on things being worse than you even imagined...

from the BBC:

US held youngsters at Abu Ghraib
A US military intelligence officer leads an Iraqi prisoner at Abu Ghraib
The US military says no children suffered abuse at Abu Ghraib
Children as young as 11 years old were held at Abu Ghraib, the Iraqi prison at the centre of the US prisoner abuse scandal, official documents reveal.

Brig Gen Janis Karpinski, formerly in charge of the jail, gave details of young people and women held there.

Her assertion was among documents obtained via legal action by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

on putting your money where you mouth is....

DAILY GRILL--from today's American Progress Report

"People on both sides of the aisle have called upon the administration to submit a budget that helps meet our obligations of – our goal of reducing the deficit in half over a five-year period, and this budget does just that."

– President Bush, 2/7/05

VERSUS

"Over the 2006-2015 period, the president's proposals would increase the total deficit by an estimated $1.6 trillion."

– Congressional Budget Office, analysis of White House budget, 3/7/05

on more 'hard work' that didn't get done

salon.com's war room summarizes today's NYT article about Bushco's missteps and failures in "supporting our troops"

Failing the troops

Again and again on the presidential campaign trial, George W. Bush railed against John Kerry for voting against an $87 billion supplemental appropriation for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. After Kerry said the matter was "complicated" -- he wanted to finance the $87 billion by rolling back some of Bush's tax cuts -- Bush turned the issue into a centerpiece of his stump speech. To huge applause from his hand-picked audiences, Bush would say, "There is nothing complicated about supporting our troops in combat."

Well, then, how will the president explain the report in this morning's New York Times detailing the administration's bumbling in providing body armor for those troops? While Donald Rumsfeld and others on Bush's team have long insisted that the administration is providing the troops with the best equipment possible just as quickly as possible, the Times' report proves otherwise. A month into the Iraq war -- when the administration was still in deep denial about the insurgency to come -- the Army shut down orders for body armor for many of the troops in Iraq, the Times says.

A month later, the Army reversed course, but the stop-and-start action was only the beginning of the problems in getting body armor to troops. Once the Army began ordering body armor again, the Times reports, it took 167 days "just to start getting the bulletproof vests to soldiers in Iraq." Other countries ordered similar vests from a U.S. supplier and got them to their soldiers in Iraq in just 12 days, the Times says. More than 200 U.S. soldiers were killed between the time the Pentagon shut down orders for body armor and the time that new vests finally started arriving in Iraq again; if any of those soldiers died because they lacked the body armor, the administration plainly bears at least some of the blame.

The Times' investigation reveals any number of other failings in the administration's effort to "support the troops." Among them: The Pentagon contracted with a former employee to manufacture the ceramic plates needed for the body armor even though his company had never successfully manufactured anything -- and ultimately failed to manufacture the ceramic plates, too; the Pentagon created so many delays in the process of contracting for body armor that one manufacturer was forced to lay off employees and shut down its plant for two months while soldiers were waiting for their vests; the Pentagon failed to push U.S. manufacturers to build armor-plating for Humvees at adequate rates; and, at least in the eyes of some troops, the military punished soldiers who spoke out about the problems the delays caused.

It turns out that supporting the troops isn't just complicated -- it's "hard work," too. For all of its yellow-ribbon, bumper-sticker politics, the administration appears not to have done it so well.

-- Tim Grieve

[07:17 EST, March 7, 2005]

"gannons everywhere"

for those of you following the shenanigannons...

salon.com's War Room has this to report:

Gannons everywhere

On Monday, a fake reporter infiltrated the press corps at a question-and-answer session in front of New York's City Hall. Disguised in a fake mustache and hair piece in an obvious spoof of discredited White House reporter "Jeff Gannon," the intruder identified himself as "Dino Ironbody." He got City Council Speaker Gifford Miller's attention and asked: "How do you feel about the president's awesome plan to privatize Social Security?"

Miller caught on right away. "I'm not such a big fan of the president's plan to private Social Security," he answered. "I think Social Security has worked pretty well for generations and we outta stick with something that works."

The reporter was Daily Show correspondent Rob Corddry, shooting a segment that will air on Thursday night's show.

-- Julia Scott

[16:00 EST, March 3, 2005]

on "hard work"

it seems that "it's hard work!" is quickly becoming a refrain throughout the bush administration--everyone liked it so much when bush used it in his debate performances...

CIA Director Goss amazed at his workload by Ryan Pearson
March 2, 2005 | Simi Valley, Calif. -- In a rare public appearance Wednesday, CIA Director Porter Goss said he is overwhelmed by the many duties of his job, including devoting five hours out of every day to prepare for and deliver intelligence briefings to President Bush.

"The jobs I'm being asked to do, the five hats that I wear, are too much for this mortal," Goss said. "I'm a little amazed at the workload."

bill moyers on the rapture, the environment

from alternet.org

"One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts...
read more

on calculating your losses

so, try out this nifty device to calculate what YOU will lose under Bush's social security privatization

gleeful about terror empire 

on lovin' that josh marshall guy...

From yesterday's Talking Points Memo, by Joshua Micah Marshall, where he discusses Bush's repeated reluctance to spell out what he plans to do with Social Security, such as in statements like this: "The tendency in Washington is, ‘OK, Mr. President, you play your cards now and we’ll decide if we’re going to play ours. I’m not going to do that. I’m keeping them close to the vest."

Marshall replies: "Sure, yes, there's legislative politicking and making the first move and all that. But this goes a bit beyond that. The president is pushing this. This is all about him. Absent initiative from him, replacing Social Security with private accounts wouldn't even be on the agenda. Though the policy has some ardent Republican supporters, the impetus all comes from him.

When you brush away all the legislative gobbledygook and beltway jockeying, you have a president who wants to put what is probably the most popular government program in American history under the knife and he won't even say what he wants to do to it.

Shouldn't his critics just be saying over and over: level with the public? Tell them what you want to do to Social Security."

on being good accountants... LOL

from today's War Room, Salon.com

"Where did the money go?

As members of Congress consider the Bush administration's request for another $82 billion in military funding -- most of which will go to a war that was supposed to have cost about $50 billion total -- they might think about how the administration has handled finances in Iraq so far.

As we noted last month, the inspector general assigned to audit reconstruction efforts says there's no way to know what became of $8.8 billion that was once in the hands of the Coalition Provisional Authority. A hearing before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee brought forth more news on that front Monday. At the hearing -- called by Democrats who lack the numbers to hold actual congressional investigations -- a lawyer for two whistleblowers said that the Coalition Provisional Authority paid the Republican-friendly security firm Custer Battles $15 million to provide security for civilian flights at Baghdad International Airport.

The catch, according to today's Washington Post: No planes actually flew during the contract term.

-- Tim Grieve

[10:29 EST, Feb. 15, 2005]

on just not being shocked, at all

U.S. missile defense system flunks test

on supporting progressive action

with Dean now the new DNC chair, we've got a chance to 'act blue'--that is, start standing up for what we believe.

Dean said this, when asked about Bush's budget: "As far as I'm concerned, this budget does two things. It brings Enron-style accounting to the nation's capital, and it demonstrates once what all Americans are beginning to see: You cannot trust Republicans with your money."

I love it!!! So...here's the deal. If we want change to happen, we gotta support it. A slew of progressive groups have joined together to form ActBlue, a collective fundraising and campaign organization to push forward progressive politics.

As DailyKos writes, let's get Dean's back.

Contribution amount: $

In just a day and a half, they've raised more than 100,000k. From just 2000 people. So give a little...it will help a lot.

on being combat-ready

from the Independent:

Pentagon covers up failure to train and recruit local security forces

Police and army numbers falling far short of projections as post-election violence surges and wait for results drags on

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington, Kim Sengupta in Basra, and Raymond Whitaker in London, 13 February 2005

"Training of Iraq's security forces, crucial to any exit strategy for Britain and the US, is going so badly that the Pentagon has stopped giving figures for the number of combat-ready indigenous troops, The Independent on Sunday has learned.

"Instead, only figures for troops "on hand" are issued. The small number of soldiers, national guardsmen and police capable of operating against the country's bloody insurgency is concealed in an overall total of Iraqis in uniform, which includes raw recruits and police who have gone on duty after as little as three weeks' training. In some cases they have no weapons, body armour or even documents to show they are in the police.

"The resulting confusion over numbers has allowed the US administration to claim that it is half-way to meeting the target of training almost 270,000 Iraqi forces, including around 52,000 troops and 135,000 Iraqi policemen. The reality, according to experts, is that there may be as few as 5,000 troops who could be considered combat ready."

press catching on to Gannon propaganda, finally

from Houston Chronicle:

Fake reporter's questioning of the president fits into the administration's widening pattern of manufactured journalism.

"The unmasking of an alleged journalist who used a pseudonym to gain access to White House briefings and news conferences raises more questions about the Bush administration's tactics for securing favorable news. James Guckert, who used the Talon News byline "Jeff Gannon," managed to get access to the White House on a daily basis for two years.

"Guckert questioned President Bush at a January news conference last month, tossing a softball query that ridiculed Democrats for "being divorced from reality." The organization Guckert worked for turned out to be an arm of a partisan group, GOPUSA, a conservative Web site based in Houston and dedicated to "spreading the conservative message throughout America." It turns out Talon News was created only a few days before Guckert first applied for a White House daily pass. . . .

"The practice of buying ostensibly independent reporters and writers to shill for politicians deceives the public and corrupts the free media. Allowing fake reporters to compete with credentialed journalists for sparse press conference time with the leader of the free world demeans the whole process."

on great finds...

beautiful art, commentary and music reviews blog: Sasha Frere Jones
http://www.sashafrerejones.com/

sfj-lauging obey guys 

sfj-talk is cheap 

on taking a new direction

i've been following the rise of Howard Dean to DNC Chair. it's been pretty exciting, i have to say. the grassroots and the blogosphere really were able to make this happen, and it give me a lot of hope.

here's what Dean said just recently (cut and pasted from Salon.com's War Room):
...Dean said that Democrats can't make progress in more conservative states until they start talking to voters one-on-one. "It is going to take a lot of work, and I'm going to be asking for a lot from all of you," Dean told Democrats in his acceptance speech. "We can't run 18-state presidential campaigns and expect to win. We have a strategy for every state and territory, and it's very simple: Show up. People will vote for Democrats in Texas and Utah and West Virginia if we knock on their doors, introduce ourselves, and tell them what we believe. That's what organization allows us to do."

When Democrats start those conversations, Dean said, they'll begin the work of framing the political debate on their own terms. "We frame the issues," Dean said. "The Republicans will not tell America what the Democratic agenda is. We will do that."

and on Bush's budget...? Dean:

"As far as I'm concerned, this budget does two things," Dean said. "It brings Enron-style accounting to the nation's capital, and it demonstrates once what all Americans are beginning to see: You cannot trust Republicans with your money."

So...here's the deal. If we want change to happen, we gotta support it. A slew of progressive groups have joined together to form ActBlue, a collective fundraising and campaign organization to push forward progressive politics.


As DailyKos writes, let's get Dean's back.

Contribution amount: $

In just three hours, they've raised more than 30k. From just 650 people. So give a little...it will help a lot.

talon news scrubs gannon himself from their website

too weird. i will be outraged if the mainstream media does not pick this up.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/9/12058/65036

on PropaGannon (Jeff Gannon, GOP media mole)

there has been a flurry of activity about "Jeff Gannon" (alias), a GOP flunky posing as a journalist who is regularly called upon in White House Press Conferences. The good people at dailykos.com have been doing a lot of searching to figure out who this guy is and who's paying him to shill for the White House. It looks like, at best, he is a shill, and at worst, he was the central link in the exposure of Valerie Plame, CIA agent, wife of Joe Wilson, who called the White House on the false claims about the Niger yellowcake.

Looks like the hard work has paid off. Rep. Slaughter is calling for a Congressional investigation into this matter. Check it out! (for background, here)

My favorite part of her letter to Bush, a great summary:

"According to several credible reports, "Mr. Gannon" has been repeatedly credentialed as a member of the White House press corps by your office and has been regularly called upon in White House press briefings by your Press Secretary Scott McClellan, despite the fact evidence shows that "Mr. Gannon" is a Republican political operative, uses a false name, has phony or questionable journalistic credentials, is known for plagiarizing much of the "news" he reports, and according to several web reports, may have ties to the promotion of the prostitution of military personnel."

on cutting ineffective programs from the budget

from www.dailykos.com

Abstinence-only education budget *increased*
by kos
Tue Feb 8th, 2005 at 09:27:11 PST

Remember when Bush promised to cut only those federal programs that were "ineffective" or "duplicative"?

He should've added "or are demanded by my base" to that list.

Abstinence-only sex education programs have had "little impact" on Texas teenagers' behavior, according to an ongoing study funded by the Texas Department of Health and presented to state officials last week, the Dallas Morning News reports. Buzz Pruitt, professor of health and kinesiology at Texas A&M University, and colleagues examined five abstinence-only sex education programs at more than 24 schools across Texas. For the study, junior high and high school students filled out an anonymous 10-page questionnaire on their sexual behavior. The study found that 23% of ninth-grade girls reported having had sexual intercourse before they received abstinence education, a percentage below the national average. However, the study found that 28% of the same girls reported having had sexual intercourse after receiving abstinence education, a percentage that is "closer to that of their peers across the state," according to the Morning News. In addition, the study found that the percentage of ninth-grade boys reporting having had sexual intercourse remained unchanged before and after abstinence education; however, the percentage of 10th grade boys reporting sexual activity "jumped" from 24% to 39% after participating in abstinence education, according to the Morning News. "We didn't find strong evidence of program effect," Pruitt said, adding, "We didn't find what many would like for us to find."

So here we have a federal program that is clearly ineffective (and we don't need a study to know that teens will have sex whether we like it or not). So according to Bush's criteria, it should be slated for elimination.

You can see the punchline coming a mile away:

If the budget is approved, abstinence education would get $206 million, an increase of $39 million.

Abortions are up during Bush's term. Divorces are up during Bush's term. And, thanks to abstinence-only education, it looks like teen sex is also up during Bush's term.

on fuzzy math

from today's salon.com War Room:

"We've told you about some of the tricks in the president's budget proposal. The Progress Report puts a nice, fine point on another one today:

"The budget includes over a billion dollars in revenue from drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), even though Congress hasn't authorized such drilling and has rejected President Bush's proposal to open ANWR to oil exploration for the last four years. Budget Director Josh Bolten defended the move, claiming, 'the budget is the right place to present the entirety of the president's policies, so all of his proposals are reflected in there.'"

As the Progress Report asks, "Really?" If the budget is the "right place to present the entirety of the president's policies," why doesn't it reflect the cost of operations in Iraq after this year or the trillions of dollars in borrowing that will be needed to fund the president's Social Security scheme?

Maybe the White House has the numbers all worked out and we just don't understand. After all, remember how the war in Iraq cost "under $50 billion," and how Iraq's oil revenues allowed it to "finance its own reconstruction?"

-- Tim Grieve

on the continuing insurgency, vol. 2

from democracynow.org, 2/7/05:

75 Killed in Iraq as Violence Continues After Elections
In Iraq, at least 75 people have died over the past three days in violence across the country. Earlier today, in Mosul a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a hospital killing 12 police officers. In Baqouba a car bomb targeted the provincial police headquarters. 13 people died in the attack and 18 others were injured. On Sunday, 22 Iraqi security forces were killed when a police station south of Baghdad was attacked. On Saturday at least 33 Iraqis died including a member of the Baghdad city council. Meanwhile on Friday the Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena was kidnapped while reporting near Baghdad University. The 56-year-old woman writes for the Italian daily Il Manifesto. In other Iraq news, the New York Times is reporting that leading Shiite clerics are pushing for the new Iraqi constitution to be based on Islamic law. Early election results show the Shiite coalition backed by the Grand Ayatollah Sistani have a commanding lead over the secular Shiite ticket headed by interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. Time Magazine is also reporting a new scandal has emerged at the U.S-run prison Abu Ghraib. According to the magazine, U.S. jail officials allowed amputations to be performed on detainees by nondoctors. Medical personnel also recycled chest tubs from the dead to the living. And in at least one case, a medic was ordered to cover up a homicide.

on wtf????!!!!! abu ghraib gets worse.

thanks to rechan on livejournal.com

"Unqualified US military medics stationed at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison carried out amputations, recycled used chest tubes and lacked medical supplies to treat the overcrowded jail's inmates after the fall of Baghdad, according to a report.

"The Time magazine report, to hit newsstands Monday, also said that a medic was ordered, by one account, to cover up a homicide inside the jail.

"Although the prison just outside Baghdad was jammed with as many as 7,000 detainees -- some of whom displayed serious mental illnesses -- no US doctor was in residence for most of 2003 following the US-led invasion of Iraq.

"The report said "with straitjackets unavailable, tethers -- like the leash held by Private Lynndie England -- were put to use at Abu Ghraib to control unruly or mentally disturbed detainees, sometimes with the concurrence of a doctor."

Source

on what the rest of the world saw, inauguration day

What the rest of the world watched on Inauguration Day

By Joan Chittister, OSB

Dublin, on U.S. Inauguration Day, didn't seem to notice. Oh, they played a few clips that night of the American president saying, "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands."

But that was not their lead story.

The picture on the front page of The Irish Times was a large four-color picture of a small Iraqi girl. Her little body was a coil of steel. She sat knees up, cowering, screaming madly into the dark night. Her white clothes and spread hands and small tight face were blood-spattered. The blood was the blood of her father and mother, shot through the car window in Tal Afar by American soldiers while she sat beside her parents in the car, her four brothers and sisters in the back seat.

on listening more closely

about Ward Churchill, and the controversial statement he made regarding some of the people who died on September 11. this controversy is being blown out of proportion to Churchill's actual argument, and is being used to further restrict free speech and intimidate dissidents.

"In the last few days there has been widespread and grossly inaccurate media coverage concerning my analysis of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, coverage that has resulted in defamation of my character and threats against my life. What I actually said has been lost, indeed turned into the opposite of itself, and I hope the following facts will be reported at least to the same extent that the fabrications have been.

read further

on not being surprised...

HALLIBURTON – THE BIG PAYOFF: In "great news" for Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, the United States Army will depart from normal policy and "not withhold future payments to Halliburton Co., despite audit reports…that said the giant logistical contractor had not properly accounted for a wide variety of work in Iraq and Kuwait." The Army's decision, which would bankroll $60 million a month more to Vice President Cheney's former firm, comes in direct opposition to the counsel of its own auditors that had recommended the withholding of 15 percent of payments while the "billing disputes" were being figured out. There have been repeated questions as to "whether Halliburton received favored treatment" thanks to its relationship to the vice president.

from today's American Progress Report.

doig painting 

on the continuing insurgency

it seems that the election did not convince all the insurgents. quelle surprise.

Militants Ambush 50-Strong Iraqi Police Convoy
By Gideon Long

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi insurgents staged a major ambush on a road south of Baghdad Thursday, killing two policemen, wounding 14 and leaving at least 36 missing on the worst day of violence since last Sunday's election.

on putting your money where your mouth is

concerning bush's rhetoric vs. his budget. american progress report breaks it down for us. bold internal to paragraphs is my edit.

GANGING UP ON AMERICAN YOUTH: President Bush said he wanted to increase his focus on giving "young men in our cities, better options than apathy, or gangs, or jail." Time to finally put his money where his mouth is. The president has proposed a 40 percent cut in federal juvenile crime prevention funds, which would effectively "pull the plug" on local programs that reduce gang and youth violence. He consistently has attempted to eliminate all funding for Youth Opportunity Grants, a program that gives job training to young people. In 2002 that program was funded at $225 million, in 2003 he proposed funding only $45 million ($43.5 million was actually funded) and in the 2004 budget, he proposed eliminating the program. Congress accepted his recommendation and funding has been eliminated. Finally, two federal banking agencies headed by Bush appointees are trying to change laws that would cripple the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), a civil rights law prohibiting discrimination by banks against people who live in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.

A CAPITAL DEFENSE: Last night, the president proposed a special training for defense counsel in capital cases, "because people on trial for their lives must have competent lawyers by their side." As the Los Angeles Times writes, "If only he'd been so concerned about poor lawyering when he was overseeing all those executions as governor of Texas." Bush recently promoted White House counsel Alberto Gonzales to the position of the nation's attorney general. As chief legal counsel for then-Gov. Bush in Texas, Gonzales was responsible for writing a memo on the facts of each death penalty case – Bush decided whether a defendant should live or die based on the memos. An analysis of these memos by the Atlantic Monthly concluded that "Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence." In his first term, the president also delayed the Innocence Protection Act, which provided funding for post-conviction DNA testing and higher-quality defense counsel, even after it passed the House with overwhelming bipartisan support. His administration wrote a 22-page letter saying the bill was the end of the world. He eventually signed it after some of its most important provisions had been badly diluted.

LOW ENERGY: President Bush also outlined his goals to resolve the nation's energy problems, saying, "To keep our economy growing, we also need reliable supplies of affordable, environmentally responsible energy." In fact, in his first presidential budget, Bush proposed cutting $277 million out of renewable energy research, while spending an additional $2 billion on coal-related programs. His FY2004 budget tried to "slash funding for numerous clean energy and energy efficiency programs, including funding for bioenergy, wind and geothermal electricity sources." (Those cuts "were announced less than a week after the president announced his goal of energy independence in the State of the Union address.") And his tax cuts include provisions that actually make the energy situation worse. His tax bill included a provision creating a $100,000 tax write-off (subsequently trimmed to $25K) for large SUVs like the Hummer, which gets just 10 miles to the gallon.

THE STATE OF SOCIAL SECURITY: President Bush unveiled some details of his plan for privatizing Social Security last night, saying, "your account will provide money for retirement over and above the check you will receive from Social Security." But in fact, "the plan is more complicated." Under the proposal, "the check you receive from Social Security" would likely be reduced sharply from what it is now. Meanwhile, workers who opt to divert some of their payroll taxes into individual accounts would "ultimately get to keep only the investment returns that exceed the rate of return that the money would have accrued in the traditional system… In effect, the accounts would work more like a loan from the government, to be paid back upon retirement at an inflation-adjusted 3 percent interest rate." The Congressional Budget Office predicts an average of 3.3 percent gains, leaving most workers "with nothing but the guaranteed benefit." In other words, even assuming the market stays stable, unless workers received an unusually high rate of return on their investments, they would face significant cuts to their Social Security benefits.

THIS YEAR'S RATIONALE FOR WAR: In 2002's State of the Union, President Bush unveiled Iraq as part of the axis of evil. 2003 brought sixteen false words about uranium and Niger. Last year, the rationale was all about Iraq's (nonexistent) weapons of mass destruction. In 2005, the rationale for sending our men and women to fight in Iraq: "Our men and women in uniform are fighting terrorists in Iraq, so we do not have to face them here at home." Like all the other rationales, this one is a lot of hot air. According to a recent report by the CIA's think tank, "Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of 'professionalized' terrorists, according to a report released yesterday by the National Intelligence Council. In fact, Iraq provides terrorists with 'a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills,' said David B. Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats. 'There is even, under the best scenario, over time, the likelihood that some of the jihadists who are not killed there will, in a sense, go home, wherever home is, and will therefore disperse to various other countries.'"

STILL NO EXIT STRATEGY: President Bush last night failed to give any details for an exit strategy in Iraq. As the New York Times opines, "Mr. Bush's argument that this is a bad time to set a timetable for withdrawal obscures the very immediate need to set goals, and to make it clear to the Iraqis that the continued presence of American forces depends on their meeting those goals." His speech "was yet another feel-good paean to freedom and democracy that did little to show the American people an exit strategy for United States troops, or to show the Iraqis what we expect from them next."

on booing

do these pundits who today criticize the Dems for booing Bush's plan to privatize social security have NO historical memory???

from dailykos.com, Courtesy of the Stick*:

1999: Republicans Booed Clinton's Entrance
Many Republican lawmakers gave him a cool, though not impolite, reception. There were a smattering of boos when Clinton first entered the House chamber, but they were quickly drowned out by applause. Some Republicans barely applauded, or refused at all to clap. House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) and U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) were conspicuously silent. [Boston Herald, 1/20/99]

1998: Republicans Booed Clinton's Medicare Proposal
Clinton's health-care initiatives, chiefly in the form of a medical bill of rights, found support on both sides, especially his attack on managed-care health-care plans. ... Clinton's proposal to expand Medicare to allow Americans as young as 55 to buy into the system drew shouts of "no" and some boos from Republicans during his speech. [Chicago Tribune, 1/28/98]

1997: Republican's Booed Clinton's Opposition to the Balanced Budget Amendment
The Republican response was far warmer than perhaps any of Clinton's previous four State of the Union speeches. Time after time, Republicans jumped to their feet to join Democrats in applauding the president. Only once did they unmistakably and collectively show their disapproval--when Clinton spoke disparagingly of a GOP-sponsored constitutional amendment to balance the budget. Many Republicans hissed and some booed. [LA Times, 2/5/97]

1995: Republicans Booed Clinton and Walked Out During Speech
The upheaval wrought by the Republican election landslide was visible throughout the president's State of the Union address - from the moment Speaker Newt Gingrich took the gavel to the striking silence that often greeted Clinton from the GOP. At one point, Republicans even booed. About 20 of them left as Clinton went on and on for an hour and 20 minutes. [AP, 1/24/95]

(*) The "Stick" is the nickname given by the dKos community to the Senate Democratic Communications Center, a.k.a. the 'War Room'.

unwelcome mat 

unwelcome mat, detail 

the unwelcome mat, by Wendy Cook

found at: http://villagevoice.com/blogs/bushbeat/

on making me smile

from villagevoice.com

Q: How many Bush Administration officials does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: None. There is nothing wrong with the light bulb; its conditions are improving every day. Any reports of its lack of incandescence are a delusional spin from the liberal media. That light bulb has served honorably, and anything you say undermines the lighting effect. Why do you hate freedom?

on toeing the line

DeLay Critic Removed From Ethics Committee

By Richard Simon Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — The House ethics committee chairman who presided over three rebukes of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) was bounced from the job Wednesday and replaced by a Republican congressman from Washington state.

The new chairman is Rep. Doc Hastings (news, bio, voting record), the committee's second-ranking Republican. He was named by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) to take the gavel from Rep. Joel Hefley (news, bio, voting record) (R-Colo.).

In addition, Hastert appointed three new members to the panel, including two — Reps. Lamar S. Smith (R-Texas) and Tom Cole (R-Okla.) — whose political action committees have contributed to DeLay's legal defense fund. Smith's PAC contributed $5,000 in 2001 and an additional $5,000 between July and September 2004; Cole's gave $5,000 between July and September 2004.

on journalistic ethics, again

from today's Boston Globe

White House-friendly reporter under scrutiny

By Charlie Savage and Alan Wirzbicki, Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent | February 2, 2005

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has provided White House media credentials to a man who has virtually no journalistic background, asks softball questions to the president and his spokesman in the midst of contentious news conferences, and routinely reprints long passages verbatim from official press releases as original news articles on his website.

Jeff Gannon calls himself the White House correspondent for TalonNews.com, a website that says it is "committed to delivering accurate, unbiased news coverage to our readers." It is operated by a Texas-based Republican Party delegate and political activist who also runs GOPUSA.com, a website that touts itself as "bringing the conservative message to America."

Called on last week by President Bush at a press conference, Gannon attacked Democratic Senate leaders and called them "divorced from reality." During the presidential campaign, when called on by Press Secretary Scott McClellan, Gannon linked Senator John F. Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, to Jane Fonda and questioned why anyone would dispute Bush's National Guard service.

(rest of story, at above link)

on the bermuda triangle that is iraq

Today, Tim Grieve writes in Salon.com's War Room:

First the WMD, then the $9 billion

Before Congress gives George W. Bush an additional $80 billion for Iraq, and before his friends in the media engage in any more hand-wringing about the U.N. oil-for-food program, somebody on the right might want to start asking about the nearly $9 billion that the Coalition Provisional Authority can't quite seem to find.

The U.S. inspector general assigned to audit the reconstruction effort says that "severe inefficiencies and poor management" by the CPA make it impossible to know what has become of $8.8 billion worth of Iraqi money that the CPA once controlled. Among the problems the inspector general found: The CPA may well have been paying "ghost employees" to provide security in Iraq. As CNN reports, auditors found 8,206 guards on the payroll at one Iraqi ministry but could validate the existence of only 602 of them. Perhaps this helps explains why Condoleezza Rice insists that there are 120,000 trained Iraqi security personnel when others, like Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, put the number at around 4,000.

Former CPA chief and Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Paul Bremer says the inspector general's findings are overblown and based on a lack of understanding about the problems on the ground in Iraq. In a response to the audit findings, Bremer said that it was more important to buy peace by getting money to Iraqi employees than it was to keep track of where the money was going and that it was better to live with a flawed payroll system than to "stop paying armed young men" who might have been providing security.

-- Tim Grieve

on iraq, and parallels to the vietnam war

(thanks to patachon for posting this bit of history on Daily Kos)

U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote :
Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror

by Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times (9/4/1967: p. 2)

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3-- United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.

According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.

The size of the popular vote and the inability of the Vietcong to destroy the election machinery were the two salient facts in a preliminary assessment of the nation election based on the incomplete returns reaching here.

rest of article here

on the use of appropriate language

kak·is·toc·ra·cy (kk-stkr-s)
n. pl. kak·is·toc·ra·cies

Government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens.

source: dictionary.com
used recently by eric alterman, www.thenation.com

the power of nightmares

from the Nation. Katrina van den Heuvel writes:

"Last week, the BBC re-broadcast a provocative documentary series which challenges the idea that Al Qaeda is the center of a uniquely powerful, unified and well-organized international terrorist conspiracy.

"The attacks on September 11th," according to the film's director Adam Curtis--one of Britain's leading documentary filmmakers--"were not the expression of a confident and growing movement. They were acts of desperation by a small group frustrated by their failure which they blamed on the power of America. It is also important," Curtis adds, "to realize that many within the Islamist movement were against this strategy." (This view accords with those held by terrorism experts--like Peter Bergen--who argue that Al Qaeda is largely a spent force that has changed from a tight-knit organization capable of carrying out 9/11 to more of an ideological threat with loose networks in many nations.)

"The film also challenges other accepted articles of faith in the so-called war on terror, and documents that much of what we have been told about a centralized, international terrorist threat "is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicans. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services and the international media."

"The series does not claim that terrorism poses no threat, nor does it challenge the idea that radical Islamism has led to gruesome violence throughout the world. "The bombs in Madrid and Bali showed clearly the seriousness of the threat--but they are not evidence of a new and overwhelming threat unlike any we have experienced before. And above all they do not--in the words of the British government--'threaten the life of the nation.' "

"First broadcast in Great Britain last November, The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear has yet to air on this side of the Atlantic. Why is it that no television outlet in the United States has yet to broadcast this critically-acclaimed film?. . . [cut]

"America has become trapped by that fear--riven by nightmare visions of 'sleeper cells' in its midst for which there is little or no evidence. The series attempts to explain why this strange state of affairs has come about and it argues that politicians have found in fear a way of restoring their power. In a populist consumerist age where their authority and legitimacy has declined dramatically politicians have simply discovered in the War on Terror a way of making themselves indispensable to their populations again by promising to protect us from something that only they can see."

"Curtis has promised to send me a copy of the documentary. But millions of Americans deserve to see a film that offers a rigorously documented and credible counter to the conventional narrative of a "war on terror."

"If you agree, write HBO and ask why it isn't showing this BBC documentary. You can also call on PBS stations to be true to their missions by asking them to air The Power of Nightmares.

on a similar note...here's someone getting told what-for on Fox

check out this short clip that's going around and around. Fox newscaster was NOT prepared. :)
click here

on why ann coulter sucks, or, someone actually cares about facts...

found this gem by quickiemart on dailykos's blog

"It's rare that the media ever nail Ann Coulter for her obfuscations and misrepresentations but it happened in prime time, in Canada last night. . .Last night, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's excellent investigative news program, "the Fifth Estate," broadcast a one-hour special on the hijacking of the American media by conservative bullies whose knowledge of foreign policy seems to run the gamut from A to B and who tend toward scream-o-ramas in which dissenters are accused of being unpatriotic.

"Of course, it included Coulter who gloated to correspondent Bob McKeown about how her side is "winning and they're loosing." But in the next segment during a rant about how Canada is disloyal for not sending troops to Iraq, Coulter was finally exposed. It just isn't clear from the exchange if she is genuinely confused or purposefully misrepresenting the truth. . .

"Transcript below. (I recorded this from my television last night.)

"Coulter: "Canada used to be one of our most loyal friends and vice-versa. I mean Canada sent troops to Vietnam - was Vietnam less containable and more of a threat than Saddam Hussein?"

McKeown interrupts: "Canada didn't send troops to Vietnam."

Coulter: "I don't think that's right."

McKeown: "Canada did not send troops to Vietnam."

Coulter (looking desperate): "Indochina?"

McKeown: "Uh no. Canada ...second World War of course. Korea. Yes. Vietnam No."

Coulter: "I think you're wrong."

McKeown: "No, took a pass on Vietnam."

Coulter: "I think you're wrong."

McKeown: "No, Australia was there, not Canada."

Coulter: "I think Canada sent troops."

McKeown: "No."

Coulter: "Well. I'll get back to you on that."

McKeown tags out in script:

"Coulter never got back to us -- but for the record, like Iraq, Canada sent no troops to Vietnam."

on iraq

apparently, we've given up searching for weapons of mass destruction. Salon.com points out that the NY Times story was buried on p. A10, in a short, 240-word blurb.

truly disturbing information about what happened in Fallujah: UK Guardian site

but hey! i really would like some MORE information about how Social Security is in SUCH A CRISIS that only President Bush can save us! Sounds a bit like the hype over the WMDs, come to think of it. Pump the fear, push the pre-emptive policies... (see Krugman on why there is no such crisis)