"It's absolutely essential that ... on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States...."
He's right.
On November 2, make the right choice. Vote for John F. Kerry.
I will no longer be writing between now and Election Day.
God bless America — and God damn George W Bush and Dick Cheney to hell everlasting.
The U.S. Army, in what could be the final twist in a complicated and drawn-out controversy, is laying the groundwork to let Halliburton Co. keep several billion dollars it was paid for work in Iraq that Pentagon auditors say is questionable or unsupported by proper documentation.
The Army has acknowledged that the Houston-based company might never be able to account properly for some of its Iraq work, and has hired a consulting firm to estimate what Halliburton's services "should cost."
[...]
...some disgruntled Pentagon officials describe the effort to broker an outside settlement with KBR as unusual in a contract of this magnitude. The company has taken heavy criticism from inside the Defense Department and from Congress for its accounting practices in Iraq.
KBR so far has billed about $12 billion in Iraq; almost $3 billion of that remains in dispute. Pentagon records show that $650 million in Halliburton billings is deemed "questionable," a term government auditors use when they see strong evidence of overcharges or contracting irregularities. Another $2 billion is considered "unsupported," meaning that KBR remains unable to provide sufficient paperwork.
[...]
Some Defense officials claim that despite a series of similar alerts running into this summer, Mr. Rumsfeld and his deputies applied little pressure on the Army to force KBR to clean up its act. Instead, they say, the problems continued to mount into 2004 as massive bills piled up that lacked sufficient documentation or were branded as questionable by Pentagon auditors.
[...]
To lead the effort to reach a settlement, the Army early this month hired Virginia-based Resource Consulting Inc., which does a wide range of government contract work, mainly for the military, and is heavily staffed with retired military officials. The Army also has assembled a "Special Cost Analysis Team," made up of Army contracting and financial officials, to work alongside the consultants.
Bills still under scrutiny include charges for services rendered as far back as the spring of 2003. Auditors have concluded that of nearly $900 million in outstanding bills for fuel and transportation costs from Kuwait to Iraq, about $250 million is regarded as "questionable."
The biggest area of dispute surrounds the way that KBR and its subcontractors billed for millions of meals, totaling more than $900 million, served to U.S. and coalition troops last year. Auditors have completed reviews for billing at about a quarter of the dining facilities in Iraq and Kuwait and have reported to the Army that KBR overcharged by an average of around 40%. Questionable charges could approach nearly $400 million after a final review of the remaining dining facilities, Defense officials say.
This story and the mammoth deceits behind it dovetail nicely with the Iraq "reparations" slush fund, from which Halliburton will be paid by the UN for "lost corporate assets and profits" from the first Gulf War.
[LAWRENCE] O’DONNELL: [On Scarborough Country] Well, this is a God—this is also a God who gives the gift of freedom. He says that‘s a gift from the almighty, that the Afghan people got this gift from the almighty this year. What was George Bush’s God doing to those people up to now? You see, that’s the problem with this. For very simple-minded religious people, that stuff works. That is a minority of the American population.
[DAILY HOWLER:] Yikes! It’s been years and years since major scribes took pot-shots like that at professed religion. As the debate proceeded, Bob Zelnick sensibly said that he’d judge Bush’s policies, not his faith. But O’Donnell wasn’t finished:
O’DONNELL: The danger of simplification is that God wants him to do what he is doing. God wants people to be free; therefore, I, George Bush, will free them. That‘s a dangerous political implication.
Any privileged connection to supposedly divine truths should be suspect in the reality-based community. And public announcement of the frivolousness of private logic becomes more important every day, as the religious charade increasingly enters discourse between citizens who are forced to question each other's unquestionable beliefs.
I'm voting for John Kerry because I'm a Christian. I know that my second cousin, George Bush, claims that he is the anointed leader of the American people and that God told him to run for office. I believe he may even believe that. I don't.
My Christian faith leads me to a concern for the poor and the marginalized, yet Bush's actions in office have repeatedly cut funding for health care, aid to failing schools, jobs programs, after school programs, Head Start, and many more services that provide real help and hope to those living in poverty. Under the Bush administration, over a million additional people have dropped below the poverty line. 1.2 million more have gone into "deep poverty," which is one-half the $18,810 for a family of four that defines "poverty."
The Bush Administration has decided that it will stand by its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah’s flood rather than by geologic forces, according to internal documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
Despite telling members of Congress and the public that the legality and appropriateness of the National Park Service offering a creationist book for sale at Grand Canyon museums and bookstores was “under review at the national level by several offices,” no such review took place, according to materials obtained by PEER under the Freedom of Information Act. Instead, the real agency position was expressed by NPS spokesperson Elaine Sevy as quoted in the Baptist Press News:
“Now that the book has become quite popular, we don’t want to remove it.”
[...]
“Promoting creationism in our national parks is just as wrong as promoting it in our public schools,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, “If the Bush Administration is using public resources for pandering to Christian fundamentalists, it should at least have the decency to tell the truth about it.”
The creationist book is not the only religious controversy at Grand Canyon National Park. One week prior to the approved sale of Grand Canyon: A Different View, NPS Deputy Director Donald Murphy ordered that bronze plaques bearing Psalm verses be returned and reinstalled at canyon overlooks. Superintendent Alston had removed the bronze plaques on legal advice from Interior Department solicitors. Murphy also wrote a letter of apology to the plaques’ sponsors, the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary. PEER has collected other instances of what it calls the Bush Administration’s “Faith-Based Parks” agenda.
As a form of delusional but protected speech, I have less problem with the sale of the book in the store (assuming accounts of the actual geologic record are also for sale) than I do with the plaques defacing the canyon overlooks, an aesthetic/environmental defamation that removes options rather than provides new ones. The schools are another matter altogether.
Lay wanted to be tried last month. Prosecutors have asked Lake to set the Enron trial for March 2005. And Skilling and Causey have requested a March 2006 trial.
Court watchers expect the judge may split the difference and schedule the three-defendant case for the summer or fall of 2005.
"Lay wanted to be tried last month." Yeah, right before the election. Sure. What a transparent piece of theater.
Isn't it obvious that Enron's political terrorists would never be tried during the reign of the administration they helped install, the same administration that let them write US energy policy in the secrecy of Dick Cheney's office in March 2001?
The Selective Service has been updating its contingency plans for a draft of doctors, nurses and other health care workers in case of a national emergency that overwhelms the military's medical corps.
In a confidential report this summer, a contractor hired by the agency described how such a draft might work, how to secure compliance and how to mold public opinion and communicate with health care professionals, whose lives could be disrupted.
On the one hand, the report said, the Selective Service System should establish contacts in advance with medical societies, hospitals, schools of medicine and nursing, managed care organizations, rural health care providers and the editors of medical journals and trade publications.
On the other hand, it said, such contacts must be limited, low key and discreet because "overtures from Selective Service to the medical community will be seen as precursors to a draft," and that could alarm the public.
[...]
Under the plan, [Richard S. Flahavan, a spokesman for the Selective Service System] said, about 3.4 million male and female health care workers ages 18 to 44 would be expected to register with the Selective Service. From this pool, he said, the agency could select tens of thousands of health care professionals practicing in 62 health care specialties.
"The Selective Service System plans on delivering about 36,000 health care specialists to the Defense Department if and when a special skills draft were activated," Mr. Flahavan said.
The contractor hired by Selective Service, Widmeyer Communications, said that local government operations would be affected by a call-up of emergency medical technicians, so it advised the Selective Service to contact groups like the United States Conference of Mayors and the National Association of Counties.
Doctors and nurses would be eligible for deferments if they could show that they were providing essential health care services to civilians in their communities.
But the contractor said: "There is no getting around the fact that a medical draft would disrupt lives. Many familial, business and community responsibilities will be impacted."
Moreover, Widmeyer said, "if medical professionals are singled out and other professionals are not called, many will find the process unfair," and health care workers will ask, "Why us?"
If Kerry can so dramatically change how people perceive him in just 90 minutes on television — without benefit of any real knockout punches by him or serious blunders by Bush, without a genuine, confrontational debate format — it suggests to me that the media hadn't fulfilled their responsibility to tell voters what Kerry is really like, what he stands for, what he would do, who he is.
In other words, Kerry should have been leading by a wide margin all along.
Media failure and voter suppression — the only things in Kerry's way.
Unless that October Surprise Red Alert rumor is true.
In addition to the usual political ranting, there is also this incisive observation from a self-described energy economist
Read their 2003 10K - the publicly held Class A shares have about 10% of the votes - the class B shares held by the Smith family the other 90%.
The 10K spells it out for you - they may make decisions that are in their interest that will disadvantage other equity holders - why is ANYONE long in this POS?
Any investor in SBGI is fooling themselves that they own anything but the table scraps. Ten percent of the vote for shareholders is a farce.
But voter suppression is indeed the GOP's theme du jour.
Since Saddam was toppled in April, Iraq has paid out $1.8bn in reparations to the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC), the Geneva-based quasi tribunal that assesses claims and disburses awards. Of those payments, $37m have gone to Britain and $32.8m have gone to the United States. That's right: in the past 18 months, Iraq's occupiers have collected $69.8m in reparation payments from the desperate people they have been occupying. But it gets worse: the vast majority of those payments, 78%, have gone to multinational corporations, according to statistics on the UNCC website.
Away from media scrutiny, this has been going on for years. Of course there are many legitimate claims for losses that have come before the UNCC: payments have gone to Kuwaitis who have lost loved ones, limbs, and property to Saddam's forces. But much larger awards have gone to corporations: of the total amount the UNCC has awarded in Gulf war reparations, $21.5bn has gone to the oil industry alone. Jean-Claude Aimé, the UN diplomat who headed the UNCC until December 2000, publicly questioned the practice. "This is the first time as far as I know that the UN is engaged in retrieving lost corporate assets and profits," he told the Wall Street Journal in 1997, and then mused: "I often wonder at the correctness of that."
But the UNCC's corporate handouts only accelerated. Here is a small sample of who has been getting "reparation" awards from Iraq: Halliburton ($18m), Bechtel ($7m), Mobil ($2.3m), Shell ($1.6m), Nestlé ($2.6m), Pepsi ($3.8m), Philip Morris ($1.3m), Sheraton ($11m), Kentucky Fried Chicken ($321,000) and Toys R Us ($189,449). In the vast majority of cases, these corporations did not claim that Saddam's forces damaged their property in Kuwait - only that they "lost profits" or, in the case of American Express, experienced a "decline in business" because of the invasion and occupation of Kuwait. One of the biggest winners has been Texaco, which was awarded $505m in 1999. According to a UNCC spokesperson, only 12% of that reparation award has been paid, which means hundreds of millions more will have to come out of the coffers of post-Saddam Iraq.
No wonder the Mission Unaccomplished Bush administration is more eager to make nice with the UN again. Once again, the priorities of their so-called "war on terror" become clear. There's money involved.
The Pentagon plans to promote Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, former head of military operations in Iraq, risking a confrontation with members of Congress because of the prisoner abuses that occurred during his tenure.
Senior Pentagon officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have privately told colleagues they are determined to pin a fourth star on Sanchez, two senior defense officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said this week.
Rumsfeld and others recognize that Sanchez remains politically "radioactive," in the words of a third senior defense official, and would wait until after the Nov. 2 presidential election and investigations of the Abu Ghraib scandal have faded before putting his name forward.
The reward for these soldiers' loyalty and service is poverty, amputation, medals that were earned but never show up, and collection notices from the Pentagon.
U.S. and Iraqi officials doled out hundreds of millions of dollars in oil proceeds and other moneys for Iraqi projects earlier this year, but there was little effort to monitor or justify the expenditures, according to an audit released Thursday.
Files that could explain many of the payments are missing or nonexistent, and contracting rules were ignored, according to auditors working for an agency created by the United Nations.
"We found one case where a payment ($2.6 million) was authorized by the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) senior adviser to the Ministry of Oil," the report said. "We were unable to obtain an underlying contract" or even "evidence of services being rendered."
In a program to allow U.S. military commanders to pay for small reconstruction projects, auditors questioned 128 projects totaling $31.6 million. They could find no evidence of bidding for the projects or, alternatively, explanations of why they were awarded without competition.
The report was released by Rep. Henry Waxman of California, ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee and a leading critic of reconstruction spending to rebuild Iraq.
"The Bush Administration cannot account for how billions of dollars of Iraqi oil proceeds were spent," Waxman said. "The mismanagement, lack of transparency, and potential corruption will seriously undermine our efforts in Iraq. A thorough congressional investigation is urgently needed."
[...]
Iraq's Ministry of Finance maintained two sets of accounting records, one manual and one computerized.
"A reconciliation between these two sets of accounting records was not prepared and the difference was significant," the report said.
Auditors questioned why checks were made payable to a U.S. official - a senior adviser to the Iraqi ministry of health - rather than to suppliers.
Other questions were raised about funds provided by the U.S.-run governing authority to Kurdish officials in northern Iraq. In one instance, auditors were given a deposit slip that showed the transfer of $1.4 billion to a Kurdish bank. Auditors said they were denied access to accounting records and were unable to verify how - or if - the money was spent.
The administration commits vast accounting frauds as part of their so-called war on terror. It will take years to figure out exactly who is profiting and what deals were cut by whom.
Yet another piece of evidence why the Bush administration is just Enron writ large.
It became quite clear that Kerry's pervasive interest in the world is genuine and intrinsic to his personality; Bush's artificial interest in the world commenced on the day in the 1990's when he was invited to George Schulz's living room to consider being set up by the GOP machine in a marionette campaign for the White House.
Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, citing vote-fraud concerns, is publicly balking at a City of Milwaukee request for almost 260,000 additional ballots in anticipation of high turnout for the Nov. 2 presidential election.
Mayor Tom Barrett blasted Walker's stance, and Common Council President Willie Hines Jr. immediately joined in, saying it was an attempt to suppress the central-city vote.
[...]
Barrett said that the 679,000 ballots the county had agreed to print were less than the amount prepared for the presidential election in 2000 as well as for the the gubernatorial race in 2002. He and the city's top election official said that the city requested 938,000 ballots from the county, which, by law, pays for and prints ballots.
[...]
The flare-up between Barrett and Walker pits two of the most prominent politicians in the Milwaukee area who - while holding non-partisan offices - are on opposite sides of the presidential race. Walker, a Republican, is a state co-chair of President Bush's campaign, while Barrett, a Democrat, is state co-chair of the John Kerry campaign.
Neither cited those roles in the exchange, but the dispute is playing out against a partisan backdrop in a battleground state.
More specifically, it involves central-city voters, most of them minorities, thousands of whom have been registered in recent months by voter-registration groups. Those efforts, though non-partisan, are widely viewed as helping the Democrats; Bush drew just 2% in 2000 in Milwaukee's predominantly African-American voting wards.
Similar vote-stifling games are being played by GOP operatives in Nevada, Oregon, and elsewhere.
Here's your October surprise: voter suppression. Anti-democracy is the new Republican platform.
UPDATE: Unsurprisingly, Paul Krugman cites this same story and theme in his column in today's New York Times.
Kendra of the Chicago chapter is organizing folks throughout the Midwest to road-trip to WI, OH, and IA. Check it out.
UPDATE: Holly writes in to inform us all that in Wisconsin "you can register to vote right up to the very day of elections. I'm not sure why everyone thinks there's a deadline." In my case, I believed the deadline supplied with the DrivingVotes.org map linked above. For more Wisconsin info, see Activote.
Changing minds one at a time. The Wall Street Journal, apparently tired of seeing Kerry win every debate poll, altered the question last night to a pretty good one: "Have the presidential debates changed your decision about whom you'll vote for?" As of now the results are yes 24% (!) and no 75%. Here are some of the post-vote comments from readers (each paragraph is from a different person):
I am a registered Republican who voted for President Bush's father. I have decided to vote for John Kerry because of his views on how to involve the rest of the world in important decisions which affect Americans as well as other countries. George W. Bush sees everything as black and white when the reality is gray. We need to find other countries with similar problems and involve them in our solutions. I can't imagine why we went into Iraq and after Suddam Hussein when there are 30 other countries with similar leaders! At this rate, we will have to take out leaders of North Korea and Iran through preemptive force.
Leila Engman
Alexandria, Virginia
I'm voting for John Kerry because I believe he will lead honestly and strongly making us more secure, safe and fiscally stable where President Bush has not.
Andrea Hobright
Madison, Wisconsin
Tonight Bush showed himself as a fool. Ignorant of the present situation of this country, and with no idea of how to improve the situation in the future. He tried to reassure us by making the same promises that he has failed to live up to these past 4 years. Kerry spoke eloquently and with knowledge about the problems of this once great country today, and presented a plan through which we can once again live up to the potential this country has. With Kerry I know that America will be heading in the right direction, and not led, as Bush said, by special interest groups (was he talking about himself here?).
Eben Broadbent
I was disappointed that President Bush did not reply directly to the questions. He seemed to relate to particular points that he felt he needed to get across and didn't have the confidence to bring the points forward in a more dramatic or forceful way.
Virginia Thielbahr
Boy, what a great job John Kerry did tonight in the final presidential debate. He has the right plan to get us out of the several messes Mr. Bush has dragged us into including war in Iraq, 2) homeland security, 3) jobs, 4) the economy and 5) health care. On all fronts, John Kerry knows what needs to be done and Mr. Bush is just a deer caught in the headlights.
Ken Boggs
The debates reveal a president in grave trouble, and without any appropriate doubts or reservations. On the question of faith, neither candidate spoke of the virtue of prayer as a way to reflect on our errors, and neither man spoke adequately of the way religious beliefs lead us to question our motives and correct our failures. But Kerry is nevertheless believably reflective. Bush, on the other hand, mistakes the appearance of unwavering commitment for the reality of leadership. His attacks sound cocky, sometimes a bit snide. Kerry's attacks are tough, but they are directed at the substance of policy. As an ethics teacher, I'm shocked by a leader refusing to accept responsibility. We have a President who is a poor example to students of how to deal with our mistakes, how to negotiate with our opponents, how to educate supporters and constitutuents. I hope he does not prevail.
Bruce Payne
Durham, NC
The debates confirmed for me what I suspected about the two candidates. I feel Kerry is the more intelligent and the more able to run the country effectively, both in terms of the domestic agenda and in terms of foreign policy, restoring the high place the US had in the world.
Dennis Bourgault
I will now vote for John Kerry, an articulate, intelligent man who will get our country back financially as well as our good name in the civilized world. Bush had his chance, he was selected in 2000, but is too absorbed with his own intelect and got us into a war without a clear solution for peace.
RRM
Those are just the first ten of 127 messages like it.
For a conservative newspaper, that's a downright shrill, un-American group of readers. Either that, or it truly is time for regime change in the United States of America.
BUSH: Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations. Of course we're worried about Osama bin Laden. We're on the hunt after Osama bin Laden.
[...]
BUSH: Talk about the VA: We've increased VA funding by $22 billion in the four years since I've been president. That's twice the amount that my predecessor increased VA funding. Of course we're meeting our obligation to our veterans, and the veterans know that.
[...]
[BUSH on Social Security:] I will work with Republicans and Democrats. It'll be a vital issue in my second term. It is an issue that I am willing to take on, and so I'll bring Republicans and Democrats together.
And we're of course going to have to consider the costs. But I want to warn my fellow citizens: The cost of doing nothing, the cost of saying the current system is OK, far exceeds the costs of trying to make sure we save the system for our children.
These three incidences unfortunately don't indicate Bush's every lie or bluff or distortion of reality — doing that would take much longer than the debate itself.
Tall tells. Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post had noted a Bush "tell" before the second debate: "Here's a debate-watching tip: Perk up your ears every time President Bush says 'of course' tonight. Because if recent history is a guide, what's coming is a statement that his supporters might find obvious, but that his critics might consider a whopper."
The Dow Jones Industrial Average opened at 10,587.59 on the first dayof the Bush (Junior) presidency and closed at 10,002.33 today. American assets saw a loss of 5% after nearly four years of Bush — because the only way to make money during this administration is simply to have lots of money already and to get an undeserved tax cut for it.
A purist might argue that the Dow Jones Industrial Average is too narrow an index for this purpose. If you go through the same calculation for the S&P 500 Index , a composite of 500 companies instead of just 30, the results are quite similar: a gain of 308% for Clinton's two terms in office, versus a loss of 17% for Bush's first term, now thankfully nearly over. Note that the loss of 5% for the very biggest companies is somewhat less than the loss of 17% for the next tier. In Bushworld, even the losses disproportionately play favorites.
Big companies long lobbied for a tax cut on their overseas profit as a way to spur U.S. job growth. But now that it has been granted, much of the windfall won't go toward hiring but for such uses as strengthening balance sheets, buying back shares and making acquisitions.
The one-year break, included in a sweeping tax bill that cleared the Senate and went to the president this week, will allow hundreds of billions of dollars in overseas profit to be brought home by dozens of U.S. companies at a steeply reduced tax rate. By some estimates, U.S. companies have parked as much as $500 billion in profit abroad to avoid taxes back home.
"We wanted a tax cut so we can create jobs. Now that you've given it to us, fuck the jobs. We'll send the jobs overseas, but bring the money home — as long as it stays out of the hands of the workers and the US Treasury."
What is the Bush presidency really about? It's the $500 billion, stupid.
Sinclair Broadcasting Group, under fire for ordering its 62 networks to broadcast a film sharply critical of John Kerry’s opposition to the Vietnam War, is a major investor in a company recently awarded a military contract by the Bush Administration, RAW STORY has learned.
Jadoo Power Systems, Inc., a producer of portable power systems, announced Sept. 28 that it had been awarded a contract to supply its products, which are used for covert surveillance operations, to US Special Operations Command. According to the SOCOM website, SOCOM “plans, directs, and executes special operations in the conduct of the War on Terrorism.”
Jadoo, a Folsom, California company, is owned by Sinclair Ventures, Inc. and Contango Capital Management. Sinclair Ventures is “a wholly owned subsidiary of Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. as well as other individuals.”
A Jadoo press release (in PDF format) reveals that in February, 2003, President Bush was personally briefed by the CEO of Jadoo, Larry Bawden, about Jadoo products.
A Bush-Cheney '04 ad claims Kerry would raise taxes on 900,000 small businesses and "hurt jobs." But it counts every high-salaried person who has even $1 of outside business income as a "small business owner" -- a definition so broad that even Bush and Cheney have qualified while in office. In fact, hundreds of thousands of those "small businesses" have no jobs to offer.
Furthermore, by the Bush definition 32 million "small businesses" would see no tax increase. The ad doesn't mention that, of course. Nor does it mention Kerry's proposals for some tax cuts specifically targeted for small businesses.
(Update, Oct. 1: After this article was posted, the Tax Policy Center issued a new estimate that the number of small employers is 471,000 -- barely half the number the Bush ad claims.)
That's from FactCheck.org, where George Soros has been working overtime.
The Bush administration has promoted its education law with a video that comes across as a news story but fails to make clear the reporter involved was paid with taxpayer money.
The government used a similar approach this year in promoting the new Medicare law and drew a rebuke from the investigative arm of Congress, which found the videos amounted to propaganda in violation of federal law.
The Education Department also has paid for rankings of newspaper coverage of the No Child Left Behind law, a centerpiece of the president's domestic agenda. Points are awarded for stories that say President Bush and the Republican Party are strong on education, among other factors.
The news ratings also rank individual reporters on how they cover the law, based on the points system set up by Ketchum, a public relations firm hired by the government.
The video and documents emerged through a Freedom of Information Act request by People for the American Way, a liberal group that contends the department is spending public money on a political agenda. The group sought details on a $700,000 contract Ketchum received in 2003 from the Education Department.
One service the company provided was a video news release geared for television stations. The video includes a news story that features Education Secretary Rod Paige and promotes tutoring now offered under law.
The story ends with the voice of a woman saying, "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting."
It does not identify the government as the source of the report. It also fails to make clear the person purporting to be a reporter was someone hired for the promotional video.
This level of fakery is far worse than anything Dan Rather found on his fax machine, which, if forged, at least had the benefit of being true.
If you're an American paying taxes, you're paying to be lied to just like in the movie Brazil, where citizens are invoiced for their own wrongful arrest. You're contributing part of your income for the active demolition of your own rights.
The people who work for Ketchum should do us all a favor and just commit mass suicide.
Signs of the times.TBOGG recounts the terror felt by those Bush supporters who are just too paralyzed with fear to actually put Bush-Cheney signs on their lawns, because of possible violent retribution from wild-eyed savagelike Kerry supporters. Bush supporters are obviously granola-fearing wimps.
Compare their situation with Rhonda Nix's. Her Kerry sign was "stabbed to death," as she relates in this Errol Morris-directed spot, one of a big series.
Amid the fierce debate over limits on medical-malpractice suits, many states have enacted limits of their own that are having a sweeping impact. One of the most common types -- caps on damages for pain and suffering, or so-called noneconomic caps -- is turning out to have the unpublicized effect of creating two tiers of malpractice victims.
Cases involving high earners or big medical bills move ahead. Lawyers can still seek economic damages for the wages these patients lost or to pay for continuing medical bills. But lawyers are turning away cases involving victims that don't represent big economic losses -- most notably retired people, children and housewives such as Ms. [Shelly] Thompson-Mooney [the focus of the full article].
Vice President Dick Cheney mentioned the Bush administration's wish to enact nationwide caps on noneconomic damages in his debate this week with John Edwards, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee and a former plaintiffs' lawyer himself. But groups such as AARP, the organization for older Americans, and the National Organization for Women are mounting campaigns against such moves. "When you put a cap on noneconomic damages," says NOW President Kim Gandy, "quite literally [women's] lives are valued lower."
The Republican platform: the housewife has no economic value, so her pain and suffering has no economic value.
The Education Department this summer destroyed more than 300,000 copies of a booklet designed for parents to help their children learn history after the office of Vice President Dick Cheney's wife complained that it mentioned the National Standards for History, which she has long opposed.
In June, during a routine update, the Education Department began distributing a new edition of a 10-year-old how-to guide called "Helping Your Child Learn History." Aimed at parents of children from preschool through fifth grade, the 73-page booklet presented an assortment of advice, including taking children to museums and visiting historical sites.
The booklet included several brief references to the National Standards for History, which were developed at UCLA in the mid-1990s with federal support. Created by scholars and educators to help school officials design better history courses, they are voluntary benchmarks, not mandatory requirements.
At the time, Lynne Cheney, the wife of now-Vice President Cheney, led a vociferous campaign complaining that the standards were not positive enough about America's achievements and paid too little attention to figures such as Gen. Robert E. Lee, Paul Revere and Thomas Edison.
[...]
Retired UCLA professor Gary Nash, co-chairman of the effort to develop the National Standards for History, said he found the decision to destroy the booklets after Cheney's office complained "extremely troubling."
"That's a pretty god-awful example of spending the taxpayers' money and also a pretty god-awful example of interference — intellectual interference," Nash said. "If that's not Big Brother or Big Sister, I don't know what is."
[...]
Recently, when the department decided to update "Helping Your Child Learn History," Cheney's office became involved because of her long-standing interest in American history.
Cheney is prominently quoted in the booklet as a "noted author and wife of the vice president." Two books on history that she wrote for children are mentioned in the booklet.
The acknowledgments also credit her office for helping with the guide, which cost $110,360 to print, Aspey said.
"Noted author" and taxpayer-funded self-promoter Lynne Cheney should fund her historical propaganda efforts herself, with the "royalties" of her "books." (The Amazon reader review of her book Sisters at the "royalties" link is especially curious.)
People soon will be able to carry guns and other dangerous weapons onto the grounds and parking lots of Reagan National and Dulles International airports, after officials yesterday eased what they said were overly restrictive rules.
Without debate, the board of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority unanimously agreed to permit passengers and other airport visitors to carry guns, knives and other weapons as long as they keep them out of terminals and other buildings that access airfields. Passengers who are taking guns with them on flights still will be allowed to carry them into the terminal but are supposed to make arrangements with airlines in advance, officials said.
The action comes after pressure from an increasingly high-profile Virginia gun rights group whose members have taken to wearing firearms on their hips in public places to make their case.
Dressed in humble prison khakis, the former treasurer of Enron [Ben Glisan Jr.] told a jury Wednesday that one of the most lucrative and intellectually stimulating things about working at Enron was creatively hiding its long-running and deep-seated economic woes from investors.
[...]
Glisan told defense attorney Tom Hagemann that he doesn't think he worked at one of America's finest companies but rather at an energy company where aggressiveness fostered both pride and escalating corruption.
In calm, confident tones, Glisan described a workplace tolerant, if not encouraging, of systematic deception.
"The company had long-running, very deep and difficult" economic issues, said Glisan, a former CPA with a master's degree from the University of Texas. But, he said, one of the joys of working there was solving the extremely difficult problems that came with "masking those issues."
"I felt it was my job to help Enron look stronger than it was," said Glisan, who is scheduled to continue on cross-examination today.
He said meeting earnings targets was the name of the game at Enron and one of his jobs was to run a team that devised transactions that "helped Enron lie about the health of the company." Inflating earnings and hiding debt, he said, garnered big individual bonuses.
To Enron's senior management, not only is lying a creative and lucrative act — it's intellectually stimulating. Systematic deception was "one of the joys of working there."
This explanation reveals the evil genius of co-conspirator Dick Cheney in the fewest words possible. After all, these were the same people he selected to secretly write US energy policy in the earliest months of his administration, in meetings whose minutes he has steadfastly refused to make public. To Cheney, systematic deception is intellectually stimulating, one of the joys of working the White House.
Edwards's bobbles of truthfulness were considerably smaller in scope than Cheney's whoppers (see for yourself), so the headline attempts to make equal what are two totally different things: Edwards's forgotten details of fundamentally true charges, and Cheney's outright deceptions in matters big and small.
Profound Cheney lie: "I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11."
Idiotic Cheney lie: "The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight."
Watching the veep debate. If you have cable and are not interested in the spin, I recommend watching C-SPAN. It was fascinating in the fifteen minutes before the first presidential debate to watch Jim Lehrer stage-manage the audience, which as far as I know was only seen unedited and live on C-SPAN. Another bonus of C-SPAN is the total absence of hairdos like on CNN screaming that this debate may be the most important thing ever in our lifetimes, until the next day when they take it all back because what actually happened didn't follow what's written in the spin bible.
The U.S. didn't have enough troops in Iraq immediately following the ouster of Saddam Hussein and "paid a big price" for it, the former head of the U.S. occupation there said Monday.
L. Paul Bremer said he arrived in Iraq on May 6, 2003, to find "horrid" looting and a very unstable situation.
"We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness," Mr. Bremer said during an address Monday in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, to an insurance group, which reported his comments.
"We never had enough troops on the ground," he said.
[...]
His comments raise eyebrows because they are similar in tone to criticism in March 2003 from then-Army chief of staff Gen. Eric Shinseki that the U.S. needed several hundred thousand troops to keep the peace in postwar Iraq. Gen. Shinseki's comments were rebuked by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other Pentagon superiors.
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, locked in tight race with President Bush, has fired similar criticism at the White House on the campaign trail.
[...]
He also disputed criticism that the Bush administration had no plans for post-war Iraq.
"There was planning, but planning for a situation that didn't arise," he said, including a large-scale humanitarian or refugee crisis. "Could it have been done better? Frankly, I didn't spend a lot of time looking back."
Not spending a lot of time looking back is a characteristic trait, hopefully a fatal flaw, of the entire administration.
A new intelligence report on the search for Iraq's illicit weapons lists hundreds of individuals and companies who, before the U.S. invasion last year, received vouchers from Saddam Hussein to purchase Iraqi oil at below-market prices, officials familiar with the report said.
The 1,400-page report by Central Intelligence Agency weapons inspector Charles Duelfer, which is scheduled to be made public Wednesday, doesn't reach a conclusion about whether use of the vouchers violated international sanctions or an individual country's laws. But it asserts that Mr. Hussein personally managed the effort and used some of the proceeds, which exceeded $1 billion in 2002, for illegal-weapons procurement, the officials said.
The report names entities in France, Russia, Poland and other countries as involved in the voucher scheme or in assisting Iraq's prewar procurement activities. Officials wouldn't say if U.S. companies or individuals were implicated.
Let's go out on a small limb here. The haze of uncertainty whether US companies or individuals are implicated in the scheme seems to imply that they are. Since the report is being issued Wednesday, and it's unclear if US companies or individuals were implicated, what are the chances that someone in the energy-industry-rich White House will be connected to the scheme? And isn't it odd that Cheney, who will undoubtedly be called upon to defend his cronyoid connections to the energy industry in this evening's debate, will not be forced to publicly address the content of this new report?
Carl Webb, 38, is a member of the Texas Army National Guard and a U.S. army veteran. In 2001 following a 7-year break in service, he enlisted in the National Guard expecting to serve for only three years. His term of service ends August 22, however, less than two months shy of the end of his service completion he was informed that his term had been involuntarily extended and he would be sent to Fort Hood for training and deployed to Iraq in November.
Webb is one of many reservists who is being compelled to serve in the war in Iraq under the "stop-loss" program. “This policy is practically an unofficial draft,” Webb said. “It is conscription against a person’s will.”
Webb's perspective is that “The war is unethical and illegal U.S. aggression,” he said. “It’s all about oil and profits.”
Carl Webb expects to serve prison time for following his conscience.
If you're a military officer, you can't miss First Command Financial Planning of Fort Worth.
It sells life insurance and investments to young officers serving around the world. Many of its executives and most of its agents were officers once themselves, and they let you know it. A parade of retired generals and admirals serve on its advisory boards. With more than 300,000 customers, virtually all of them current or former officers, the company depends on the military for its very existence.
[...]
First Command was not happy a year ago when it discovered that a legal office at Air Force headquarters had put out a notice asking military lawyers in the field for feedback on "reports of possible unethical or overly aggressive" sales practices by the company's agents. The notice also raised questions about the suitability of the company's core product, an archaic and expensive type of mutual fund with sales fees that eat up half of an investor's first-year contributions.
First Command fought back: it complained to the second- most-powerful general in the Air Force. And it was heard.
The New York Times has found that within three weeks of the legal office's posting, the Air Force issued a retraction, which it had allowed the company to edit. It gave the company a letter of exoneration, signed by the Air Force's top legal officer, after letting the company edit that, too. The Air Force legal staff stopped cooperating with a securities industry investigation into the company's practices and products. And the Air Force effectively abandoned a broad inquiry of its own, letting local base authorities handle complaints.
One complaint was about a First Command agent who had made veiled threats against a young officer in Charleston, S.C., suggesting he could be court-martialed or sued for criticizing the company in an e-mail message.
I can't be court-martialed, but for those of you who can, please take this advice: Do not buy anything from First Command. Their sales practices for mutual funds and life insurance are punitive, far below civilian standards, and they are here to fleece you. Their CEO contributes to George W Bush, who sent you on a highly questionable mission in Iraq. Invest your money elsewhere, just keep it away from First Command.
For more background on our perspective on First Command, see this series of posts "First Command, Last Resort, Parts 3, 2, and 1."
And when Rush Limbaugh or Fox News or Sean Hannity bitch about liberals, remember who broke this story on behalf of soldiers. It sure as hell wasn't the conservatives.
Martha got a month of prison for roughly each $37,000 of her financial nastiness. Druyun, on the other hand, was sentenced for her conflicts of interest in a Boeing contract worth $23.5 billion of public money. If $37,000 worth of financial misbehavior gets Martha a month of prison, by this formula Darleen Druyun should get 635,000 months of prison, or 53,000 years.
Shouldn't victimless crimes, like drug possession and certain less pernicious forms of insider trading, get smaller sentences or fines, while those white-collar crimes that significantly erode the public trust, like Druyun's, get the book thrown at them? What's the matter with the judicial system? Can't judges do simple calculator-level math?
Our reverse chronology of the Dragon Lady Drama (also starring her daughter and former Boeing CFO and author Michael Sears) starts here.
SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan -- Guerrillas from the ousted Taliban regime killed at least 12 government soldiers in southern Afghanistan yesterday in a sharp escalation of violence ahead of the landmark presidential election this month.
At least seven more soldiers were killed in other clashes in the southern province of Zabul on Tuesday and Wednesday, provincial officials said.
They said some Taliban members also were killed, but no details were available.
[...]
The governor did not elaborate on the fighting in Zabul, scene of repeated attacks by the Taliban over the past three days.
On Wednesday, guerrillas attacked a joint convoy of US and Afghan forces. The Taliban said several US soldiers were killed, but there has been no independent verification.
Zabul is near the border with Pakistan and is part of the main bastion of the Taliban. The guerrillas have pledged to derail the Oct. 9 election, in which 17 candidates are standing against incumbent President Hamid Karzai.
Taliban spokesman Hamid Agha told the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press agency that the militia was responsible for a rocket attack Wednesday on a German peacekeeping base in the northern city of Kunduz. Four foreign soldiers were wounded, one seriously.
''All people and forces helping America will come under attack from us," Agha said. The NATO-led peacekeeping force, deployed mainly in Kabul, is investigating the attack.
The Taliban are so nonexistent that they even have a spokesman.
Unfortunately for Bush and for American soldiers, what's nonexistent is Bush's capacity to deal with reality as it occurs, not the version of it spoon-fed to him by his desperately disappointed stage managers Karl Rove and Karen Hughes.
We must have China's leverage on Kim Jong Il, besides ourselves.
So according to Bush when the WMD threats are real, as North Korea's are, we need international allies.
In the case of Iraq, where the WMD threats are bogus and the political friction is based on family feuds, we go it alone at US taxpayer and soldier and reservist expense.
