hours-long waits in heavily black neighborhoods caused voters to leave in frustration without casting a ballot.

"In 2000, if Al Gore had just held on and fought to the bitter end, he would have been president," said Mark Lomax, a black Columbus musician challenging the vote. "I kind of have the same feeling now - whether or not you like John Kerry, that's not the issue. It's just that your vote counts."

Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell said there's no reason to prolong the election.

"Jesse Jackson can complain, grandstand, whine, stamp his feet all he wants," said Blackwell spokesman Carlo LoParo. "It's not going to change the results of Ohio's election or how voters cast their ballots on Nov. 2."

The Bush campaign echoed those sentiments in the filing, saying the challenge falls "far short of a legitimate election contest."

It is not known when the chief justice might rule on the challenge.

Passionate Voters Chose To Challenge Election Results

2005-01-04T09:57:00.000-05:00

Congress To Certify Vote

POSTED: 4:18 pm EST January 3, 2005
UPDATED: 6:05 pm EST January 3, 2005

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- One voter didn't witness fraud Election Day but was suspicious of the results. Another was surprised by long lines in her suburban city, where voting was always quick in the past.

Another was angered by an hours-long wait to vote in his black neighborhood, where some people left in frustration without casting a ballot.

Peace activists, musicians and politicians are among the 37 voters challenging President George W. Bush's Nov. 2 election that he won with Ohio's 20 electoral votes. And three days before Congress certifies the vote, they're not ready to give up.

"In 2000, if Al Gore had just held on and fought to the bitter end, he would have been president," Mark Lomax, a black Columbus musician challenging the vote, said Monday. "I kind of have the same feeling now -- whether or not you like John Kerry, that's not the issue. It's just that your vote counts."

Lomax, 25, stood in line from 10:30 a.m. until about 2 p.m. on Election Day.

The voters' claim is pending before Chief Justice Thomas Moyer of the Ohio Supreme Court, who must decide whether they showed enough evidence to set aside the election results.

The Bush campaign on Monday asked Moyer to dismiss the challenge. The voters' arguments "resemble a poorly drafted script for a late night conspiracy-theory movie and fall far short of a legitimate election contest under Ohio law," the filing said.

Bush strategy will hurt Republicans, says former aide

2005-01-04T09:33:00.000-05:00

By Alec Russell in Washington
(Filed: 04/01/2005)

One of President George W Bush's former cabinet officials has criticised his record and his electoral strategy, accusing him of running a short-term policy which will damage the Republicans in the future.

Christine Todd Whitman joined Mr Bush's first cabinet as head of the Environmental Protection Agency and one of its few Republican moderates before leaving after a series of disputes in June 2003.

In a new book, It's My Party too: the battle for the heart of the GOP [Grand Old Party, the nickname for the Republican Party] and the Future of America, she describes regular battles with "extreme anti-government ideologues".

Her book is clearly designed to cast a shadow over Mr Bush's inauguration later this month.

But she says that while Mr Bush's campaign did energise his own political base, he failed to expand it. The results showed he "missed an opportunity to significantly broaden his support in the most populous areas of the country", she writes.

Ms Whitman argues that the strategy of Karl Rove, Mr Bush's chief political adviser, to focus rigorously on the narrow conservative base may have won the day, "but we must ask at what price to governing and at what risk to the future of the party".

Social Security Formula Weighed

2005-01-04T09:32:00.000-05:00

Bush Plan Likely to Cut Initial Benefits

By Jonathan Weisman and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, January 4, 2005; Page A01

The Bush administration has signaled that it will propose changing the formula that sets initial Social Security benefit levels, cutting promised benefits by nearly a third in the coming decades, according to several Republicans close to the White House.

Under the proposal, the first-year benefits for retirees would be calculated using inflation rates rather than the rise in wages over a worker's lifetime. Because wages tend to rise considerably faster than inflation, the new formula would stunt the growth of benefits, slowly at first but more quickly by the middle of the century. The White House hopes that some, if not all, of those benefit cuts would be made up by gains in newly created personal investment accounts that would harness returns on stocks and bonds.

Republicans, The Divided Conquerors

2005-01-04T09:31:00.001-05:00

By Hanna Rosin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 4, 2005; Page C01

We know the stereotype: Republicans are about as unruly and capricious as a May Day rally. They never bicker, they always line up behind their leader. Strength in Unity is their motto. Harmony runs in their blood.

But even the cheeriest family is repressing hostilities, and with a new Congress convening today, it's likely some of those feelings will emerge. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said recently that he believes the party should move a little to the left in order to attract new voters. Crack! Three prominent senators said they'd "lost confidence" in Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Crack! Reps. John McHugh of New York and Ernest Istook of Oklahoma "came close to physical blows" over Amtrak funding, according to an article in the newspaper the Hill. Physical blows over Amtrak??!! The center is not holding.

Plus there is new Republican blood coming into the House and Senate, cocky with victory, eager to make a point about Iraq, Social Security, immigration, federal spending. Not to mention the nascent ambitions of would-be Republican presidents, restless to find a following.

Dubious Purge at the CIA

2005-01-04T09:31:00.000-05:00

By Haviland Smith
Tuesday, January 4, 2005; Page A15

Porter Goss, the new CIA director and a devoted political ally of President Bush, has brought with him to Langley a Praetorian Guard from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Against the backdrop of his hands-off management style, they are making it clear, without much tact or subtlety, what their goal is: They have come to shake the place up.

Whatever is going on, it is at the behest of the White House, and it probably does not focus on faulty intelligence about weapons of mass destruction but rather on the conduct of the Iraq war and its aftermath. In that context, the administration's wrath seems directed toward the clandestine service, that component of the CIA that recruits and handles spies (not the component that publishes intelligence estimates). Since Goss's arrival in Langley, much of the senior management of the clandestine service has been fired or has quit, reportedly to be replaced with more compliant officials.

Bush Immigration Plan Meets GOP Opposition

2005-01-03T13:32:00.000-05:00

Lawmakers Resist Temporary-Worker Proposal

By Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 2, 2005; Page A06

President Bush's plan to liberalize the nation's immigration laws to allow millions of undocumented workers the opportunity for legal status appears to be on a collision course with newly aroused sentiment among House Republicans pushing for a crackdown on illegal immigration.

Bush describes his immigration proposal as one of the top goals of his second term, calling it a humane way to get a handle on the nation's mushrooming illegal immigration problem. Republican strategists, led by White House chief political adviser Karl Rove, also see the proposal as an important element in their plan to expand the party's base among the nation's fast-growing Hispanic population.

Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. wants tougher immigration laws.

The key prong in Bush's plan is a temporary-worker program that would offer the nation's estimated 10 million illegal immigrants a chance to earn legal status that would allow them to stay in the country as long as six years. Once they register as temporary workers, they would be eligible to begin the long process of applying for citizenship or permanent residency.

"It's a compassionate way to treat people who come to our country. It recognizes the reality of the world in which we live," Bush said during a news conference last week. "There are some people -- there are some jobs in America that Americans won't do and others are willing to do."

It's Her Party and She'll Cry If She Wants To

2005-01-03T13:28:00.000-05:00

By Mike Allen and John F. Harris
Sunday, January 2, 2005; Page A09

Christine Todd Whitman, the former New Jersey governor who was President Bush's first administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, is violating the omerta of Bush alumni with a memoir that touts the importance of moderates to the future of the Republican Party and flays Bush and his team for ignoring the country's middle. Whitman charges on Page 3 that Bush's three-percentage-point margin in the popular vote is the lowest of any incumbent president ever to win reelection.

"The numbers show that while the president certainly did energize his political base, the red state/blue state map changed barely at all -- suggesting that he had missed an opportunity to significantly broaden his support in the most populous areas of the country," Whitman writes. "The Karl Rove strategy to focus so rigorously on the narrow conservative base won the day, but we must ask at what price to governing and at what risk to the future of the party."

Whitman was a bit of a misfit in the Bush Cabinet, coming in as a supporter of abortion rights and taking a job that is not a quick route to popularity in a GOP administration. She left in June 2003, clearly unhappy.

The book gives a flavor of how different the White House mind-set was before Sept. 11, 2001. Whitman writes that after meeting with the president-elect at a hotel suite in Washington, she had no doubt that Bush "wanted a strong environmental record to be part of both his agenda and his legacy."

Don't heed Bush's squawks that the sky is falling

2005-01-03T13:24:00.000-05:00

Web-posted Jan 2, 2005

Stan Kurzman
SPECIAL TO THE OAKLAND PRESS

Now that President Bush has announced that he will spearhead an election-style public relations campaign early next year to try to convince Americans that Social Security is in urgent need of change, we can expect more of the same false propaganda that supported the Bush agenda to invade Iraq.
Whether getting rid of Saddam Hussein was a good thing, the fact remains that the United States went to war based on false pretenses and with a significant change in policy - pre-emptive war. The Bush administration strategy was to create a major crisis - the threat of weapons of mass destruction - and thus convince the public that war was necessary.

The same strategy will soon be at work with Social Security.

The Chicken-Littleing over Social Security is as bogus as the WMD scare, and the underlying agenda is to get rid of it. The so-called crisis is nowhere near as severe as the Bush administration and conservative pundits declare. Even the doomsday date keeps changing.

In 1994, we were told that the system would go bust in 2029. The latest word has it at 2042. In a short 10 years, we've added 14 years to Social Security's life - seems as if we're gaining and not losing. And even the suggestion that Social Security would be broke in 2042 is false. What is true is that economists say that at that time only 81 percent of the projected benefits will be funded. Many private pension plans are in far worse shape than that.

The Bush solution - privatizing Social Security - is wrong. And the sucking sound you'll hear is the $1 trillion to $2 trillion additional national debt that will be required. But proponents find that irrelevant. They see the personal investment accounts as earning retirees so much more than Social Security that, in the future, benefits could be cut and the government saves that money. But it doesn't take an economist to understand the fallacy of that one.

'I'm Going to Learn'

2005-01-03T10:24:00.000-05:00

First, the blame. Then, the healing. In a new book, NEWSWEEK talks exclusively with John Kerry about why he lost—and looks at his plans for another run

Khue Bui for Newsweek
Kerry: Is it safe to come back?
By Evan Thomas
NewsweekJan. 10 issue - It was a little after 7 p.m. on election night 2004. The network exit polls showed John Kerry leading George Bush in both Florida and Ohio by three points. Kerry's aides were confident that the Democratic candidate would carry these key swings states; Bush had not broken 48 percent in Kerry's recent tracking polls. The aides were a little hesitant to interrupt Kerry as he was fielding satellite TV interviews in a last get-out-the-vote push. Still, the 7 o'clock exit polls were considered to be reasonably reliable. Time to tell the candidate the good news.

Kerry had slept only two hours the night before. He was sitting in a small hotel room at the Westin Copley (in a small irony of history, next door to the hotel where his grandfather, a boom-and-bust businessman, shot himself some 80 years ago). Bob Shrum, Kerry's friend and close adviser, couldn't resist the moment. "May I be the first to say 'Mr. President'?" said Shrum.

The others cringed. Kerry did not respond, at least in any memorable way. In the dark days after the election, he tried a joke: "Until about 7 p.m. that night, it felt great to be the 44th president of the United States." Ever since election night, John Kerry has been trying hard to learn from his mistakes, to cheer his disappointed followers, to avoid sinking into the inevitable depression—and to plot his own comeback.

2004: A seesaw year for Wall Street

2005-01-01T08:16:00.000-05:00

Market analysts doubt whether 2005 will be better

By Roland Jones
Wall Street reporter
MSNBC
Updated: 5:55 p.m. ET Dec. 31, 2004In the end, it was an unexciting finish to a rather unremarkable year for equities. Wall Street closed Friday’s sluggish trading session, the last of 2004, with modest losses, but chalked up a second straight positive year for the stock market.

The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was off 1.63 points — or 0.1 percent — at Friday’s close, making for an annual gain of 9 percent for the broad market index, roughly matching analysts’ estimates for the year, but falling far short of the 26 percent gain seen in 2003. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 3 percent in 2004, while the Nasdaq composite Index added nearly 9 percent.

Overseas markets also finished 2004 moderately higher, including major European stock indexes in the United Kingdom, Germany and France and Japan’s benchmark Nikkei average, all of which were up between 7 and 8 percent for the year.

Still, some analysts were upbeat about the markets in 2004.

Cheating suspected in vote

2004-12-17T09:14:00.000-05:00

By Ralph Z. Hallow
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Republicans in Washington state suspect Democrats, with 500 patronage jobs at risk, are cheating in what is now the unprecedented third counting of the 2,883,341 ballots cast in the Nov. 2 election for governor.
In the current hand recount, Democrats keep discovering untabulated ballots. The state's Republicans, who thought they had elected Dino Rossi as the first Republican governor in 20 years, are furious.
State Republican Party Chairman Chris Vance says he can't decide whether Democrat officials in heavily Democratic King County — where uncounted or improperly discarded ballots keep popping up — are "colossally incompetent or completely corrupt."

GOP CORRUPTION & DEM IMPOTENCE

2004-12-17T08:30:00.000-05:00

By JOHN PODHORETZ
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

December 17, 2004 -- THE big question for pro fessional Democrats right now is this: Can the party that invented Big Government become an effective critic of Big Government? It's the best, indeed perhaps the only, path to a Democratic renaissance.
The Democratic Party finds itself in a terrible predicament. At a time when national security is paramount, the Democratic Party finds its core strength among those who don't believe in military solutions to world problems.

Peaceniks represent the Democratic Party's core strength, but they're also the party's most profound weakness — because American voters who want a strong leader won't buy a candidate acceptable to the peaceniks.

So where can Democrats turn? They can shift their attention to the fiscal corruption that has taken hold of the Republican Party in Congress.

As 2005 begins, the GOP will have controlled both Houses of Congress for a decade (excepting an 18-month blip from 2001-2002 when liberal Republican-turned-independent Jim Jeffords joined with Democrats to give them the reins of power in the Senate).

But Republicans won majorities in the House and Senate in the 1994 elections because they ran as reformers against the corruption of the entrenched Democratic majority on Capitol Hill. They were supposedly the party of less government, less regulation, less intrusion. They would be in Washington, but not of Washington. They would fight the temptation to spend the people's money and to control the people's economy.

Something unseemly has happened over the course of the GOP decade, especially in Congress. The reformers have become the entrenched majority.

It's time to pass torch, younger Dems say

2004-12-17T08:28:00.000-05:00

By Jill Lawrence, USA TODAY

They are opining, organizing and running for party chairman. A wave of young Democrats is demanding not just to be heard but to take charge.

"This generation is looking for ways to participate because we're tired of losing," says Jamal Simmons, 33, a consultant who has worked for presidential hopeful Wesley Clark (news - web sites) and several other Southern candidates.

Simmons and his fellow "Young Turks" worry about the Democratic Party's dependence on interest groups, their relations with minority groups, the stereotypes that they are weak on defense and values, the Republican appropriation of the "reformer" label and the swaths of America that Democrats seem to have written off.

Young Democrats believe that the party is dominated by people who came of age politically in the 1960s, and it's time for them to make room for new ideas and new voices. Theirs.

"We respect the struggles of the feminist movement, the civil rights movement and Vietnam, but (we) are not defined by those struggles," says Kirsten Powers, 37, a New York-based strategist and commentator for Fox News. "We want to take what is good in liberalism and make it better, and get rid of what is not working."

Lisa Marie Presley Selling Elvis Estate

2004-12-17T08:27:00.000-05:00

Dec 16, 9:34 PM (ET)

By WOODY BAIRD

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) - Lisa Marie Presley is keeping Graceland but selling the bulk of the Elvis estate, including rights to her father's name and image, in a deal worth approximately $100 million.

Elvis Presley Enterprises Inc. announced an agreement Thursday to sell 85 percent of its assets to businessman Robert F.X. Sillerman, founder of music and sports promoter SFX Entertainment.

The Presley estate brought in almost $45 million last year. Sillerman said more aggressive marketing, supported by capital raised through a new publicly traded company, can make Elvis an even bigger earner.

Presley occupies a unique place in American pop culture, and "I don't think there's much likelihood his influence is going to wane anytime in my lifetime," Sillerman said by telephone from New York, where he runs the Sillerman Companies.

As Presley's only child, Lisa Marie is the sole heir to the estate, most of which is now to become part of a publicly traded company that will be called CKX Inc.

The agreement will pay her $53 million in cash and absolve her of $25 million in debts owed by the estate. She also is to get shares in the new company expected to be worth more than $20 million.

Companies must expense options by mid-2005

2004-12-16T15:44:00.000-05:00

After years of wrangling, accounting standards finally set

The Associated Press

Updated: 2:39 p.m. ET Dec. 16, 2004NEW YORK -

The nation’s accounting rulemaker decided Thursday that companies will have to begin deducting the value of stock options from their profits next year, a move cheered by shareholder advocates but scorned by many companies who rely heavily on options to beef up compensation packages.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board’s long-awaited decision means public companies will have to start expensing options beginning with their first annual reporting period after June 15, 2005.