18 August 2004

Don't Politicize Terrorism
By David Ignatius
Washington Post, 17 August 2004
EXCERPT: The mixing of anti-terrorism policy with the 2004 presidential campaign is becoming destructive. It is creating a vicious cycle of hype, skepticism and mistrust that puts the country's security at risk. The dangers of politicizing terrorism were clear in this month's announcement about potential attacks on financial centers in the New York area and in Washington. When Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge disclosed the threats on Aug. 1, he faced immediate skepticism about whether the intelligence was valid. Sadly, the Bush administration had helped create this climate of public suspicion by overusing its elaborate, color-coded system of terrorism warnings. After a terrorism advisory by Attorney General John Ashcroft last spring was pooh-poohed the same day by Ridge, some people wondered whether these warnings were being used for political effect.

Bush Administration Ignores Terrorist Potential in Its Own Backyard
BushGreenWatch, 17 August 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush administration, which has ventured thousands of miles away to pursue still unsubstantiated reports of weapons of mass destruction, continues to thwart efforts to eliminate the very real danger of catastrophic terrorist attacks right in the nation's own backyard. The threat consists of chemical-laden railroad tank cars-- lethal cargoes which the US Department of Transportation characterizes as potential "Weapons of Mass Destruction." A hair-raising photo taken last September shows the Capitol dome in the background with a loaded, clearly identified, extremely dangerous chlorine tank car passing in the foreground, on tracks just blocks away (dangerous cargoes carry this identification to assist firemen and emergency personnel responding to an accident). "This photo is an indictment of non-homeland security," says Dr. Fred Millar, a rail security specialist who served as a consultant to Friends of the Earth on the issue of terrorism and dangerous rail cargoes. "The blindness on this is stunning," Millar told Bushgreenwatch. The simple, effective solution-- opposed by the chemical industry, the railroads, and the Bush administration-- is to reroute hazardous cargoes away from cities ranked as major targets for terrorists, such as Washington, New York, Chicago, Houston, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles. A sudden release of chlorine from a 90-ton rail tank car could create a cloud 40 miles long and 4 miles wide and be fatal 8 to 10 miles downwind. [1] If terrorists ruptured a tank car on tracks near the Washington Mall during public events such as the Fourth of July or the Inauguration, the deadly cloud could kill 100,000 people in a half-hour, according to estimates from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratories.

Effort by Bush on Education Faces Obstacles in the States
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
NYT, 17 August 2004
EXCERPT:  "The question is, will this emphasis on testing really better educate kids, or is it an artificial thing?" Critics contend the law gives schools dozens of ways to fail, but does little to help them tackle the causes of low achievement among poor, minority and disabled children. Others complain that the law's reliance on standardized tests is unsound, that its strict rules conflict with existing state efforts and that its remedies for struggling schools are largely punitive. As a result, in the two and half years since Mr. Bush signed No Child Left Behind into law, a political backlash has curtailed its reach.

Inquiry Into F.B.I. Questioning Is Sought
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
NYT, 17 August 2004
EXCERPT: Several Democratic lawmakers called on Tuesday for a Justice Department investigation into the Federal Bureau of Investigation's questioning of would-be demonstrators about possible violence at the political conventions, saying the questioning may have violated the First Amendment. In a letter to the department's inspector general seeking an investigation, the three lawmakers said the F.B.I. inquiries appeared to represent "systematic political harassment and intimidation of legitimate antiwar protesters."

Who Needs Assault Weapons?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
NYT, 17 August 2004
EXCERPT: President Bush promised in the last presidential campaign to support an extension of the ban, which was put in place in 1994 for 10 years. "It makes no sense for assault weapons to be around our society," Mr. Bush observed at the time. These days Mr. Bush still says that he'll sign an extension of the ban if it happens to reach his desk. But he knows that the only way the ban can be extended on time is if he actually urges its passage, and he refuses to do that. So his promise to support an extension rings hollow - it's not exactly a lie, but it's not the full truth, either.

Army to Withhold $60 Million per Month from Halliburton
By David Teather
The Guardian (UK), 18 August 2004
EXCERPT: The United States army will withhold payment of up to $60m (£32.8m) a month on future invoices submitted by Halliburton, the firm formerly run by vice-president Dick Cheney, due to a continuing dispute over work done in Iraq. The decision contradicted a statement issued by Halliburton on Monday saying that it had won a suspension of the longstanding threat to withhold payments. Shares in the oilfield services and construction company fell more than 4% in early trade on Wall Street after the ruling was announced. They have dropped 16% since the beginning of the month. The decision puts Halliburton under further financial pressure. The company needs cash to pay for a $2.3bn settlement of asbestos injury lawsuits stemming from a division acquired during Mr Cheney's tenure as chairman and chief executive. The US army said it was withholding 15% of payments to Halliburton unit Kellogg Brown & Root for its contract to provide logistical support, including clothing and housing troops. A spokeswoman for the army field support command said that could amount to $60m a month.

Bush's royal oil pals apparently feel the need for a P.R. blitz
Saudis Use 9/11 Report in US Ad Campaign
By Ken Guggenheim
Associated Press, 17 August 2004
EXCERPT: Stung by criticism about its role in fighting terrorism, Saudi Arabia has launched a radio advertising campaign in 19 U.S. cities citing the Sept. 11 commission report as proof that it has been a loyal ally in the fight against al-Qaida. The two advertisements quote the commission's conclusion that the Saudi government did not fund al-Qaida. One ad cites the report's finding that Saudi Arabia stopped a 1998 plot to attack U.S. troops; the other cites a finding that Saudis were not flown out of the United States right after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The ads don't address commission criticism of Saudi Arabia, which the report called "a problematic ally in combating Islamic extremism." It said Saudi-funded Islamic schools have been exploited by extremists and, while Saudi cooperation against terrorism improved after the Sept. 11 attacks, "significant problems remained."

Bush Makes the Rich Richer and the Poor Fatter
A BushWhackedUSA commentary
If for no other reason, Americans should vote Bush out of office in order to lose weight. It's true. Stands to reason. Here goes...  The gap between rich and poor is growing in this country. As Leigh Strope of the Associated Press reports, "The wealthiest 20 percent of households in 1973 accounted for 44 percent of total U.S. income, according to the Census Bureau. Their share jumped to 50 percent in 2002, while everyone else's fell. For the bottom fifth, the share dropped from 4.2 percent to 3.5 percent." Just the other day the Congressional Budget office has found that a third of Bush's tax cuts have gone to people earning in the top one percent; meanwhile, the tax cuts are minimal or nonexistent for those on the bottom rung of the ladder. In other words, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. And as NPR reported on Tuesday, if you're poor, you're more likely to suffer from obesity. Statistically speaking, as that income gap widens so does your waistline.
COMMENT: Stop by BushWhackedUSA: THE BLOG and We'll Help You Plan Your Diet!

Help! Mom! There are Liberals Under My Bed!
(Revisited--we missed putting this one in our headlines)
These two items come courtesy of alert BushWhackedUSA reader G.S. in Colorado Springs. First, if you're sick of liberals taxing your income, silencing your right to express your religious beliefs, and forcing you to give up unhealthy habits, AND you've got kids, well, here's the perfect book for your family! With Help! Mom! There are Liberals Under My Bed! Katherine DeBrecht manages to boil down the seething resentment of Conservative America with a story even small children can understand! And if your kids still don't get into the swing of politics, perhaps you ought to shop for Presidential Campaign Barbie or a Dishonest Dubya action figure!

Conventional Facades: Why the Republicans Have to Hide their Agenda
by Maureen Farrell
BuzzFlash.com, 17 August 2004
EXCERPT: Soon after Dick Cheney told Sen. Pat Leahy to "go f**k himself," the Republican National Committee feigned outrage over actor Alec Baldwin’s assertion that the GOP has been "hijacked" by "fundamentalist wackos." While the word "wackos" is indeed jarring, there are few suitable descriptions for the Harry-Potter-fearing, Armageddon-embracing, End-of-Days experts the White House reportedly cavorts with. And while the Guardian used the more colorful term "bonkers" to describe this mindset, regardless what one calls it, a palpable stench of weirdness fills the air. After uncovering notes proving that White House staffers were "taking two-hour meetings with Christian fundamentalists," the Village Voice announced, "apparently, we're not supposed to know the National Security Council's top Middle East aide consults with apocalyptic Christians eager to ensure American policy on Israel conforms with their sectarian doomsday scenarios." Baldwin or no Baldwin, does any of this sound normal to you?

17 August 2004

An End to Winner Take All
AlterNet News Log, 16 August 2004
EXCERPT: An opportunity for Colorado citizens to change their state's electoral voting allocation to a winner take all system is on the state ballot for November. If passed, Colorado would become the first state to allocate electoral votes proportionately according to the popular votes.
What does this mean for the future? The AP cites Republican Gov. Bill Owens and Republican State Party Chairman Ted Halaby as saying it would lessen the state's clout in presidential elections, warning that candidates will ignore the state and its nine electoral votes if the measure passes.
But that's all wrong. If the measure passed, it would mean that a candidate with no shot at winning the majority of votes would still visit Colorado and listen to the issues of local residents. Imagine if this ballot were law in all 50 states for the 2004 election. Kerry would be spending time in Mississippi, shoring up his minority base, and Bush would be there too, ensuring his majority vote.
In short, candidates would have to pay attention to all of the United States, and would have less incentive to make special-case catered offers for various states' constituencies. Less chance we'd see endorsements of ethanol (Iowa) and coal (W. Virginia) as progressive fuel alternatives.

Misconceived Military Shuffle
NYT, 17 August 2004
EXCERPT: The troop redeployment plan announced yesterday by President Bush makes little long-term strategic sense. It is certain to strain crucial alliances, increase overall costs and dangerously weaken deterrence on the Korean peninsula at the worst possible moment. Meanwhile, it will do nothing to address the military's most pressing current need: relieving the chronic strain on ground forces that has resulted from failing to anticipate the long, and largely unilateral, American occupation of Iraq. Mr. Bush provided few new details yesterday, confirming only that over the next 10 years, about 60,000 to 70,000 uniformed troops, along with some 100,000 family members and civilian employees, would be transferred from bases and other military installations in Europe and Asia to the United States. ...Despite the Pentagon's denials, it seems deliberate that the two largest withdrawals have been proposed for countries that the Bush administration has had serious differences with in recent years, over Iraq in the German case, and over negotiating strategy with North Korea in the case of Seoul. Both countries have been working hard to patch up relations - South Korea is one of the few American allies with troops in Iraq - but the Pentagon does not seem interested in reciprocating.

Bush U-turns on Intel Czar Powers
By Shaun Waterman
UPI, 16 August 2004
EXCERPT: President George W. Bush, in an apparent reversal, has decided that the new national intelligence director recommended by the Sept. 11 Commission should have the budgetary and hire-fire authority that the commission wanted, one of the ten commissioners told United Press International. "I have very good reason to believe that is what the president intends," John Lehman, the Reagan-era Navy secretary said Sunday, confirming reports from a handful of journalists briefed Friday by a senior White House official. Lehman declined to elaborate on his reasons.

Saving the Vote
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT, 17 August 2004
EXCERPT: Everyone knows it, but not many politicians or mainstream journalists are willing to talk about it, for fear of sounding conspiracy-minded: there is a substantial chance that the result of the 2004 presidential election will be suspect. When I say that the result will be suspect, I don't mean that the election will, in fact, have been stolen. (We may never know.) I mean that there will be sufficient uncertainty about the honesty of the vote count that much of the world and many Americans will have serious doubts. How might the election result be suspect? Well, to take only one of several possibilities, suppose that Florida - where recent polls give John Kerry the lead - once again swings the election to George Bush.

Income Gap Up Over Two Decades, Data Show
Income Gap Between Richest and Middle-Income Americans Up Steadily Over Two Decades, Data Show
By Leigh Strope
AP,  16 August 2004
EXCERPT: Over two decades, the income gap has steadily increased between the richest Americans, who own homes and stocks and got big tax breaks, and those at the middle and bottom of the pay scale, whose paychecks buy less. The growing disparity is even more pronounced in this recovering economy. Wages are stagnant and the middle class is shouldering a larger tax burden. Prices for health care, housing, tuition, gas and food have soared. The wealthiest 20 percent of households in 1973 accounted for 44 percent of total U.S. income, according to the Census Bureau. Their share jumped to 50 percent in 2002, while everyone else's fell. For the bottom fifth, the share dropped from 4.2 percent to 3.5 percent. Jobs and the economy top the list of voter concerns this election year. President Bush touts a strong economy that is growing, but polls find that Americans have doubts and think jobs are scarce. John Kerry is trusted more on the economy, with Democrats talking regularly of "two Americas," divided between the rich and everyone else.

AUDIO LINK
Latest Bad Idea from Bush: National Sales Tax
Matthew Rothschild's daily two-minute commentaries
Progressive Magazine, 13 August 2004
MP3 file (1mb)
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Illinois to Help Residents Buy Drugs From Canada, and Afar
By MONICA DAVEY
NYT, 17 August 2004
EXCERPT: Opening a new front in the fight over the cost of prescription drugs, Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois is preparing to help residents of his state buy cheaper medicines from Britain and Ireland, as well as Canada. Aides to Mr. Blagojevich, a Democrat, said he would announce on Tuesday that Illinois would create a program, accessible on the Internet, so people could buy 100 of the most common drugs for 25 percent to 50 percent less than in most American drugstores. Federal authorities say it is illegal to buy drugs from outside the United States, but since early this year, officials in at least four other states - Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Dakota and Wisconsin - have set up Web sites that link residents to Canadian pharmacies. Expanding the market to Britain and Ireland, Mr. Blagojevich's aides said, will spread demand beyond Canada, where some suppliers have reported shortages of certain drugs. "The drug companies have pretty aggressively been shutting supplies to Canada, and we want to ensure that the supply will meet the demand," Abby Ottenhoff, a spokeswoman for Mr. Blagojevich, said. "Ultimately, they can't shut down supplies to the world to keep prices high in the United States."

'Data Quality' Law Is Nemesis Of Regulation
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post, 16 August 2004
Second of three articles
EXCERPT: A Washington Post analysis of government records indicates that in the first 20 months since the act was fully implemented, it has been used predominantly by industry. Setting aside the many Data Quality Act petitions filed to correct narrow typographical or factual errors in government publications or Web sites, the analysis found 39 petitions with potentially broad economic, policy or regulatory impact. Of those, 32 were filed by regulated industries, business or trade organizations or their lobbyists. Seven were filed by environmental or citizen groups. Some environmental groups are boycotting the act, adding to the imbalance in its use.
Among the petitions:
• The American Chemistry Council and others challenged data used by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) as it sought to ban wood treated with heavy metals and arsenic in playground equipment.
• Logging groups challenged Forest Service calculations used to justify restrictions on timber harvests.
• Sugar interests challenged the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration over dietary recommendations to limit sugar intake.
• The Salt Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce challenged data that led the National Institutes of Health to recommend that people cut back on salt.
• The Nickel Development Institute and other nickel interests challenged a government report on the hazards of that metal.
• The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers petitioned the CPSC to retract data that ranked the risk of lint fires in various clothes dryers.
Environmental and consumer groups say the Data Quality Act fits into a larger Bush administration agenda. In the past six months, more than 4,000 scientists, including dozens of Nobel laureates and 11 winners of the National Medal of Science, have signed statements accusing the administration of politicizing science. The White House's heavy editing of a key global-warming report, its efforts to emphasize abstinence rather than condoms in the war against AIDS and its alleged stacking of scientific advisory committees have drawn particular ire. But many scientists and public advocates believe that far more is at stake with the Data Quality Act. From their perspective, the act is shifting the authority over the nation's science into the politicized environment of the OMB -- a change, they say, that will favor big business. ..."The argument that it costs too much to protect people does not sell," said Thomas O. McGarity, a professor at the University of Texas Law School in Austin and president of the Washington-based Center for Progressive Regulation, a network of academics that supports regulatory action to protect health, safety and the environment. "But what does sell is this idea that the science is not good." Science is ever evolving and often hobbled by uncertainty, but policymakers have long recognized this and relied on weight-of-evidence arguments in making regulations, according to McGarity, other activists and Clinton administration officials. They point out that DDT was banned despite lingering doubts about its role in the decline of birds. Many other substances, including vinyl chloride and asbestos, also were regulated before their full effects were known.

Patriots all
Family of Iraq Abuse Whistleblower Threatened
Reuters, 16 August 2004
EXCERPT: Relatives of the U.S. soldier who sounded the alarm about abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison said on Monday the family was living in protective custody because of death threats against them. Reservist military police officer Staff Sgt. Joseph Darby alerted U.S. Army investigators about the abuse by fellow soldiers of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, a move his wife says has angered people in their community in western Maryland. "People were mean, saying he was a walking dead man, he was walking around with a bull's eye on his head. It was scary," said Bernadette Darby from Corriganville, Maryland. Mrs. Darby said it was difficult living in protective custody, and she missed her privacy. She did not say who was providing the protection. "There's always someone with you," she told ABC's "Good Morning America" show. Despite the threats, Mrs. Darby she believed her husband made the right choice exposing the abuse.

9/11 Commission Leaders Cite Gaps in Aviation Security
Kean: Terrorists 'target transportation'
From Mike Ahlers
CNN, 16 August 2004
EXCERPT: U.S. airlines continue to check passengers against incomplete, truncated lists of suspected terrorists, almost three years after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the heads of the 9/11 commission testified Monday. Appearing before a Senate panel, commission chairman Thomas Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton described that as one of numerous lapses that leave aviation vulnerable to another attack.

Absolutely non-attributable Bush style BS
Non-Arab Recruits Scout for Al-Qaeda
Officials provide detail on U.S. cells
By John Diamond and Toni Locy
USA TODAY, 16 August 2004
EXCERPT: Al-Qaeda allies are believed to be scouting U.S. targets, and the terror organization is using non-Arab recruits to avoid detection, U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials say. The FBI has counterterrorism investigations in virtually all 56 of its field offices but has not broken up a known surveillance cell, either because agents are tailing suspects who have not committed crimes or because they have descriptions but not identities. It is unclear how many al-Qaeda scouts are in the USA. “The FBI has their eye on or has opened several hundred investigations of people sympathetic to or supportive of” al-Qaeda, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said. “If we knew somebody was here as an operative — and we knew who they were or where they were — they wouldn't be on the street.” Information about active cells came from Ridge and three intelligence and law enforcement officials. The three officials wouldn't speak for attribution because the information they provided is classified. One of the three, a senior U.S. intelligence official, responded to criticism that the Bush administration raised the terrorism threat level based on information about surveillance al-Qaeda did years ago. [BWUSA emphasis]

Faith-based initiatives forthcoming
Study Finds Climate Shift Threatens California
By DEAN E. MURPHY
NYT, 17 August 2004
EXCERPT: A scientific study released on Monday presents an alarming view of climate changes in California, finding that by the end of the century rising temperatures could lead to a sevenfold increase in heat-related deaths in Los Angeles and imperil the state's wine and dairy industries. The study, published in the online version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offers the most detailed projection yet of changes in California as temperatures rise around the world because of building concentrations of heat-trapping gases. Under one of two scenarios, in which fossil fuel use continues at its present pace, the study determined that summertime high temperatures could increase by 15 degrees in some inland cities, putting their climate on par with that of Death Valley now. That scenario also foresaw a reduction of 73 percent to 90 percent in the snow pack in the Sierra Nevada, resulting in disrupted water supplies from the San Francisco Bay Area to the Central Valley. Even in the second scenario, which assumed significant increases in the use of renewable energy like wind and solar power, the study concluded that fossil fuel emissions could push average high temperatures up by four to six degrees - the difference, one author said, between the temperature in Yosemite National Park and downtown Sacramento. ...The study was conducted by 19 scientists from several universities and research institutions, including Stanford University, the University of California and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. It was financed by a variety of foundations as well as the Department of Energy and the California Energy Commission. Several of the scientists warned against dismissing the findings as overstated. "We have been studying this for 30 years, and the conclusions are getting increasingly clear, and increasingly consistent," said Dr. Stephen H. Schneider, a climate scientist at Stanford. He added, "We think this problem has too high a chance of happening and in negative incarnations for us to ignore it."

16 August 2004

F.B.I. Goes Knocking for Political Troublemakers
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
NYT, 16 August 2004
EXCERPT: The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been questioning political demonstrators across the country, and in rare cases even subpoenaing them, in an aggressive effort to forestall what officials say could be violent and disruptive protests at the Republican National Convention in New York. F.B.I. officials are urging agents to canvass their communities for information about planned disruptions aimed at the convention and other coming political events, and they say they have developed a list of people who they think may have information about possible violence. They say the inquiries, which began last month before the Democratic convention in Boston, are focused solely on possible crimes, not on dissent, at major political events. But some people contacted by the F.B.I. say they are mystified by the bureau's interest and felt harassed by questions about their political plans. "The message I took from it," said Sarah Bardwell, 21, an intern at a Denver antiwar group who was visited by six investigators a few weeks ago, "was that they were trying to intimidate us into not going to any protests and to let us know that, 'hey, we're watching you.' '' ...In an internal complaint, an F.B.I. employee charged that the bulletins improperly blurred the line between lawfully protected speech and illegal activity. But the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, in a five-page internal analysis obtained by The New York Times, disagreed. The office, which also made headlines in June in an opinion - since disavowed - that authorized the use of torture against terrorism suspects in some circumstances, said any First Amendment impact posed by the F.B.I.'s monitoring of the political protests was negligible and constitutional. ...civil rights advocates argued that the visits amounted to harassment. They said they saw the interrogations as part of a pattern of increasingly aggressive tactics by federal investigators in combating domestic terrorism. In an episode in February in Iowa, federal prosecutors subpoenaed Drake University for records on the sponsor of a campus antiwar forum. The demand was dropped after a community outcry.

No Pentagon Inquiry into US Troops 'Ordered to Ignore Prisoner Abuse'
By Suzanne Goldenberg
The Guardian (UK), 16 August 2004
EXCERPT: A unit of the Oregon national guard was ordered not to intervene on behalf of Iraqi prisoners who were being beaten and starved by their Iraqi jailers, it has emerged. The order, which compelled US forces to withdraw from a compound of Baghdad's interior ministry housing dozens of prisoners, was issued on June 29, the day after Iraq formally returned to sovereign rule under the interim administration of Iyad Allawi. The episode, reported in the Oregonian newspaper, was the first known instance of abuse by the new Iraqi authorities, the publication claimed. Under the terms of the handover, all forces in Iraq remain under Pentagon command, not that of the fledgling Iraqi government. US military codes require troops to report abuse. The US embassy in Baghdad confirmed the incident, and said it had asked Iraq's interior ministry to explain the "brutality". The Pentagon said it had no plans to investigate.

Ye ol' Bush Bag of Tricks
Suppress the Vote?
By BOB HERBERT
NYT, 16 August 2004
Courtesy of rdg
EXCERPT: The vile smell of voter suppression is all over this so-called investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Joseph Egan, an Orlando lawyer who represents Mr. Thomas, said: "The Voters League has workers who go into the community to do voter registration, drive people to the polls and help with absentee ballots. They are elderly women mostly. They get paid like $100 for four or five months' work, just to offset things like the cost of their gas. They see this political activity as an important contribution to their community. Some of the people in the community had never cast a ballot until the league came to their door and encouraged them to vote." Now, said Mr. Egan, the fear generated by state police officers going into people's homes as part of an ongoing criminal investigation related to voting is threatening to undo much of the good work of the league. He said, "One woman asked me, 'Am I going to go to jail now because I voted by absentee ballot?' " According to Mr. Egan, "People who have voted by absentee ballot for years are refusing to allow campaign workers to come to their homes. And volunteers who have participated for years in assisting people, particularly the elderly or handicapped, are scared and don't want to risk a criminal investigation." Florida is a state that's very much in play in the presidential election, with some polls showing John Kerry in the lead. A heavy-handed state police investigation that throws a blanket of fear over thousands of black voters can only help President Bush. The long and ugly tradition of suppressing the black vote is alive and thriving in the Sunshine State.

Reservists Say War Makes them Lose Jobs in US
By Larry Margasak
Associated Press, 16 August 2004
EXCERPT: Increasing numbers of National Guard and Reserve troops who have returned from war in Iraq and Afghanistan are encountering new battles with their civilian employers at home. Jobs were eliminated, benefits reduced and promotions forgotten. Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Labor Department reports receiving greater numbers of complaints under a 1994 law designed to give Guard and Reserve troops their old jobs back, or provide them with equivalent positions. Benefits and raises must be protected, as if the serviceman or servicewoman had never left. Some soldiers, however, are finding the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act can't protect them.

"My Pet Goat" Was a Cover for the President "Collecting His Thoughts"
G.W. Bush on Larry King Live
TomDispatch.com, 15 August 2004
EXCERPT: The President on Larry King Live finally puts to rest any doubts you had about what he was doing for those 7 minutes in a Florida classroom on September 11, 2001: "Well, I had just been told by [Chief of Staff] Andrew Card that America was under attack. And I was collecting my thoughts. And I was sitting with a bunch of young kids, and I made the decision there that we would let this part of the program finish, and then I would calmly stand up and thank the teacher and thank the children and go take care of business.…
"KING: Wasn't that the hardest seven minutes of your life?
"G. BUSH: Well, there's been a lot of hard moments in my life.
"KING: But at that moment, to hear that news. . . .
"G. BUSH: Yes, it was -- trying to understand exactly what it meant. But there have been a lot of hard moments."
   So My Pet Goat was just a cover. The President was actually collecting his thoughts and trying to understand exactly what IT meant before leaping on a plane and heading for Louisiana.
SEE ALSO:
The Imperfect Media Storm
or George Bush and the Temple of Doom
TomDispatch.com
EXCERPT: So here we are, hardly a year and a quarter beyond that "mission accomplished" moment and the Bush administration finds itself in the middle of Najaf, a most unathletic Indiana Jones facing the Temple of Doom. Since the moment just after 9/11 when our President briefly uttered the fatal word "crusade" (and then had to swiftly retract it), it seems as if we've never been heading anywhere else. Our troops, Humvees, tanks, Predator drones, Apache helicopters, and F-16s are all right there, just overhead or at moments only a few hundred yards from one of Islam's holiest spots. Who cares about motives, you couldn't have created a better recipe for a "clash of civilizations" if you wanted to.

Bush leading by example...
Uranium Reactors on Campus Raise Security Concerns
By MATTHEW L. WALD
NYT, 15 August 2004
EXCERPT: But its fuel is weapons-grade uranium. If it were stolen, experts say, it could give terrorists or criminals a major head start on an atomic bomb. And Wisconsin is not alone. Five other university research reactors around the country use weapons-grade fuel, even though the federal government has promised for more than two decades to reclaim their uranium and substitute a less enriched variety that is closer to the kind that commercial power plants use. ...The reactors at Wisconsin and the other universities - Oregon State, Washington State, Purdue, Texas A&M and the University of Florida - were first supplied with uranium during the cold war, as a spinoff of the government's Atoms for Peace program. The United States gave the material to research reactors around the world, offering to share nuclear technology if the recipient countries promised not to develop nuclear weapons. But since 1978, out of concern that the uranium might be turned into bomb fuel, the Department of Energy has spent millions of dollars to develop lower-grade fuel and convert scores of reactors to run on it. As of July 30, according to the Government Accountability Office (formerly the General Accounting Office), 39 of 105 research reactors worldwide had converted or were in the process. But the six campus reactors in this country are not among them.

Bush Forces a Shift In Regulatory Thrust
OSHA Made More Business-Friendly
By Amy Goldstein and Sarah Cohen
Washington Post, 15 August 2004
First of three articles
EXCERPT: Then, on the last day of 2003, in an action so obscure it was not mentioned in any major newspaper in the country, the administration canceled the rules (regarding tuberculosis in the work place). Voluntary measures, federal officials said, were effective enough to make regulation unnecessary. The demise of the decade-old plan of defense against tuberculosis reflects the way OSHA has altered its regulatory mission to embrace a more business-friendly posture. In the past 3 1/2 years, OSHA, the branch of the Labor Department in charge of workers' well-being, has eliminated nearly five times as many pending standards as it has completed. It has not started any major new health or safety rules, setting Bush apart from the previous three presidents, including Ronald Reagan . The changes within OSHA since George W. Bush took office illustrate the way that this administration has used the regulatory process to redirect the course of government. To examine this process, The Washington Post explored the Bush administration's approach to regulation from three perspectives. This article about OSHA traces the impact on one regulatory agency. Tomorrow's story will look at a lobbyist's 32-line, last-minute addition to a bill that created a tool for attacking the science used to support new regulations. Tuesday's article will document a one-word change in a regulation that allowed coal companies to accelerate efforts to strip away the tops of thousands of Appalachian mountains. ..."In the past, the business community worked to develop regulations that were acceptable," said Patrick R. Tyson, an Atlanta lawyer representing corporations in occupational safety matters who held senior positions at OSHA in the 1970s and '80s. "But now the game has changed, and the business community feels like they can kill any regulation they want."

New York Ready to Unleash Fury on Republicans
Sit-down protests and traditional dances as Democrats use every weapon to beat Bush
By Paul Harris
The Observer (UK), 15 August 2004
EXCERPT: The smiling face of former New York mayor Ed Koch beams down from posters all over the city. 'The Republicans are coming,' it says underneath. 'Make nice.' Fat chance. New York is bracing for one of the biggest showdowns in its political history as the Republican national convention comes to town at the end of the month. Meeting the army of delegates, politicians and lobbyists will be a vast array of protest groups that intend to make the Republicans' Big Apple stay as unpleasant as possible. Trying to keep order on the streets will be 20,000 police, secret servicemen and National Guard units. A quiet week seems out of the question.

Kerry is Playing into Bush's Hands with Pseudo-Military Posturing
By Peter Preston
The Guardian (UK), 16 August 2004
EXCERPT: Why is a 60-year-old millionaire in shirt and slacks touring America, saluting plump matrons with banners and teenagers waving flags? Because he's John Kerry and, almost four decades after four or so months of very active military service, he's running for president. No, wait. Saluting for president. It's an incongruous and depressing spectacle. There is, in a muted way, quite a lot to be said for Kerry. Watch him answering questions from black journalists in Washington last week and see how he handles the issues well: he's good at thoughtful policy discussion. His long years in the Senate haven't been wasted. He understands defence and intelligence. Maybe he still looks curiously lumpen on the stump - half Woody from Toy Story, half Van Heflin in Shane - but his Boston convention speech was decently eloquent. And he gave his daughter's hamster the kiss of life. In sum, Kerry and John Edwards make a balanced team - mixed gravitas and grin - which, nationally, is probably just ahead of Bush and Cheney - mixed gawp and grizzle - and doing rather better than that in a majority of the battleground states where November's election will be won and lost. So far, so promising. But somehow you feel that the real contest isn't joined yet - and meanwhile Kerry keeps on saluting, a nervous tic.

Help! Mom! There are Liberals Under My Bed!
These two items come courtesy of alert BushWhackedUSA reader G.S. in Colorado Springs. First, if you're sick of liberals taxing your income, silencing your right to express your religious beliefs, and forcing you to give up unhealthy habits, AND you've got kids, well, here's the perfect book for your family! With Help! Mom! There are Liberals Under My Bed! Katherine DeBrecht manages to boil down the seething resentment of Conservative America with a story even small children can understand! And if your kids still don't get into the swing of politics, perhaps you ought to shop for Presidential Campaign Barbie or a Dishonest Dubya action figure!

Who Is Anonymous?
He's Michael Scheuer. But why won't the Times and the Post say so?
By Jack Shafer
Slate, 13 August 2004
EXCERPT: Sussing out the identity of Anonymous isn't a parlor game, either, as investigative reporter Steve Weinberg insists in his review of Imperial Hubris in the Orlando Sentinel. It's a matter of public interest when a government official such as Anonymous criticizes the administration's handling of the war on al-Qaida and its invasion of Iraq; describes Osama Bin Laden and his allies as insurgents, not terrorists; and calls for "blood-soaked defensive military action" against Islamists who threaten the United States. Are these the views and recommendations of a first-rate mind, an intelligence crank, or a low-level munchkin? "Publication of such important books without the author's true name attached is unconscionable and counterproductive," Weinberg writes... What makes the Times' and Post's continued reluctance to name Anonymous even weirder is that reporter Jason Vest revealed his identity as senior CIA analyst Michael Scheuer in the July 2 edition of the Boston Phoenix. A variety of columnists and book reviewers writing in the Detroit Free Press, the Dallas Morning News, Orlando Sentinel (Weinberg), the Wall Street Journal editorial page (George Melloan), Salon, Slate, and for the UPI have published the name since. Meanwhile, Anonymous has been interviewed repeatedly on television (This Week, Hannity & Colmes, CNN), face unseen, to publicize his views. Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern named him on C-SPAN on July 22. Although USA Today did not identify Anonymous, it ran a lengthy editorial page interview with him (one cheer for them). The Los Angeles Times published a thorough, context-laden news story about Anonymous on July 1, quoting extensively from its interview with him, even supplying the first name of "Mike." (Two cheers for them.) Scheuer didn't choose his anonymity, as did Deep Throat, Joe Klein, and most other anonymice. The CIA thrust anonymity upon him as a pre-condition of publishing the book, as he confirmed to Vest during several telephone conversations. Vest writes that "Anonymous does not, in fact, want to be anonymous at all. …" Nor is Scheuer's CIA status secret, as was undercover officer Valerie Plame's, because he works on the overt side of the agency.

"Fahrenheit 9/11" Will Not Be Shown at Military Theaters
Reuters, 14 August 2004
EXCERPT: A spokesman for Fellowship Adventure Group claimed the military was stonewalling for obvious reasons. Judd Anstey, public affairs specialist for the Army and Air Force Exchange Service which books movies for military base theatres, denied any suggestion the decision not to book the film had anything to do with its content and was solely based on business. The organisation, called AAFES, is a non-appropriated government group, meaning that it is almost exclusively funded through its own ability to make money. The time between when "Fahrenheit 9/11" would be played in base theatres and when it would be sold on DVD was too short to allow it to make money, Anstey said. "This was based on business standards," he told Reuters. Anstey said it was only about a week ago that AAFES was told "Fahrenheit 9/11" would be available to the bases by August 16. By that time, AAFES had already booked base theatres with movies through September 3, and with a reported DVD release date of October 5, it simply didn't think enough base personnel would show up to make the movie profitable.

14-15 August 2004

Stem Cell Battles
NYT editorial, 15 August 2004
EXCERPT: Stem cell research moved to the forefront of the presidential campaign last week. The Democratic candidates said they would ease the Bush administration's restrictions on federal funding and quadruple the money available. Republicans retorted that they were the first to finance embryonic stem cell research and that the Democrats were cruelly inflating expectations for instant cures. Just as the debate was heating up, two developments suggested that the Democrats were right to call for expansion of this important research. An opinion piece in The New England Journal of Medicine asserted that many opportunities are being missed, or soon will be, for lack of federal grants to pursue promising avenues of research that have just opened up. Meanwhile, British regulators issued their first license allowing scientists to use cloning techniques to produce stem cells, thus opening the way for Britain to surge ahead in the most promising area of stem cell research. The Democrats clearly think they hold a winning card in stem cell research because of its potential, eventually, to yield treatments for diabetes, heart disease, neurological ailments and a host of other illnesses.

Defending the America from Freedom of Speech
Hecklers Banned at Bush Rallies
By Bill Plante
CBS, 13 August 2004
EXCERPT: The art of TV-friendly political stagecraft reaches new levels in this campaign. At "Ask President Bush" events, even the president makes no bones about the fact that he's speaking to invited guests. "Okay, I've asked some citizens to come and help me make my points," he said. As relaxed and affable as a talk show host, the president answers friendly questions -- which are often not questions at all. "Mr. President, I don't have a question. I've got three thank-yous," said one supporter. ... But what about inviting some voters who haven't yet made up their minds? "You mean the people who don't support Bush? They're only gonna sit and chat and you won't get to hear anything," said a backer. It's all about getting out the message without any distractions, and making sure that there's no public argument to spoil the party. [Emphasis by BWUSA]

PBS Adds Insult to Injury
By Eric Alterman
The Nation, 12 August 2004
EXCERPT: The far right's decades-long campaign to falsely brand PBS a leftist conspiracy--one that apparently included giving shows to such commies as William F. Buckley, Louis Rukeyser, Ben Wattenberg and Fortune magazine--has really hit pay dirt this year, first in creating a show around CNN's conservative talking head Tucker Carlson, and now, far more egregiously, in creating a program for the extremist editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. Crossfire co-host Tucker Carlson is a nice guy and among the least offensive of contemporary conservative pundits. Unfortunately, that is damn faint praise indeed. In recent weeks, the purposely inflammatory demagogy of PBS's newest host has included a description of John Edwards as "specializing in Jacuzzi cases," owing to the lawyer's successful representation of a small child who saw her intestines sucked out inside a wading pool. Carlson has compared the Democratic Party's efforts to keep track of its own racial data to those of Gestapo head and SS chief Heinrich Himmler, and he accused John Kerry of demanding that "dark skinned foreigners from the Middle East fight our war for us." No less odiously, he defended GOP smear tactics against the legless Democratic Vietnam veteran Max Cleland, who was linked with Osama bin Laden in one of the most scurrilous campaigns of the past century. Still, the insult of throwing up Carlson to quiet the whining of crybaby conservatives pales in comparison to the injury of offering up millions of dollars in taxpayer and viewer-donated resources of our public broadcasting service to the far-right ideologues behind the Journal Editorial Report. Short of turning the broadcast day over to Rush Limbaugh or Richard Mellon Scaife, it's difficult to imagine a more calculated effort to undermine PBS's intended mission of providing alternative programming than this subsidy to a wealthy, conservative corporation to produce yet another right-wing cable chat show. [Emphasis by BWUSA]

White House Jumped Gun on Politically-Timed Terror Alert
Capitol Hill Blue, 13 August 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush Administration jumped the gun with their high-profile "terror alert" two weeks ago -- an alert planned, coincidently, right on the heels of the Democratic National Convention. Two weeks ago, when Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge warned of possible al-Qaida attacks, the "where" was very specific: financial institutions in New York City, Washington and Newark, N.J. The "when," however, was a mystery. And since Ridge's announcement, the Bush administration has discovered no evidence of imminent plans by terrorists to attack U.S. buildings, a White House official admitted Thursday. Perhaps our announcement was premature," the official admitted sheepishly. Some documents and computer files seized in al-Qaida raids included surveillance reports of the financial buildings during 2000 and 2001, which prompted warnings Aug. 1 from the White House about possible threats. But nothing in the documents themselves has suggested any attack was planned soon, the official said. "I have not seen an indication of an imminent operation," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity with reporters from nearly a dozen news organizations. Investigators are still poring over volumes of the seized information.

US Trade Gap Widens to New Record
Reuters, 13 August 2004
EXCERPT: The U.S. trade deficit widened much more than expected in June, hitting a record $55.8 billion dollars as the biggest drop in exports in nearly three years combined with record imports, the government said on Friday. Wall Street economists had expected the deficit to widen, but looked for a gap of just $47 billion. In its report, the Commerce Department also revised May's trade shortfall to $46.9 billion from the previously reported $46.0 billion. The department said exports fell 4.3 percent to $92.8 billion in June, the biggest decline since September 2001 and the weakest performance since February.... The trade report showed the politically sensitive trade gap with China widened to a record $14.2 billion as exports eased and imports soared to an all-time high. U.S. manufacturers and labor groups complain that Beijing's policy of holding the value of its currency, the yuan, steady against the dollar has given it an unfair trade advantage. The Bush administration has claimed it is making progress getting China to move toward a more flexible currency regime, but Democrats want to ratchet up the pressure with a trade investigation. The report also showed the U.S. trade gap with Mexico reached a record.

Retirement in Peril: It's Not Too Late to Save America's Pensions
By Jonathan Tasini
TomPaine.com, 12 August 2004
EXCERPT: How did we get here, and what does this mean for the future of the middle class? A short-term answer is simply that companies used every loophole possible to avoid fully funding their pensions with annual contributions--but made sure that executives were still paid obscene amounts of money. Companies--like too many Americans--felt fat and happy in the 1990s when the stock market inflated the market values of the pension fund portfolios; those companies moved from safer investments like bonds into the riskier, casino-like atmosphere of the stock market. When the bubble burst, billions of dollars of pension fund value disappeared, creating the mess now facing a number of companies, which, at the same time, face competitive pressures. Workers and investors had no clue of the scope of the disaster because, shockingly, the law allows companies to keep secret the true health of the pension plans. Here's where the Wal-Martization of the economy enters into the picture. The old-style defined benefit pension plans are really a testament to the power of collective bargaining. As unions have lost power (thanks to a relentless drive by employers to break unions and prevent organizing of new members, with the helping hand of anti-union laws) the number of these plans has declined dramatically. In 1980, 27 percent of private sector workers belonged to single-employer plans; by 2001, that number had dropped to 15 percent.  Since 1992, only five--five--multi-employer plans have been formed. Translation: no unions, no decent pensions.

Cronkite Endorses Kucinich's Plan for Department of Peace
Column by Walter Cronkite
King Features Syndicate, 12 August 2004
EXCERPT: With this nation embroiled in what threatens to be an interminable "War on Terrorism," an idea put forward last year by Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich has, for me, considerable appeal. Kucinich, who was the one candidate in the Democratic primaries to unfailingly promote the party's traditional Franklin Roosevelt liberalism, proposed the establishment of a Department of Peace. Now he has introduced in the House HR 2459, a bill that would establish a Peace Department, adding a new cabinet post to the executive branch of government. The Department of Peace would "advise the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State on all matters relating to national security, including the protection of human rights and the prevention of, amelioration of, and de-escalation of unarmed and armed international conflict." The secretary of peace would serve as a delegate to the National Security Council and also would "provide training of all United States personnel who administer post-conflict reconstruction and demobilization in war-torn societies." In other words, the Department of Peace, with a highly trained and dedicated staff, would be a constant, working counterpoint to the Defense Department and its expenditure of billions of dollars to perfect the weapons of war.

13 August 2004

Case Against So-Called Terror Cell Headed for Dumpster
By Sarah Karush and John Solomon
Capitol Hill Blue, 12 August 2004
EXCEPT: The Bush administration's already troubled case against an accused terror cell in Detroit is being dealt another blow with revelations that a witness came forward after the trial to undercut a key piece of video evidence presented to jurors. Lawyers and Justice Department officials said Wednesday night that a man shown in a videotape of landmarks in New York, Las Vegas and California has told investigators the tape was an amateur film and not surveillance as prosecutors portrayed at the trial of four suspected terrorists. The witness interview was conducted in January, months after the trial in Detroit ended, and was turned over this summer to defense lawyers. It could deal a significant blow to the Bush administration's first major terror prosecution since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Tyranny in the Name of Freedom
By DAHLIA LITHWICK
NYT editorial, 12 August 2004
EXCERPT: So it has come down to this: You are at liberty to exercise your First Amendment right to assemble and to protest, so long as you do so from behind chain-link fences and razor wire, or miles from the audience you seek to address. The largely ignored "free-speech zone" at the Democratic convention in Boston last month was an affront to the spirit of the Constitution. The situation will be only slightly better when the Republicans gather this month in New York, where indiscriminate searches and the use of glorified veal cages for protesters have been limited by a federal judge. So far, the only protesters with access to the area next to Madison Square Garden are some anti-abortion Christians. High-fiving delegates evidently fosters little risk of violence. It's easy to forget that as passionate and violent as opposition to the Iraq war may be, it pales in comparison with the often bloody dissent of the Vietnam era, when much of the city of Washington was nevertheless a free-speech zone. It's tempting to say the difference this time lies in the perils of the post-9/11 world, but that argument assumes some meaningful link between domestic political protest and terrorism. There is no such link, except in the eyes of the Bush administration, which conflates the two both as a matter of law and of policy.

U.N. Report Cites Harassment at American Airports of Asylum Seekers
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
NYT, 13 August 2004
EXCERPT: A confidential report conducted by the United Nations in cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security has found that airport inspectors with the power to summarily deport illegal immigrants have sometimes intimidated and handcuffed travelers fleeing persecution, discouraged some from seeking political asylum and often lacked an understanding of asylum law. ...In its report, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees commended the department for working to safeguard people fleeing persecution, noting that most airport inspectors properly identified asylum seekers and correctly referred them for further interviews to ensure that their cases would be heard by an immigration judge. But the United Nations noted that problems remained at American airports - where summary deportations have occurred since 1997 - even after inspectors received training about the importance of protecting asylum seekers. The report found that inspectors at airports often failed to provide certified translators for asylum seekers who did not speak English, improperly notified consulates about the identity and detention of immigrants seeking asylum and in 14 cases mistakenly concluded that travelers who expressed a credible fear of persecution were not entitled to apply for asylum.

Painting the Economy Into a Corner
NYT editorial, 12 August 2004
EXCERPT: President Bush reacted decisively to this month's shockingly bad employment report - by quickly changing the topic to terror. The Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, also focused elsewhere, namely on rising oil prices. Mr. Greenspan used inflationary energy costs as the rationale for raising interest rates a quarter point, despite the drastic slump in hiring and a recent slowdown in productivity growth. What neither man seems ready to acknowledge outright is that policy makers have run out of tools for stewarding an economy that - nearly three years into a recovery - has yet to flourish and may even be downshifting to neutral. The president's fiscal policies, mainly high-end tax cuts, have resulted in a record federal budget deficit without spurring hiring or income growth. If Mr. Bush continues on the tax-cut path, continuing high deficits will further threaten job creation and living standards. Mr. Greenspan passed up opportunities to discourage Mr. Bush's disastrous tax-cut strategy back when it might have done some good. Instead, the Fed pursued its own stimulative policy, pushing interest rates to the lowest level in a generation. One result has been a debt load that is a big factor in the overall decline in households' net worth, despite the rise in housing values. That alone argues for tightening the money spigot. Another reason for raising rates is that the continuation of a cheap-money policy would probably precipitate inflation, as a glut of dollars would eventually feed rising prices. Mr. Bush and Mr. Greenspan have now exhausted almost all of their stimulus options. The economy is on its own, and it is not clear whether it is on track for a stronger recovery in the second half of the year.

CBO Report Finds Tax Cuts Heavily Favor the Wealthy
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
NYT, 13 August 2004
EXCERPT: Fully one-third of President Bush's tax cuts in the last three years have gone to people with the top 1 percent of income, who have earned an average of $1.2 million annually, according to a report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to be published Friday. The report calculated that households with incomes in that top 1 percent were receiving an average tax cut of $78,460 this year, while households in the middle 20 percent of earnings - averaging about $57,000 a year - were getting an average cut of only $1,090. The new estimates confirm what independent tax analysts have long said: that Mr. Bush's tax cuts have been heavily skewed to the very wealthiest taxpayers. Those are also the people, however, who pay a disproportionate share of federal income taxes. The calculations, which were requested by Congressional Democrats, are all but certain to intensify a central debate between Mr. Bush and Senator John F. Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee. Mr. Bush has argued that the tax cuts provided crucial support to the economy at a time when it was mired in a recession and reeling from the effects of a stock market collapse, terrorist attacks and corporate scandals.

Administration to Sacrifice Western Wilderness to Oil and Gas
BushGreenWatch, 11 August 2004
EXCERPT: In a familiar refrain favoring development over conservation, the Bush Administration is ramping up to sacrifice some of America's finest Western wilderness to oil and gas development.
SEE ALSO: Dissenting Scientist Fired by Administration's Fish and Wildlife Service (BGW)

Escape from Oil Addiction: America's First Hybrid Vehicle
By Jeff Rickert
TomPaine.com, 12 August 2004
EXCERPT: When Ford released its new hybrid vehicle last week, some environmental groups jeered. But some, including the Sierra Club and others, adopted the positive reinforcement strategy‹noting that Ford needs to do more, but applauding the hybrid as a step toward weaning America off its oil habit. Here, Rickert of the Apollo Alliance, argues the new Ford product shows practices that benefit the environment can also benefit workers.

Kerry Faults Bush Over Opposition to Drugs From Canada
By JODI WILGOREN
NYT, 12 August 2004
EXCERPT: Hitting hard on an issue of deep concern to older voters, Senator John Kerry on Wednesday promised an overhaul of the Medicare prescription drug law, saying President Bush had personally "stood in the way" of importing drugs from Canada, which advocates say would significantly reduce costs. "George Bush stood right there and said, 'Nope, we're not going to help people to have lower cost drugs in America, we're going to help the big drug companies get a great big windfall,' " Mr. Kerry said.

Poll Gives Kerry 6-Point Lead Over Bush in Florida
Reuters, 12 August 2004
EXCERPT: Democrat John Kerry leads President Bush 47 percent to 41 percent among registered voters in Florida, according to a poll released on Thursday that showed independent Ralph Nader with 4 percent. In a two-way race, Kerry leads Bush 49 percent to 42 percent, according to the poll of 1,092 registered Florida voters conducted last week by the Connecticut-based Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. The poll's error margin was three percentage points. Among independent voters in the key battleground state, 51 percent supported Kerry while 34 percent said they would vote for Bush and 12 percent were undecided. A similar poll taken in late June before the Democratic convention showed Bush and Kerry tied at 43 percent among registered voters, with Kerry then holding a 12-point lead over Bush among independent voters. The poll showed most Florida voters have already made up their minds, with only 12 percent saying they might change their choice in the weeks ahead.

Closing the 'Religion Gap'
By Eyal Press
The Nation, 12 August 2004
EXCERPT: At last month's Democratic convention, few words were uttered more frequently than the one that seems to roll most easily off the tongue of George W. Bush: faith. "Let me say it plainly," announced John Kerry in his acceptance speech. "In this campaign, we welcome people of faith." John Edwards thanked his parents, Wallace and Bobbie, for instilling in him an appreciation of "faith" from an early age. Barack Obama declared that Kerry "understands the ideals of community, faith and service," and added, to those who think only Republicans turn to religion for inspiration, "We worship an awesome God in the blue states." That Democrats are eager to propagate this message is not surprising. The United States is, after all, an astoundingly religious country. And in recent decades, Americans who take their religion seriously have been flocking to the GOP in numbers that have left Democratic strategists alarmed.
SEE ALSO: California's Supreme Court Declares Gay Marriages Void (AP)
SEE ALSO: New Jersey Governor Resigns, Disclosing Gay Affair (NYT)

Back to Archive Index

18 August 2004

Cleric Rebuffs Iraqi Mediators; Battle in Najaf Continues
By ALEX BERENSON and SABRINA TAVERNISE
NYT, 17 August 2004
EXCERPT: The rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr refused to meet here on Tuesday with a peace delegation that traveled from a national conference in Baghdad, and fighting between American forces and his Shiite militia intensified. It is not yet clear whether Mr. Sadr's refusal to meet the delegates will scuttle the chance for talks between him and the interim Iraqi government. Members of the mission said they were not upset that Mr. Sadr had turned them away, and both sides said lower-level discussions had been cordial. The delegation had come to ask that Mr. Sadr give up control of the Imam Ali shrine and join the political process in return for amnesty for his fighters. For almost two weeks, his forces have battled Americans in Najaf, in the Sadr City district in Baghdad, and in several cities across southern Iraq.

The Outing of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan: State of Play
Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 18 August 2004
EXCERPT: Journalism is often defined as an attempt to "catch history on the run." We historians, when writing history, most often have at hand a range of documents on an issue, and the luxury of being able to weigh them against one another. In trying to track contemporary affairs, the facts are often murky and often only a single source comes forward, who may or may not be reliable. Here is what we now know.

AUDIO/VIDEO LINK
Evolving Empire: An Analysis of Bush's Major Troop Realignment
Amy Goodman interviews Chalmers Johnson
Democracy Now!, 17 August 2004
EXCERPT: In talking about our over 700 military bases abroad, the story is in the details, and Bush simply doesn't tell us the details. He omits to tell us the bases that are being opened as distinct from the ones that are being closed. For all of the endless talk by this administration about our support for democracy, he doesn't tell us that the new bases are being opened in some of the most autocratic or -- military dictatorships that exist around the world, whereas they're actually withdrawing troops from two of the genuine democracies that did not join the coalition of the consenting, so called, namely South Korea and Germany. There is a very open question of whether this will actually occur despite what he said. Secretary Rumsfeld is in great trouble with the military, and he and above all, Douglas Fife, his assistant who has been in charge of this, seem to have no real knowledge at all of inter-service rivalries and how strong they can be. ... Well, I don't see that it has anything to do with the war on terror. That is to say the war on terror -- we have applied wrongly an overly military approach to it from the beginning. There is no question that the situation is worse today than it was on 9/11. That is, between 1993 and 2001, including 9/11, al Qaeda managed to carry out five major bombings internationally. In the three years since 9/11, down to and including the attacks in Riyadh, the suicide bombings in Istanbul, the bombings of the commuter railroads in Madrid, they have carried out well over 20 that -- Rumsfeld asked last October, you know, we need a measure of how we're doing in the war on terrorism. Well, baby, we have got a measure. We're losing it. We're losing it rather badly, and it's because of an excessively military approach to these problems without any real understanding of the needs to alter our foreign policy in order to do the only known way to deal with terrorism. To try and separate the activists who are incorrigible from their passive supporters. The only way so that you can get information from their passive supporters on who the activists are and arrest them in courts of law. The only way to separate the activists from their passive supporters is to recognize the legitimacy of the grievances of their passive supporters, grievances that are easily illustrated in the Middle East by the fact that we have American troops in Iraq, that we are the world's sole supporters of the Sharon government in Israel, and its extremely militaristic policies toward the essentially defenseless Palestinians. The result is that the entire Islamic world are now passive supporters of al Qaeda.

It seems the 'special relationship' extends to prison abuse...
Israel Orders Guards to Eat in Front of Hunger-Striking Prisoners
BBC News, 16 August 2004
EXCERPT: Israel has launched a psychological war against hundreds of Palestinian inmates on hunger strike for better conditions. Prison officers are setting up barbecues outside cells and have told guards to eat in front of prisoners. The fast has entered its second day as about 1,600 prisoners press for an end to strip searches, increased family visits and access to public telephones. Organisers said the remainder of 7,500 detainees would join the liquids-only protest by the end of the week. But Israel's security minister has said they would not bow to pressure and the prisoners could starve "until death". "They can strike for a day, a month, until death. We will ward off this strike and it will be as if it never happened," said Tzahi Hanegbi.
SEE ALSO: Sharon Orders 1,000 New Settlement Homes in West Bank (Guardian)

Global Warming: Heat Waves Here to Stay
By Tim Radford
The Guardian (UK), 13 August 2004
EXCERPT: Heatwaves of the kind that killed 30,000 people in Europe last year will become more frequent, more intense and longer-lasting, according to reports by US scientists today. Gerald Meehl and Claudia Tebaldi of the US national centre for atmosphere research (NCAR) report in the journal Science that the predicted increase in heat-absorbing greenhouse gases over the next hundred years is likely to intensify the pattern of heatwaves established in Europe and North America. Computer models show that heatwaves will become more severe in the south and west of the US and the Mediterranean. "It's the extreme weather and climate events that will have some of the most severe impacts on society as climate changes," said Dr Meehl. The study backs up a prediction made by Swiss scientists, earlier this year that 2003 was a "summer of the future" for Europe.
SEE ALSO: Hurrican Charley Typical of Predicted Extreme Weather (Democracy Now!)
SEE ALSO: World Faces Population Explosion (Guardian)
SEE ALSO: Bush to Sacrifice Western Wilderness to Oil and Gas (BGW)