Discussion: The Traditional Conservatives as Bush Critics

I've already written about my shock & dismay to find a Pat Buchanan article with which I wholeheartedly agreed.

Now, I'm nodding my head in agreement to George Will!!! What next? Hell freezing over? Pigs flying?

Basically Will is saying in this morning's Washington post column that Bush's efforts in Iraq are driven by ideology and are unsustainable nor supportable.

I agree with much of what he says, but also think he performs some mental contortions to avoid laying too much blame at Bush's feet directly.

So while, as a traditional conservative, he can't help but be disturbed by Bush, as a Republican he can't bring himself to totally eviscerate his Party's nominee.

So, he's pretty smart, but not very brave.

Read more in the extended entry:

Will makes a start by comparing Thomas Jefferson, idealist vs. Alexander Hamilton, prosaic realist. This puts Will in the position of keeping this Jefferson vs. Hamilton analogy up throughout the column, to Jefferson's detriment I must say.

But only because of the one thing I didn't like about Will's column: his reluctance to blame George Bush and his actions directly, not just his staff. And to do that, he ends up blaming Jeffersonian ideals.

Will thinks Bush's speech last week showed Bush, in "an agreeably prosaic frame of mind, turning U.S. policy in Iraq in a direction for which Americans are ready."

Apparently Hamilton bucked the trend and refused to speak in idealistic and optimistic language, preferring stark realism, even skepticism.

But it's not the having of ideals that is the problem here, it is having ideals that don't reflect the country's mindset. And it's not turning ideals into action plans that is the problem, but rather not having fully considered plans, and poorly executing the plans you have.

Will does make the following interesting point:

"Some say that U.S. policy toward Iraq primarily needs a military success akin to what saved Lincoln politically when things were going badly in 1864 -- the capture of Atlanta. But what Iraq event could be analogous? And remember: The general who marched, as the song says, "from Atlanta to the sea" did so using tactics that anticipated the "total war" of the next century. Are we ready to do that in Iraq?

He's right. I don't think we, as a people, have the stomach anymore for a "Great" war. We are too globally plugged in and connected.

During World War II, the US killed thousands upon thousands of civilians, men, women & children, with little compunction or aftershocks back home. But very very few Americans likely had day-to-day contact with or access to information about actual Germans or actual Japanese. We never had to think, "they're just like us."

And I'm sure most people would say it is just about as important to dismantle terrorists as it was to dismantle the Nazis, but we imagine that in 60 years that somehow technology should have advanced enough that we can do so without the loss of innocent lives or destruction of property.

The terrorists, on the other hand, seem quite capable of demonizing the West the way we used to demonize the Japanese or Germans. And they will attract a steady stream of recruits with their ideology. And since their military goals, for now, are destabilization and unpredictability, they can achieve that with their relatively small army.

Bush, on the other hand, as the leader of a "superpower" nation has more lofty military goals...regime change, nation building etc. You need (contrary to what Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz wanted to admit) massive forces to accomplish such broad goals.

So, Bush may have the ideological dedication that, in fact, the terrorists have. But unlike the terrorists, who need their army of fanatics and a few Saudi financiers behind them, Bush would need his nation behind him. And his nation may, as Will suggests, be in a Hamiltonian frame of mind!

But I'm not as ready as Will to associate Bush's ideals with Jeffersonian ideals. And even if they were, here's where competent execution of such ideals comes into play. And Will puts himself in the position of having to somewhat blame Jeffersonian ideals just to avoid saying that Bush and his crew aren't fit to either promote ideals or execute on more prosaic tasks.

Nonetheless, Will is part of a growing number of conservatives, from Buchanan to Friedman, who are willing to question, even criticize, the Bush White house and its activities.

Will provides a great quote from Kansas Republican Pat Roberts. Roberts, chairman of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee and another traditional conservative says:

"We need to restrain what are growing U.S. messianic instincts -- a sort of global social engineering where the United States feels it is both entitled and obligated to promote democracy -- by force if necessary. . . . Liberty cannot be laid down like so much AstroTurf."

Sounds a lot like my favorite quote of the moment seen fro the other side:

Freedom and dignity spring from within the human heart. They are not imposed. And inside the human heart is where the impetus for political change must be generated.
-Wesley Clark

Will mentions a book, "Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet" that depicts the Bush cabinet as a group of people who think the only rationale for a large military in the post-Cold War world is to actively spread and promote our (or more accurately, their) ideals.

Perhaps we could focus less on spreading our ideals, and more on helping the will and well-being of people in other nations prevail, even if it doesn't agree exactly with our will.

Discussion: Constitutional Checks & Balances at Stake

Interesting story this morning in the NY Times about how even some Republican Congresspeople are beginning to balk at Bush's near monarchistic attitude toward disclosure or oversight (my words, not theirs.)

There are several things that seem to be boiling under the surface here:

1. The increasing willingness of some Republicans to break from the stony wall of partisan support that Bush has so far enjoyed, indicates that even in the high stakes world of national politics, some Republicans fear their party is getting away from them, and are willing to speak out.

2. There people who cried "cynicism" or "paranoia" when Democrats complained about Republican oversight of every committee resulting in limited access to the White House and limited debate. Those people are being proved sadly wrong, especially in the House.

3. Something that seems unspoken but a real fear is that Bush's disregard for constitutional checks & balances risks marginalizing Congress and in fact bringing their role into question. How big a step is it from disregarding Congress to disbanding it? Some of the Congresspeople quoted in the article seem to feel if they don't start asserting themselves, the may help obsolete themselves.

All of this, combined with the military's increased dissatisfaction with the way their civilian leadership is running things, make me believe this country is ready to wake up and make a drastic change in course, rather than stay the course.

Link to story is above, or full text of article is in extended entry:

Even Some in G.O.P. Call for More Oversight of Bush
By CARL HULSE
New York Times
Published: May 31, 2004

WASHINGTON, May 30 - Members of Congress have a proud tradition of asking witnesses tough questions at famous inquiries like the Watergate and Iran-contra hearings. Now the Iraqi prison abuse scandal has some lawmakers asking a hard question of themselves: What doesn't Congress know and why doesn't it know it?

The disclosures about the treatment of detainees, coupled with complaints from some quarters about the Bush administration's handling of antiterrorism money, have ignited a debate over whether Congress is keeping a close enough eye on the White House and staying adequately informed on developments in Iraq.

Democrats, not surprisingly, think much more scrutiny is necessary and have been complaining for months that the Republican leadership in Congress is refusing to hold its allies in the administration accountable on a range of subjects. Now even some Republicans say they worry that Congress is abdicating its oversight responsibility.

"I believe our failure to do proper oversight has hurt our country and the administration," said Representative Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican who traveled to Iraq to get a view of the situation outside administration control. "Maybe they wouldn't have gotten into some of this trouble had our oversight been better."

The issue burst into the open in recent days as the Senate and House took starkly different approaches to the prison abuse inquiry, with the Senate holding a series of high-profile hearings and the House one public session. House Republican leaders criticized the Senate for grandstanding on the issue, and the House rejected a Democratic push for a broader inquiry.

Frustrated Democratic leaders sent a letter to Speaker J. Dennis Hastert last Monday, demanding that he direct the relevant committees to pursue the abuse issue.

"There does not seem to be an investigative agenda, and a work plan for fulfilling that agenda, in place anywhere in the House," said the letter, signed by the Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi of California; the Democratic whip, Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland; and the caucus chairman, Robert Menendez of New Jersey. "We believe that the House will be derelict in its institutional oversight responsibilities unless this situation changes soon."

Mr. Hastert dismisses the rising criticism of the House's oversight record as a partisan effort to build a political case against the Republican leadership. He said the majority had actively kept abreast of developments in Iraq, though it might not be conducting the "show trials" he said Democrats would prefer.

"In Iraq, we have literally sent scores of members there to take a look and see for themselves what is happening on a bipartisan basis," Mr. Hastert said.

Representative Duncan Hunter, the California Republican who is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said Congress had given undue attention to the abuse of prisoners. "Maybe we should cancel every piece of Congressional business for the entire year so that the issue at Abu Ghraib can be milked until the election," he said.

To other lawmakers and outside experts, the feud over how far to go in examining the scandal is symptomatic of the deeper question of whether the Republican Congress is being aggressive enough in monitoring the administration when their political fortunes are so closely linked.

"The Republican dominance of Congress and the White House has led to an attitude of 'We can keep it within the fold; it is our team and our team will understand us,' " said Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat who sits on the Armed Services Committee.

Democrats and others say Congress should have looked more closely at the administration's failure to provide full estimates of the cost of the new Medicare drug law and the leak of the identity of a covert C.I.A. worker, among other matters.

"Party has trumped institutional responsibility," said Thomas E. Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "The sense of shared political stakes bridging either end of Pennsylvania Avenue has overwhelmed any sense of institutional responsibility."

Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, a Republican who has made himself a thorn in the side of both Republican and Democratic administrations, says Congress rarely does enough oversight. "And I believe that is whether you have a Republican Congress versus a Republican president or a Democratic Congress versus a Democratic president," Mr. Grassley said. He recalled that Democrats had been all too eager to help him pursue wrongdoing in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and the first George Bush, but that when he kept at it in the Clinton era, "I lost the same allies."

Mr. Grassley pointed out that oversight can be tedious, unglamorous work, and that it sometimes takes years to tease out problems buried deep in the bureaucracy. Mr. Hastert acknowledged that Republicans were slow to acquire the investigatory skills honed by Democrats during their 40-year dominance of the House. Some say demands on the time of lawmakers and lack of experienced staff have also contributed to diminished oversight.

Yet there have been serious efforts by some committees to pursue lines of inquiry over Iraq - particularly in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and its review of the upcoming transition of power, and in the House Government Reform Committee, which explored reconstruction contracts in Iraq.

Even leading Republicans concede privately that the Bush administration resists energetic oversight, an attitude Democrats say is reflected in the administration's occasionally dismissive attitude toward lawmakers of both parties. They point to the allegation in Bob Woodward's book "Plan of Attack" that the administration diverted $700 million in post-Sept. 11 money to secretly begin planning the war with Iraq. In the past, such a charge could have led to a full-blown inquiry.

Congressional Republicans said the White House appeared to have acted within the wide latitude it was given by Congress to handle the money. But the disclosure about the movement of the money, when added to the fact that lawmakers got no advance warning of the scope of the prison abuse before it exploded into the news, seems to have stirred a more assertive attitude in some.

Besides the prospect of more Senate hearings on prison abuse, Republicans in both the House and the Senate joined Democrats in insisting that the additional $25 billion sought by the Bush administration for Iraq be much more tightly controlled than the previous war allocations.

"We really do need to preserve the important role that Congress plays," said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, as the Armed Services Committee examined the administration's request. "It is our duty."

Soapbox: In Praise of Independence, even if it's Republican

Amongst all of the Rush Limbaugh's talking about "blowing off steam" or Sen. Inhofe being "outraged over the outrage" when it comes to Abu Ghraib, it's only fair to point out some saner, more reasonable republican voices.

I'm not saying I'd vote for these guys, but I can admire their willingness to buck the ultra-right-wing trend. I've already mentioned John McCain. And Although I think Rep. Lindsay Graham is a bit of an ass in some respects, he certainly was willing to tell Dick Cheney to back off and let Congress do their job and investigate Abu Ghraib.

Now a Washington Post story on Sen. John Warner highlights his independent streak, and his willingness to continue digging into this scnadal, at the risk of pissing off the right-wing leadership.

What do these guys, McCain, Graham and Warner, have in common? They have served in our military.

Perhaps it is such men who take it most personally when the reputation of our armed forces is besmirched, and it doesn't matter to them if it comes from within or without...the problem must be eradicated.

And I will give them credit for it.

Helpful Link: Paul Krugman Does It Again...on the Press & the Truth

Well, you know Krugman is my favorite guy (except for this week, when Al Gore gets to hold the title.)

This week's column talks about the press since 9/11: intimidated, bending over backwards to avoid appearing liberal, to avoid appearing its equivalent in right-wing-speak...anti-American.

But we, the People, have a role here too. We can demand more truth. We can send our messages of support to those who speak out. We can question.

Every journalist, every politician has an email address. And you're reading this, so I would imagine you do too.

Use it to praise, to damn, to demand. But communicate.

We have less than 6 mnths until the election. Make them count.

The full column text is in the extended entry:

To Tell the Truth
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: May 28, 2004

Some news organizations, including The New York Times, are currently engaged in self-criticism over the run-up to the Iraq war. They are asking, as they should, why poorly documented claims of a dire threat received prominent, uncritical coverage, while contrary evidence was either ignored or played down.

But it's not just Iraq, and it's not just The Times. Many journalists seem to be having regrets about the broader context in which Iraq coverage was embedded: a climate in which the press wasn't willing to report negative information about George Bush.

People who get their news by skimming the front page, or by watching TV, must be feeling confused by the sudden change in Mr. Bush's character. For more than two years after 9/11, he was a straight shooter, all moral clarity and righteousness.

But now those people hear about a president who won't tell a straight story about why he took us to war in Iraq or how that war is going, who can't admit to and learn from mistakes, and who won't hold himself or anyone else accountable. What happened?

The answer, of course, is that the straight shooter never existed. He was a fictitious character that the press, for various reasons, presented as reality.

The truth is that the character flaws that currently have even conservative pundits fuming have been visible all along. Mr. Bush's problems with the truth have long been apparent to anyone willing to check his budget arithmetic. His inability to admit mistakes has also been obvious for a long time. I first wrote about Mr. Bush's "infallibility complex" more than two years ago, and I wasn't being original.

So why did the press credit Mr. Bush with virtues that reporters knew he didn't possess? One answer is misplaced patriotism. After 9/11 much of the press seemed to reach a collective decision that it was necessary, in the interests of national unity, to suppress criticism of the commander in chief.

Another answer is the tyranny of evenhandedness. Moderate and liberal journalists, both reporters and commentators, often bend over backward to say nice things about conservatives. Not long ago, many commentators who are now caustic Bush critics seemed desperate to differentiate themselves from "irrational Bush haters" who were neither haters nor irrational — and whose critiques look pretty mild in the light of recent revelations.

And some journalists just couldn't bring themselves to believe that the president of the United States was being dishonest about such grave matters.

Finally, let's not overlook the role of intimidation. After 9/11, if you were thinking of saying anything negative about the president, you had to be prepared for an avalanche of hate mail. You had to expect right-wing pundits and publications to do all they could to ruin your reputation, and you had to worry about being denied access to the sort of insider information that is the basis of many journalistic careers.

The Bush administration, knowing all this, played the press like a fiddle. But has that era come to an end?

A new Pew survey finds 55 percent of journalists in the national media believing that the press has not been critical enough of Mr. Bush, compared with only 8 percent who believe that it has been too critical. More important, journalists seem to be acting on that belief.

Amazing things have been happening lately. The usual suspects have tried to silence reporting about prison abuses by accusing critics of undermining the troops — but the reports keep coming. The attorney general has called yet another terror alert — but the press raised questions about why. (At a White House morning briefing, Terry Moran of ABC News actually said what many thought during other conveniently timed alerts: "There is a disturbing possibility that you are manipulating the American public in order to get a message out.")

It may not last. In July 2002, according to Dana Milbank of The Washington Post — who has tried, at great risk to his career, to offer a realistic picture of the Bush presidency — "the White House press corps showed its teeth" for the first time since 9/11. It didn't last: the administration beat the drums of war, and most of the press relapsed into docility.

But this time may be different. And if it is, Mr. Bush — who has always depended on that docility — may be in even more trouble than the latest polls suggest.  

E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com

Great Link: The Salon.com Interview with John Kerry

here is another must read story.

And you know, entries like this are not only must-read, but must-forward. These links, like Gore's speech, like Wes Clark's brilliant dissection of the Bush strategy for the Middle East, and like this interview with John Kerry should go out to everyone you know.

If you'd send someone a joke, or a poem about Wonderful Women Week, why would you not help them gather data to help them make a decision in this, the most important election in decades?

Yes, these links are not to a 30-second sound bite, or simple paragraph of homilies and stirring, but meaningless words. These are long, and sometimes they're even nuanced, but they represent a truth that the mainstream media is not as anxious to focus on.

The Kerry interview in Salon establishes Kerry as a candidate with ideas, with guts, with intelligence.

For those people you talk to who think, but don't know WHY they think, that Kerry is a flip-flopper or a scary liberal, this interview should help them start to realize that Kerry is a guy with a better idea, a better plan, and a better chance of executing the job of president of the United States with competence and honesty...two things we're missing right now.

Bear in mind if you're not a premium Salon member, you'll have to view a brief advertisement to see the whole interview. Do it. It's worth it.

Recent News: Kerry quote for the day

While both Clinton and Gore are praising Kerry for staying a tiny bit above the fray when it comes to the crisis in Iraq, it's not like Kerry is staying completely silent. here's a great quote for the day from Kerry:

"They looked to force before exhausting diplomacy, they bullied when they should have persuaded. They have gone it alone when they should have assembled a whole team. They have hoped for the best when they should have prepared for the worst. They have made America less safe than we should be in a dangerous world. In short, they have undermined the legacy of generations of American leadership, and that is what we must restore, and that is what I will restore."

You know, all these Republicans seem to think that Kerry should prove that he has a completely thought out and guaranteed plan for Iraq to justify our call to boot out Bush. But you know, most of them have been in business at some time in their lives.

And I'll ask them: "Haven't you ever fired someone for incompetence before?"

That's what you would do in a business.

And you line up a replacement that has the qualities, values, perspective, background that would enable them to succeed in the job.

And that's what Kerry needs to have, and does have, not a guaranteed alternative plan.

GREAT LINK: Al Gore's Incredible Speech

You, go Gore!!!!

Man, he is speaking right to ME!!!

I have been blathering on for months to anyone who will listen or read about how this administration is tearing away at the soul of America, is destroying everything we stand for...not only to our own citizens, but to the world.

Maybe because the guy isn't running for president he feels free to:

-Call Bush and his cronies incompetent
-Call them, further, dishonest
-Call them power-hungry
-And to call for accountability...real accountability

Gore is on fire, is righteously indignant, and is, most of all RIGHT!

You can get a link to both the video and the audio in the extended entry:

Link to the video on C-SPAN

Link to an audio clip

Discussion: Which Democrat WON'T You Find Hassling Kerry?

Why our former President, Bill Clinton, that's who.

Obviously following my repeated advice to Democrats to get off Kerry's back, Clinton is offering only encouraging and supportive words to Kerry's campaign, particularly what he is and isn't saying about the Iraq situation.

I knew I liked that guy.

read his comments in the extended entry:

Bill Clinton: Kerry runs smart campaign
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Sara Kugler, Salon.com

May 28, 2004  |  New York -- Former President Clinton said Thursday that Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry is smart not to comment daily on every development in Iraq because "he recognizes that he's not the president."

Speaking at his office in Harlem, Clinton said he didn't think the Massachusetts senator was running "too safe a campaign" as some political strategists have suggested. Among the criticism is that Kerry is failing to exploit increasing skepticism about President Bush's handling of the war.

"He recognizes that he's not the president, and he's not, he's the candidate for president, he's not somebody that's supposed to give day-by-day commentary on events," Clinton said. "He's made quite clear what he believes about the major issues in the news today, and I think he's shown a certain reticence."

The former president said that "given the seriousness of the problems we face in the world today, I think it's been quite appropriate."

Clinton said Kerry should be focused on letting "the American people get to know him, who he is, what he's for, what he wants to do, and then clarify, on his terms, the differences between himself and the president."

Clinton on occasion offers campaign advice to the Democratic candidate. Kerry aides have said the former president will play a prominent role at the Democratic convention July 26-29 in Boston.

The former president dismissed suggestions that his memoirs, to be released June 22, will steal the spotlight from Kerry.

"I think that it will not detract in any way," Clinton said. "I hope it will make citizens believe in politics more and believe in the importance of elections more and understand the honest differences between the two parties more."

"My Life," expected to be about 900 pages, has a first print run of 1.5 million copies.

Soapbox: Here We Go Again: Democrats as Un-American

Nice, subtle, but evil quote from Ashcroft the other day:

"The Madrid railway bombings were perceived by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to have advanced their cause. Al Qaeda may perceive that a large-scale attack in the United States this summer or fall would lead to similar consequences."

So, in case you don't have your subtle, but evil hat on today, Ashcroft is trying to say that a vote for John kerry (the opposition party candidate) is a vote to advance Al Qaeda's cause.

Yeah, but we want to propagate our beautiful brand of democracy throughout the world. It sets such a nice example when you compare opposition parties to terrorists.

As I've said before, I'm sick and tired of the implication that liberals, Democrats, progressives etc. are Anti-American...actually I think we demonstrate our love for our country by expecting MORE from her. And by wanting fairness for all of our citizens, not just a privileged few.

Recent News: BUsh finds yet another small issue to care about

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Soapbox: I Don't Get We, Democrats Sometimes

So last week the big story on Kerry wasn't the story on how Bush is belatedly seeing the wisdom of Kerry's Iraq plan and trying to claim it as his own.

No, the big story was that Kerry was considering delaying his official acceptance of the nomination, so he could delay having to stop raising and spending funds.

See the Republican convention is 5 weeks after the Democratic one, and even though Bush is as much, if not more, a done deal candidate for his Party as Kerry is for his, the rules (lame rule if you ask me) state that once the nomination is official each candidate can only dip into their $75 million in public financing.

So Kerry thought, why not wait, so that Bush and I both spread that $75 million over the same amount of time?

Well, the idea has been discarded, and I think it's another case of Democrats shooting themselves (and their candidate) in the foot.

Read why in the extended entry:

So, what have we been saying this year...we want a candidate who will fight back, who won't lie low, who's a scrapper.

But apparently we are only interested in someone fighting back with words and speeches, not clever and, yes I'll say it, political maneuvering.

Who are these whiners?

The Mayor of Boston! Oh, it will make the convention less important. All the same people are going to go to Boston and spend the same money they would have spent. That's all you should care about, Mr. Mayor.

And, incredibly, the journalists. Richard Cohen, a fine and usually left-leaning columnist got his panties all in a bunch. What? You want me and my journalist brethren to show up there, and you're not really going to accept? You're wasting my time like that? :(

Oh my God, that blew me away. You are going to go hear the same speeches, ring up the same expense account and cover the same anti-climactic..."Oh look they've nominated Kerry"...moment either way.

And then there are those folks saying, people will see through it and know it's a political move.

Oh, I would hope so.

Maybe it would wake people up about campaign finance reform.

Or maybe people would just have a new-found respect for a Democratic Party that can be as strategic as the other guys.

Is it just me? Or did we just shot ourselves in the foot again, rather than risk offending some small minority of folks?

Discussion: Kerry v. Bush on Iraq: Differences that MATTER

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Yesterday Kerry outlined "guiding principles" for dealing with Iraq.

GP #1 is forging "new alliances with foreign countries", and this is where Difference #1 comes into play:

Difference #1: Differences in the ability to execute
Kerry asserts, and I have to agree, that Bush has seriously undermined our nation's ability to garner and maintain international support. Not only has he marginalized and derided some of our traditional allies, thus reducing their desire to pitch in purely out of humanitarian concerns, but saving all of the infrastructure rebuilding contracts for his cronies' companies doesn't help incent them from a business perspective either.

GP #2 is "the use of diplomacy, intelligence, economic power and "the appeal of our values and ideas" to keep the country safe". And this is where Difference #2 comes into play:

Difference #2: Differences in guiding principles
It flies in the face of American history and philosophy to treat invasion as a preemptive, offensive move, rather than a defensive move. It flies in the face of American history and philosophy to go to war before exhausting other possibilities. (And let me reiterate: Saddam did not have anything to do with 9/11, so while one could argue that 9/11, like Pearl Harbor, was a declaration of war against us, it has no relevance to justifying the invasion of Iraq.)

If you haven't already read Wes Clark's piece in the Washington Monthly on the Cold War v. the War on Terrorism, it brilliantly talks about the need for nations to desire change from within, and how America's example can influence, more than our military might.

Bush may be all words about our "values and ideas", but his actions have erased his credibility to really stand up for those values and ideas.

GP #3 is: "freedom from dependence on oil from the Middle East." And this is just one of the staggering differences between Kerry & Bush.

Difference #3: Differences on dependence on oil companies!
Bush is beholden in more ways than one to the energy industry. His efforts since entering office have focused on easing regulations, minimizing our focus on alternative energy sources, even easing the roadmap for more fuel-efficient vehicles. You won't even hear Bush talk about America's own gluttonous dependence on oil as something that should be addressed.

Now maybe people like me don't like being chastised for our SUVs or sport sedans that get <20 MPG, but it's called reality, folks, and Bush won't face it if it means putting a dent in the solid gold armor of his buddies.

Kerry has both a philosophy AND a plan, and the credibility to execute on his plan. As far as I have seen, Bush has a lot of stirring words that he can recite from the tele-prompter, but has no clue how to turn them into a real, workable path forward to honorably and advantageously extricate ourselves from his mess.

It's a tough way for anyone to start a new job, but I say it's time to let Kerry try to clean up Bush's mess.

Source articles:

AP Story on Kerry's latest Iraq Speech>

William Safire's piece in the 5/26 NY Times

5/26/04 NY Times Article: Candidates' Iraq Policies Share Many Similarities

Soapbox: More on the cuts in service, courtesy of massive tax cuts

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When this budget document first surfaced, White House officials dismissed the cuts within as "based on a formula and did not accurately reflect administration policy."

But last week they had to finally cop to the truth and admit: "that agencies should assume the spending levels in that printout when they prepare their fiscal 2006 budgets this summer."

So, what's the big deal? I mean we, fiscally conservative Democrats believe in balancing budgets. And we believe you are going to have to do some spending cuts to achieve that right? So, he's a little late to the rational spending cut game, but at least he's getting there right?

Wrong.

It is wrong, I tell you, to cut massively, while simultaneously asking Congress to make permanent the tax cuts Bush enacted.

Just like it is wrong of Schwarzenegger to talk about "tightening the belt" when it is only the most vulnerable and needy among us who will really feel the pinch. Meanwhile the rest of us can go all crazy spending our $150 car tax rebate.

This isn't fiscal conservatism; it is corporate welfare and quid pro quo cronyism.

And what is also wrong, is to run around talking up your big accomplishments on your domestic agenda, such as: programs for Head Start: The Education Department; a nutrition program for women, infants and children; homeownership; job-training; medical research and science programs, when they are all facing significant cuts in your proposed budget.

It's wrong. No, it's hypocrisy. No, perhaps it's simply lying, bearing false witness, whatever you'd like to call it.

All I'm asking is that we call Bush on it. Preferably on November 2nd.

Here's a link to the Washington Post story.

Discussion: The BS starts about the candidates being "similar"

So here we go. For some reason some media outlets seems motivated to blur the differences between Kerry & Bush to a mind-boggling degree.

Just in today's NY Times, there are three different columns whose headlines tell the story of the supposedly similar candidates:

1. "The Bush-Kerry Non-debate", an op-ed piece by William Safire
2. "Candidates' Iraq Policies Share Many Similarities" and
3. "The Bush and Kerry Tilt"

Now I know this serves Nader's agenda...this was his original argument in 2000 after all. But I'm realizing that it serves the right-wing agenda to serve Nader's agenda in this regard.

See, the neocon Republican leadership will be confident that their ardent right-wing followers will see through such sophisticated sophistry, confident that Bush is really in their right-wing back pocket, eager to outlaw abortion, degrade our civil liberties and continue to reward his wealthy cronies and their big businesses on the backs of of the middle class.

They're counting on the liberal base to fall for such media manipulation, abandon Kerry and once again let Nader be the siphon we desperately need him NOT to be.

Well, let's not fall for it shall we? Much as the media tries to tell us that the candidates are similar or see eye-to-eye, never forget that Kerry is a leader who can help America recover our international standing, a leader who will protect both our security AND our environment and personal freedoms, a leader who will be a Commander-in Chief who didn't shirk, but rather served, a leader who shunned lobbyist money, a leader who will balance corporate interests with tax fairness.

There are HUGE differences between Bush & Kerry. I'll forgive you for buying the line in 2000, back when Bush was pretending to be a moderate, but not this year. Now you know.

As Bush himself said, in my favorite Bush blooper ever:

There's a saying that goes, 'Fool me once..er...(long pause)...shame on you; Fool me, fool me...don't get fooled again."

Why a couple of months of job growth is nothing to crow over

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Delusions of Triumph
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: May 25, 2004

Republicans, we hear, are frustrated by polls showing that the public has a poor opinion of George Bush's economic leadership. In their view, the good news about Mr. Bush's economic triumphs is being drowned out by the bad news from Iraq.

A recent article in The New York Times, citing concerns of "Republican elected officials, pollsters and strategists," put it this way: "The creation of nearly 900,000 new jobs in the last four months — a development that might otherwise have redefined the race in Mr. Bush's favor — has been largely crowded out of the electorate's psyche by images from Iraq."

Funny, isn't it? In 2002, Republican strategists used the impending Iraq war to distract the public from the miserable economic news. Now they're complaining that Iraq is taking voters' focus off the economy.

But is the economic news really that good? No. While the recent economic performance is better than in the administration's first three years, it isn't at all exceptional by historical standards. And after those three terrible years, the economy has a lot of ground to make up.

Let's start with the "nearly 900,000 new jobs" created in the last four months. Is that exceptional? Well, during the first four months of 2000, the last presidential election year, the economy created 1.1 million new jobs. An e-mail message to Bush's supporters from Ken Mehlman, his campaign manager, takes a longer view, boasting of 1.1 million jobs created since last August (when job growth finally turned positive). But in April 2000, payroll employment was 2.3 million higher than in August 1999.

And that was after seven years of sustained employment growth; rapid job growth is hard to achieve when the economy is already close to full employment. To find a year comparable to 2004, we need to look back to 1994, when the economy was still recovering from the first Bush recession. In the first four months of that year, the economy added almost 1.3 million jobs.

The experience of 1994 also gives us some indication of how likely job growth is to "redefine" an election. Between December 1993 and November 1994 the economy gained 3.6 million jobs, a number beyond the Bush administration's fondest dreams. Yet voters, convinced that Bill Clinton was leading the country astray, gave his party a severe defeat in that year's midterm elections. So it's interesting that a new CBS News poll finds that 65 percent of Americans believe that the country is headed in the wrong direction — a level not seen since 1994.

If you want to convince yourself that I'm not playing games with dates, go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Web site at stats.bls.gov. Click on "U.S. economy at a glance," then on the green dinosaur next to "Change in payroll employment" for a 10-year chart of monthly job gains and losses. The chart reveals that for 37 months, from January 2001 to February 2004, the Bush administration presided over dismal job numbers: employment for each month fell, or grew far more slowly than the norm during the Clinton years. March and April were much better, but they still weren't exceptional by 1990's standards.

And a mere return to Clinton-era job growth isn't enough: after all those years of poor job performance, we need extra-rapid growth to make up for lost time.

Here's one way to look at it. The job forecast in the 2002 Economic Report of the President assumed that by 2004 the economy would have fully recovered from the 2001 recession. That recovery, according to the official projection, would lead to average payroll employment of 138 million this year — 7 million more than the actual number. So we have a gap of 7 million jobs to make up.

And employment is chasing a moving target: it must rise by about 140,000 a month just to keep up with a growing population. In April, the economy added 288,000 jobs. If you do the math, you discover that President Bush needs about four years of job growth at last month's rate to reach what his own economists consider full employment.

The bottom line, then, is that Mr. Bush's supporters have no right to complain about the public's failure to appreciate his economic leadership. Three years of lousy performance, followed by two months of good but not great job growth, is not a record to be proud of.  

Helpful Link: Salon's Round-up of Reaction to Speech

This article simply re-prints reaction to Bush's speech last night from numerous political commentators.

If you're not a Salon Premium subscriber, you can read the full story by watching a 30-second ad...quite a bargain.

Check it out here.

Forgot to Mention One Thing

I forgot, in my ranting last night, to rant abut one more thing:

Can you believe the way Bush still tries to tie Iraq to 9/11 and Al Qaeda's terrorist methods?

He can't say it directly, of course, since even he's admitted they have found no link between Saddam and Al Qaeda. But the concluding segment of last night's speech was all about trying to weave it all together into one big ball of stuff to fear and let him take care of.

But it's a smart move, given the number of people who still believe that Saddam had something to do with 9/11.

Soapbox: That's it? That's Your Big, Reassuring Plan?

Okay, I missed seeing Bush's speech, which is just as well, because the very sight of him or sound of his voice makes me nauseated. But I have read the recap, and the upshot seems to be that he listed 5 things they're gonna do, any day now.

And my problem is that none of them seem anything more than the obvious things that everyone has been talking about for months. And more than that, he didn't offer anything more detailed, anything to convince the country he has a plan, not just an outline of a plan...oh sorry, perhaps I should say an outline of a list of actionable items, right?

Let's discuss in detail in the extended entry, shall we?

Step #1: Handing over authority to a sovereign Iraqi government

Um, yeah. But remember in the infamous press conference, when he wasn't really sure what kind of entity we would be handing it over to? So, I guess today the administration proposed what that entity should look like. A president and a prime minister. 2 Vice Presidents, and six of one and half dozen of the other cabinet ministers. But here we are, 5 weeks away, and that a hell of a lot of positions to fill with God knows who. Am I just being picky here?

Step #2: Establishing security

You think? Hey, have we NOT been trying to establish security up until now? Come to think of it, how are you going to find 3 dozen folks who want to be part of this sovereign entity when we can't seem to keep them from getting blown up? This reminds me of when we "stepped up" efforts to find Osama, which was supposedly our #1 priority already. I also liked this little nugget:

"In some cases, the early performance of Iraqi forces fell short. Some refused orders to engage the enemy. We've learned from these failures and we've taken steps to correct them."

There's something chilling about the abstract language chosen. Basically the Iraqi refused to shoot on their own people, I guess. I wonder what "corrections" were in order?

Oh, and I find the following statement pretty disingenuous:

"If commanders need more troops, Bush said, "I will send them."

I'm sorry, but haven't the military types been saying from the beginning we need more troops there? So, exactly when does "will" kick in for Bush?

Step #3: Continuing to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure

Am I the only one seeing this as a reassuring message to Halliburton and his other contract-winning cronies? Just to make sure they know that a healthy part of the extra billions of dollars he's asking for will go to them!

And here's where he throws in a little bone about Abu Ghraib (which I understand he can't pronounce correctly, but we already know that he massacres the English language, so why freak out that he can't handle a little "furr'ner" talk?)

His big grand gesture? Hey guys, we going to knock down this prison...and build you a bright shiny NEW prison. The symbolism is awesome. "La plus ca change, la plus c'est la meme chose" huh? (That's "the more things change, the more they stay the same" for those of you less Frenchy-pretentious than I!)

Step #4: Encouraging more international support

This is another one that just blows my mind. You mean like every reasonable person begged you to do from the beginning? You gonna claim ownership of this idea now, Dubya? Oh, according to him, I'm so sorry, they've gone to the UN every step of the way. Perhaps. But I think usually it fosters good relations to go to them before, and then to actually listen to their input and perhaps even work together towards agreed upon goals. I guess that makes me a weak, little liberal girly-girl, huh?

Or maybe not. Maybe Bush is looking a little weak having to go back and beg for UN help when he was all cocky, or should I say 'cock and bull', about not needing it.

And by the way, when you've managed to belittle and denigrate just about every other nation except the UK, exactly what is your plan to re-engage. Who are you going to send on the grand world tour to line up our allies?

Gee, he is sending Colin Powell. That properly conveys the placating but pointless nature of this belated and insincere "reaching out" to the international community. This is the guy they have so marginalized and kept out of the loop, that he was telling the Congressional Black Caucus that they wouldn't be asking for more money for Iraq on the very morning the request for $25 billion was submitted!

Step #5: Moving toward a national election in Iraq that "will bring forward new leaders empowered by the Iraqi people"

I'm only going to say this: what would Dubya know about honest national elections?

Bush then closes with a lot of inspiring yakety-yak. But not before dropping this pearl:

"I sent American troops to Iraq to defend our security, not to stay as an occupying power. I sent American troops to Iraq to make its people free, not to make them American."

Yeah? I thought you sent troops, preemptively, proactively (not defensively) to eliminate the imminent threat posed by Saddam's amassing of weapons of mass destruction.

That didn't turn out to be such a great reason, huh? Gotta think of a new way to spin it. Good job.

If I sound more feisty than usual, it's because I'm infuriated by the big lot of nothing we heard tonight, and I'm petrified that the American people will heave a collective sigh of relief, thinking that it's been really hard to deal with all of the disturbing things we've seen lately, and wouldn't it be so much nicer to just believe he's got it all under control?

Well, as hard as he may be trying to pat you on the head and tell you not to worry your pretty little head about it, the fact is we have had months and months of such fine, forthright-sounding words.

There was nothing new here tonight. Am I the only one who has sat through a big company meeting in the high tech world and heard this well-worn phrase:

"Execution is everything"

It's well-worn because it's true. Shut up and get something actually done. Bush's words are too little, too late, and are backed up with nothing!

He is finally talking to the American people only because his poll numbers are pathetically low. When he was popular, he didn't call; he didn't write. He wouldn't give us the time of day. But now that he wants something from us (like our vote) all of a sudden he's offering to carry our books home from school.

I hope you see through it, and I hope you help everyone around you to see through it too!

Recent News: Yet another insider slams the Bush handling of the War in Iraq

Retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, former U.S. commander in the Middle East, seems to be on a mission. On the TV show circuit and in a new book, he basically reads the Bush White House the riot act. He slams them for:

-Flawed strategy & lack of planning
-Unnecessary alienation of our allies
-Purposely sending too few troops into Iraq
-Creating a dangerous distraction from real threats

Here's a particularly strongly-worded quote:

"In the lead-up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw, at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence, and irresponsibility; at worst, lying, incompetence, and corruption."

Just add him to the growing chorus of both military types and insider government officials who express similar criticism.

The only question is when will there be some accountability? I say the accountability will be fully assigned in November, when we kick the whole incompetent and immoral bunch out of Washington.

Here's a link to the Washington Post story.

Discusson: The "better off 4 years ago" question

Perhaps you remember Reagan's simple campaign strategy from 1984: Asking voters, are you better off today than you were four years ago. Most people could answer 'yes', and Reagan won handily.

It came up yesterday in our Call to Action meeting. And we discussed asking people that same question again today.

I have no doubt many people would say 'no.' But I'm wondering whether the better question to ask is:

"Is the country better off today than four years ago?"

I know some people will say that asking the latter question is just a typical hippy-dippy, liberal, bleeding heart thing to do, that it won't resonate with swing voters, or even with those on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder who want to be personally better off.

But in these times, when 57% of Americans feel the country is on the wrong track, don't you think it could resonate?

Or am I just a tree-hugging, like-to-buy-the-world-a-Coke, starry-eyed idealist?

How You Can Help: Carry Around Voter Registration Forms!

Yesterday, while at the SCC DP Call to Action meeting, I picked up some voter registration cards. Later that day I went to a party up in the City and found two, fine left-leaning people who needed my forms!

You can pick up forms from a library, from a post office, from a political offices, I think even at the DMV.

If you're willing to speak up and ask if everyone is registered where ever you go, you can help find those disenfranchised non-voters, and get them started on the path to taking positive action!

Discussion: Talking to the Undecided (or even Bush-leaning)

Yesterday the SCC DP held one of its monthly 'Call to Action' meetings for its volunteers.

They presented a featured speaker, Dr. Katherine Forrest, from the Commonweal Institute, to discuss how to talk to (and ultimately persuade) others about your political viewpoint.

Forrest provided a lot of interesting information and valuable advice, but made one point that I am not sure I agree with, and I thought I'd solicit my blog readers' opinions.

If you're interested, read the extended entry:

I mentioned I often hear a litany of concerns about Bush from the Republicans and/or Independents or even undecided Democrats I speak to, but nonetheless a confusing lack of commitment to vote Kerry. Often at that point I ask the folks to name what they actually like about Bush. Not the Republican Party; not the theory of what was supposed to happen, but in the real world...what positive things can they say about Bush?

I think there are two advantages to this tactic:

First, it is helpful to understand the opposition. If you don't know what people like about the opposition, how can you counter it?

But secondly, and more importantly, my experience is that most people have a lot of trouble naming even one concrete thing. And sometimes they can name intangible qualities, but not actual tangible actions that they have liked. And this makes them pause and think and start to question themselves too.

So, what's the downside? Well, according to Forrest, if people get to state the positives of their position, it helps solidify it in their minds; it helps harden their resolve. So, don't engage in debate.

Now, don't get me wrong, I can totally see that with some of the die-hard, hard-core, right-wingers that I've met. But I'm not sure I'd waste my breath on those folks anyway. definitely see her point about debate. The more you defend a position, the more emotionally invested you get in that position.

But what do you think about the people who describe themselves as undecided or ambivalent or on the fence?

Bottom line: what has worked for you?

D.O.A.: No Limit to the Hypocrisy?

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White House Is Trumpeting Programs It Tried to Cut
By ROBERT PEAR

Published: May 19, 2004
WASHINGTON, May 18 — Like many of its predecessors, the Bush White House has used the machinery of government to promote the re-election of the president by awarding federal grants to strategically important states. But in a twist this election season, many administration officials are taking credit for spreading largess through programs that President Bush tried to eliminate or to cut sharply.

For example, Justice Department officials recently announced that they were awarding $47 million to scores of local law enforcement agencies for the hiring of police officers. Mr. Bush had just proposed cutting the budget for the program, known as Community Oriented Policing Services, by 87 percent, to $97 million next year, from $756 million.

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The administration has been particularly energetic in publicizing health programs, even ones that had been scheduled for cuts or elimination.

Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, announced recently that the administration was awarding $11.7 million in grants to help 30 states plan and provide coverage for people without health insurance. Mr. Bush had proposed ending the program in each of the last three years.

The administration also announced recently that it was providing $11.6 million to the states so they could buy defibrillators to save the lives of heart attack victims. But Mr. Bush had proposed cutting the budget for such devices by 82 percent, to $2 million from $10.9 million.

Whether they involve programs Mr. Bush supported or not, the grant announcements illustrate how the administration blends politics and policy, blurring the distinction between official business and campaign-related activities.

In recent weeks, administration officials have fanned out around the country. Within a 48-hour period this month, Treasury Secretary John W. Snow was in Wisconsin and Illinois, doling out federal aid to poor neighborhoods. Anthony J. Principi, the secretary of veterans affairs, was in Las Vegas to announce plans for a new veterans hospital. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham was in South Carolina to announce a new national research laboratory. And a top transportation official was in Portland, Me., awarding a $13 million grant to the city's airport.

In some cases, overtly political appearances are piggybacked onto such trips. Earlier this month, Mr. Principi was in Florida announcing plans for another veterans hospital, in Orlando, with a side trip to Tampa to kick off a national coalition of veterans supporting the re-election of Mr. Bush.

A few days earlier, while traveling to Marco Island, Fla., on official business, Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans stopped in Daytona Beach to attend a large prayer meeting, where he praised Mr. Bush as "a leader you can trust 100 percent of the time."

The combination of official business and politics is neither illegal nor unusual in an election year, though Bush administration officials were reluctant to provide details. In fact, the Bush administration is using techniques refined by President Bill Clinton. The difference is that in the Clinton years the White House was often trying to add and expand domestic programs, not cut them.

The government has byzantine rules for documenting mixed official and political travel. The goal is to ensure that the campaign or some other political group pays for parts of a trip that are purely political.

But as the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, has said, "it is often impossible to neatly categorize travel as either purely business or purely political."

Ron Bonjean, a spokesman for Mr. Evans, said the Republican National Committee paid for the commerce secretary's stop in Daytona Beach on May 6. A local newspaper, The News-Journal, said the prayer meeting there "evolved into a rousing Republican political rally."

The contrast between politics and policy is particularly striking when the administration takes credit for spending money appropriated by Congress against the president's wishes.

In April, Secretary Thompson announced that the administration was awarding $3.1 million in grants to improve health care in rural areas of Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, New Mexico and New York. He did not mention that the administration was trying to cut the same rural health program by 72 percent, to $11.1 million next year, from $39.6 million.

Mr. Thompson likewise recently boasted that the administration was awarding $16 million to 11 universities to train blacks and Hispanic Americans as doctors, dentists and pharmacists. But at the same time, the administration was urging Congress to abolish the program, on the ground that "private and corporate entities" could pay for training.

Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, has sent a memorandum to Cabinet officers saying they must carefully allocate travel costs between the government and the campaign.

"There is considerable room for discretion in determining whether an event giving rise to an expense is political or official," Mr. Gonzales wrote. Ultimately, he said, the decision depends on the facts of each case.

Interior Department lawyers said that Secretary Gale A. Norton had made eight entirely political trips and 17 trips combining official business with political activity, for which the government was reimbursed. The political sponsor typically pays a share of the costs, based on the amount of time spent on political activity, said Timothy S. Elliott, a lawyer at the department.

Last month, on a trip to Alaska, Ms. Norton attended two fund-raisers, in Juneau and Anchorage. "It's always beneficial to have members of the cabinet at these events," said Randy Ruedrich, chairman of the Republican Party of Alaska.

A trip to Minneapolis by Education Secretary Rod Paige shows a similar mix. John M. Gibbons, a spokesman for the secretary, said Mr. Paige went to a Republican fund-raiser there on Feb. 17, then visited schools the next day.

On March 13, Mr. Paige made a political trip to Orlando for a Republican dinner. He was back in Florida for a Bush-Cheney fund-raiser in Fort Lauderdale on March 26 and for the annual conference of the National School Boards Association, in Orlando, on March 28-29.

Likewise, Anthony T. Jewell, a spokesman for Mr. Thompson, said the health secretary attended a Republican fund-raiser on April 22 while visiting Detroit to promote organ donation.

The precedents for such activity run deep. Phillip M. Caplan, who was a special assistant to President Clinton, said the Clinton White House had a weekly conference call with chiefs of staff at Cabinet departments.

"We would tell officials, for example, that the president will be in Ohio on the 27th of this month, so you should scour the agency, and if you have something coming up in Ohio, let us know," Mr. Caplan recalled. "The announcement of grants was timed to coincide with the president's visit. The goal was to maximize the credit and visibility for the president."

Scott M. Stanzel, a spokesman for the Bush campaign, said: "The law sets forth clear guidelines as to how costs should be allocated. We adhere to the guidelines. We pay travel and other costs for government officials participating in political events."

Soapbox: Is THIS the Answer??

In case you were wondering (which I wasn't) it's clear that in Bush Land "I'm sorry" merely means: "I'm sorry we got caught" or "I'm sorry you presumptuous people dare to question us or our methods." It certainly doesn't mean "I'm sorry this happened."

Latest evidence? This totally infuriating story that Rumsfeld is banning all camera phones, camcorders and digital cameras at US Army installations.

Yeah, because they were doing SO MUCH to address the reports on Abu Ghraib prison abuses before the photographic evidence came to light to the public.

Like John Dean has said: this Administration makes the Nixon bunch look like an open book!

Soapbox: Where is the Media Coverage That Shows Kerry CAN Inspire?

We are being subjected to Bush and all the free PR in the world he gets from the mainstream media. We hear about every speech, and we hear repeatedly his empty words about democracy and high ideals.

Meanwhile we're told, as Democrats, that our candidate is uninspiring, or uninspired. Well read this quote and tell me you're NOT inspired:

"America is more than a piece of geography, it is the most powerful idea in
human history: freedom and equal opportunity for all… I am running for
president to renew that idea and spirit again."

Well, believe me, as much as I liberally quote the NY Times and Washington Post in this blog, I didn't get this quote from any such mainstream news source, but rather Arianna Huffington's syndicated column.

I constantly hear people wonder why Kerry isn't out there "fighting back." Well, if you dig around you can find these great gems from speeches he's giving every day. But we need the media to cover those speeches.

You know what I'm going to suggest, don't you?

Use the SCC DP letter writing tool to write your local media outlets and tell them you want equal time. If they're going to cover every comencement speech given by a guy who wouldn't go to his own daughters' college graduations, then cover every speech of Kerry's too.

The Letter Writing Tool

Recent News: The GAO Finally Catches Up to Our Blog!

About two months ago I wrote a blog entry here about the propaganda pieces the White House was delivering to news stations around the country. These were propaganda pieces posing as news pieces, and a shameful number of stations actually played those pieces during their newscasts.

Well, funny thing about that. Apparently that little idea breaks federal law.

Where's the Independent Prosecutor? Where are the Congressional hearings? How would this have gone down in a Clinton Administration, do you think?

Well, here's what's going to happen here: nothing, apparently. Check out this quote from the NY Times article on the story:

Medicare officials are unlikely to face any penalties. David M. Walker, the comptroller general of the United States, who is head of the General Accounting Office, said, "We do not have reason to believe that this violation was knowing and willful, and we are not in the enforcement business."

Oh, you don't think it was "knowing"? Really? Based on what exactly? And since when is ignorance of the law an excuse? It is NOT, as any 3rd grader knows.

I have two suggestions:

Use the SCC DP Letter Writing section write a letter to the editor of your paper, asking for accountability from this Administration.

And use the same section to write a letter to your Congresspeople, asking them to DO something!

SCC DP Letter Writing Tool

Full text of the NY Times article is in the extended entry:

White House's Medicare Videos Are Ruled Illegal
By ROBERT PEAR
Published: May 20, 2004

WASHINGTON, May 19 - The General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said on Wednesday that the Bush administration had violated federal law by producing and disseminating television news segments that portray the new Medicare law as a boon to the elderly.

The agency said the videos were a form of "covert propaganda" because the government was not identified as the source of the materials, broadcast by at least 40 television stations in 33 markets. The agency also expressed some concern about the content of the videos, but based its ruling on the lack of disclosure.

The consequences of the ruling were not immediately clear. The accounting office does not have law enforcement powers, but its decisions on federal spending are usually considered authoritative and are taken seriously by officials in the executive branch of the government.

The decision fuels a raging political debate over the new Medicare law. President Bush and many Republicans in Congress say the law will provide immense assistance to millions of elderly and disabled people. But Democrats say the law will do little for the elderly and is so seriously flawed that the government had to resort to an illegal public relations campaign to sell it to voters.

The General Accounting Office said that a specific part of the videos, a made-for-television "story package," violated the prohibition on using taxpayer money for propaganda.

People seeing the videos in a newscast would "believe that the information came from a nongovernment source or neutral party," it said.

William A. Pierce, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, who helped develop the videos, said: "We disagree. It's not covert. TV stations knew the videos came from us and could have identified the government as the source if they had wanted to."

The accounting office dismissed that argument. The intended audience, it said, was not news directors, but viewers, and "the video news releases did not alert viewers that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services was the source."

Moreover, it said, "some news organizations indicated that they misread the label or they mistook the story package as an independent journalist news story."

Two videos end with the voice of a woman who says, "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting." A third video is narrated, in Spanish, by a man who identifies himself as "Alberto Garcia reporting." The scripts were prepared by the Bush administration at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a unit of the Department of Health and Human Services.

The accounting office said the videos were "not strictly factual news stories" and were flawed by "notable omissions and weaknesses" in their explanation of the Medicare law. But the main problem, it said, is that they were "misleading as to source."

The government, it said, served up a "purported news story" using "alleged reporters" to read scripts prepared by the government, but "nothing in the story packages permits the viewer to know that Karen Ryan and Alberto Garcia were paid with federal funds."

Federal law prohibits the use of federal money for "publicity or propaganda purposes" not authorized by Congress. The accounting office has found that federal agencies violated this restriction when they disseminated editorials and newspaper articles written by the government without identifying the source.

The accounting office said the administration's misuse of federal money "also constitutes a violation of the Antideficiency Act," which prohibits spending in excess of appropriations. Under the law, the secretary of health and human services, Tommy G. Thompson, must report the violation to Congress and the president, with "a statement of actions taken" to prevent a recurrence.

The Antideficiency Act, derived from a law passed in 1870, is one of the major statutes by which Congress exercises its constitutional control of the purse.

Medicare officials are unlikely to face any penalties. David M. Walker, the comptroller general of the United States, who is head of the General Accounting Office, said, "We do not have reason to believe that this violation was knowing and willful, and we are not in the enforcement business."

Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, said he was drafting legislation that would require the Bush campaign to reimburse the Medicare trust fund for the cost of the videos. The administration put the cost at $42,750, but refused to provide any documentation.

Senator John Kerry, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, said it confirmed his view that the administration had improperly tapped the Medicare trust fund to pay for political advertisements.

Under the Medicare law, the government is encouraging the use of drug discount cards for the next 18 months. In 2006, Medicare will provide insurance coverage for certain outpatient drug costs.

The Bush administration hired Ketchum Inc. to disseminate information about the Medicare law, and Ketchum hired another company, Home Front Communications, to create the videos. The materials were distributed to television stations by satellite, mail and a syndicated news service, CNN Newsource, the ruling said.

Recent News: Arrests Made in Berg Beheading: Saddam Loyalists

Recent reports are that they have arrested four Iraqis described as "Saddam loyalists" for the beheading of Nicholas Berg.

When the first official reports came out linking a high-ranking Al Qaeda associate to the beheading, my inner conspiracy theorist wondered whether they were simply trying to pin it on an Al Qaeda rep to somehow establish a link between Saddam and Al Qaeda that they were never able to do before the War.

Now, the stories seems even murkier. They are arresting Saddam loyalists, but still trying to pin the actual beheading on the Al Qaeda guy.

The story as it stands is on CNN.com here.

But keep watching.

D.O.A.: No war hero shall be left unsmeared

Here's a quote I read today that has me Disgusted, Outraged and Appalled:

On Tuesday, John McCain, a Republican senator from Arizona, gave a speech excoriating both political parties for refusing to sacrifice their tax cutting and spending agendas in wartime. McCain is a thorn in the Republican side because he tends to be a bit more forthright and reasonable than most. And the worst insult they think they can hurl at him is to tell him he is only posing as a Republican. Little do they realize this is more of a compliment really.

But they found something better to hurl at him in response to his comments about sacrifice:

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (Ill.) lectured McCain -- an outspoken opponent of Bush's tax cuts -- over war sacrifices, saying: "If you want to see sacrifice, John McCain ought to visit our young men and women at Walter Reed [Army Medical Center] and Bethesda [Naval Hospital]. There's the sacrifice in this country."

That may be true, but one probably shouldn't point that out to McCain, who nearly died of war wounds in a North Vietnamese prison camp.

Just disgusting to lecture McCain about sacrifice, just because he dared to suggest that we cannot continue to fight this War and build larger and larger deficits without consequence.

See a recounting of the entire barbed exchange in this Washington Post article.

Helpful Link: Kerry's 1971 Testimony before Congress

For those of you interested in everything Kerry had to say to Congress back in 1971 regarding the Vietnam War, here is a link to the transcript. The following excerpt should convince you that Kerry has the visionary within him:

(And it should resonate very strongly in today's times.)

"We are also here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership? We are here to ask where are McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Gilpatric and so many others. Where are they now that we, the men whom they sent off to war, have returned? These are commanders who have deserted their troops, and there is no more serious crime in the law of war. The Army says they never leave their wounded.

We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service as easily as this administration has wiped their memories of us. But all that they have done and all that they can do by this denial is to make more clear than ever our own determination to undertake one last mission, to search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war, to pacify our own hearts, to conquer the hate and the fear that have driven this country these last 10 years and more, and so when, in 30 years from now, our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say “Vietnam” and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory but mean instead the place where America finally turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning."

Soapbox: The Media and Somalia vs. Fallujah

I often throw in little rants about the Myth of the Liberal Media, because I think it's one of the most insidiously successful strategies the neo-cons have executed over the last few years. They have moved the 'center' of any debate so much further right than it ever was before.

The latest example that has popped into my head is the media coverage of some of the atrocities against Americans we have seen in Iraq vs. those same type of atrocities against Americans in Somalia less than a decade ago.

Read on about the media giving the kind of legitimacy to views on the extreme right that they would never give to views on the extreme left in the extended entry:

One of Arianna Huffington's definitions of a fanatic is someone that thinks they have a direct line to God, and therefore everything that happens can only be evidence that supports a foregone conclusion. In other words, they'll FIND a way to make events match their expectations.

And so it is in Somalia vs. Fallujah:

Take the low point of US involvement in Somalia during the Clinton Administration. A US aircraft goes down, and we see images of burned bodies of US servicemen being dragged through the streets.

This is a touchpoint for many many Clinton haters. And if you talk to them, even today, they use this incident to absolutely skewer the President...use it as proof that we shouldn't have been there; that that draft-dodging hippie had no right to be Commander-in-Chief, and frankly directly blame him, saying the blood is on his hands.

This viewpoint got widespread coverage, and while mainstream media pundits may not have, themselves, gone as far as the extremists holding this opinion, by covering it seriously, it gave the opinion legitimacy.

Fast forward to scenes of atrocities in Iraq: first the stringing up of four contractors' bodies in Fallujah, and even the beheading of Nicholas Berg.

Well, one would assume that those same people so disturbed by the treatment of our military personnel in Somalia would be equally disturbed by the treatment of contractor civilians, right?

One would assume that it would prove that we shouldn't have been there, and that this AWOL son of privilege had no right to be Commander-in-Chief, and now has blood on his hands, right?

Wrong, because this wouldn't support a fanatical foregone conclusion.

Instead these atrocities go to prove that the terrorists are evil; to validate why we went there in the first place; to justify our holy mission, if you like.

And while there is criticism, it is stopping short of the Commander-in-Chief this time around. No one is talking about blood on Bush's hands. Maybe (and only maybe) Rumsfeld will be the willing scapegoat.

Now, there may be extreme left-wing folks skewering Bush in the same, personal way that Clinton was skewered, but the point is that the mainstream media, too afraid of being perceived as liberal by some group of powerful right-wingers who will see them as liberal anyway no matter what they do, is not giving the extremists on that side of the political spectrum the same coverage, nor, therefore, the same legitimacy.

And it matters. It really matters.

People have short memories, and first impressions are the longest lasting. We have a media that is unwilling or unable to truly be objective and non-partisan...sometimes because of their own closely held beliefs, sometimes because of the closely held beliefs of their corporate management, and sometimes purely out of fear of negative perceptions of the media itself.

So, never forget that it's not only up to you to educate yourself; to be a well-informed and savvy voter, but also to share what you learn with those that you know.

Yesterday, my John Kerry button started a conversation in the Ladies' Room of a restaurant.

Where are you talking about John Kerry?

Great Link: The Cold War vs. the War on Terrorism

One phenomenon in the blogosphere is you start to have blogs quoting blogs quoting blogs.

But, it' all just leveraging the immediacy and interactivity of the Internet (not to mention the alliteration, huh?)

While browsing the various blogs that I read I found this brief entry from the 'Political Animal' blog, now supported by the Washington Monthly (WM).

It actually comments on (and provides the link to) a great article in this month's issue of the WM by my personal preference for Veep choice, Wes Clark.

His point: that the fall of the Soviet Union came to fruition during the Reagan years, but it was 40 years of strategy that got us to that point. And one of the most important factors? Showing a desirable alternative to communist rule that would spur discontent and desire for change from within.

If our government sullies the appeal of our reasonable and desirable alternative form of government by flouting international law, repressing our own citizens and others, and maintaining an attitude that they are entitled to behave as they like with little regard for the checks and balances our Constitution ensures, then we will have blown our opportunity to effect change in the Middle East as we were able to in Eastern Europe.

Seems eminently logical to me. Check it out.

Humor: A new kind of no-carb diet

I couldn't resist sharing this. It's just too perfect (even though, as a vegetarian, I am hardly one to go on a no-carb diet.)

The No-Carb Diet for 2004:

NO C-heney
NO A-shcroft
NO R-umsfeld
NO B-ush

And remember, No carbs means: NO RICE! 

Discussion: A Living Constitution

Today marks the 50th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, a landmark ruling that outlawed "separate but equal" as a constitutionally sound principle, and in this case led to the de-segregation, sometimes by necessary show of force, of our schools.

Stephen Breyer, one of the quiet members of the Supreme Court, wrote a piece on this historic decision, and final 2 paragraphs really struck me (emphasis is mine):

"Above all, Brown's simple affirmation helped us to understand that our Constitution was meant to create a democracy that worked not just on paper but in practice — one that can work only if every citizen understands that the Constitution belongs not to the majority, or to the lawyers, or to the judges, but to us all. Brown helped us to understand that the Constitution is "ours," whoever we may be.

In this way that simple affirmation expresses the belief that many millions of Americans of different races, religions and points of view can come together to create one nation. That is the hope that Thurgood Marshall expressed in his argument to the court in Brown. It is a hope about the Constitution, one Constitution; about the people, one people; and about the nation, one nation. That is the message the court sent forth in Brown 50 years ago today. The message sets a goal: we have made progress; we aspire to more.

These paragraphs seem to be saying something very simple and powerful to the right wing of this nation who decry "activist judges", when those judges dare to seek to keep our Constitution a living document.

Those paragraphs validate the idea that the framers did just that: created a frame. But they could not possibly have foreseen the evolution of our culture and or society, and they were wise enough to know it.

The message, as Breyer says, and the Constitution itself set a goal.

And, sometimes it is the job of our judges to be leading the way.

Brown v. BOE was such a decision. It wasn't met by majority approval in affected states 50 years ago. But it was, nonetheless, the right thing to do.

Soapbox: Part II of Policy for Sale

The Washington Post follows up yesterday's piece on the highest-level Bush fundraisers with a companion piece today.

See how just one Bush Pioneer benefitted from legislation once Bush was in office.

And this is an example of a Bush-run agency actually overturning a Clinton-era regulation once in office...to this fundraiser's direct monetary benefit.

Here's the link.

Full text is in the extended entry.

THE BUSH MONEY MACHINE : An Industry Gets Its Way
Fundraiser Denies Link Between Money, Access
EPA Rule on Hazardous Waste Favored Ohio Businessman Who Is a Big GOP Donor

By James V. Grimaldi and Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, May 17, 2004; Page A01

MASON, Ohio -- Richard T. Farmer is one of America's richest men and a Bush Pioneer by virtue of having raised at least $100,000 for the 2000 campaign. Over the past 15 years, he and his wife have given $3.1 million to Bush campaigns, the Republican Party and Republican candidates.

Farmer's family controls Cintas Corp., a $2.7 billion company that rents and launders uniforms and industrial shop towels. For years, Farmer's industry has been at odds with the Environmental Protection Agency over increased regulation of shop towels, particularly a Clinton administration proposal that, though not fatal, "would have cost us a lot of money," Farmer said.

In a recent interview at company headquarters here, Farmer said his campaign donations were made with no strings attached. He said he supports Republicans because they believe in "less government, more individual freedom, more individual responsibility."

"If you think I'm giving money to get access to [President Bush], you're crazy," Farmer said. "I'm just trying to get the right guy elected. That's all I care about."

The Clinton proposal would have required that woven shop towels contaminated with chemical solvents be wrung dry for them to be treated as laundry, not hazardous waste. Last November, the EPA changed its position, adopting a more lenient proposal for the woven towels. Farmer and his industry were overjoyed, because the change promised to save them millions and preserve their advantage over the competition -- paper towels. "It would have been a big problem," Farmer said.

After a series of telephone calls, e-mails, letters and meetings with representatives of the laundry industry, the EPA had provided industrial-laundry lobbyists with an advance copy of a portion of the proposed rule, which the lobbyists edited and the agency adopted.

That same opportunity was not given to the rule's opponents -- environmental groups, a labor union, hazardous-waste landfill operators and paper towel manufacturers who argue their product should be treated as environmentally equal to laundered towels. The opponents say industrial laundries send tens of thousands of tons of hazardous chemicals to municipal sewage treatment plants and landfills where toxics can get into groundwater, streams and rivers. Labor unions contend that the towels expose workers to cancer-causing fumes.

Cintas said in a statement that the rewritten rule will prevent pollution because "reusable shop towels are friendlier to the environment" than disposable paper towels.

The proposed shop towel rule is but one example of a policy change by the Bush administration that favors a company controlled by a Bush Pioneer or Ranger, who as a group have helped the president bank a record $200 million for the 2004 election campaign. The shop towel case reflects the subtle interactions between corporations and an administration determined to roll back what it considers to be regulatory overkill. For many big donors, getting "the right guy elected," as Farmer puts it, is an end in itself.

EPA Assistant Administrator Marianne Lamont Horinko said Farmer's campaign contributions had nothing to do with the agency's decision. Although Cintas was represented by the industrial-laundry lobbyists in discussions with the EPA, Farmer said he himself did not directly contact the administration about the proposed rule. He did say that, at the behest of the laundry industry, he called members of the Ohio congressional delegation, who wrote to then-EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman.

In a summary of the rule, the EPA said it would improve "clarity and consistency" of regulation, "provide regulatory relief, and save affected facilities over $30 million." Whitman -- who resigned from the EPA last year and has since become a Bush Ranger -- declined to be interviewed. But she said through a spokesman that contacts such as those from the Ohio congressional delegation "are helpful because they highlight an interest and a constituent's interest" and "that just feeds into the deliberative process."

Fred Meyer, the former chairman of the Texas Republican Party who in 1998 helped set up the Pioneers for then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush, said there is a good reason money will always flow to political campaigns. "There are too many things that are important to too many people," Meyer said. "The existence of businesses and billions of dollars are affected."

Democrats have their own history of rewarding large donors. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed major contributor Joseph P. Kennedy to be ambassador to Britain. Lyndon B. Johnson funneled contracts to Texas firms.

Direct quid pro quos -- specific benefits in exchange for cash -- are illegal. There is nothing illegal, however, about the adoption of broad legislation or regulations benefiting sectors of the business community -- such as laundries disposing of wastewater containing toxic chemicals -- that happen be a source of major fundraisers and donors.

For example, securities and investment banking firms have benefited enormously from reduced capital gains and dividend taxes initiated by the Bush White House. Six produced 17 Pioneers and Rangers this year, and employees in those firms have raised $2.53 million. Altogether, finance industry employees have raised $19.68 million for the 2004 election campaign, according to an analysis produced for The Washington Post by Dwight L. Morris & Associates.

Twenty-four Rangers and Pioneers are either drug industry executives or lobbyists whose companies stand to get more business from the administration's Medicare drug benefit bill passed last year.

Twenty-five energy company executives, along with 15 energy industry lobbyists, are either Pioneers or Rangers. Many have been deeply involved in developing the administration's energy policy. Seven of those Pioneers served on the Bush energy transition team. The administration's energy bill, which remains stalled by a largely Democratic filibuster in the Senate, would provide billions of dollars in benefits to the energy industry.

Industry: $400 Million Cost

The proposed shop towel rule shows how the process can play out to the advantage of a Pioneer.

For more than two decades, the EPA has grappled with how to regulate the cloth towels used to wipe up chemicals in printing plants, factories and industrial shops. Each year, 3 billion of them sop up more than 100,000 tons of hazardous solvents such as benzene, xylene, toluene and methyl ethyl ketone.

"Why should these materials be regulated as a hazardous waste?" the EPA said in a document given to the laundry industry in 2000. "Because they have the potential to cause fires, or to be the source of fugitive air emissions, and ground water contamination."

In 1997, the Clinton administration proposed a clean-water rule requiring industrial laundries to pretreat their wastewater to remove chemical solvents. The Uniform & Textile Service Association (UTSA) and Textile Rental Services Association of America (TRSA) mounted a $1.2 million lobbying campaign against the proposed rule, arguing that toxic pollutants are removed at the laundries or by municipal wastewater treatment plants. The trade groups said the proposal would have cost them more than $400 million.

In 1999, the Clinton EPA withdrew the rule. The next year, with Clinton still in the White House, the EPA floated a new draft rule that proposed to exempt shop towels from hazardous-waste requirements only if factories squeezed the towels "dry" -- defined as containing no more than five grams of solvents -- before placing them in sealed containers and sending them to laundries.

Calling this "an extremist view in the EPA," the laundry industry forcefully opposed the new proposal as overregulation.

But environmental activists, labor groups and paper towel makers said the laundries and local treatment plants frequently exceed their mandated pollution limits. Sixty-five Cintas laundries in 15 states and Canada have exceeded pollution limits on more than 1,100 occasions in the past several years, according to public records gathered by the Sierra Club and the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE).

For the EPA and the laundry industry, things changed when Bush took office in 2001. The industry pushed hard to derail the Clinton proposed rule in favor of a more lenient one that gives shop towels a hazardous-waste exemption without the need to wring them dry or store them in special containers.

Laundry trade groups appealed directly to EPA Administrator Whitman in February 2001: "The draft regulation in its current form . . . increases the regulatory burden."

In May, Whitman sent a conciliatory response: "Partnerships with our stakeholders will be an important part of how we will do business at EPA."

To aid in the effort, the industry urged contributions to its Textile Rental Services Association's Political Action Committee. "Will PAC donations open doors, get appointments and allow your message to be delivered? Absolutely," Textile Rental magazine said in its March 2002 edition.

Exemption Sought at EPA

In Richard Farmer, the industry had one of the biggest political givers in the country.

For President George H.W. Bush, Farmer, now 69 , was a member of "Team 100," donors who gave more than $100,000 to Republican Party-building committees. When George W. Bush ran for office in 2000, Farmer's "golfing buddy," Cincinnati financier Mercer Reynolds III, recruited Farmer to be a Pioneer, Farmer said. This year, he earned the more exalted Ranger status by raising a minimum of $200,000 in individual contributions.

Farmer said that his big gifts are not connected to political favors.

In the case of shop towel regulation, Farmer said Cintas itself was unconcerned. "We huddled up and [decided] no matter what happens here, it will have no impact on Cintas," he said.

Later in the interview, when specifically asked about the Clinton-era proposal, he said it would have hurt Cintas by making it difficult for the company to provide the full range of services its customers demand. Shop towels are now about 5 percent of Cintas's business, but they remain an important service to customers who also rent uniforms.

Farmer said he never contacted the administration about the new rule. He said he did complain about the rule to Ohio Republican Sen. George V. Voinovich and Rep. Rob Portman, a fellow Bush Pioneer and chairman of Bush's campaign in Ohio this year.

Farmer said he made the calls in 2002 on behalf of the two laundry trade groups. Cintas is the biggest company in the industry, but Farmer said that complaints from hundreds of small laundries probably had more impact than his calls. "It would have put small guys out of business," he said.

Portman said in a recent interview that he was first contacted by one of the trade groups, which he knew represented Cintas, "one of those big companies in our district." He said he considered it a constituent issue. "I do remember talking to Dick about it at least once," he said.

About the same time in 2002 that Farmer was making his calls and the trade groups were contacting members of Congress, he made a major contribution. On March 19, 2002, Farmer gave $250,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee.

On March 25, Portman and Voinovich co-wrote a letter to Whitman asking her to support a more encompassing waste exemption for shop towels -- this one from solid waste regulation. Gaining a solid-waste exemption would remove a further layer of regulation because some states apply additional taxes, fees and special handling requirements to solid waste.

Whitman spokesman Joe Martyak said such a letter from lawmakers "helps to precipitate a meeting to find out what's the glitch. You help to unglitch it, to move it along."

At this point , EPA attorneys were balking at the solid-waste exemption, Portman and Voinovich said in their letter.

A month later , Whitman wrote Portman and Voinovich that the EPA was considering the solid-waste exemption and assured that it would "incorporate suggested changes where appropriate."

Three weeks later, EPA officials signed off on the exemption, according to the trade group's timeline.

Jim O'Leary, the EPA official who wrote the original language that was rewritten, said there was no political interference from Whitman's office. "That's nonsense," O'Leary said. "We called it the way we saw it. No one interfered."

A Rule That Isn't 'Onerous'

On Aug. 2, EPA's Kathy Blanton, who replaced O'Leary, e-mailed to industry attorney William M. Guerry Jr. the "language we have put together to address the laundries' concerns," according to a copy of the e-mail obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

Guerry wrote back on Aug. 15 with proposed changes, documents show. Among them was deletion of a phrase in the preamble stating that shop towels "remain regulated." Instead, the lobbyist wanted the words "regulatory status . . . remains unchanged."

Guerry, in an interview, said the change was important to make sure that states did not misread the rule as a significant change in policy. Otherwise there would have been "chaos" and a "train wreck," he said. EPA officials shared the language with him, he said, because "they recognized that we had the expertise they needed."

Blanton said she sent Guerry just part of the regulatory language. "I can see how, from the outside, that it would look like colluding or something. [But] these were the people who were going to be most affected by the rule and they were the ones with the expertise." She said at this point the EPA had already had sufficient input from the paper towel people and others affected by the rule.

Opponents, including the union, environmentalists and paper towel makers, say they were not given an advance look at the language. Ralph Solarski, a Kimberly-Clark Corp. executive who chairs a task force of paper towel makers, said his group would have been glad to have one.

"Kathy Blanton and Bob Dellinger at EPA were asked on multiple occasions for advance copies and we were consistently denied," Solarski wrote in an e-mail to The Post.

EPA officials attended two industry meetings to discuss the proposed rule, one in Baltimore on Aug. 20 and one in Old Town Alexandria on Sept. 12. On Aug. 30, Farmer donated $250,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

EPA's Office of Solid Waste Director Dellinger spoke at the Alexandria meeting. His comments later appeared in the trade group's magazine: "EPA doesn't want to make this onerous."

Instead of screw-on, sealed containers for transporting contaminated woven towels from factories to laundries, which were proposed in 2000, Dellinger said, a piece of plywood over a barrel would meet the new EPA proposed standard.

Also, the EPA opted not to require the towels to be wrung out. "The point of that is not to make it harder to do than what you would do through your normal course of business," Dellinger said.

However, he told the group, the paper towel industry would have to wring out its towels to make sure they had no more than five grams of solvent on them before being dumped.

The new proposed rule was published in the Federal Register on Nov. 20, 2003.

Paper industry officials say that the EPA is ignoring its own studies showing that laundries create 30 percent more waste than paper towels in the form of sludge -- lint, debris, toxics and other substances extracted from laundry wastewater -- sent to municipal landfills.

"This is a case study," Solarski said, "for how an industry has used the regulatory process to gain a market advantage."

Post database editor Sarah Cohen and researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

Soapbox: Policy for sale to the highest bidder

Back in my "Conversations with Republicans, Part 1" my Republican friend said he thought that Bush did/said what he believed in, not what the polls told him. I disagree on that, but on the other hand, I would agree that his words/actions are dictated more by what his big-time contributors think than even the polls.

As long as he keeps them happy, he will have the money to influence the polls!

I've read various material about politicians for sale, Arianna Huffington's "Pigs at the Trough" a notable example. But often such reports are looking at the big picture.

But an article in today's Washington Post outlines more of the nuts & bolts of how a campaign team encourages fundraising, and the positive results the best Bush fundraisers have received in return and therefore others can expect.

Read more in the extended entry:

Check out the Post article here.

And in case Huffington's sweeping rhetoric makes you think all politicians can be painted with the same brush: take heart. John Kerry has a long record of restraint when it comes to fundraising. In fact, an interesting data point is that Bush raised more special interest money in 2003 then Kerry raised in his entire political career! You can read more about Kerry's stand on campaign finance at his web site here.

While the Republicans are trying to prevent organizations like MoveOn from advertising, it seems like so much smoke-screen to obscure one little fact from Huffington's research: raising the individual contribution limits from $1K to $2K only helped the big guy. Most people only give in the <$250 range. People who give over that amount are the ones that make a LOT of money.

So, the effective result of raising the individual limit was to ease the way for the wealthy to give more, and, if they're following the Bush fundraising methodology, get their friends, employees and suppliers to give more too.

Now the only question is whether to beat them or join them? And the fact is for this campaign, we need to join them and donate what we can, as much as we can, up to the legal limit, to help Kerry combat Bush's huge war chest.

And if you host a Kerry House Party, you can be your own version of a Bush 'Pioneer' and get your friends to donate too.

There's more at the Kerry web site: Kerry Fundraising Information

Soapbox: Schwarzenegger...a Bushie at heart?

I read an article from the Washington Post this morning about Arnold and his budget-wrangling activities, and I'm wondering if I'm the only person who sees this as just more neo-con Bushism at work?

Here's what I mean:

1. He is making tremendous cuts to programs that affect the middle class and lower income folks of this state. Cuts to higher education; cuts to local governments; cuts to programs that help the poor.

2. He is taking loans and pushing bonds. So, in effect, borrowing more to pay for our debt. So Arnold prefers bond debt to huge deficits, but it's essentially the same kind of money management you wouldn't do in your household.

3. He is refusing to consider any tax, even temporary, on our wealthiest citizens.

So, let's see...who has to sacrifice to get our fiscal house in order? Yup, the poor and the middle-class. Oh, and our children who will have to pay off the mountain of additional debt.

Oh sure, he's making promises about future spending increases, but they're worth the paper they're NOT written on. And those promises are based on a economic boom that is far from certain. You might as well consider these cuts permanent. It's a common Bushie tactic to get this passed because they're temporary, and then work like hell later to make them stick. See the Patriot Act; see the tax cuts.

So what could be done instead?

Well, read again my earlier blog entry recounted the successful fiscal recoveries of numerous states who accomplished this with reasonable and manageable fee and tax increases.

And let's not forget that the Clinton boom was partially stimulated by the same kind of fiscally responsible sharing of the load.

It really goes to prove what my Republican friends have notes of late: it is now the Democrats who are the fiscally conservative party, while the Republicans try all manner of schemes...from huge tax cuts without spending cuts to huge spending cuts and more borrowing rather than reasonable revenue generating increases...to avoid fiscal responsibility.

Here's the link to the Post article.

Full text is in the extended entry.

Full text of Washington Post article:

Calif. Fiscal Plan Leaves Taxes Alone
Governor Proposes Budget Cuts, Loans

By Rene Sanchez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 14, 2004; Page A03

LOS ANGELES, May 13 -- Plunging into his next political trial, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) proposed a budget for the financially beleaguered state Thursday that lawmakers regard as either daring or delusional: He wants to close a projected $15 billion deficit without raising taxes.

Schwarzenegger has racked up a series of political victories since taking office last fall, and polls show that most voters approve of his governing style. But persuading a legislature firmly controlled by liberal Democrats to solve California's fiscal crisis almost strictly with budget cuts and borrowing -- and not new taxes on the rich -- looms as his biggest test yet.

"If we don't get our fiscal house in order, we threaten every program for years to come," Schwarzenegger said as he announced his first budget plan, adding that he is "all pumped up" for a summer showdown with the legislature.

To erase the budget shortfall, which has pushed the nation's most populous state to the brink of financial ruin, Schwarzenegger wants to curtail billions of dollars in aid to schools, colleges and local governments over the next year, reduce spending on some social programs for the poor and collect more revenue from casinos run by Indian tribes in the state. He also wants to borrow about $2 billion.

He and the legislature have until June 30 to reach a deal, but that could prove difficult. Even before Schwarzenegger unveiled his budget Thursday, some state leaders and lawmakers were complaining that he is relying on the same kind of quick fixes he criticized as a candidate for governor in California's recall election. Others contend that Schwarzenegger is trying to shut the legislature out of the budget debate entirely.

Twice this week, he has announced secretly brokered budget agreements with influential constituencies whose backing could defuse opposition in the legislature to his spending cuts.

Both deals reflect Schwarzenegger's emerging political pragmatism and his penchant for using unconventional tactics to win support for his agenda.

First, he stood with California's university leaders and said that they had agreed to support his plans to raise tuition and fees later this year in exchange for his promise to increase campus funding in the future and to ease the restrictions on enrollment that he had earlier proposed. Robert Dynes, the president of the University of California system, told reporters that he agreed to the unusual deal because it will give campuses that have suffered from budget uncertainty in recent years "renewed fiscal stability."

A day later, Schwarzenegger stood with local government leaders from around the state who had denounced some of his preliminary budget proposals and said that they had struck a similar deal. They agreed not to fight $1.3 billion in cuts to local governments this year and next in exchange for long-term financial protections from state raids on their treasuries.

But skeptics in state government say that those promises may be hard for Schwarzenegger to keep -- and that he is resorting to the same kind of wishful budget thinking of his predecessor, Gray Davis (D).

"We're concerned that if the governor's proposal relies too much on an economic rebound, there's no way we can handle these balloon payments and all these expenditures in such a short time," state Sen. Tom Torlakson (D) said.

State Treasurer Phil Angelides, a Democrat who might run for governor in 2006, called Schwarzenegger's budget "politics as usual" that does little to address the structural taxing and spending problems that keep California swerving from economic boom to bust.

"His deal-by-deal approach has done nothing to close our budget deficit," Angelides said. "He's done more gimmicks and more deferrals than we've ever seen in our state."

Some lawmakers are vowing to fight the governor's cuts to higher education even though campus leaders have agreed to them. But others say that Schwarzenegger already may have won enough public support to get his budget passed in time for the July 1 start of the next fiscal year, which would be a rare political feat in California.

Schwarzenegger is proposing his budget at a time of economic uncertainty in California, which is home to one of the world's largest economies. Schwarzenegger and his financial team say they are confident that the state, which has been battered by the tech bust in Silicon Valley and an ongoing exodus of businesses to Nevada and Arizona, is on the road to recovery. State revenue estimates this year have not fallen far below projections, as they often did last year, but job growth remains anemic.

Many Democratic leaders say the fastest route to restoring California's financial health would be to impose at least a temporary tax on the state's wealthiest residents, which they contend would inflict little pain inasmuch as the federal government has cut taxes in recent years.

But so far, Schwarzenegger has refused to budge on his opposition to any tax increases, which he has said would be the "final nail" in California's coffin. He repeated that vow as he unveiled his budget Thursday. "No state can tax its way to prosperity or financial health," Schwarzenegger said.

Special correspondent Kimberly Edds contributed to this report.

Amazing Link: Kurt Vonnegut's Take on These Times

I'm not a huge Kurt Vonnegut fan.

I read "Breakfast of Champions" at way too young an age, pulling it from my parents' unattended book shelf. (Reading that and Philip Roth's "Portnoy's Complaint may have made a lasting impression on my 13-year-old brain, but I assure you it did not warp me into the unabashed liberal I am today.)

It's no coincidence that I never read another Vonnegut (or Roth either I think.)

But someone forwarded me this incredible essay he has written on the mess we're in with the Bush Administration. It's a little rambling, but it is a LOT powerful.

Here's the link.

As a teaser, here's the brilliant closing statement:

Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.

And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.

Full text is in the extended entry:

Full text of Vonnegut essay:

Features > May 10, 2004

Cold Turkey
By Kurt Vonnegut

Many years ago, I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.

But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America’s becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.
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When you get to my age, if you get to my age, which is 81, and if you have reproduced, you will find yourself asking your own children, who are themselves middle-aged, what life is all about. I have seven kids, four of them adopted.

Many of you reading this are probably the same age as my grandchildren. They, like you, are being royally shafted and lied to by our Baby Boomer corporations and government.

I put my big question about life to my biological son Mark. Mark is a pediatrician, and author of a memoir, The Eden Express. It is about his crackup, straightjacket and padded cell stuff, from which he recovered sufficiently to graduate from Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Vonnegut said this to his doddering old dad: “Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.” So I pass that on to you. Write it down, and put it in your computer, so you can forget it.

I have to say that’s a pretty good sound bite, almost as good as, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” A lot of people think Jesus said that, because it is so much the sort of thing Jesus liked to say. But it was actually said by Confucius, a Chinese philosopher, 500 years before there was that greatest and most humane of human beings, named Jesus Christ.

The Chinese also gave us, via Marco Polo, pasta and the formula for gunpowder. The Chinese were so dumb they only used gunpowder for fireworks. And everybody was so dumb back then that nobody in either hemisphere even knew that there was another one.

But back to people, like Confucius and Jesus and my son the doctor, Mark, who’ve said how we could behave more humanely, and maybe make the world a less painful place. One of my favorites is Eugene Debs, from Terre Haute in my native state of Indiana. Get a load of this:

Eugene Debs, who died back in 1926, when I was only 4, ran 5 times as the Socialist Party candidate for president, winning 900,000 votes, 6 percent of the popular vote, in 1912, if you can imagine such a ballot. He had this to say while campaigning:

As long as there is a lower class, I am in it.
As long as there is a criminal element, I’m of it.
As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

Doesn’t anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools or health insurance for all?

How about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. …

And so on.

Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney stuff.

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.

“Blessed are the merciful” in a courtroom? “Blessed are the peacemakers” in the Pentagon? Give me a break!
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There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.

But, when you stop to think about it, only a nut case would want to be a human being, if he or she had a choice. Such treacherous, untrustworthy, lying and greedy animals we are!

I was born a human being in 1922 A.D. What does “A.D.” signify? That commemorates an inmate of this lunatic asylum we call Earth who was nailed to a wooden cross by a bunch of other inmates. With him still conscious, they hammered spikes through his wrists and insteps, and into the wood. Then they set the cross upright, so he dangled up there where even the shortest person in the crowd could see him writhing this way and that.

Can you imagine people doing such a thing to a person?

No problem. That’s entertainment. Ask the devout Roman Catholic Mel Gibson, who, as an act of piety, has just made a fortune with a movie about how Jesus was tortured. Never mind what Jesus said.

During the reign of King Henry the Eighth, founder of the Church of England, he had a counterfeiter boiled alive in public. Show biz again.

Mel Gibson’s next movie should be The Counterfeiter. Box office records will again be broken.

One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.
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And what did the great British historian Edward Gibbon, 1737-1794 A.D., have to say about the human record so far? He said, “History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.”

The same can be said about this morning’s edition of the New York Times.

The French-Algerian writer Albert Camus, who won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, wrote, “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”

So there’s another barrel of laughs from literature. Camus died in an automobile accident. His dates? 1913-1960 A.D.

Listen. All great literature is about what a bummer it is to be a human being: Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, The Red Badge of Courage, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Crime and Punishment, the Bible and The Charge of the Light Brigade.

But I have to say this in defense of humankind: No matter in what era in history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got there. And, except for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these crazy games going on, which could make you act crazy, even if you weren’t crazy to begin with. Some of the games that were already going on when you got here were love and hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf and girls’ basketball.

Even crazier than golf, though, is modern American politics, where, thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.

Actually, this same sort of thing happened to the people of England generations ago, and Sir William Gilbert, of the radical team of Gilbert and Sullivan, wrote these words for a song about it back then:

I often think it’s comical
How nature always does contrive
That every boy and every gal
That’s born into the world alive
Is either a little Liberal
Or else a little Conservative.

Which one are you in this country? It’s practically a law of life that you have to be one or the other? If you aren’t one or the other, you might as well be a doughnut.

If some of you still haven’t decided, I’ll make it easy for you.

If you want to take my guns away from me, and you’re all for murdering fetuses, and love it when homosexuals marry each other, and want to give them kitchen appliances at their showers, and you’re for the poor, you’re a liberal.

If you are against those perversions and for the rich, you’re a conservative.

What could be simpler?
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My government’s got a war on drugs. But get this: The two most widely abused and addictive and destructive of all substances are both perfectly legal.

One, of course, is ethyl alcohol. And President George W. Bush, no less, and by his own admission, was smashed or tiddley-poo or four sheets to the wind a good deal of the time from when he was 16 until he was 41. When he was 41, he says, Jesus appeared to him and made him knock off the sauce, stop gargling nose paint.

Other drunks have seen pink elephants.

And do you know why I think he is so pissed off at Arabs? They invented algebra. Arabs also invented the numbers we use, including a symbol for nothing, which nobody else had ever had before. You think Arabs are dumb? Try doing long division with Roman numerals.

We’re spreading democracy, are we? Same way European explorers brought Christianity to the Indians, what we now call “Native Americans.”

How ungrateful they were! How ungrateful are the people of Baghdad today.

So let’s give another big tax cut to the super-rich. That’ll teach bin Laden a lesson he won’t soon forget. Hail to the Chief.

That chief and his cohorts have as little to do with Democracy as the Europeans had to do with Christianity. We the people have absolutely no say in whatever they choose to do next. In case you haven’t noticed, they’ve already cleaned out the treasury, passing it out to pals in the war and national security rackets, leaving your generation and the next one with a perfectly enormous debt that you’ll be asked to repay.

Nobody let out a peep when they did that to you, because they have disconnected every burglar alarm in the Constitution: The House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, the FBI, the free press (which, having been embedded, has forsaken the First Amendment) and We the People.

About my own history of foreign substance abuse. I’ve been a coward about heroin and cocaine and LSD and so on, afraid they might put me over the edge. I did smoke a joint of marijuana one time with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, just to be sociable. It didn’t seem to do anything to me, one way or the other, so I never did it again. And by the grace of God, or whatever, I am not an alcoholic, largely a matter of genes. I take a couple of drinks now and then, and will do it again tonight. But two is my limit. No problem.

I am of course notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other.

But I’ll tell you one thing: I once had a high that not even crack cocaine could match. That was when I got my first driver’s license! Look out, world, here comes Kurt Vonnegut.

And my car back then, a Studebaker, as I recall, was powered, as are almost all means of transportation and other machinery today, and electric power plants and furnaces, by the most abused and addictive and destructive drugs of all: fossil fuels.

When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won’t be any more of those. Cold turkey.

Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn’t like TV news, is it?

Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.

And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.

Great Link: Even hawks like Friedman are turning away from Bush

Thomas Friedman had supported the war, and had criticized others for politicizing it. But now, he is putting forth an amazing (for him) theory:

"Do we have any chance of succeeding at regime change in Iraq without regime change here at home?"

Here's the link to his Op-Ed piece in the NY Times.

Full text is in the extended entry:

Dancing Alone
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: May 13, 2004

It is time to ask this question: Do we have any chance of succeeding at regime change in Iraq without regime change here at home?

"Hey, Friedman, why are you bringing politics into this all of a sudden? You're the guy who always said that producing a decent outcome in Iraq was of such overriding importance to the country that it had to be kept above politics."

Yes, that's true. I still believe that. My mistake was thinking that the Bush team believed it, too. I thought the administration would have to do the right things in Iraq — from prewar planning and putting in enough troops to dismissing the secretary of defense for incompetence — because surely this was the most important thing for the president and the country. But I was wrong. There is something even more important to the Bush crowd than getting Iraq right, and that's getting re-elected and staying loyal to the conservative base to do so. It has always been more important for the Bush folks to defeat liberals at home than Baathists abroad. That's why they spent more time studying U.S. polls than Iraqi history. That is why, I'll bet, Karl Rove has had more sway over this war than Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Bill Burns. Mr. Burns knew only what would play in the Middle East. Mr. Rove knew what would play in the Middle West.

I admit, I'm a little slow. Because I tried to think about something as deadly serious as Iraq, and the post- 9/11 world, in a nonpartisan fashion — as Joe Biden, John McCain and Dick Lugar did — I assumed the Bush officials were doing the same. I was wrong. They were always so slow to change course because confronting their mistakes didn't just involve confronting reality, but their own politics.

Why, in the face of rampant looting in the war's aftermath, which dug us into such a deep and costly hole, wouldn't Mr. Rumsfeld put more troops into Iraq? Politics. First of all, Rummy wanted to crush once and for all the Powell doctrine, which says you fight a war like this only with overwhelming force. I know this is hard to believe, but the Pentagon crew hated Colin Powell, and wanted to see him humiliated 10 times more than Saddam. Second, Rummy wanted to prove to all those U.S. generals whose Army he was intent on downsizing that a small, mobile, high-tech force was all you needed today to take over a country. Third, the White House always knew this was a war of choice — its choice — so it made sure that average Americans never had to pay any price or bear any burden. Thus, it couldn't call up too many reservists, let alone have a draft. Yes, there was a contradiction between the Bush war on taxes and the Bush war on terrorism. But it was resolved: the Bush team decided to lower taxes rather than raise troop levels.

Why, in the face of the Abu Ghraib travesty, wouldn't the administration make some uniquely American gesture? Because these folks have no clue how to export hope. They would never think of saying, "Let's close this prison immediately and reopen it in a month as the Abu Ghraib Technical College for Computer Training — with all the equipment donated by Dell, H.P. and Microsoft." Why didn't the administration ever use 9/11 as a spur to launch a Manhattan project for energy independence and conservation, so we could break out of our addiction to crude oil, slowly disengage from this region and speak truth to fundamentalist regimes, such as Saudi Arabia? (Addicts never tell the truth to their pushers.) Because that might have required a gas tax or a confrontation with the administration's oil moneymen. Why did the administration always — rightly — bash Yasir Arafat, but never lift a finger or utter a word to stop Ariel Sharon's massive building of illegal settlements in the West Bank? Because while that might have earned America credibility in the Middle East, it might have cost the Bush campaign Jewish votes in Florida.

And, of course, why did the president praise Mr. Rumsfeld rather than fire him? Because Karl Rove says to hold the conservative base, you must always appear to be strong, decisive and loyal. It is more important that the president appear to be true to his team than that America appear to be true to its principles. (Here's the new Rummy Defense: "I am accountable. But the little guys were responsible. I was just giving orders.")

Add it all up, and you see how we got so off track in Iraq, why we are dancing alone in the world — and why our president, who has a strong moral vision, has no moral influence.  

Humor: James Carville is always good for a one-liner

Here's one of his latest:

"Back in 2000 a Republican friend warned me that if I voted for Al
Gore and he won, the stock market would tank, we'd lose millions of
jobs, and our military would be totally overstretched. You know
what? I did vote for Gore, he did win, and I'll be damned if all
those things didn't come true!"

 - James Carville in "Had Enough?: A Handbook for Fighting Back ”

Recent News: Diebold CEO is "sorry"

Well, after all the brouhaha about e-voting machine manufacturer Diebold CEO, Walden O'Dell, promising to "deliver" Ohio's electoral votes to Bush in a fundraising letter, O'Dell has finally woken up and decided to apologize.

It only took him a few months. It only took him until he saw that Bush's approval rating are at an all-time low. It must hearten Bush to know that his arrogant buddies are willing to eat a little humble pie to save his butt, even if he's not.

Here's the link to the NY Times story.

Full text is in the extended entry:

Executive Calls Vote-Machine Letter an Error
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

Published: May 12, 2004

Walden W. O'Dell, the chairman and chief executive of Diebold Inc., said on Monday that it had been a "huge mistake" for him, as the head of a voting machine company, to express support for President Bush's re-election in a fund-raising letter last year. Mr. O'Dell also said the company was working to address computer security problems and build voter confidence in its wares.

In a meeting with reporters and editors from The New York Times, Mr. O'Dell by turns apologized for mistakes and stood up for what he said the company had done right.

"The country had a crisis" after the 2000 debacle, he said; his company realized that "we could help; it would be an opportunity to serve, and it would be a good business."

Mr. O'Dell drew criticism of his company in August when he sent an invitation to a fund-raising party that said, "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." He said he had not written it himself, though he declined to say who had, and intended only to sign a "party invitation."

Mr. O'Dell said that he had since dropped out of all political activity and that the company would not support political parties "so long as we are in the voting business."

He said he could not discuss California, which on April 30 prohibited the use of Diebold's machines in four counties for the November election. The secretary of state, Kevin Shelley, has asked California's attorney general to investigate whether Diebold should face charges.

Reading carefully from a statement, Mr. O'Dell said, "Diebold intends to fully cooperate with the attorney general in his investigation of the secretary of state's concerns."

Diebold entered what was a small market for electronic voting systems in 2002, when it bought Global Election Systems of McKinney, Tex. Mr. O'Dell characterized Global as near failure, and Diebold, he said, has spent a great deal of time "bringing the company up to the right level."

Helpful Link: Kerry finally speaking out on Iraq War

It's a common strategy to send surrogates out with highly negative messages about the competition, while a candidate stays somewhat above the fray.

This is what the Bushies did with Kerry and his anti-war activities (since Bush himself would hardly have a leg to stand on there.)

And this weekend Wes Clark, Ted Kennedy and James Carville were all over the air waves associating the abuses at Abu Ghraib directly to the attitude from the very top of the command chain (i.e. the Commander-in-Chief) that the Geneva Conventions could be ignored at our convenience.

But for those of you were were longing for Kerry himself to slam Bush on this topic, he came through yesterday...showing the cojones I want him to show and telling it like it is.

Check it out in the Washington Post.

(And we can all wonder why so-called-liberal NY Times didn't even BOTHER to cover this major statement on Iraq from Kerry.)

Full text is in the extended entry. And there's some extra info in the article, like one more example of how the Bush campaign has no qualms about out and out lying about our candidate and his statements.

Full Text:

Kerry Assails Bush on Iraq
Senator Says War Is 'Mismanaged'

By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 13, 2004; Page A01

ORLANDO, May 12 -- Sen. John F. Kerry, breaking momentarily from his cautious approach to turmoil in Iraq, blasted President Bush on Wednesday for running an "extraordinarily mismanaged and ineptly prosecuted war" and strongly suggested Bush is partly to blame for abuses at Abu Ghraib prison.

"They dismiss the Geneva Conventions, starting in Afghanistan and Guantanamo, so that the status of prisoners both legal and moral becomes ambiguous at best," the senator from Massachusetts told radio host Don Imus.

In his most expansive comments on U.S. mistreatment of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib, the presumptive Democratic nominee said this amounts to "major failures in command."

Asked if Kerry is assessing partial blame to Bush in the prison scandal, Rand Beers, a Kerry foreign policy adviser, said in an interview, "Undoubtedly, that kind of ambiguity, yes, is a failure of leadership."

Kerry proposed two immediate changes: Oust Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and delay court-martial hearings for Americans charged with mistreating the prisoners.

"I think it's sort of a panicked move to try to display to the Arab world and others that we are going to, you know, do things immediately," Kerry said of impending hearings. "But I think you have to think of morale of the military and the chain of command."

Kerry said dismissing Rumsfeld during wartime would not hinder efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he offered up a few candidates to replace the defense secretary: GOP Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and John W. Warner (Va.) and Democratic Sen. Carl M. Levin (Mich.), a staunch war critic.

"If America has reached a point where only one person has the ability in our great democracy to manage the Pentagon and to continue or to put in place a better policy even, we're in deeper trouble than you think," Kerry said. "I don't accept that. I just don't accept that. I think that's an excuse. The fact is that we need a change in policy."

Kerry's latest comments come as the Democratic candidate wrestles with how aggressively to criticize the president at a sensitive moment when much of the world is watching the U.S. reaction to the prison scandal. Since pictures of the abused prisoners were plastered on television screens worldwide, Kerry has carefully avoided talking about the issue, for the most part. The candidate has held only one news conference in the past 31/2 weeks, in part to limit questions about Iraq. On Tuesday, he brushed aside several questions about the prisoners.

After learning that an American in Iraq was decapitated by men claiming al Qaeda affiliation, Kerry avoided any mention of Bush in his statements about the killing and struck a bipartisan, patriotic tone.

"I think it will harden the resolve of a lot of Americans to make certain terrorists won't get away with it, even as we move to address obvious problems that have existed in Iraq," he told reporters late Tuesday.

Some Democrats worry that Kerry is not saying enough about Iraq, which allows Bush and his allies to set the agenda and the tone of the debate. In Washington, Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill said the senator would continue to speak out on Iraq but would not be pressured into doing so, given how rapidly the story is unfolding.

"We're watching this, we're trying to find out as much about this as possible," she said, "but we're not going to rush into commenting on a national crisis."

The Bush campaign has repeatedly accused the senator of "politicizing" Iraq. Bush-Cheney chairman Marc Racicot told reporters Wednesday that Kerry is relentlessly "playing politics" and exploiting tragedy for political gain.

Racicot, for instance, told reporters that Kerry suggested that 150,000 or so U.S. troops are "somehow universally responsible" for the misdeeds of a small number of American soldiers and contractors. Racicot made several variations of this charge. But Kerry never said this, or anything like it.

As evidence, Racicot pointed to the following quote Kerry made at a fundraiser on Tuesday: "What has happened is not just something that a few a privates or corporals or sergeants engaged in. This is something that comes out of an attitude about the rights of prisoners of war, it's an attitude that comes out of America's overall arrogance in its policy that is alienating countries all around the world."

What Racicot did not mention was that Kerry preceded this remark by saying, "I know that what happened over there is not the behavior of 99.9 percent of our troops."

Kerry has spent the week talking about health care, but as he has focused on domestic issues other Democrats have rushed in to help shape the Iraq debate -- and often taking it in a direction different from Kerry's. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), a top Kerry supporter who opposed the war, criticized the administration so harshly this week that Kerry distanced himself from the remarks.

"On March 19, 2004, President Bush asked, 'Who would prefer that Saddam's torture chambers still be open?' " Kennedy said. "Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management: U.S. management."

Kerry told Imus: "He's my friend and I respect him, but I don't agree with the framing of that."

As Kerry continued his campaign swing, his advisers were making the case that Bush's $70 million ad campaign had failed to knock Kerry out of the race and that, compared with Al Gore four years ago, the Massachusetts senator is in solid shape to compete with Bush in the fall.

Armed with a series of slides showing current and past polling data nationally and in battleground states, Kerry's top advisers told editors and reporters at The Washington Post that the Bush campaign had mistakenly assumed a huge financial advantage at the beginning of March would allow it to dictate the terms of the race and shape perceptions of Kerry. Instead, they said, Kerry and Bush continue to run roughly even in national polls.

Cahill said the campaign decided at the end of the primaries, when Bush had $110 million in the bank and Kerry had barely $2 million, to spend March and April fundraising, and that the payoff was $43 million raised in March and an estimated $25 million or more in April. "We decided to step back and try to level the playing field financially," she said.

Staff writer Dan Balz in Washington contributed to this report.

How You Can Help: Don't Let Bush Turn Us Into a Monarchy!

I think I've figured out why Bush still has supporters despite the complete mess he has gotten us into, both domestically and internationally: His attitude is one of benevolent dictatorship. He wants full rein to do what he wants, when he wants, for however much money he wants. And he wants to do all of this with very little disclosure and certainly very little oversight.

In return, citizens can not "worry their pretty little heads" about big, bad problems. We can avoid having to educate ourselves about issues, particularly complicated ones. And we can close our eyes to the rest of the world and its relationship with our country, because they are "them", and we are "us", and Bush the Dissembler will take care of us.

You know that Bush is asking for $25 BILLION more for the Iraq War effort, but what you may not know is that he wants it given to him to spend at his SOLE DISCRETION. This despite the fact that Congress is currently investigating whether he misappropriated funds earmarked for Afghanistan and used it to prepare for war in Iraq...a Violation of LAW.

It is just more evidence that Bush operates as though he were a monarch or a dictator, above and beyond democratic law.

And I hope this time Congress takes a stand and turns him down.

You can use the SCC DP Letter Writing page to help you send a message to your congressperson here. The text I sent my Congresspeople is in the extended entry:

Source: CNN.com 5/13/04

My Email to my Congresspeople:

This is not a monarchy, nor a dictatorship, benevolent or otherwise.

I am appalled that Bush is not only asking for $25 Billion MORE for the Iraq War, but that he is also asking for sole discretion to spend it without Congressional oversight.

Whether you think we need to allocate that money to fully support our troops or not, I surely hope you do NOT trust Bush to spend it properly. Just look at how he misappropriated funds allocated to Afghanistan and routed those funds to prepare for the War in Iraq.

Hold firm. Take a stand.

Easy Action: Email Senator Inhofe and tell him how you feel

Yesterday Senator Inhofe, (R) Oklahoma, made the following statement from his seat on the Committee investigating the prison abuses in Iraq:

"...I have to say and I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment.

The idea that these prisoners, they're not there for traffic violations. If they're in cell block 1A or 1B, these prisoners, they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents, and many of them probably have American blood probably on their hands and here we're so concerned about the treatment of those individuals."

I think it's rather heartening that, until now, people have been consistently decrying the abuses, regardless of their political affiliation. Here we have a guy who is going to step up and defend what is, let's face it, torture???

I couldn't let it pass. I know I'm not a constituent of his, but I went to his web site and sent him an email telling him that I was appalled at his laissez-faire attitude toward the abuse and torture we are seeing evidence of.

Here's the link if you'd like to tell him what you think too:

Senator Inhofe's Contact Page

You can see what I wrote to him in the extended entry:

I read the quote attributed to you today, and I am shocked. Has the bar for American behavior been set so low? Do we no longer ask ourselves to abide by both international and our own military law?

You should be pleased that in the toughest of times, the American people are still guided by ethics that include fairness and humanity.

If we are to continue to maintain (or perhaps at this point regain) our standing as a nation who sets an example for the world...which I fervently believe we can be...then we must hold ourselves to the highest standards, not the lowest.

I urge you to re-think your position and perhaps clarify it.

Respectfully,

Elisa Camahort
San Jose, CA

Great Link: Zogby predicting a Kerry win

I saw James Carville on 'Meet the Press' on Sunday, and he said one thing to Democrats that we ALL should heed: "Get off John Kerry's back."

It wasn't so long ago everyone was talking about how the Democrats were united like never before. Pulling together. Having one goal and keeping it in our sights. And John Kerry won the primary season, pretty much overwhelmingly.

Now, 6 months pre-election, some Democrats are already ready to devour our young. Unity out the window, they're carping on Kerry and fantasizing about a broken convention. Are they crazy? Or just really really masochistic?

Some people cite polls, amazed that in the midst of a horrible month in ONE important area (Iraq) the President's poll numbers aren't in the cellar. But as always, people want someone to vote for, not just to vote against. Kerry is establishing the reasons to vote for him now. It's just gravy that Bush is encountering so many troubles.

If you don't believe me, read this prediction from John Zogby, the online pollster. It should hearten you. And maybe get some of those impatient, self-defeating Democrats "off Kerry's back."

Recent News: More details to come in prison abuse scandal

There is a lengthy article in the New Yorker detailing a timeline and chain of events around the prison abuse scandal in Iraq. There are also descriptions of pictures of further abuses that have not yet been made public.

What this article makes clear is that Rumsfeld is hardly a "superb" Secretary of Defense, but rather someone who seems clearly negligent and almost willfully so.

If you are faint-hearted, I wouldn't recommend reading this article. It is appalling and will make you feel sick and ashamed.

The New Yorker article on the failure up the entire chain of command.

Another link to dispute the "Myth of the Liberal Media"

I continue to try to debunk the Myth of the Liberal Media as often as I can, because it is one of the more upsetting directions this country has taken. With consolidation of the media in the hands of but a few, quite wealthy and Bush-supporting magnates, the idea that the media is liberal is another head-scratcher for me.

Here's a little item from Salon.com pointing out how the NY Times...a "loony left-wing rag" according to one of my right-wing friends, is doing the same number on Kerry that they did on Gore.

DON'T LET THEM GET AWAY WITH IT THIS TIME.

Remember to make your voice heard. Send letters to the editor, call talk radio. Whatever it takes to combat the right-wing media :)

Salon.com's Article on the NY Times slanted coverage

Full text is in the extended entry:

Salon.com Article Full Text

A year's worth of presidential campaign coverage is sure to produce all sort of head-scratching dispatches, as journalists scramble to produce copy from the trail regardless if much news is happening. But for suspicious Democrats still smarting over how the press treated Al Gore in 2000, and specifically how reporters from the New York Times routinely dealt with Gore in a caustic, nitpicking way, there are disturbing signs of déjà vu from Sen. John Kerry's campaign. A peculiar, wildly dated article in Saturday's Times served as the latest evidence.

Written by Jodi Wilgoren, the Political Memo piece headlined "Kerry Words, and Bush's Use of Them, Offer Valuable Lessons in '04 Campaigning," detailed how when Kerry was asked about his vote last fall against president Bush's request for $87 billion to fight the battle in Iraq, Kerry famously said, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion -- before I voted against it." The article offered up the Bush campaign not one but two opportunities to recall how they rejoiced over the awkward sound bite: "You don't get gifts like that very often," said Bush's media man Mark McKinnon, then adding, "There was a clear ripple of excitement that rolled through the campaign -- not quite as big as the Dean scream, but it was a ripple." The Times phoned up a University of Wisconsin poli-sci prof who dutifully mocked Kerry's choice of words: "It's like something Comedy Central would do." And the piece detailed how the Bush campaign immediately dropped the dubious Kerry quote into an attack ad.

Does most of this sound familiar? It should, Kerry's quote was uttered 53 days prior to Saturday's left-field article, and was documented at the time by every news organization in the country, including the Times which has now printed the infamous Kerry quote in ten separate articles. So why return to the topic nearly two months later?

Wilgoren tried, at the very end of the article, to give the piece a larger context by suggesting Kerry's not the first candidate to be stung by his own words, and then reached back 12 years to the Republican primaries when Pat Buchanan ran ads featuring the first president Bush's "Read my lips, no new taxes" pledge. Yet incredibly, the Times failed to mention the fact that just three weeks ago, the current president Bush served up his own sound bite gift for Democrats when, during an April 13 press conference he stumbled badly when asked, looking back on Iraq, what his biggest mistake was. Flummoxed, Bush responded haltingly, "I wish you'd have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it. You know, I just -- I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer."

Three days later the DNC used Bush's own words against him and turned his non-response into a devilish 30-second ad of its own. The only difference is, according to a Nexis search, the Times has never reported on that campaign ad.

-- Eric Boehlert

Let's not dicker about data; this is about MORE

I see folks feeling bad that we actually added some new jobs this last month, and I understand the feeling. We're afraid that opposition to Bush will melt away if employment improves.

Well, I don't think this campaign should be about the # of jobs lost then recovered, nor a few percentage points change in arcane economic statistics that very few of us real people understand much less care about in our day-to-day lives. If we as Democrats only try to hammer Bush on economic data, then we are leaving way too much of the tone of this campaign to things beyond the Party's or Kerry's or even Bush's control.

I think this campaign should be about bigger things. Are we saying that the recovery of jobs is more important than the erosion of our principles, our standing in the world, our civil liberties, our adherence to law...both our own and international; more important than the world we are leaving behind for the next generation, from mountains of debt to polluted mountains?

If we say that a jobless recovery that eventually includes new jobs wipes all of those horrors away...then what kind of country are we?

I don't know what to make of the American people. Every poll shows they are deeply dissatisfied with the economy, the War, the track this country is on, but they have yet to associate any of that with Bush personally. How can it be?

And we have to tap into that deep desire Americans are having to be on the RIGHT track. And the right track is about big ideas: honor and truth and liberty and fairness...it's about America retaining its self-image as the shining beacon of nations. We WANT to be the land of opportunity, the land that stands for freedom and right...with or without having to display our might.

Bush cannot lead us there. Bush cannot make our country truly great again.

If you believe (as 60% of the nation does) that we are on the wrong track, then DO something about it. Lay the blame where it belongs: at the feet of the President. And fire him in November.

Recent News: How are the States Rebounding? Gasp! Higher Taxes & Fees!

Here's an interesting article for all of those people who don't want to see the results of Bush's massive federal tax cuts.

Basically many states are only now recovering from over 2 years of growing deficits and curtailed services. How? The state legislatures took the risk of raising taxes and instituting new fees.

Result: they're in the black, services are maintained, and people and business aren't howling in protest or leaving in droves.

Then again it's not that surprising when you consider that polls show that people would rather have services than Bush's tax cuts.

Check out the Washington Post article

Recent News: If you don't think your reproductive rights are at risk, read this

So, the March For Women's Lives 2 weeks ago notwithstanding, there is tremendous apathy about their about the right to choose, especially among younger women who don't remember that it wasn't always legal.

People find it hard to believe that they will ever really succeed in overturning Roe v. Wade.

But maybe they won't have to. Maybe they'll just chip away around the corners of reproductive rights.

Find out the latest chip dislodged in the extended entry:

The latest politicization of women's wombs is in the recent refusal of the FDA to allow the morning after pill (or Plan B as it's now called) to be sold over-the-counter.

The acting Director of the FDA chose to override the recommendations of both a federal advisory panel and his own staff to issue the refusal.

His reasoning: the availability of the pill might induce teenagers to have sex without condoms and therefore increase their risk of STDs.

Huh?

Used to be the FDA cared about whether a drug did what it said it did and whether it did so safely. They didn't used to make judgment about how people might behave due to the existence of a drug.

Not to mention that this is just an example of the right-wing agenda morphing out of convenience, not conviction.

I mean, isn't one of their arguments that condom availability induces teenagers to have sex in the first place (despite studies showing that NOT to be the case)? Now they're all gung ho to make sure teens use condoms?

Let's just face it, they don't want teens having sex (a worthy goal, I might add) but if they DO have sex, then it seems the anti-choice'rs think the teens deserve to be punished with unwanted pregnancies and STDs.

Just another example, in this Plan B case, of ideology trumping science and health.

Here's the link to the NY Times article on the FDA Director's decision.

Helpful Links: Writing Letters to the Editor or Elected Officials

I hope you all know that this web site has an excellent tool for facilitating writing letters to the editor and/or elected officials.

If you go to the following link, you can check off which people/publications you'd like to write to, compose your message and have it sent off via email. You can also have your message converted into a printable document if you prefer.

SCC DP's Letter Writing Page

I also found a page on Wes Clark's PAC web site that gives excellent advice on HOW to write such a letter and have the best chance of having it published:

Go to his site:

Wes Clark's PAC site

And click on the right-hand side bar that says "letters to editors"

The election is November 2nd, but you can make sure your voice is heard NOW!

Follow up with 1 Republican

You might recall my first Conversation with a Republican.

That was my friend from Chicago who didn't like Bush, but didn't know Kerry and was looking for a reason to vote for either one of them.

This was also the guy who was stumped when I asked him to tell me what he LIKED about Bush.

Well, he did get back to me later, and apparently still has a problem answering that question. His reply was all about what he likes about the typical Republican Party stand, not Bush himself. And I think it could be argued (and as you might guess, I did reply and argue exactly this) that Bush doesn't actually represent those ideals.

Get the details in the extended entry:

I'll list his 'PROs' for the Republican Party (which he acknowledged were general, not Bush-specific) followed by my response to how each PRO applies or does NOT apply to Bush.

PRO #1. "Strong in Foreign Policy. Very results oriented in relationships with both enemy and ally nations."

So, if you leave aside the nice memories of what Republicans "typically" represent or "used to" stand for, what do you like about Bush and his presidency, and what about his record in the job deserves re-election?

I haven't got an answer from my Republican friend on this last question. Perhaps there isn't one. I'll keep you posted.

Discussion: Are Democrats too nice?

I've been thinking lately about double standards.

I've been thinking back to the Clinton Administration and the sheer number of partisan "investigations" that were launched again it, over issues big and small. And if you ask most Democrats, they would say that was bad and wrong. A distraction. A right-wing conspiracy.

Now, we have a slew of things happening in the Bush Administration that seem to beg for such investigation.

-You've got the Medicare bill scandal: requiring an official to lie to Congress about the costs of the bill until after the bill passed. Sounds illegal doesn't it?

-You've got the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity to the press. According to Dubya's daddy, such an action is "treason", and covering it up would have to be aiding and abetting, right?

-You've got the possible misappropriation of funds earmarked for Afghanistan routed over to Iraq. And we've also got Bush not complying with a law he signed that gave him funds, but required that he submit to Congress both a plan for the allocation of the funds and an accounting of what happened to the funds.

-You've got the Abu Ghraib scandal, not just what happened, but how long Administration officials KNEW it was happening...say no more

-You've got the detainees at Guantanamo, practically equivalent to the "disappeared" of Chile, all at the word of the President.

Only now is outrage starting to bubble up in Congress and in the mainstream media. Only now are special prosecutors being suggested and panels convened.

Maybe it's time for "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em." Maybe we have to swallow our "we're above such partisan behavior" pride and start slamming the Bush Administration with investigations left and right. let's stop being so nice and fair and balanced and start trying to disrupt his ability to get anything done.

And this time? it would be well deserved. Are we agreed?

Extra bonus: There's a link to an Anthony Lewis op-ed piece about how Bush behaves as though he IS the law of the land in the extended entry:

Anthony Lewis column

Link to News Feed available

For those of you who use news readers to manage all your blogs, we have a URL available to add this blog to your list:

http://sccdcc.mn.sabren.com/index.xml

Pretty soon there will be a button on the site to access this feed URL, but in the meantime I thought I'd post it here for anyone who's interested.

If you don't know what a news reader is and how it can help you track all of the various news feeds and/or blogs you read, post in the Comments section, and I'll send you an explanation.

Great Link: Another Take on The World According to Bush

Similar to Maureen Dowd's "BushWorld" piece from last week, Arianna Huffington's latest column is an examination of democracy, as defined by the Bush Administration.

Huffington is informative, but also a great rabble rouser.

I hope you will get sufficiently roused after reading this column to sign her petition and to get involved in this campaign, if you're not already.

Recent News: FBI files on Kerry released

Wow, the Bushies must be gloating. The FBI released the files it kept on Kerry when he was part of a anti-war veteran's group and discovered the following:

An FBI summary of the anti-war protests Kerry helped organize in April 1971 says the decorated war hero "overshadowed" many of the organization's other leaders and was "a more popular and eloquent figure" than the rest.

"Kerry was glib, cool, and displayed just what the moderate elements wanted to reflect," the summary says.

Another FBI memo describes in detail the medals Kerry won as a Navy lieutenant in Vietnam and noted he was a Yale graduate who was named class orator in 1966.

Yeah, that's damning stuff. He was moderate, charismatic, willing to engage in healthy dialog and encouraged personal action for social change.

Source: salon.com

Humor: In a dark, cynical kind of way

here's a quote from a salon.com article on the perils of electronic voting:

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush told reporters that printers for making receipts have not been manufactured for the electronic voting machines in his state, but he suggested he is not concerned about using the machines in November.

"I'm afraid a lot of the concerns about this are really to try to create a cloud of controversy during the election to motivate people to vote and there's got to be a better way to do that," Bush said. "You can talk about issues and ideas, maybe, instead of scaring people."

This was laugh out loud funny to me for two reasons:

1. Of course Jebbie's not concerned about using the machines: he has other ways of dealing with votes in Florida.

2. Using fear as a motivator? Hmmm...isn't that the trick Brother Dubya pulls out of the hat most often?

This quote proves Jeb either has no sense of history or no sense of irony.

Soapbox: And what happened to "The Buck Stops Here"?

I just heard that the new military commander of the prisons in Iraq is willing to apologize to the Iraqi people for the alleged prison abuse, but that our President, the Commander-in-Chief (and therefore this commander's boss) went on Arab radio and danced around in every possible way to avoid the actual "I'm Sorry" phrase.

This is now a running theme for him. He can't say he's sorry or that he's made mistakes, so it's left to those lower on the food chain to do so.

I think Truman would be Disgusted, Outraged and Appalled, just like me.

D.O.A.: The Deadly Combo of Incompetence & Secrecy

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Soapbox: More on Smearing Kerry's Service

As much as I try to stay focused on getting George Bush out of office, not demonizing the entire Republican Party, sometimes they make it hard.

The "attack machine", as plenty of people like to call it, is in full operation now, and it seems they will stop at nothing.

And I guess keeping people focused on the Vietnam War 30 years ago keeps Bush's prospects a little brighter, hard as that is to believe, than letting them focus on today.

Why? Because people are so conflicted about Vietnam that they find it hard to blame Bush for doing his best to avoid active duty. So they're giving him a pass on it. They did the same for Quayle and Clinton before Bush.

But they should NOT give Bush a pass on smearing Kerry's willingness to serve then, nor his willingness to speak out against the war upon his return.

I cannot believe all these years later, when nearly everyone can agree it wasn't the most noble, well-executed military endeavor of our history, people are really going to judge Kerry for actually stepping forward and saying what he thought, testifying before Congress.

I mean Ron Kovic came back an anti-war activist, and they made an Oscar-nominated hero out of him.

You'd think Bush wouldn't have much of a leg to stand on in this area, given his lack of service, and he doesn't, so it's other lackeys in his party that are doing the dirty work, and he is standing silently by and letting them.

You'll find some links that discuss this smear effort further and expose some of the people pulling the strings behind the effort in the extended entry:

E.J. Dionne Jr in the Washington Post decries the smear efforts, and talks to John McCain. McCain was a victim of similar tactics in 2000 running against Bush, and he's stepping forward, party be damned, to defend Kerry now:

EJ Dionne Column

Salon.com has an excellent little expose on the people behind the current efforts, the so-called "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" or the "Smear Boat Vets for Bush" as Salon calls them. These are some of the same folks behind other smears, from John McCain to Max Cleland.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/05/04/swift/index.html

It's good to know what you're up against, so i recommend reading both articles.

Soapbox: Oh My God: He didn't just say that did he?

Have you heard the one about the brown people trying to self-govern?

No?

It's a truly heinous gaffe made by Bush, disturbing on multiple levels.

But wait, let me take a breath and fill you in.

Talking to reporters in the Rose Garden the other day, with the Canadian Prime minister at his side, Bush veered of topic to make the following statement:

"There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren't necessarily -- are a different color than white can self-govern."

Let me count the ways that statement bothers me...in the extended entry.

First thing:

"whose skin color may not be the same as ours"????

Who is he talking about? Americans? Politicians? North Americans?

In any case, it is soooo insulting and exclusionary. I live in California, a state where white people are now the minority. But even the US in general is very far from a homogenous society.

Forget the percentages anyway, this is a country that USED to pride ourselves on being a melting pot, not a paternalistic white nation.

As for the "lot of people who believe" non-whites can't self-govern...who is he talking about there? His neocon buddies? Our one remaining "willing" coalition member of any notable size, the UK? Anyone who thinks he may not be going about promoting democratic ideals in the Middle east in the most alluring way possible?

The irony is to see Bush try to cow critics of his efforts to in Iraq by attributing their objections to racism, but to do so with a statement marked with, at worst, a different form of racism and certainly, at the least, condescension.

So, all you people of color involved in all levels of government and politics, or hell, even going to the voting booth, you are side notes to this great white democracy. In case you didn't know.

Anyway, you know something is really a blooper when George Will, arch-conservative, weighs in, and I mostly agree with him. He takes the opportunity to also hammer home another point I really agree on: that this Administration cannot adjust to realities that don't fit with their political ideology or agenda.

As Arianna Huffington said Friday night:

Repeating identical actions, but expecting different results is the definition of insanity.

And accusing those who point that out of being racists won't make that simple fact go away.

Recent News: There's more than a military mess in Iraq

We have all been transfixed of late by the ever more disturbing military situation in Iraq. From the apparently spreading dissent and insurgency to the sobering revelation that our own troops may have abused Iraqi prisoners, the news about this "concluded" war is enough to keep you up at night.

Leave it to my favorite columnist these days, Paul Krugman of the NY Times, to give me even more to worry about.

Today's column talks about the other actions we're taking in Iraq: the actions dealing with their economy. And how it's a disturbing mix of cronyism, privatization of the most sensitive governmental responsibilities and sheer refusal to look outside favorite economic theories and deal with Iraqi reality.

Here's the link, and the full text is in the extended entry:

Battlefield of Dreams
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: May 4, 2004
Last November the top economist at the Heritage Foundation was very optimistic about Iraq, saying Paul Bremer had just replaced "Saddam's soak-the-rich tax system" with a flat tax. "Few Americans would want to trade places with the people of Iraq," wrote the economist, Daniel Mitchell. "But come tax time next April, they may begin to wonder who's better off." Even when he wrote that, the insurgency in Iraq was visibly boiling over; by "tax time" last month, the situation was truly desperate.

Much has been written about the damage done by foreign policy ideologues who ignored the realities of Iraq, imagining that they could use the country to prove the truth of their military and political doctrines. Less has been said about how dreams of making Iraq a showpiece for free trade, supply-side tax policy and privatization — dreams that were equally oblivious to the country's realities — undermined the chances for a successful transition to democracy.

A number of people, including Jay Garner, the first U.S. administrator of Iraq, think that the Bush administration shunned early elections, which might have given legitimacy to a transitional government, so it could impose economic policies that no elected Iraqi government would have approved. Indeed, over the past year the Coalition Provisional Authority has slashed tariffs, flattened taxes and thrown Iraqi industry wide open to foreign investors — reinforcing the sense of many Iraqis that we came as occupiers, not liberators.

But it's the reliance on private contractors to carry out tasks usually performed by government workers that has really come back to haunt us.

Conservatives make a fetish out of privatization of government functions; after the 2002 elections, George Bush announced plans to privatize up to 850,000 federal jobs. At home, wary of a public backlash, he has moved slowly on that goal. But in Iraq, where there is little public or Congressional oversight, the administration has privatized everything in sight.

For example, the Pentagon has a well-established procurement office for gasoline. In Iraq, however, that job was subcontracted to Halliburton. The U.S. government has many experts in economic development and reform. But in Iraq, economic planning has been subcontracted — after a highly questionable bidding procedure — to BearingPoint, a consulting firm with close ties to Jeb Bush.

What's truly shocking in Iraq, however, is the privatization of purely military functions.

For more than a decade, many noncritical jobs formerly done by soldiers have been handed to private contractors. When four Blackwater employees were killed and mutilated in Falluja, however, marking the start of a wider insurgency, it became clear that in Iraq the U.S. has extended privatization to core military functions. It's one thing to have civilians drive trucks and serve food; it's quite different to employ them as personal bodyguards to U.S. officials, as guards for U.S. government installations and — the latest revelation — as interrogators in Iraqi prisons.

According to reports in a number of newspapers, employees from two private contractors, CACI International and Titan, act as interrogators at the Abu Ghraib prison. According to Sewell Chan of The Washington Post, these contractors are "at the center of the probe" into the abuse of Iraqi prisoners. And that abuse, according to the senior defense analyst at Jane's, has "almost certainly destroyed much of what support the coalition had among the more moderate section of the Iraqi population."

We don't yet know for sure that private contractors were at fault. But why put civilians, who cannot be court-martialed and hence aren't fully accountable, in that role? And why privatize key military functions?

I don't think it's simply a practical matter. Although there are several thousand armed civilians working for the occupation, their numbers aren't large enough to make a significant dent in the troop shortage. I suspect that the purpose is to set a precedent.

You may ask whether our leaders' drive to privatize reflects a sincere conservative ideology, or a desire to enrich their friends. Probably both. But before Iraq, privatization that rewarded campaign contributors was a politically smart move, even if it was a net loss for the taxpayers.

In Iraq, however, reality does matter. And thanks to the ideologues who dictated our policy over the past year, reality looks pretty grim.  

Arianna Huffington's Message: Urge Kerry to Think Big

I have said before that I want Kerry to have two things in this Presidential campaign: cojones and vision.

Well, I saw Arianna Huffington, another conservative turned liberal, speak in Menlo Park Friday night. And at least I know she's with me on the vision thing.

Huffington is an impressive, articulate speaker. But intellectualism doesn't preclude passion, and Huffington has that in spades as well. her primary message is that we need to reach out to the nearly 50% of eligible voters that simply don't vote. And she believes that the only way to do this is to think big and to appeal to the hope in us, not the fear in us.

If you agree, there's a way to send Kerry the message en masse: sign Huffington's petition asking Kerry to "Go Big."

Check the petition out at her new web site: Fanatics and Fools

Helpful Link: New site dedicated to tracking, reporting and correcting right-wing media lies

David Brock is an interesting guy. Once a right-wing reporter, probably most renowned for his efforts to smear and discredit Anita Hill, he went through a dramatic transformation into liberal, outing himself as such with a book that was basically one big mea culpa for all of the horrible lies he told as a right winger.

Now, with the donations of wealthy liberals (see you can have money and still support the liberal ideal) Brock is launching a web site to counteract the damaging effects of the dishonest right-wing media.

The site is called Media Matters and is designed to combat the right wing media in real time...its staff will watch and monitor both print and TV commentators and journalists to catch and correct misleading or downright dishonest statements.

That staff will be kept be busy! They're already hard at work. Check it out.

The Nightline Dust-up

You may have heard about this latest controversy: Ted Koppel's 'Nightline" did a show entirely comprised of reading aloud the names of service people killed in Iraq.

Sinclair Broadcasting pre-empted the broadcast of that episode on its stations. Sinclair and its executives happen to be, you guessed it, ardent Bush supporters.

Sinclair's contention: that is it not balanced to honor those service people, while highlighting the cost of war, without also acknowledging the other side of the coin...the benefit of the military action. They claim that to do so was political statement, not journalism.

Let's leave aside for a moment whether or not Bush's war has achieved any of the positive goals he laid out. Let's leave aside whether there actually is another side of the coin.

Leaving that aside, there is definitely a part of me that does see the Nightline episode as political statement, not news.

You may be surprised, but you can read why I haven't lost my liberal mind in the extended entry:

Reading the names of "victims" aloud has become a fairly common event, usually at political rallies or memorials. In contemporary times, I believe it came into vogue during the unveiling of the AIDS Memorial Quilt. Then, as now, part of the point was to open people's eyes to the very real human costs of political or governmental ignorance, or even just apathy.

They've also used this sort of roll call connected to WTC memorials, Oklahoma City memorials etc. Again, usually such a roll call is part of a memorial or political rally, not part of the nightly news.

The exception may be that in the days immediately following 9/11 it was fairly common for both TV news shows and newspapers to run photos and bios of the victims of 9/11.

So, there is some validity to Sinclair's claim that this isn't reporting, but rather politicking. What Sinclair isn't acknowledging, however, is that this is but one feeble, much-delayed political statement after months of equally unbalanced political statements from the media supporting the White House's version of events overseas.

When the War on Iraq started the national media essentially abdicated their role and responsibility to be independent, investigative and non-partisan. They reported what was spoon-fed to them by the White House, including widely using the White House code name for the immediate onslaught of the war, "Shock & Awe."

Where was the reporting of the costs of this action, to balance out the gung-ho admiration for our military might?

I'm not saying the news media should have wanted us to fail, but shouldn't someone have questioned what we were "succeeding" at, and how?

And here we are a year later and only NOW is the media starting to challenge and question the Administration AT ALL.

So, Sinclair and their "protesting too much" offends me, not because they would be wrong if this episode was happening in some alternate universe where the media had been thus far doing their job, but because they are wrong in this, the real world, the real, complex world that is all too often neither black, nor white, but shades of gray.

Like any of the fanatics who cannot adjust either their beliefs nor their subsequent actions in the face of reality, Sinclair and its leaders keeps their blinders firmly on, seeking fairness and balance only when that would serve their limited, unchanging and certainly skewed world view.

Recent News: Sometimes you don't WANT to be right

I (along with many ohers) have been sort of riled up about electronic voting, particularly electronic voting relying on machines from Diebold. Diebold, as you may know, is run by an ardent Bush supporter and fundraiser who promised to do what it took to keep Bush in the White house.

Doesn't give ME a warm fuzzy anyway.

And even though it made me sound a bit paranoid, I did start being quite concerned about another fouled-up election. It's not JUST the lack of a paper trail, but also the amazing combination of transparency and opacity of the machines.

Transparent because apparently, according to independent firms that were hired to analyze them, they're incredibly easy to hack.

Opacity because the machines are completely proprietary in nature and Diebold didn't want non-Diebold employees to be able to see the inner workings.

Well, as they say, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're NOT out to get you.

To hear the fate of the Diebold (and other) machines in California, read the extended entry.

Long story short, the all electronic machines have been de-certified for use in California, unless they can manage to comply with a set of rules, ensuring a paper trail among other things. Not only that, the Secretary of State is recommending that Diebold be prosecuted for "fraudulent actions."

Hey, it's not just as bad as you feared...it's worse!

The silver lining in all of this is that it demonstrates that grass roots actions CAN have influence.

Ben Cohen (that would be the Ben from Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream) has a political group called True Majority that focuses on helping people take simple actions. One of their recent causes has been voting credibility. They've facilitated sending messages to California's Secretary of State expressing concern over the use of insecure, and unaccountable voting machines in California.

I received their messages and forwarded them to every Californian I knew who was concerned about fair elections. (Isn't that everyone?)

Even after the investigative panel made their recommendations to Secretary of State Shelley to de-certify Diebold, True Majority facilitated sending him more messages urging him to follow the recommendation.

Thousands of people rose to the occasion and responded.

The result: Shelley is taking a stand, albeit one that should have been taken some time ago.

Read more in these San Jose Mercury articles:

4/30/04: California Bans Touch-Screen Voting

05/01/04: State Curbs Use of e-Vote