Tuesday, April 22, 2003
New blogs added to the roll. Blogger software difficulties have prevented these fine blogs from appearing here sooner:Billmon
No More Mister Nice Blog
pfaffenBlog
words mean things
Back In Iraq 2.0
BADATTITUDES JOURNAL
Demagogue
Blog :: Gary Hart
HugoZoom
INTEL DUMP
painpill
Silver Rights
unmedia
We Want the Airwaves! Go visit! (And thanks to everyone who has linked here, including one of our favorites: Cursor.)
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"We will try and endeavor to get the menu." Spring frost continues in the White House, where deputy press secretary Claire Buchan answered none of about 75 questions posed to her by the press corps, even on such innocuous subjects as the menu for Easter dinner at the Crawford ranch. Dana Milbank in the Washington Post:When the matter is inconsequential, such as what the president is eating for dinner, the White House's determination not to answer the question is harmless, and often amusing. But it is indicative of something larger. In a study of communications in the Bush White House, to be published in the June issue of Presidential Studies Quarterly, academic Martha Joynt Kumar writes that the administration's intense control over information has the benefit of keeping the message simple and unified. But it also leaves presidential policies unexplained and White House responses inflexible.
"While previous administrations regularly explained policy proposals from the White House podium, it has not been a practice of the Bush administration to do so," she writes. Kumar also observes that "one of the byproducts of a communications operation geared toward action is the difficulty inherent in listening while selling." Similar to the difficulty inherent in pronouncing the word "nuclear," walking and chewing gum, etc.
But answers to basic questions are indeed coming out of the White House — delivered in theocratic action, not secular words. From the same article:Muslims were upset that Franklin Graham, who had condemned Islam as evil, preached at the Pentagon last week. Now comes word that the White House held a private briefing for 141 evangelical Christian leaders March 27 to discuss the Iraq war and other subjects.
Those invited included Jerry Falwell, who apologized last year for calling the prophet Muhammad a "terrorist," and broadcaster Marlin Maddoux, who has proclaimed an "irrefutable connection" between Islam and terror. Also invited were the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is sending food to Iraq labeled "grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ," and Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who said Iraqis are "desperately in need of the gospel." Invited, too, was D. James Kennedy, whose ministry published an article calling Islam "one of the greatest challenges to Christianity." Meanwhile, Rumsfeld says (New York Times), "...we hope (for) a system that will be democratic and have free speech and free press and freedom of religion."
Of course, he meant in Iraq, at the same time his boss is calling America's most notorious theocratic wannabes to the Pentagon and the White House for a joint salivation session over all those appetizing, newly-conquered souls.
Dress the salad with this Moonie news crouton (MSNBC link via Atrios):For his new Deputy of U. S. Trade, Bush has selected Josette Shiner, a longtime member of the Unification Church, whose members are sometimes derisively called "The Moonies." Shiner was also the managing editor for Moon's Washington Times newspaper.
In December, Bush gave another longtime Moon follower a plum appointment. He named David Caprara to head AmeriCorps at VISTA, leading some to question whether Bush is paying back the reverend for his generosity to the Bush family. So what's it going to be for dinner in America? Democracy or theocracy?
We will try and endeavor to get the menu.
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Devious Iraqi bosses contract with devilish Halliburton. Wall Street Journal (sub. req'd):"They're all with Saddam," said many in a group of workers who made an 80-kilometer journey in a crowded bus from Basrato to this dusty town, where oil pipelines snake across the desert scrub brush. The reference was to senior Iraqis working with Kellogg, Brown & Root, a unit of Halliburton Co. (HAL), which the U.S. has contracted to rehabilitate Iraq's oil infrastructure.
"They (Iraq oil managers) were all corrupt, making 1 million to 1.5 million dinars a month, while we took home 50,000 to 60,000 dinars a month," said one of the oil workers, mechanic Asad Jabar. Iraqi oil managers made 20 to 25 times more than workers? That's undemocratic! Inhumane! How can bosses be treated so disproportionately?
"The average [US] chief executive's pay was 42 times that of the average hourly worker in 1980, according to Business Week. By 2000, the CEO compensation was 1,531 times as much as the hourly worker's" (Houston Chronicle). Regardless of how fast workers' wages rose in those twenty years, CEO compensation rose over 36 times faster.
It's an undeclared war, but American CEOs sure are winning it.
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Monday, April 21, 2003
On the eighth day, after He rested, He built a creationists' theme park along Interstate 275. Even stupid people deserve their own museum:The cold winter is over, flowers are blooming and steel is going up at the unique Creation Museum, under construction in Northern Kentucky. Massive steel beams — some 50 feet high — now rise above the scenic skyline along Interstate 275.
Answers in Genesis, a nonprofit apologetics ministry based in the Cincinnati suburb of Florence, Kentucky, is building a 95,000 sq. ft. complex (which will include the new AiG headquarters) debt- free, as donations come in. Over $7 million has already been raised.
"Plans for the interior of the museum are taking shape, as well. As soon as guests walk through the front doors, realistic, life- size dioramas will provide a snapshot of an early world -- including Adam with dinosaurs -- that will challenge evolutionary worldviews," according to AiG's Mark Looy. These "Answers in Genesis" geniuses have all the answers. Here's how they blithely explain the troublesome dinosaur problem:The Bible tells us that God created all of the land animals on the sixth day of creation. As dinosaurs were land animals, they must have been made on this day, alongside Adam and Eve, who were also created on Day Six (Genesis 1:24-31). If God designed and created dinosaurs, they would have been fully functional, designed to do what they were created for, and would have been 100% dinosaur. This fits exactly with the evidence from the fossil record. Wouldn't it be great if the world were explained as simply and as neatly as these cretins seem to think it can be? On second thought, maybe not.
Sad excuse for an educator, Dr. David Menton will be explaining all about dinosaurs this weekend to the 11-year-olds of Indiana.
How soon before these deranged people get science research grants from the US government?
Via ArchPundit.
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Jesus died for your congressman's $1.1 million townhouse. Amazing how a million dollars here, a million dollars there, can blind your average Christian lawmaker from the fact they they are rolling in theocratic conflicts of interest (Yahoo/AP):Six members of Congress live in a $1.1 million Capitol Hill town house that is subsidized by a secretive religious organization, tax records show.
The lawmakers, all Christians, pay low rent to live in the stately red brick, three-story house on C Street, two blocks from the Capitol. It is maintained by a group alternately known as the "Fellowship" and the "Foundation" and brings together world leaders and elected officials through religion.
The Fellowship hosts receptions, luncheons and prayer meetings on the first two floors of the house, which is registered with the Internal Revenue Service as a church.
The six lawmakers — Reps. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn.; Bart Stupak, D-Mich.; Jim DeMint, R-S.C.; Mike Doyle, D-Pa.; and Sens. John Ensign, R-Nev. and Sam Brownback, R-Kan. — live in private rooms upstairs.
Rent is $600 a month, DeMint said.
[...]
It organizes the annual National Prayer Breakfast attended by the president, members of Congress and dignitaries from around the world. The group leaves its name off the program, even though it spent $924,373 to host the event in 2001, bringing in $606,292 in proceeds, according to the most recent available IRS records, and pays travel expenses for foreign officials to attend.
[...]
"We feel like it's nobody's business but our own," said former Rep. Steve Largent, R-Okla., who lived there before leaving Congress to run unsuccessfully for governor in his home state last year.
That secrecy is unsettling to the Rev. Barry Lynn, a United Church of Christ minister who heads watchdog group Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.
"What concerns people is when you mix religion, political power, and secrecy," Lynn said. "Members of official Washington should always be open and direct about the groups they choose to join, just to dispel any concerns that there's an inappropriate or unconscious agenda in these groups." Subsidized housing is so nice — too bad so few people beyond CEOs and Christian members of Congress are entitled to it.
Because the Capitol Hill townhouse is a "church," it's supposed to be "religious," and that means it's all "tax-free" too!
But ordinary American citizens don't have the benefit of their leaders' secretive benefactors, whose chief result was the claim to have helped not legislators but the poor.
Consider the spiritual symmetry of this arrangement: Congressional Christians get to make more money and pay less rent than their own interns and staffers:Cameron McCree, a recent graduate of the University of Arkansas, was at the bottom of the scale when he interned on Capitol Hill in the summer of 2001. He earned $1,000 a month, but it cost him $800 a month to rent a room at George Washington University, not to mention the cost of food and sightseeing. With even a little scrutiny, this scheme is looking less Christian and more routinely opportunist.
Once again, the most outwardly pious people turn out to be the sneakiest conniving bastards you'd ever want as your representatives in government.
UPDATE: Via The Agonist comes this long article on the benefactors' cult from Harper's.
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It's better late than never, I hope, to point out that, while on the post-surgical mend, The Sideshow's Avedon Carol is posting at Avedon's other weblog, a temporary depository of all that is good and just and sane in this crazy, mixed-up world of ours.
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President as Pet Rock. The Bush brand didn't outsell the Gore brand — it just had better (and much more expensive) packaging to attract your average Wal-Mart customer, says Digby. The deceptive tactics of marketing are now married to the deceptive tactics of corrupt CEOs and the deceptive tactics of Republican political strategy:The Bush administration, then, really is the political equivalent of Enron. Ken Lay and George W. Bush and Karl Rove and Andrew Fastow and Jeff Skilling and Dick Cheney are all cut from the same cloth. And what stingy, threadbare, conformist crap that cloth turns out to be.
But walking in lockstep comes naturally to the right. The larger problem is organizing people who celebrate diversity and nonconformity in thought and styles of self-expression. That is, Democrats with a capital D.
After the debacle of the midterm congressional elections last November, I had plenty of similar thoughts. But how will we get where we need to go while we're immersed in Republican-compliant media? I agree with the commenter at Digby's Hullabaloo who said that if the Bush administration is the political equivalent of Enron, then the press is Arthur Andersen.
The absence of a critically thinking mainstream American press is the void that all this blogging energy is meant to fill.
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Riley Bechtel and the crony economy. The joys of the Bush economy are limited to the administration's innermost circle of influence and affluence (Wall Street Journal, sub. req'd):...Bechtel is widely perceived as the front-runner for future [Iraqi reconstruction] business as the U.S. spends up to $100 billion in what is seen as the biggest reconstruction project since World War II's aftermath.
[...]
At least two current Bechtel executives have ties to the Bush administration.
A senior vice president, Jack Sheehan, sits on the Defense Policy Board formed to advise Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who himself once lobbied for a Bechtel project. Sheehan, a retired Marine Corps general, manages Bechtel's petroleum and chemical operations.
And President Bush appointed Bechtel's chairman, Riley Bechtel, in February to the Export Council, which advises the president on international trade matters.
[...]
Bechtel's critics don't doubt the company is up to the job. Instead, they say that by limiting the bidding to Bechtel and five other U.S. companies, the federal government might not have gotten the best free-market deal.
"We are concerned that the government seems to be handpicking their buddies for these contracts," said Seth Morris, research associate for the nonpartisan Washington-based Project on Government Oversight.
[...]
Riley Bechtel, 51, is the great-grandson 
I'm so rich!of company founder Warren Bechtel and has been chief executive for 13 years. He has emerged as one of the world's richest people with an estimated fortune of $3.2 billion, according to Forbes magazine.
The company has backed its personal contacts within Washington with sizable campaign contributions. Bechtel gave $1.3 million to political candidates from 1999 through 2002, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
That is a lot less than other influential businesses. The donations look like small change compared to the money Bechtel earns from the government.
In the fiscal year ended in September 2002, the Department of Defense paid Bechtel $1.03 billion, making it the 17th-largest military contractor in the country. In retrospect, Bechtel makes even more sense than Cheney's Halliburton.
Why? Because it's a private, family-owned company, and therefore not bothered by such messy details as disclosure or accountability. It's logical for one dynasty — the Bushes — to honor the Bechtel dynasty.
Bechtel's past, too rich to go into detail here, is fascinating in its contrivances — first by wooing Saddam Hussein as a suitor (with one Donald Rumsfeld popping a breath mint and holding the bouquet), then by punishing him by killing him for his rejection of its affections:After serving as treasury secretary in the Nixon administration, George Shultz was Bechtel's president for seven years before he left in 1981 to become secretary of state in the Reagan administration.
And Casper Weinberger was its general counsel and served on the company's board from 1975 to 1981 before becoming secretary of defense under Reagan.
While Shultz was U.S.'s top diplomat, the U.S. government tried unsuccessfully to persuade Saddam Hussein to let Bechtel build a pipeline to carry Iraqi crude oil through Jordan to the Red Sea port of Aqaba.
In 1983, Rumsfeld, while working as a special U.S. envoy in the Middle East, traveled to Baghdad to discuss the pipeline with Saddam and Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, according to memos in the National Archives.
Iraq rejected the pipeline idea in 1986. Shultz has since returned to Bechtel's board of directors.
Bechtel exemplifies "the revolving door between government and business that Washington has helped perpetuate for years," said Jim Vallette, a research director at the Institute for Policy Studies, a nonpartisan Washington-based think tank. "We should have a separation between the state and corporations. Instead, they're acting more like partners." Bechtel reminds us that the war wasn't totally about political hypocrites craving Iraqi oil.
It was also hypocritical hyper-opportunists moving American taxpayer money from the US Treasury directly into the hands of the Bush dynasty's supporters. And cynical geopolitical strategies designed to pilfer international assets. And the new Faustian alliance between corporate financial power and American military power.
Who would have thought that a choice other than Halliburton could stink quite as detestably?
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The Book of Sharon. Michael Moore's publisher is ponying up the advance to get Neil Bush's jilted wife Sharon Bush's backstory on the Bush dynasty (Cragg Hines in the Houston Chronicle):...Los Angeles publisher Michael Viner confirmed "a deal in principle" to handle Sharon's book. The Bushes viewed this as an especially bad sign: Viner also saw into print Stupid White Men, the work of Bush/Republican scourge Michael Moore.
Sharon's working title: Family First. Sharon's advance: "six figures," which covers a lot of territory and is apparently not close to "seven figures." Sharon's outlook: "It will be positive, not negative," said Suzanne Wickham, a publicist for Viner's New Millennium Entertainment. Now that Sharon has been voted off the island, former first lady Barbara Bush is already practicing at the firing range for the 2004 Battle to Defend Her Family's Values:The former first lady will view Sharon's book as another assault on her carefully cultivated image as the nation's grandmother, when, in fact she has the longest, most exacting political memory of any member of the family*. Runner-up in that category is the current president**.
It's not made any easier for Barbara Bush knowing that Neil's family-busting affair was with a former volunteer at the former first lady's good-works foundation. Or that the volunteer's own recent divorce case featured several letters from Neil to the "other woman" -- reportedly with lots of syntactical problems. Syntactical problems are evidently a large part of the Bush legacy.
The current administration was supposed to be the alternative to adultery, but Sharon's book will put an end to that ludicrous notion — given that her syntactically-challenged banking criminal husband repeatedly porked one of Mom's assistants before the Republican slattern's most recent child even turned two years old.
Instead of the alternative to adultery, the Bushes have given us many other alternatives... to international peace, jobs, homeland security, civil liberties, environmental protection, the separation of church and state, ethics in business, viable stock markets, and fair elections within our borders.
*Translation: Bitch with grudge.
**Translation: Takes after Mom.
Previous post about Sharon and Neil Bush here.
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Thursday, April 17, 2003
Syringes from Jesus. A crusade by any other name would smell as sickening (Christian Science Monitor):Christians have been present in the Middle East since the first century, living harmoniously with Muslims for long periods. Some claim the problems are with a more assertive Western Christianity that uses its wealth in manipulative ways.
"There are very sincere missionaries whom Muslims like," says Dr. Nasr. "But what makes them angry is that US proselytizing is combined with worldly advantages: Poor people are wooed with medicine for their children, syringes for their cows, and then are expected to attend services." Broadly speaking, a more assertive Western Christianity "using its wealth in manipulative ways" could include things like bombing and invasion. Especially since the purported rationale for the war — WMD and terrorism — has so far turned out to be an utter fraud.
Now the conquered people can suffer further indignities, bartering their spiritual lives for medicine and food. Aren't we nice for helping the armless orphan boy, whose family we killed and whose arms we blew off? I wonder if he has yet accepted Jesus as his true savior.
The way all these people act in the name of God — George W. Bush, Osama bin Laden, Franklin Graham, millions of others — only supports the idea that if a deity exists at all, it is nowhere in the vicinity of any of them.
Happy fucking Easter.
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Go read Monkey Media Report's excellent post on Syria and al Qaeda.
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"It didn't have to happen." Yahoo tells us that Bush Cultural Advisers Quit Over Iraq Museum Theft:The head of a U.S. presidential panel on cultural property has resigned in protest at the failure of U.S. forces to prevent the wholesale looting of priceless treasures from Baghdad's antiquities museum.
"It didn't have to happen," Martin Sullivan said of the objects that were destroyed or stolen from the Iraqi National Museum in a wave of looting that erupted as U.S.-led forces ended President Saddam Hussein rule last week.
Sullivan, who chaired the President's Advisory Committee on Cultural Property for eight years, said he wrote a letter of resignation to the White House this week in part to make a statement but also because "you can't speak freely" as a special government-appointed employee.
The president appoints the 11-member advisory committee. Another panel member, Gary Vikan, also plans to resign because of the looting of the museum. The President's Advisory Committee on Cultural Property has its own website stating that the United States Department of State is responsible for implementing the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act.
Even though he was lone dove of the Bush bunch, former military leader Colin Powell is going to get the Chaos of the Chickenhawks pinned on him.
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Is it still considered looting if you have keys? From the Houston Chronicle:Some looters emptying Iraq's museums of centuries-old treasures were possibly professional thieves who used keys to enter locked safes and vaults, experts said today. [...]
A gathering of 30 art experts and cultural historians in Paris said that while much of the looting in Iraq was haphazard, some of the thieves clearly knew what they wanted and where to find it -- suggesting they were prepared professionals.
"It looks as if part of the looting was a deliberate planned action," said McGuire Gibson, a University of Chicago professor and president of the American Association for Research in Baghdad. "They were able to take keys for vaults and were able to take out important Mesopotamian materials put in safes." McGuire Gibson is coincidentally the same expert who repeatedly conferred with the Pentagon (Washington Post) in advance of the war.
We wrote about the deviousness behind this "looting" previously.
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Please pay before pumping. Except no one is there to take our money for the 51 percent increase in oil imported to the USA from Iraq in February, the month before we invaded it.
In January 2003, we imported only 600,000 barrels of Iraqi crude a day. In anticipation of our invasion, we upped our order to 909,000 barrels per day in February.
Hopefully we put the purchase on a credit card so we can skirt the bill and also get a half-billion frequent flyer miles for Colin Powell.
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The New, Improved Jessica Lynch Show. A healthy dose of artistic license can often make a drab story seem more dramatic (Washington Post):Accounts of the U.S. military's dramatic rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch from Saddam Hospital here two weeks ago read like the stuff of a Hollywood script. For Iraqi doctors working in the hospital that night, it was exactly that -- Hollywood dazzle, with little need for real action.
"They made a big show," said Haitham Gizzy, a physician at the public hospital here who treated Lynch for her injuries. "It was just a drama," he said. "A big, dramatic show." This may come as a surprise to average Iraqi civilians and other recent amputees (see the same article above), but the American style of leadership is now 100% show business. The scripts, editing, camera angles, costuming, sets and props are much more carefully planned than any other aspect of government actions. The Jessica Lynch Show, like the The Fall of the Statue Show, is a fraud.
The war between surface and substance is over. Surface won. Why else put an empty suit in front of a painted warehouse backdrop — inside a real warehouse?
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Wondering about Jessica. I found myself wondering aloud about POWs Jessica Lynch and Shoshana Johnson and casualty Lori Piestewa, and saw that Jeanne d'Arc of Body and Soul had already wondered about the same issues that troubled me. Her post is dated April 6, a week before POW Shoshana was found:...I had found myself wondering, too, if the situations were reversed and Lori Piestewa, the Hopi woman who was killed in Iraq, had been rescued, and Jessica Lynch had died, if we would not now be seeing the tragic death as more important than the rescue. If we wouldn't be thinking, yes, thank God that one woman was rescued, but we must not forget the brave, blonde girl who died at the hands of evil men, and fight all the harder in her memory. The word "wondering" is the key there. I'm aware of how often the issues and concerns of anyone who isn't white, male or middle class (preferably all three) get shoved to the margins, and when something like this happens, it's pretty hard not to notice that the media is obsessed with one particular woman, and that her pigmentation is different from that of the majority of women in the military. Lori's story is told in "What about Private Lori?" in The Guardian.
Links via Progressive Gold and The Agonist.
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Wednesday, April 16, 2003
Next up for looting: The Art Museum of Enron. Another glorious aspect of Enron's past excesses is now coming to light — the company had a multimillion dollar art collection hand-picked by the wife of its now-indicted CFO. So says the Houston Chronicle:What Enron hoped would be a world-class collection of contemporary art promoting its cutting-edge image will go on the block next month.
 The first round of the auction, approved by a U.S. bankruptcy judge on Tuesday, is scheduled for May 15-16 in New York. Up for sale will be the most valuable pieces, including Claes Oldenburg's Soft Light Switches and nine other artworks.
About 50 other pieces will be auctioned by Phillips de Pury & Luxembourg in the fall.
Much of the collection was bought by an in-house art committee, chaired by Lea Fastow, wife of indicted former Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow. Given a $20 million budget, she traveled to New York; Venice, Italy; and elsewhere in search of pieces.
The spree continued from late 2000 to the following fall, when Enron went into the tank and shopping was stopped, having spent about $4 million.
"It's like The Beverly Hillbillies," said Hiram Butler, co-director of the Devin Borden Hiram Butler Gallery in the Heights. "What's not fun -- flying around, buying art?"
Examining a partial list of the artists and pieces represented in the collection, Butler, who specializes in contemporary art, "I'm wondering, 'Who are these guys?' "
Five pieces that will be auctioned May 15 are the highlights "are all 'A' quality" representative pieces of contemporary genres, including pop, op (for optical) and minimalism, said Amalia Dayan, a contemporary art specialist at Phillips de Pury.
The majority of the collection, to be auctioned this fall, is "lower value work," Dayan said. "It was a corporate collection. You have huge spaces you have to fill with art. When you have to fill huge spaces, you buy less valuable art. You combine that with a few quality examples."
Oldenburg's Soft Light Switches, a vinyl pop sculpture of what appears to be a melted light switch, is by far the most valuable piece in the collection. Enron bought it from Phillips de Pury three years ago for about $590,000, including commission.
Light switches, energy company — get it?
Effortlessly mixing the sublime with the banal, Enron's hamburger-helper art collection will be auctioned instead of looted, as if that makes any difference at all to the acquirers of such fabulously expensive objects.
I picture Lea Fastow in a Venetian gallery, haggling over price in louder and louder English with an Italian dealer. Ugly art for ugly Americans.
The Enron quote of the day for these "Beverly Hillbillies" is "What's not fun -- flying around, buying art?" For a contemporary art expert with a sense of humor, I give a lot of credit to the immediately likeable Hiram Butler.
Image credit: Phillips de Pury & Luxembourg, who receives luscious commissions on both the original purchase and the subsequent auction of many of these artworks.
May 1, 2003 UPDATE: Photos at this post: Lea Fastow is charged and surrenders to federal authorities.
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Neil Bush offers soon-to-be ex-wife Sharon $1,000 a month. Brother to presidential candidates George and Jeb and compassionate bank criminal Neil Bush is taking full advantage of his divorce proceedings to exercise his Inner Miser (Denver Post):...Neil infamously served as a director of Silverado Banking, Savings & Loan. The S&L failed in the late '80s, costing taxpayers more than $1 billion. Neil received federal sanctions and, with 11 other defendants, agreed to pay $49.5 million to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The family moved to Houston in 1991.
Maybe that $49.5 million is why Neil's final settlement offer to Sharon was $1,000 a month, which she refused. The case goes to jury trial this month.
 According to gossip columnist Cindy Adams, Neil is involved with Maria Andrews, mother of three (the youngest 18 months), who divorced her husband in October. Neil met Andrews when she worked for a Barbara Bush foundation. Dozens of letters from Neil to her have been admitted as exhibits. Ouch. Houston insiders expect Neil and Andrews to marry once his divorce is settled. Adultery among parents! It's always refreshing to see Republican family values as they're actually lived.
Neil's offer of $12,000 a year precludes any more fancy Egyptian vacations for Sharon Bush. What a contrast from Neil's remarks about their March 2001 family getaway to a painfully obvious destination — the Mideast:First of all, this is our first visit to Egypt as a family. My wife Sharon and my daughters have been to Luxor and Cairo, but never to the Red Sea. We’ve heard so much about the snorkeling and diving here, so we decided to spend a portion of our trip in this part of Egypt. I dive, but I’m not a master. My wife has been diving many times, but this is actually the first time for us to dive together as family. Perhaps it also turned out to be the last time they would dive together as a family.
Sharon's refusal of the thousand-a-month offer was understandable, given the lifestyle to which she's become accustomed as part of the Bush dynasty.
Also interesting in the Egyptian article is the dyslexia angle, trumpeted as Neil's triumph of entrepreneurial insight: Neil Bush has recently initiated a revolutionary interactive learning tool in the United States, which he calls the Ignite! Learning System. Ignite! is a computer program designed to replace classroom textbooks and help teachers teach and students learn more effectively. In his youth, Neil Bush suffered from dyslexia, and his 7th grade teachers told his mother, Barbara Bush, that he would not graduate from high school. Bush triumphed in his challenge to live with dyslexia, and was inspired to promote ways of learning such as Ignite! to enable children to be better educated by methods that help them develop their full learning potential. Ignite! will be launched in the United States this summer, actively promoted by members of Neil Bush’s family, including two of his children, Ashley and Pierce. Readers in Texas and especially Houston — you know who you are (wink!) — are invited to email me as many local stories as possible as the divorce trial proceeds.
See a previous post about Neil Bush here. Lauren Bush has been hailed as a Republican Babe of the Week. Denver Post link via BuzzFlash.
UPDATE: The Daily Kos reports on a New York Observer story about Sharon's pitch for a tell-all book. Sharon is supposedly willing to break Bush family silence about its overt dynasty-building, since they collectively refused to budge on the $1,000 a month offer.
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Thieves favored in California. The voters of California apparently prefer known thieves to unknown Democrats according to this poll, that shows Bush (45 percent) ahead of any Democrat (40 percent) if the 2004 election were held today.
 Bush's chief campaign financiers included Enron, one of the masterminds behind the California energy crisis that wiped $45 billion from the state economy.
Enron, of course, imploded in a wave of accounting scandals based on fraudulent earnings only months after helping Junior secure the White House and helping Dick Cheney determine US energy policy in secret.
Californians, no more snooze button. The alarm is ringing. It's time to wake up.
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Tuesday, April 15, 2003
Advice on protecting antiquities was sought and ignored (Washington Post). The Pentagon was warned about looting, consulted with experts for months, and is now acting surprised that "it happened," in Rumsfeld's words.
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What's your blog's sign, Senator? It turns out that The Rittenhouse Review is an Aries.
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Department of Homeland Obscurity. The levers of power are bei |
