Clark rips Bush.

Clark: Bush more concerned with 'political security' than national security

Now that's a headline!

I would have used: "Clark Peels Teflon from Bush -- naked Texan exposed by ALUMINUM MAN!" :)

TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer Tuesday, January 13, 2004
(01-13) 12:05 PST MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP)

Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark on Tuesday criticized the timing of an investigation of former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and suggested President Bush was more concerned with "political security" than national security.

Campaigning in New Hampshire two weeks before its primary election, Clark called for a full congressional investigation into why the United States went to war in Iraq.

"We don't know what the motivation was. We just don't know. We've spent $180 billion on it, we've lost 480 Americans, we've got 2,500 with life-changing injuries," the retired general told reporters.

Clark contended that Bush was obsessed with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, and with establishing a national missile defense, in the months leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks -- and did not do enough to protect the nation against such an attack.

In a book released Tuesday, O'Neill criticized Bush's leadership style and suggested he planned to go after Saddam even before the attacks... *snip*

...Clark contrasted the speed of the O'Neill investigation with the slow pace of an inquiry into who last summer divulged the name of a CIA official whose husband had criticized the president's Iraq policy.

"They didn't wait 24 hours in initiating an investigation on Paul O'Neill," Clark said. "They're not concerned about national security. But they're really concerned about political security. I think they've got their priorities upside down." more good stuff

Clark really hits a grand slam with this stump speech. He nails the Bush Administration more effectively that I have yet heard or read about. Of course given the CEIP report and O'Neill's bombshells, I expect to see this sort of hard line questioning right up to November.

Clark raises some obvious things that those voted alongside the GOP simply cannot ask.

Clark is asking questions that every American should want to know the answers to. Damn fine set of comparisons as well. NH voters like this sort of thing. It'll be interesting to see how Bush, who can't effectively use the, "I'm the national security guy" bs anymore will spin all of this.

When I used "effectively" in the above sentence, I meant that Bush couldn't use the argument against informed voters. Let's hope the sheep awaken.

Bush's Press Problem

Fascinating reading.

Posted 2004-01-13
This week in the magazine, Ken Auletta writes about the George W. Bush Administration’s relationship with the American press, and about how the President manages to keep reporters at a distance. Here, with The New Yorker’s Daniel Cappello, Auletta discusses how that relationship affects the public.

DANIEL CAPPELLO: All Presidents complain about the press. How is the Bush White House different?

KEN AULETTA: In two ways. They are more disciplined. They reject an assumption embraced by most reporters: that we are neutral and represent the public interest. Rather, they see the press as just another special interest. The discipline flows down from President Bush, who runs the White House like a C.E.O. and demands loyalty. This is a cohesive White House staff, dominated by people whose first loyalty is to Team Bush. When Bush leaves the White House, most of his aides will probably return to Texas. They are not Washington careerists, and thus they have less need to puff themselves up with the Washington press corps. In fact—and this leads to the second difference—from Bush on down, talking to the press off the record is generally frowned upon and equated with leaking, which is a deadly sin in the Bush White House (unless it is a leak manufactured to advance the President's agenda).

[Ed. Valerie Plame anyone?]

Members of the Bush Administration complain that the media are too liberal, and too biased. Do they have a point?

Sometimes. Although the press’s surveys of the Washington press corps are less scientific than many conservative critics proclaim they are, privately many White House reporters concede that they are probably somewhat more liberal than the majority of American voters. One often glimpses the bias in abortion stories, in which right-to-life proponents are sometimes portrayed as fanatics, while those who are pro-choice are portrayed as human-rights advocates. But these are rarely conscious biases. Most reporters, I think, strive to be fair. In fact, while White House officials think there is a liberal bias in the press, they don't believe this is terribly important. They describe the press as critical of every President, not just a conservative President.

[Ed. It's well documented that the higher a level of education a person has, the more likely they are to associate themselves with 'liberal' positions]

You write that George W. Bush is influenced by his mother, Barbara Bush, who has a famous distrust of the press—she never spoke off the record to reporters when she was First Lady. Does someone in such a position have an obligation to be available?

I believe they do have that obligation. In a nonparliamentary system such as ours, close questioning of the President is supposed to come from the press, usually in the form of press conferences. Yet Bush has held only eleven solo press conferences, fewer than almost any modern President. Over a comparable period, his father held seventy-one and Bill Clinton thirty-eight. The Bush White House claims that they have answered thousands of press questions, but the bulk of those answers come from the handful of questions allowed a couple of times a week after photo opportunities, and from joint press conferences, where the President gets only one-quarter the number of questions and few follow-up questions are permitted.

[Ed. "This is scripted?" -GWB March 6, 2003 see link below*]

New Yorker Online Exclusive - Go. Read. Learn.

Here's the CNN transcript from the, "this is scripted?" Press conference. Of course it has been scrubbed.

Pure bs, where there are no scripts. Ever. Obviously.

Yet more O'Neill and a CNN Poll. You know the drill.

Soros v GOP

Soros pins his hopes on defeat for Bush

By JULIA MALONE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Rick McKay / AJC

WASHINGTON -- Billionaire George Soros, probably the single biggest giver to Democratic causes, said Monday that Republican criticism of him could be very costly.

"It has got a rise out of me," he said, adding that his anger "will probably find expression" in additional donations to efforts to defeat President Bush.

How much, Soros wouldn't say. He already has given $10 million to Americans Coming Together and $2.5 million to www.moveon.org, groups that are running anti-Bush campaigns.

Soros, recently ranked as the 28th richest man in America by Forbes magazine, said he will devote this year to unseating Bush.

"I'm ready to put my money where my mouth is," said the Hungarian-born financier, who made his fortune in New York as a hedge-fund operator. His opposition to the Bush administration is based chiefly on the invasion of Iraq. More at link.

The RWOC taking shots at Soros isn't the smartest thing to do. Warren Buffett is also on record as being against several Bush policies. I guess Mr. Soros unlike most of us intends to keep his New Year's resolution.

Naomi Klein and The Year of the Fake

The Year of the Fake

[from the January 26, 2004 issue]

Don't think and drive.

That was the message sent out by the FBI to roughly 18,000 law enforcement agencies on Christmas Eve. The alert urged police pulling over drivers for traffic violations, and conducting other routine investigations, to keep their eyes open for people carrying almanacs. Why almanacs? Because they are filled with facts--population figures, weather predictions, diagrams of buildings and landmarks. And according to the FBI Intelligence Bulletin, facts are dangerous weapons in the hands of terrorists, who can use them to "to assist with target selection and pre-operational planning."

But in a world filled with potentially lethal facts and figures, it seems unfair to single out almanac readers for police harassment. As the editor of The World Almanac and Book of Facts rightly points out, "The government is our biggest single supplier of information." Not to mention the local library: A cache of potentially dangerous information weaponry is housed at the center of almost every American town. The FBI, of course, is all over the library threat, seizing library records at will under the Patriot Act.

The blacklisting of the almanac was a fitting end for 2003, a year that waged open war on truth and facts and celebrated fakes and forgeries of all kinds. This was the year when fakeness ruled: fake rationales for war, a fake President dressed as a fake soldier declaring a fake end to combat and then holding up a fake turkey. An action movie star became governor and the government started making its own action movies, casting real soldiers like Jessica Lynch as fake combat heroes and dressing up embedded journalists as fake soldiers. Saddam Hussein even got a part in the big show: He played himself being captured by American troops. This is the fake of the year, if you believe the Sunday Herald in Scotland, as well as several other news agencies, which reported that he was actually captured by a Kurdish special forces unit.

It was Britain, however, that pushed the taste for fake to new levels. "Her main aim is to meet as many Nigerians as she can," the Queen's press secretary, Penny Russell, said of the monarch's December trip to Nigeria. But just as Bush never made it out of the airport bunker in Baghdad, the Queen's people decided it was too dangerous for her to mingle with actual Nigerians. So instead of the planned visit to an African village, the Queen toured the set of a BBC soap opera in New Karu, constructed to look like an authentic African market. During the "fake walkabout," as the Sunday Telegraph called it, the Queen chatted with paid actors playing regular villagers, while actual villagers watched the event on a large-screen TV outside the security perimeter.Read it all here

Is it just me, or is a pattern of deception and exposure developing? One can only hope that this is so. 2004 the year of the truth? Nah. Too much too ask.

Krugman!

The Awful Truth

By PAUL KRUGMAN

People are saying terrible things about George Bush. They say that his officials weren't sincere about pledges to balance the budget. They say that the planning for an invasion of Iraq began seven months before 9/11, that there was never any good evidence that Iraq was a threat and that the war actually undermined the fight against terrorism.

But these irrational Bush haters are body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freaks who should go back where they came from: the executive offices of Alcoa, and the halls of the Army War College.

I was one of the few commentators who didn't celebrate Paul O'Neill's appointment as Treasury secretary. And I couldn't understand why, if Mr. O'Neill was the principled man his friends described, he didn't resign early from an administration that was clearly anything but honest.

But now he's showing the courage I missed back then, by giving us an invaluable, scathing insider's picture of the Bush administration.

Ron Suskind's new book "The Price of Loyalty" is based largely on interviews with and materials supplied by Mr. O'Neill. It portrays an administration in which political considerations — satisfying "the base" — trump policy analysis on every issue, from tax cuts to international trade policy and global warming. The money quote may be Dick Cheney's blithe declaration that "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." But there are many other revelations.

One is that Mr. O'Neill and Alan Greenspan knew that it was a mistake to lock in huge tax cuts based on questionable projections of future surpluses. In May 2001 Mr. Greenspan gloomily told Mr. O'Neill that because the first Bush tax cut didn't include triggers — it went forward regardless of how the budget turned out — it was "irresponsible fiscal policy." This was a time when critics of the tax cut were ridiculed for saying exactly the same thing.

Another is that Mr. Bush, who declared in the 2000 campaign that "the vast majority of my tax cuts go to the bottom end of the spectrum," knew that this wasn't true. He worried that eliminating taxes on dividends would benefit only "top-rate people," asking his advisers, "Didn't we already give them a break at the top?"

Most startling of all, Donald Rumsfeld pushed the idea of regime change in Iraq as a way to transform the Middle East at a National Security Council meeting in February 2001.

There's much more in Mr. Suskind's book. All of it will dismay those who still want to believe that our leaders are wise and good.

The question is whether this book will open the eyes of those who think that anyone who criticizes the tax cuts is a wild-eyed leftist, and that anyone who says the administration hyped the threat from Iraq is a conspiracy theorist.

The point is that the credentials of the critics just keep getting better. How can Howard Dean's assertion that the capture of Saddam hasn't made us safer be dismissed as bizarre, when a report published by the Army War College says that the war in Iraq was a "detour" that undermined the fight against terror? How can charges by Wesley Clark and others that the administration was looking for an excuse to invade Iraq be dismissed as paranoid in the light of Mr. O'Neill's revelations?

So far administration officials have attacked Mr. O'Neill's character but haven't refuted any of his facts. They have, however, already opened an investigation into how a picture of a possibly classified document appeared during Mr. O'Neill's TV interview. This alacrity stands in sharp contrast with their evident lack of concern when a senior administration official, still unknown, blew the cover of a C.I.A. operative because her husband had revealed some politically inconvenient facts.

Some will say that none of this matters because Saddam is in custody, and the economy is growing. Even in the short run, however, these successes may not be all they're cracked up to be. More Americans were killed and wounded in the four weeks after Saddam's capture than in the four weeks before. The drop in the unemployment rate since its peak last summer doesn't reflect a greater availability of jobs, but rather a decline in the share of the population that is even looking for work.

More important, having a few months of good news doesn't excuse a consistent pattern of dishonest, irresponsible leadership. And that pattern keeps getting harder to deny.

One has to wonder about Howard Dean's off the cuff remark about the Bushies Being tipped off pre 9/11. I am not one of those people, but given the extent and depth of this Administration's deceptions -- okay, LIES -- everything that the Bush Administration denies must be further looked at.

Hey, you can buy O'Neill's book today..I am going to.

Josh Marshall's quote is spot-on:

Number of days between Novak column outing Valerie Plame and announcement of investigation: 74 days.

Number of days between O'Neill 60 Minutes interview and announcement of investigation: 1 day.

Having the administration reveal itself as a gaggle of hypocritical goons ... priceless.

-- Josh Marshall

I don't find any humor in Josh's play on the Visa ad copy. It's a damn shame that 'democracy' in America is under siege.

Link to buy from Amazon

Link to Joshua's TPM.

Yes, kids. It's 10 links of Interest™ Time

I'm declaring January 11 Paul O'Neill day. Boy, that man went from Alcoa CEO to Treasury Secretary to Homeless Guy to Fearless Teller of Truth to Potential Investigatee of said Treasury in 48 Hours! I'll add his quote for color. "I'm an old man and I've made plenty of money. They can't hurt me." I believe he's right. Document marked "secret." It was a stage game, done for drama.(feeble attempt at humor) I really hope that this turns into a big affair. His book isn't likely to be a 'tell all.' After all, you save your powder for battle.

The Shi'ites are beginning to oppose US plan to pick assembly. Democracy. It's such a funny word. Hard to pin down.

New Scientist is reporting faux fog could foil terrorists. This is a German proposal. It is as yet unclear(har har) if U.S. for is as efficacious.

Health Alert. Preservative chemicals found in samples of breast tumours probably came from underarm deodorants, UK scientists have claimed.

Their analysis of 20 breast tumours found high concentrations of pare-hydrosphere acids (probing) in 18 samples. Probing can mimic the hormone estrogen, which is known to play a role in the development of breast cancers. The preservatives are used in many cosmetics and some foods to increase their shelf-life.

This next piece ties in with my earlier commentary declaring environmental protection a hell of a lot more important than Moon bases, and manned Mars missions. How Many Windmills would $87 Billion Buy? Nobody knows exactly how much the United States has spent so far on the war. But it is a fact that Congress recently appropriated an extra $87 billion to support military operations for another year and rebuild Iraqi infrastructure.

Oh, the dismal science again. This time The Federal Reserve Board says U.S. consumer debt grows at alarming rate. When interest rates rise.. Well, I wouldn't call the fallout, 'pretty.'

9/11 Commission update: *cue teletype sample* WASHINGTON - The federal 9/11 commission has formally decided to ask President Bush and former President Bill Clinton to meet with the panel and to extend its investigation by several months. Vice President Cheney and former Clinton veep Al Gore also would be called, a spokesman told the Daily News yesterday. Chairman Thomas Kean and Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton will approach the four men. The request to appear is just that, a request, and not a legal subpoena. Oh, man.

Uh oh. Dismal science again. The NYT takes a rather in-depth look at the employment situation. You'll like it! There's a chart, and a promise to play, 'connect the dots.' I never did find that :(

The Two Blairs? The Blair Which Project? Yes, I like that. Blair: Iraq weapons threat growing. That's Tony B 2k3. I do not know if Iraq had WMDs. Tony B v2k4. Heh.

Oh no. The dismal science returns. This is the last time. Tonight. I promise.

World save the US A snippet:

"In its lengthy overview, IMF has warned the United States that a huge budget deficit, tax reduction as well as the war on terrorism can all have a negative impact on the world"s economy. The Fund asked the US to take proper actions to recover its sinking currency. It seems however that America is not concerned with world"s problems. While using such Dollar devaluation, American authorities continue to stimulate its own economic growth."

***

Those are your ten for tonight. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do preparing them. I may start putting all my entries in 'boxes.' --That's CSS for rectangles...you'll note that those crazy guys at W³ have assigned a two dimensional element a three dimensional name..No. I suppose you wouldn't notice. Only an anal chip geek like your humble author would notice something so trivial. Sorry.

:)

From The Guardian

"What amazes me, however, is how obscure he remains at this point in the electoral process. Purveyors of opinion in the national press continue to brand him as a north-eastern liberal, an anti-war activist who will appeal mainly to white, well-educated, granola-crunching and latte-sipping liberals of the type who supported George McGovern in 1972 [McGovern lost by a huge margin to Nixon in the presidential race]. In recent weeks, the infamous McGovern comparison was raised once again by David Brooks, a regular columnist for the New York Times. It's a ridiculous notion, worth discarding as soon as possible."

David 'neo-con & Bush shill' Brooks and 'regular' are not typically found habitating the same sentence. Or, with a nod to Dean,'co-habitating.'

Get yours here.

More:

"Dean is, I think, a pragmatist without an obvious ideological bent. Trained as a physician, he studies a given situation, assesses the facts, and makes a diagnosis. As governor, he was remarkably decisive, even combative, willing to make cuts in healthcare and education to balance the budget. On the other hand, he strongly backed the idea of universal healthcare, and made sure that medical assistance for Vermont's children under the age of 18 was guaranteed - a real achievement. Famously, he supported the idea of civil unions for gay couples in Vermont, although he did so rather quietly, signing the act presented to him by the legislature behind closed doors. In a sense, this pragmatic governor simply went along with the majority opinion in Vermont, where a substantial gay population exists.

I woke up most mornings for a decade listening to Dean on the radio. He is a talker, and was quoted most mornings on Vermont Public Radio. He is, as most Americans have now gathered, a blunt fellow, prone to shoot from the lip. He often speaks before he thinks. But the good news is that, given a few moments, he can think."

Ouch. A British journo takes aim at Bush.......Direct Hit!

Again. Why is it that we need the foreign press to tell us these things in such a frank manner?

I've written on these very pages about Dean being a pragmatic person. I've also said that pragmitism and politics are often a messy mix.

The writer does hail from Vermont.

My nominees for Time magazine's 2004 Person of the Year. 1) Paul O'Neill 2) The Foreign Press. (I'll add as circumstances warrant)

"The stated policy of my administration towards Saddam Hussein was very clear. Like the previous administration, we were for regime change" -George WTF Bush 12, January 2004

Somebody's off his meds. I kid you not. W. said that today.

Those whacky liberals!

Yeah, you know the folks at the Army War College. Well, they're at it again.

Army War College report blasts war on terrorism

By Thomas E. Ricks

WASHINGTON - A scathing new report published by the Army War College broadly criticizes the Bush administration's handling of the war on terrorism, accusing it of taking a detour into an "unnecessary" war in Iraq and pursuing an "unrealistic" quest against terrorism that may lead to U.S. wars with states that pose no serious threat.

The report, by visiting professor Jeffrey Record, who is on the faculty of the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., warns that as a result of those mistakes, the Army is "near the breaking point."

It recommends, among other things, scaling back the scope of the "global war on terrorism" and instead focusing on the narrower threat posed by the al-Qaida terrorist network.

"(T)he global war on terrorism as currently defined and waged is dangerously indiscriminate and ambitious, and accordingly ... its parameters should be readjusted," Record writes.

Currently, he adds, the anti-terrorism campaign "is strategically unfocused, promises more than it can deliver, and threatens to dissipate U.S. military resources in an endless and hopeless search for absolute security."

Record, a veteran defense specialist and author of six books on military strategy and related issues, was an aide to former Sen. Sam Nunn when the Georgia Democrat was chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.More liberal nonsense
here.

(hat tip to SC)

How and the heck did Clark and Dean keep their names out of the byline? You know how those nutties over the Army War College will say anything to get their names into the press.

It looks to be a week of revelations(no, we don't do X-tianity here) from all quarters about the mis-handling and deceptions vis a vis, the Gulf War redux.

This might just be the week that Americans - approximately half of them - are roused from the deep mental slumber that they have been in for the past three years. I'm not holding my breath.

Dean and Race

Look, it's pretty simple. Vermont is so white that their cow's milk looks dark.

I go to Vermont several times per year. It is most unusual to see a brown skinned Vermonter. I really don't know if Sharpton simply doesn't know the Vermont demographic, or if he was merely grandstanding.

From the U.S. Census bureau, 2000:

White persons, percent: 96.8%
Black or African American persons, percent: 0.5%
American Indian and Alaska Native persons, percent: 0.4%
Asian persons, percent: 0.9%
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, percent: 0.1%
Persons reporting some other race, percent: 0.2%
Persons reporting two or more races, percent: 1.2%
Persons of Hispanic or Latino origin, percent: 0.9%

There is not much of a pool of persons to choose from -- unless they're white.

If Dean had a fully representative cabinet of Vermont's demographic, the cabinet would be all white. In fact, it appears that he in fact, did.

I guess politics is a numbers game only when convenient, or serves some other need.

I'm not defending Dean's choices, but illustrating a basic fact.

Blair Caught up in WMD shitstorm

Blair: I do not know if Iraq had WMDs

FRASER NELSON
POLITICAL EDITOR


Key points
• Tony Blair was unsure when asked whether he accepted his statement that Iraq had WMD capable of being fired within 45 minutes was wrong
• The PM's position has been shifting since July last year; he is now looking for "clandestine operations" in Iraq - rather than weapons themselves
• Claims that the Iraqi Survey Group had found "clandestine laboratories" were recently dismissed as a "red herring" by US administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer

Key quote
"In the 23 months I was there, I never saw anything that I would characterise as evidence of weapons of mass destruction," he told Time magazine. Paul O’Neill, former US treasury secretary.

Story in full: TONY Blair has admitted that he does not know whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction at the time of the Iraq war, and is no longer confident of finding any.

The Prime Minister has also said he was looking for evidence of "clandestine operations" in Iraq - backing down from his earlier pledge that weapons programmes would be found rather then weapons themselves.

He also left doubt hanging over whether he will lead the Commons debate on the forthcoming Hutton Report or whether one of his ministers will be sent to do battle with Michael Howard, the Conservative leader. Enough rope to hang himself here.

I think that the Brits will have none of there shenanigans, and if American's care about our democracy, we shouldn't either.

It wasn't an especially good week for the Bushies and their lackeys. Rush Limbaugh had a typical rant stating that the "Carnegie Endowment for International Peace" was a 'leftist organization' while carefully not attempting to refute any of their findings. "It's politics" Limbaugh decries. This is pretty funny coming from one of the lamest, yet partisan, 'political commentators.' Hypocrisy thy name is Limbaugh.

This week should prove to be interesting indeed.

It's time I gave a plug to Bush Tax.com. (yes, this is America-centric) If you happen to live in the states, check it out. The numbers for my state are spot-on.

The CS Monitor brings us an editorial written by Gerard DeGroot, professor of modern history at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

New space drive - the right thing to do

Civilization gets more bang for the buck in morale, technology, economy.

By Gerard DeGroot

ST. ANDREWS, SCOTLAND -- You can learn a lot from studying billboards. Drive into the town of Cocoa, on Florida's Space Coast, and the first thing you see is a huge sign offering bankruptcy settlements for just $88. Next come two from the real estate sector: "Beat Repossession" and "We Buy Ugly Houses." Advertisements for pawn shops, bail bondsmen, and flea markets confirm an area in crisis.

Then comes a billboard honoring the crew of the shuttle Columbia, which broke up on reentry last February. That sign provides dramatic confirmation of the region's problems. When a spaceship fails, it does so because of mistakes on the ground. The Columbia disaster is a huge emotional burden for the people of Cocoa - but also an economic one.

The future of the space program has been in serious doubt. But now comes news that President Bush will announce a major new space initiative this week that, if approved, will put Americans back on the moon by 2013. Such a mission might in turn be the springboard for a trip to Mars. Under the plans, NASA's budget will increase significantly. Suddenly, they'll be dancing in the streets of Cocoa.much more at link.

In the op-ed piece, professor DeGroot acknowledges that manned space flight was largely a product of "cold-war animosity," and this is pretty clear. He goes on to denigrate the current generation of "geeks" saying, "Computer geeks think not of going to the moon, but rather of spreading spam, hacking, and playing computer games." This seems an ivory tower intellectual position. Sure, some of the best and brightest use their intellectual gifts maliciously, while others squander them playing "computer games," but this is true of every generation.

It is truer to state that the majority of those gifted in math and science have been engaged in the rise of the internet, the greatest enabler of communications that the western world has yet known. Progress in this area continues unabated. How very odd that a person writing a piece for mass distribution via the web, should not acknowledge its importance?

As far as "more bang for the buck in morale, technology,[and] economy" is concerned, I would ask as compared to what? Obviously the defense industry is more than amply compensated here in the U.S. and offers a lousy reurn - largely a stranded cost to the taxpayers. What other programs are more important to our long term goals and provide a higher return, whilst giving rise to a new generation of explorers?

The answer is the environment. Investment in our own planet is what is need now. After having tackled one once thought impossible task through the use of novel, technologies, the environment must now be our number one priority.

It would be irresponsible to go and pollute other worlds when we still have not got our own ecological house in order. It is this mission, that of solving our myriad environmetal problems that represents the greatest benfefit to cost ratio of any challenges facing us at the dawn of the 21st century. Space exploration can wait. Our global environment can not.

As for what is important, there is nothing as important as securing a place for life to inhabit. We've been to the Moon, Mars and Venus - none of our cosmological neighbors is fit for human habitation. If we fail to act soon, the Earth's climatic change will render civilization in the near future unrecognizable to us.

I do agree that space exploration offers excitement that solving environmental challenges is unlikely to match. But the solving of our environmental challenges offers benefits that space exploration can never come a light year from equaling. That is the saving of us.

your pure bs 10 links de jour

New Scientist brings us more evidence of humanity mucking up the environment. This time it's corals in the Caribbean.

NASA Gives us an update on the Stardust Mission. It will be very exciting to have actual cometary particles. Wild 2 will surely give us another data set to answer questions, and pose many more.

In a story that isn't garnering much coverage by CNN or on the East coast of the U.S. those 70,000 grocery clerks on strike failed to reach an agreement in what the NYT is calling, "secret informal negotiations."

The CS Monitor reports that Enron convictions have been slow in coming. But, they report that CFO Fastow may give prosecutors the break they need if a plea bargain can be reached. Otherwise, big fish Kenneth "Kenny Boy" lay and Jeffrey Skilling may be difficult to prosecute. It's hard to fathom that Lay is still free. But then, he has low friends in high places.

This is a link everyone should bookmark. Knight Ridder's Washington Bureau. Always good stuff right there. Lots of those underreported stories. See next link.

Punk rock meets politics in the heart of Middle America A good read, and be sure to check out punk voter.

Salon.com Three great things about Salon..okay four. 1. Joe Conason's Journal 2. Michelle Goldberg's great writing 3. This Modern World 4. No more Andrew Sullivan Go and read, it's fun, and educational..honest.

David Rees' fabulous "Get You War On" three panel comic strip. This is enough to have either: A subscription to Rolling Stone, or an internet connection. Preferably both.

The Bizarre Case of Sgt. Pogany This is that poor chap that seems likely to have a case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder(PTSD) and initially charged with 'cowardice' - an offense punishable by death. Read The Independent's latest. A really odd case, in a very odd world.

This is hysterical I don't know whether to laugh or vomit. That neo-con's neo-con, Bill Kristol, is looking to blame the whole Iraq fiasco on Clinton. "Secret Leaked Memo." Real cloak and dagger stuff. I would say that this means that O'Neill's got a weapon more powerful than a simple tactical nuke. Paul O'Neill is armed with the truth, and the neo-cons are seeking cover. Of course I could be wrong :)

Those are today's ten of some interest. To someone. Somewhere. Maybe.

Iraqis are looking for some of that good old fashioned U.S. style Democracy...or is that, still looking?

In Blow to U.S. Plans, Top Shiite Demands Direct Elections

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 11 ? In a blow to White House plans for a smooth handover of power to an Iraqi transitional government by July 1, the most influential Shiite cleric in Iraq said today that members of an interim assembly had to be chosen through direct elections.

The cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, had called in November for direct elections to counter an American proposal to hold caucus-style elections, but had said he would reconsider his decision if a United Nations committee decided that general elections were not possible.

But in a statement issued today, Ayatollah Sistani essentially left no room for compromise by saying that elections could be held "within the next months with an acceptable level of transparency and credibility."

He added that an interim constitution being drafted by the Iraqi Governing Council would have to be approved by a directly elected assembly for it to have legitimacy.

In another sign that Iraqis were asserting their power, the Governing Council issued new guidelines today for the removal of former Baath Party members from government jobs. Like the Coalition Provisional Authority's previous guidelines, the new ones call for the automatic dismissal of anyone who belonged to the top four levels of the Baath Party. But it allows for people from the fourth level to appeal the dismissal, and says those who choose not to appeal can take a pension.

Disturbing signs emerged of a tenuous security situation in parts of southern Iraq, generally considered much calmer than the north. An Iraqi-American man working for the provisional authority and an Iraqi man were found shot to death execution-style by a highway south of Basra, said Capt. Saddam Mortaza of the Basra police. Their killer or killers had blindfolded the two men and tied their hands behind their backs, then shot them in their heads, Captain Mortaza said.

In the southern town of Amara, protesters armed with sticks and homemade bombs attacked British soldiers outside city hall one day after six people were killed by Iraqi police officers and possibly British soldiers in a demonstration against the country's lack of jobs. More from the NYT

After the ouster of Hussein, the order of things that needed to be done was:

1) Secure Iraq's massive stockpiles of WMD

2) Insure that chaos and/or civil war didn't break out

3) Restore services to the Iraqis -- water, electricity, etc.

4) Start rebuilding the country

5) Work with various groups to get Iraq on the road to democratic rule

I believe that to be correct. Let's see what we have actually done.

1. WMD's turned out to be a myth.

2. Iraq is still in a state of lawlessness outside of the U.S. controlled "Green Zone" in Baghdad.

3. The state of the essential components of the iraqi infrastructure are intermittantly functioning in most areas according to reported, but sabotage remains a problem. The full picture is very cloudy. See link below.

4. Work in this area has begun. This article details the issues. We're far from giving Iraqi firms parity in bidding.

5. Any democracy appears to be conditional. On our terms. The NYT article at the top of this entry provides color.

See this article for further color on the Iraqi economic situation.

Arguably, the most successful single operation in post-war(?) Iraq has been the securing of the oil ministry. I think that this as much as anything is where the Iraqis perceive our priorities to start.

I am not an expert on the region. I'm not even going to play one on the internet. An observation that many have made since Sept. 11 is that all of a sudden the U.S. was filled with WASPy experts on the Middle-East. I was born a skeptic. It has served me well. Many of these self-styled Middle-East experts were simply not.

I am a silicon engineer that has a blog. Nothing more. We'll leave it up to the reader to determine who the experts are.

Well, no 60 minutes for me this evening. I'm certain that I'll be able to get the dirt from a number of reliable sources(perhaps a senior White House Official speaking on the condition of anonymity) Heh.

I know that over the weekend I've veered from what I hope is perceived as balanced commentary, backed by facts. I'll be back to normal on the morrow. I hope.

I'm going to try and add a new daily feature. A total of ten links, a few political, some sci-tech, social and pot pourri for your perusal. Things that have gone unreported or underreported by the major media in the States and elsewhere.

Since I started this blog, I've had comments left by people from around the globe. I always knew that my countrymen, for the most part have an America-centric view of the world, but in reading reader comments I find myself in the same ridiculously chauvinistic boat.

I assume that my readers have a working knowledge of my geographic location, the issues that I'm concerned about and well, nealry everything. It isn't hard to fathom why much of the greater world views the U.S. as not some benevolent giant, but as the greatest danger to world peace. And let's be frank, the U.S. govenment's position on that longest lasting of issues, the environment, has been anything but that of a responsible leader. Under the currnet administration this has been particularly apparent.

I'll try and write more from a citizen of the world community, rather than as a myopic American that believes the world ends at our borders.

pure bs speculation:

Re: VP Cheney's Energy Policy Documents and related material.

*dons moonbat conspiracy tin helmet with eider earflaps* (I'm in frigid NH, you know)

I have been wondering about what it is in Cheney's Energy Policy Documnts that could be so damning to the Teflon Administration™. I may have just crossed that line..(in my case, it's a four lane highway) that seperates the patients from the doctors.

I like to keep pure bs as free from speculation as possible, but indulge me.

It now appears likely that Bush had designs on Iraq since before his inauguration. "This guy tried to kill my dad." --GW Bush

If this is the case, and Cheney would be well inside the loop on this, it is possible that the stonewalling has something to do with post Iraq invasion/occupation. Taken a step further, (pulls helmet lower) it is possible that a word or two of this is mentioned somewhere within those documents. Perhaps even how U.S. oil interests might be serverd in a post Saddam Iraq.

This would certainly be a damn good reason to keep those documents away from even a lapdog press such as ours. Stranger things have happened. I think it's going to get weirder still.

Of course there are other reasons as well. Anything Enron is sure to go over like a lead balloon.

*removes moonbat conspiracy tin helmet with eider earflaps*

Should you question accounts given by the press? Readers of this site know that it is their duty.

Jayson Blair, NYT = Liar

Rick Bragg, Pulitzer winner = Liar

Fox News Channel = LIARS

Now this:

USA Today Reporter Admits Deception in Probe

Sun January 11, 2004 12:51 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top foreign correspondent with USA Today said he resigned from the newspaper because he allowed a translator to lie for him during an investigation of his work, The Washington Post reported Sunday.
Jack Kelley, a 21-year veteran of America's best-selling daily, stepped down Tuesday after an internal probe into the accuracy of his stories, although he stood by his stories.

USA Today announced the resignation but would not disclose details of the investigation, which had echoes of a probe over fabricated stories that hit The New York Times last year. Kelley told the Post that during USA Today's probe, he had allowed a translator who was not present during a 1999 interview in Belgrade to call the paper's in-house investigator and impersonate another translator who had been there.

Kelley said he had not been able to track down the original translator for the investigation after Executive Editor Brian Gallagher told him, "You must produce her quickly."

"I resigned because I felt I should no longer work at USA Today because of what I'd done," The Washington Post quoted Kelley as saying in an interview. USA Today had been checking the accuracy of Kelley's front-page article based on the Belgrade interview as part of a broader investigation into his reporting. Kelley, a 2002 Pulitzer Prize finalist, has covered many high-profile stories from the Balkans to the Middle East and the Iraq war.

"I knew it was wrong," the Post quoted Kelley as saying. He also said he had "panicked and used poor judgment" during the probe, but stands by every story he has written.

A USA Today spokesman declined immediate comment but said there would be a response to Kelley's interview in the newspaper Monday. But Editor Karen Jurgensen said in a statement last week: "It is our policy to thoroughly investigate any suggestion of an inaccuracy. We are in a position where we are not correcting anything at this time."

Last year the two top editors at The New York Times resigned after the newspaper disclosed that a series of stories had been fabricated by reporter Jayson Blair.

Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent Rick Bragg also left the newspaper amid allegations that a non-staffer had done uncredited reporting under his byline. Link

.

Always question the press. They have scripts that often conflict with reality. Question everything you read here as well. I want to be held to the absolute highest standards. It's up to you to keep me honest. (except when I'm satirizing as below ;))

The press is only a day or two behind pure bs.

We'll bypass the onerous L.A. Times Reg. process and give you the scoop via ABS-CBN(yeah, new to me as well)

As we shrilly noted down the page a few entries back, you just don't mix Bush, Moon bases, and Mars missions. Bush = NOT a Scientist :)

Here's the dope:

Moon, Mars missions: Hard sell

By RALPH VARTABEDIAN and ELIZABETH SHOGREN
Los Angeles Times

In the aftermath of the Columbia shuttle disaster, investigators asserted that Nasa's space-flight program was floundering, without any clear goals or future vision.

The initiative President Bush will unveil next week -- which is expected to call for building a moon colony and undertaking a Mars landing -- could answer a question that long has vexed the space program: Why should the nation spend billions of dollars every year to put humans in space?

Following the successful and popular Apollo moon program, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) developed the space shuttle and then began building the International Space Station, under rationales that failed to ignite strong support in the science and technology communities.

At various times, Nasa justified its work by touting the ability to perform zero-gravity science experiments, develop commercial products in space or cheaply launch payloads, among other things. Those rationales largely have been discredited.

The idea of a Mars or moon mission is not new. Advocates of space exploration always have considered them as the key, long-term goals, and the justification for such a massive effort remains to expand human presence beyond the known world -- an instinct as old as the human race.

The value of the Bush administration proposal will be judged not by the idea itself but by whether it can create the political and financial support needed to make the program real. "Bush can talk the talk, but he has to come up with a plan that generates something besides artwork," said John Pike, an expert on space issues. "He has to come up with a plan that is politically and financially sustainable." Much more at link

.

Okay, given all the bullshit shoveled to a largely mathematically challenged populace with no critical thinking skills, I am going to type what I first thought when reading this. Please bear with me.

John Pike(an EXPERT on space issues..alarm bells anyone?) states,"Bush can talk the talk." Mr. Pike, 'space EXPERT' obviously hasn't seen George and a microphone share the stage. Bush cannot "talk" even once, much less twice!

"This is scripted, right." -GWB at some canned 'press conference.'

John Pike, 'space EXPERT' further says: "He[Bush] has to come up with a plan that is politically and financially sustainable." Hmm, are you sure that you want Mr. Bush to actually hold the checkbook?

The politically sustainable bit is most likely spot-on, as if you were to poll adult Americans, over 50% would answer yes if asked, "Did you approve of the two Mars missions John Glenn has been on while maintaining his seat in the Senate?" Rather than, "WTF are you talking about? Don't you mean, NASA flight 092 STS 95? You know, when Discovery and its seven member crew, launched on October 29, at 2:19 p.m. EST. The mission conducted scientific Spacehab experiments, deployed and retrieved the Spartan free-flyer payload, and conducted operations with the HST Orbiting Systems Test and the International Extreme Ultraviolet Hitchhiker payloads? That's the only instance of Glenn returning to space that I know of."

By the way, John Pike is legit. I have nothing but respect for people like Mr. Pike.

Please read the entire article. It's actually quite good. Small print, so adjust your font size accordingly.

Iraqi mortar rounds -- obviously NOT evidence of the type necessary to justify going to war.

The Danes via Reuters:

Possible Iraqi blister gas weapons found - Denmark

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Danish troops have found dozens of mortar rounds buried in Iraq which initial chemical weapons tests show could contain blister gas, the Danish army said on Saturday.

The tests were taken after Danish troops found 36 120mm mortar rounds on Friday in southern Iraq. The Danish army said the rounds had been buried for at least 10 years.

"All the instruments showed indications of the same type of chemical compound, namely blister gas," the Danish Army Operational Command said on its Web site.

"However, this will not be confirmed until the final tests are available," it said in a statement. Results of the final tests are likely to be ready in about two days.

Blister gas, an illegal weapon which ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein said he had destroyed, was extensively used against the Iranians during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. More at link

Here's a pic:



It should be obvious that these eroding mortar rounds, if they are indeed found to have a blister agent -- the most common and easily produced vesicant is mustard, or dichloroethyl sulphide -- that they were only a danger to anyone that happened to come into direct contact with either the contents of the rounds, or contaminated earth.

These are likely to be remnants of the Iran-Iraq war, when unfortunately, Saddam was 'our guy' in the region. Of course I am breaking my own rule here by speculating on the contents and age of the mortar rounds. But I can't always be armed with the straight facts.

In any event, these archaic mortar rounds are not the reason we went to war with Iraq. Neither the publicly stated casus belli -- from which the Bush Administration has been backing down from -- nor the myriad other reasons that have been floated since. One can bet that the Right Wing Echo Chamber will use these scrapyard pieces as evidence that Iraq had effective WMD.

Mustard agent, you and the press -- It's time for a bit of chemistry(hey, no whining!)

In 1921 it was noted by Rona, that mustard decomposed relatively slowly in the presence of atmospheric water vapor. Sulphides are generally less stable than oxygen containing compounds due to their long carbon chains.

Mustard hydrolyses(decomposes in the presence of water) at a sufficient rate that if these rounds did contain mustard, or another sulphide based vesicant, it is most likely that the compound has hydrolysed into other compounds. A closely related property is persistence. This property was very important to a compound's suitability for use a chemical agent. The formula for an agent's persistence is not widely known. Certainly not by the press, and not by most organic chemists. Since the publicized work into gases of war was effectively halted with the signing and ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention(CWC) ban on 10 April 1972,(London, Moscow, Washington) there is, hopefully little going on new in this field.

The formula for persistence was first worked out by Leitner, Militarwissencsh. u. Techn. Mitteil, 1926. I won't publish the formula here, as it is only necessary for mention. The formula for persistence was valuable for knowing how long an agent would be effective. It is based on the amount of time required to evaporate a like quantity of water at temperature +15C. Hence, +15C = 1. Mustard's persistence value varies over a temperature gradient from 103 @ +15C to 29 @ 30C. Mustard scales in a nearly linear fashion.

This formula does not take into account atmospheric water vapor, hence it must be adjusted in a non-linear equation. That is well beyond the scope of this exercise.

What does all this mean? It means that one can determine with a high level of accuracy the age of any mustard given a reasonably complete data set.

Don't expect any of the information on this page to make it into the minds of the masses. It is all a matter of public record -- if you know where to look -- and should be high on anyone's list of questions to any authoritative party, if an agent is found in the suspect mortar rounds.

The press isn't filled with a bunch of chemists. Judith Miller could not assess the information I have laid out on this page. She was wrong about WMD because she could not assess the information she was given. The teams in Iraq looking for this stuff could not tell you whether or not the info. I have laid out here is accurate or not. David Kay..Not a scientist.

The information I have given you will enable you to ask the questions that need to be answered given any chemical weapons finding. The formulae, and properties are different of course for various agents, but you now know the kinds of things to look out for in the press.

I am politically non-partisan. I have voted both sides of the aisle. I am however, not neutral when it comes to matters of truth. That is why I have such a low opinion of the Bush Administration. The Bush Lies™ are a topic that most anyone that ventures onto this site will already know that I am most upset by.

I should again note that I am not a chemist by training. I do have lots of time in a university chem lab, but is because of my being a gate-oxide process engineer.(a chip geek)

More O'Neill, via Time.

Get your popcorn ready. It's gonna be fun. :)

More O'Neill:

Report: Bush Planned Iraqi Invasion Before Sept. 11

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill charges in a new book that President Bush (news - web sites) entered office in January 2001 intent on invading Iraq (news - web sites) and was in search of a way to go about it.

O'Neill, who was fired in December 2002 as part of a shake-up of Bush's economic team, has become the first major Bush administration insider to launch an attack on the president.

He likened Bush at Cabinet meetings to "a blind man in a room full of deaf people," according to excerpts from a CBS interview to promote a book by former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind, "The Price of Loyalty."

To go to war, Bush used the argument that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and had to be stopped in the post-Sept. 11, 2001, world. The weapons have never been found.

"From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) was a bad person and that he needed to go," O'Neill said in the "60 Minutes" interview scheduled to air on Sunday. "For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap."More at link

You must watch 60 Minutes this evening. That's an order! (well, not really an order..more of a heads up)

Bushwhacked!

I guess it's payback time for former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill. (hat tip to SC)

In today's Boston Globe he ends his silence since being canned along with Larry "war with Iraq could fall between 100 billion to 200 billion dollars" Lindsey.(I suppose McClellan will say Lindsey was dismissed for an erroneous estimate..he was after all, at least 300 million dollars off ;))

Today's Boston Globe:

Ex-treasury chief takes aim at Bush in new book

By Martin Crutsinger, Associated Press, 1/10/2004

WASHINGTON -- Former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, pushed out of the administration for not being a team player, says President Bush was so disengaged during Cabinet meetings that he was like a "blind man in a roomful of deaf people."

O'Neill, who has kept silent about the circumstances surrounding his ouster from the Cabinet 13 months ago, is now ready to give his side of the story in a tell-all book that paints Bush as a disengaged president who didn't encourage debate either at Cabinet meetings or in one-on-one meetings with his Cabinet secretaries.

To promote the book, which will be out Tuesday, O'Neill will appear tomorrow on CBS's "60 Minutes" in an interview with correspondent Lesley Stahl.

In an excerpt released by CBS, O'Neill said that a lack of real dialogue characterized the Cabinet meetings he attended in the administration's first two years.

O'Neill said that the atmosphere was similar during the one-on-one meetings he had with Bush.

Of his first meeting with the president, O'Neill said, "I went in with a long list of things to talk about and, I thought, to engage [Bush] on. . . . I was surprised it turned out me talking and the president just listening. It was mostly a monologue."

O'Neill is described as the principal source for the book, "The Price of Loyalty," being published by Simon and Schuster and written by Ron Suskind, a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal.

In addition to interviews with O'Neill, Suskind drew on 19,000 documents O'Neill provided, according to CBS, which said Suskind also interviewed dozens of Bush insiders to flesh out his account of the administration's first two years.

In response, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters yesterday, "I think it's well known the way the president approaches governing. . . . The president is someone that leads and acts decisively on our biggest priorities and that is exactly what he'll continue to do."

Asked about the administration's opinion of the upcoming book, McClellan said, "I don't do book reviews."

O'Neill, the former head of aluminum giant Alcoa, did not immediately respond to phone messages left at his office in Pittsburgh. But in an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, O'Neill said he hoped his inflammatory comments did not overshadow the substantive issues he discusses in the book.

"If the 'red meat,' taken out of context, is all that people get out of this book, it will be a huge disappointment to me," he said. "Ideally, this book will cause people to stop and think about the current state of our political process and raise our expectations for what is possible."

O'Neill gained a reputation during his two years in the Bush Cabinet for frequently shooting from the lip with incendiary comments that shook up financial markets and antagonized Wall Street. O'Neill said he was just trying to discuss complicated public policy issues in greater depth than the television sound bites so often used by the typical Washington politicians.

O'Neill was fired in December 2002 when Bush shook up his economic team in search of better salesmen for a new round of tax cuts the president hoped would stimulate the economy.

O'Neill had publicly questioned the need for the cuts in light of growing budget deficits. He was replaced by John Snow, former head of CSX Corp., who became a staunch advocate for new tax cuts, which Bush signed into law in May.

Well. Hard to know what to say.

Bush cans O'Neill for trying to raise the level of dialogue above that of a sound bite? That O'Neill's got some nerve!

And how dare he question the vaunted BUSH TAX CUTS! Those tax cuts, once made permanent, will provide a land of plenty for all Americans well into the sunset.

"I'll have to take a half-hour out of my schedule tomorrow night and watch this, what's it called? 60 Minutes?"

(aide whispers in ear)

"That's what I said. I'll take an hour out of my schedule. You don't have anything on tape!" :P

Aide: "Yes, Mr. President."

Bush, polls, and the internet gap.

I just left the online Newsweek online pre-presidential polling site.

Link to the poll and attendant article is below.

Go and enjoy the fun!

First an excerpt:

"Bush's approval rating has climbed to 54 percent (from around 51 percent prior to Saddam's capture) and 50 percent of Americans say they approve of the way things are going in Iraq, an increase from 45 percent before the Iraqi leader's arrest. Meanwhile, after a holiday season marked by fears of terror attacks in the United States, 70 percent of registered voters say they approve of the way Bush has worked to prevent or minimize terrorism at home, his highest approval rating in that category since last May. This could prove significant in coming months because 60 percent of voters say they are more likely to vote for Bush because of his handling of terrorism."

I'd just like to point out a few obvious things about the above numbers and how they bear no semblance to reality.

1) Americans do not have any tangible evidence of how things are going in Iraq. Another helicopter shot down. A new rising tide of attacks against U.S. forces and Iraqis. From what the press has been able to get out, things are worsening. That's what is being reported. Why don't people see this?

2) Bush and terrorism. On Dec. 17 -- less than a month ago, Mr. Kean, the chair of the 9/11 commission said, "There are people that, if I was doing the job, would certainly not be in the position they were in at that time because they failed. They simply failed." Then there is the Administration's handling of the President's Daily Briefs. There is a lot of smoke here.
The media has utterly failed as a watchdog. For people to harbor these sorts of unsupported beliefs either means that Americans don't know, or that the continuous line of propaganda coming out of the White House is overriding their mental functioning. Or that we have become those sheep that fella Nietzsche was always going on about.

I just took the first paragraph to parse. I could've taken any one of them. Now, onto the big Qs.

The questions are as follows:

NEWSWEEK: "In general, would you like to see George W. Bush re-elected to another term as president, or not?"

pure bs: "In general, who would you like to see elected as president in 2004? GW Bush lost the vote by over a half-million votes last time around, and was appointed president in a 5 - 4 ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court. Who would you like to see elected in 2004, a Democrat or a Republican? "

NEWSWEEK: "Does the current state of the economy and the job situation make you more likely or less likely to vote to re-elect George W. Bush next year?"

pure bs: "Thinking about the current economic climate, are you better off than you were three years ago? Do you feel that your job is safe? Do you feel that GW Bush has your best economic interests at heart? Do you think a Democrat would do a better job?"

NEWSWEEK: "Do you think a Democratic president would handle economic conditions in this country better than George W. Bush?"

pure bs: "Do you know how far into debt the U.S. is currently? Does it bother you that under GW Bush the country will be running deficits for the foreseeable future? Do you want your children to pay for wars of choice? Do you think a Demaocrat would do a be a better choice?"

NEWSWEEK: "Do you think a Democratic president would handle this country's foreign policy better than George W. Bush?"

pure bs: "Do you know that GW Bush's foreign policy was engineered by a small group of men known as neo-conservatives? Do you know what the "Project for A New American Century is? Do you agree with its stated goals? Do you trust these men? Do you think a Democrat would be a better choice?"

NEWSWEEK: "Do you think Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean is too liberal to defeat Bush if he is the Democratic Party's presidential candidate this year?"

pure bs: "Do you think that GW Bush is too reactionary to serve another term? Do you feel betrayed by Bush's pledge of, "compassionate conservatism," and subsequent move to a hard right agenda?" Do you think Howard Dean is too moderate to represent the Democratic party?"

NEWSWEEK: "Based on what you know about Howard Dean, do you think he has the kind of temperament to make a good president?"

pure bs: "Because your only exposure to Howard Dean has been through the mass media, do you feel qualified to make a statement about Howard Dean's temperament? Did GW Bush's "Deer in the Headlights" look on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 give you any insight into the character of the man?"

NEWSWEEK: "How confident are you that the United States will successfully establish a stable democratic government in Iraq over the long term?"

pure bs: "How confident are you that the United States will successfully establish a stable democratic government?" (don't you mean in Iraq?)

No. Iraq is a different question.

Come on. Dean's temperament? Sure my poll is almost as silly. Criminy. Our press corps. at work. *heavy sigh*

At least the majority of the online voters have likely framed the issues properly. Or at least, not as improperly.

Kilroy wasn't here...

I've been reading the BBC's reports on the fall-out from the BBC's very own, Mr. Robert Kilroy-Silk.

Short version via Aussie paper The Age

Anti-Arab slurs cost BBC host
January 11, 2004

The BBC yesterday suspended a popular British talkshow after its presenter branded Arabs "suicide bombers, limb amputators and women repressors" in an article in a London newspaper.

Presenter Robert Kilroy-Silk, a former British Labour MP, later expressed "very deep regret" over the column, which questioned whether Arab nations had contributed anything to civilisation.

The BBC said it would suspend the daily talkshow Kilroy, which records audience ratings of 1.2 million, while it conducted a probe.

Kilroy-Silk said the column was written in April last year in response to opposition to the US-led invasion of Iraq. "It is not what I would have said today," he said in a statement.

The article, headlined "We owe the Arabs nothing", asked: "What do (Arabs) think we feel about them? That we admire them for being suicide bombers, limb amputators, women repressors?"

The Commission for Racial Equality said it would refer the article to police.

- Reuters

I think what Mr. Kilroy-Silk allegedly wrote was in very poor taste. Mr. Kilroy-Silk appears a racist.

Balancing his statements are some facts. There is the fact that a tiny fraction of Arabs do turn to suicide bombing missions, and under Sharia Law, which is maintained alongside secular courts in many predominantly Muslim countries¹ amputation is a penalty for some offenses.²

The overt or covert repression of women has been a part of most societies and continues today. It must be noted that in countries that practice Sharia Law, this repression is often overt, and very pronounced.

So, what to do? Mr. Kilroy-Silk was stating facts. Sometimes facts are ugly things. The things of which he wrote are not the exclusive domain of Muslims under Sharia law. All of these practices - or their analogues - have pretty much been with us since the dawn of civilization. They have ebbed and flowed in societies and religions worldwide. What gets people like Mr. Kilroy-Silk into trouble is not what they say is factually in error, it is because it is said of a distinguishedly different group.

Kilroy-Silk's words loosely fit the definition of racism as, 'discrimination or prejudice based on race.'

I am a Caucasian male. I have never been exposed to what I perceive as racism. The internet is awash in Causcasian racism as defined by the above definition. Every Red-neck joke, trailer park epithet, and in my particular case, atheism crack is an affront to my 'race' or lack of religious belief. Yes, Me personally! It is only because, by and large these slurs are made by white Americans for white Americans(jokes about each other are just about the only thing we make these days) are they not only tolerated, but encouraged.

The closest that I came to feeling discriminated against was when George H.W. Bush uttered this:

"No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God."

He uttered that pearl of wisdom to American Atheists' reporter Robert Sherman in 1987 while serving as Vice President.

At the time I thought this guy believes in an invisible sky-guy, and gets his moral guidance from a book that talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all this other stuff not only for which there is no evidence, but pretty convincing evidence that it's ALL a load of pure bs(I added the 'pure bs' thing as a plug for the site ;)), and I am the one whose citizenship should be questioned?

I'll share this with you. I wasn't going to touch this issue. I only decided to if I could frame it sans emotion. I hope that I have succeeded.

Although Kilroy-Silk's words were printed in an unaffilated newspaper, I would 'sack him.' He has, as is said, "a history."

Full text of "We Owe Arabs Nothing"

Much more Kilroy-Silk here

1. Most countries of the Middle East and north Africa maintain a dual system of secular courts and religious courts, in which the religious courts mainly regulate marriage and inheritance. Saudi Arabia and Iran maintain only religious courts for all aspects of jurisprudence. Sharia is also used in Sudan, Libya and for a time in modern Afghanistan. Some states in northern Nigeria have reintroduced Sharia courts.


2. I searched for a source that is neutral on the issue of Sharia Law. This Wikipedia page, while short on facts, appears to be neutral.

Saddam to be declared, "POW"

This is really good news. Sure he is by all accounts a really bad guy, but the U.S. -- I'm not using the "and our allies" line, because it's simply rhetoric -- after having illegally invaded and now occupied Iraq, should treat Saddam as one of our guys should be treated if the situation was reversed.

Here's the AP's take on this:

Hussein declared to be a POW

The general counsel office in the Pentagon has determined that Saddam Hussein is a prisoner of war because of his status as former commander in chief of Iraq's military.

BY MATT KELLEY
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Pentagon lawyers have determined that Saddam Hussein has been a prisoner of war since American forces captured him Dec. 13, a Defense Department spokesman said Friday.

Despite that determination, aides to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were grappling Friday with what to say publicly about the issue. A senior defense official who insisted he not be named said Hussein's legal status was still under review.

Similarly, Secretary of State Colin Powell told CBS News: ''I don't know that he has been formally declared a prisoner of war.'' It was up to the Pentagon, Powell said.

However, Powell said, "We are certainly treating everybody in our custody in accordance with basic rights and expectations of international agreements that we have.''

Whether or not Hussein is a prisoner of war could be key to how he is treated in captivity and eventually put on trial. The Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners of war forbid any kind of coercion in POW interrogations, for example.

Rumsfeld said earlier in the week that Hussein and all Iraqi captives are being treated in compliance with the Geneva Conventions.

He said Hussein's legal status was being reviewed by several U.S. agencies and that no determination had been made.

The general counsel office in the Pentagon -- the Defense Department's top civilian lawyers -- has determined that Hussein is a prisoner of war because of his status as former commander in chief of Iraq's military, spokesman Maj. Michael Shavers said Friday. More at link

I thought that democracy, where it concerns rule of law had been abolished in the post 9/11 climate. The detainees at Guantanamo, and Jose Padilla's treatment certainly pointed in this direction.

As all the partisans on both sides of the issue as so fond of saying, "everything changed on Sept. 11." Well, if rule of man trumps rule of law, then this is certainly the case. In a democracy model that has withstood civil war, two world wars, and a host of other crises, that statement is incompatible. As noted above, we have been successfully able to contend with crises orders of magnitude greater than 9/11. Suspension of the rule of law would be the death knell of American democracy.

A democracy is not worth the breath used to utter the word when allowed to be shaped by emotional responses to events, however frightening they may be.

Appeals to emotion can be powerfully motivating and cause us to wander from the path that has served us so well. Black and white versions of the world are both inaccurate, and defeatist to long term goals. As we have seen over the last year in particular, submitting to these appeals can have grave consequences. This has been clearly demonstrated in the build-up to, and subsequent prosecution of the second Gulf War. We have damaged relationships with the very states that we will need to share information with, if the scourge of international terrorism is to be depreciated. Not just for today, but for extended periods. Logic and reason are the tools by which to best illuminate our future. But I digress.

Saddam's treatment as a POW is a small but very valuable victory for democracy in a country that has been governed in a de-facto manner by an odd jingoism, as some corners continue to recklessly beat the drums of war.

Most Americans(and that includes your author) know very little of Saddam Hussein. We are told a great many things about this man. Some are assuredly true. Perhaps most or all. But there is nothing that nearly 100% of the U.S. population knows about Hussein that hasn't been through a governmental filter of one variety or another.

I am a skeptic because of my academic background. In science one takes no novel information at face value. I may be too harsh on governmental sources of information, but like a poor scientist once the government has been shown to be in error, their subsequent information should be first viewed with skepticism. This administration, like most all others, has been shown to be deceitful.

I would not be doing anyone a favor by accepting information provided to me by the government -- or any source for that matter -- if I took it at face value without scrutiny. The true scientific method cannot be used in many instances where information is provided, but the tools of critical thinking can. I would say that they must.

In the coming days, weeks and months, I suspect that information about Saddam Hussein will make its way to the public. All information should be viewed with the same scrutiny that one might use if told that there are an army of sequined turquoise chameleons replete with gold lamé covered toe pads were about to take over your neighborhood.

It will be difficult, but not impossible to assess the available information with a high likelihood of accuracy. Here's a good place to hone your critical thinking skills.

Covertly, the U.S. largely made Saddam, and I am fairly certain that Saddam has more detail to add to the published accounts of who, how, why, and what the U.S. did, or did not do for him, and for Iraq during his ascendancy to power, and in assisting him in solidifying and retaining that power.

In closing, I'll offer you the words of true renaissance man, Sir Francis Bacon. In 1605 he wrote: "For myself, I found that I was fitted for nothing so well as for the study of Truth; as having a mind nimble and versatile enough to catch the resemblances of things ?… and at the same time steady enough to fix and distinguish their subtler differences; as being gifted by nature with desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and as being a man that neither affects what is new nor admires what is old, and that hates every kind of imposture."

We should all aspire to view novelty with the same degree of reason.

I just had a moment to pop over to Atrios', Eschaton blog, and found a link to this Nedra Pickler article.

Dean Criticizes Bush Over Stem Cells

By NEDRA PICKLER
The Associated Press
Friday, January 9, 2004; 2:02 PM

ROCHESTER, N.H. - Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean on Friday criticized President Bush for restricting stem-cell research based on religious beliefs even though his own faith affected his decision to extend legal rights to gay couples.

In 2001, Bush limited research that destroyed human embryos. Many Christian organizations and abortion-rights opponents were against the research.

"I think we ought to make scientific decisions, not theological and theoretical decision," Dean told voters at a town hall meeting. "I think that what the president did on stem-cell research was based on his religious beliefs and I think that is why."

Earlier this week Dean said his Christian faith contributed to his decision to sign the civil unions bill four years ago when he was governor of Vermont. The bill gave gay couples the same legal rights as married couples without allowing them to wed.

"The hallmark of Christianity is to reach out to people who have been left behind," Dean told reporters Tuesday night. "So there was a religious aspect to my support of civil unions."

Dean told the town hall meeting Friday that if elected president he would allow stem-cell research. He said he has a nephew with diabetes who could benefit from it.

"We'll give hope back to people with diabetes and other diseases who could be cured by stem-cell research," Dean said.

Bush, in announcing his decision in August 2001, said the use of human embryos had led different people of different faiths to different conclusions. He said he himself had given the question thought and prayer.

"I also believe human life is a sacred gift from our creator," Bush said in a national address. "I worry about a culture that devalues life, and believe as your president I have an important obligation to foster and encourage respect for life in America and throughout the world." Link

In this particular instance Ms. Pickler is technically correct. However, Dr. Dean's endorsement of stem cell research is known to be medically valuable. Mr. Bush's stance on stem cell research is reactionary. Mr. Bush's worldview is not far removed from that which caused Galileo to be a prisoner in his own home until his death.

Ms. Pickler fails to parse the nuanced words of Dr. Dean when he says that, "there was a religious aspect to my support of civil unions." Of course primarily it was a civil rights issue.

Mr. Bush has no medical or scientific background to come to a well-informed reasoned decision about the necessity of embryonic stem-cell research to further medicine and human healing. It is most likely that Mr. Bush does indeed have great personal reservations about embryonic stem-cell research. He also would have to answer tough questions from the 'Christian Right' if he was to do the medically responsible, yet religiously troubling thing and sponsor embryonic stem-cell research.

Essentially, Dr. Dean's position was bolstered by his Christian beliefs, whereas Mr. Bush's decision was formed entirely by his.

Bad reporting by agencies with as much prestige as the AP and WaPo should not go unchallenged.

I was unable to find an AP ombudsman email contact, but did find this: info@ap.org

The Washington Post's online news ombudsman can be reached here.

MSNBC has just reported that Bush wanrts a Moon base..nice.

Bush to announce return to the moon
Long-range space strategy to be revealed Wednesday

WASHINGTON - President Bush is preparing to unveil a new space initiative with a long-range goal of returning humans to the moon and establishing a permanent presence there, then moving on to Mars, NBC News has confirmed.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters Friday that the president would make remarks about the space program next Wednesday in Washington.

"The president is strongly committed to the exploration of space," McClellan said.

McClellan declined to discuss the contents of the upcoming speech, as did NASA spokesman Glenn Mahone.

"We're not going to pre-empt the president," Mahone said, "but we're excited about the news of the announcement next week and what it means for the future direction of NASA."More bs at link.

Senior White House officials have told pure bs, on condition of anonymity, that the President is "hoping for its(Moon base) completion prior to November of next year, so he'll have a reasonably safe to stay once he's out of office."

"Hey you eggheads! There aren't going to be any pretzels up there on that hunka cheese, are there? Great! Once I'm done building my new fort, you brainiacs ain't gonna have a penny left over."

Rumors are rampant about Bush making an announcement to send a manned mission to Mars, amongst a few other things. While I appreciate the notion of such a mission, I have what I think is better idea.

Let's continue with the relatively inexpensive unmanned missions and spend the estimated Half-a-Fuckin'-Trillion-Dollars on some pragmatic things...oh, like Getting our own planet's environment under control before we go and fuck up Mars, and then..THE UNIVERSE!!

I love this shit.

Bush Will Propose a "Responsible Budget"

January 9, 2004 ? The White House says President Bush will propose a "responsible budget" even though he's reportedly about to propose two hugely expensive manned space missions.
Senior officials say in a speech next week, the president will unveil plans to send U-S astronauts to build a permanent station on the moon. They say he'll also set the goal of sending Americans to Mars.

Estimates of the costs of these ventures top half a (T) trillion dollars -- which is roughly the size of the federal deficit for the current year alone.

But Press Secretary Scott McClellan says Bush intends to keep to a course that funds important national priorities, and then -- in his words -- "holds the line elsewhere."

Among those criticizing Bush's plan is Nobel prize-winning physicist Douglas Osheroff. He'd rather see NASA concentrate on more affordable robots, like the "Spirit" rover that just arrived on Mars.

This is what you reap when you have a "C" student in the oval office. Bush has never met a spending bill he didn't like. Vetoes? Nary a one.

Fortunate son's should be excluded from handling the affairs of State until they have demonstrated leadership ability.

Let's run down the list quickly.

1) Without additional spending, deficits extending into the foreseeable future

2) Unfunded or underfunded Bush domestic programs

3) DoD budget equal to the rest of the planet combined

4) World markets cashing out of dollars -- gradually now, but if a panic ensues -- look out below!

5) Iraq. No one knows how much money we're going to throw at that country because of the neo-cons little experiment 500 billion is a reasonable estimate.

6) Another 500 + billion for something that Bush knows nothing about, yet apparently spends most of his waking there.

Plus there is Afghanistan, and potentially more neo-conquests.

McSmellan is a bald faced liar. This sort of BS puts Ari to shame. (yeah, the "McSmellan" bit is juvenile)

America needs to keep fiscally baffled fucktards like this out of office.

Revised alert level -

Yellow

I am not alone.

The Independent seems to allow its journalists a pretty wide berth. How else would they keep Robert Fisk?

I give them the pure bs gold star for this bit.

I'm also going to try some new formats today. You have been warned!!

'US climate policy bigger threat to world than terrorism'

Bravo!!

By Steve Connor, Science Editor
09 January 2004


Tony Blair's chief scientist has launched a withering attack on President George Bush for failing to tackle climate change, which he says is more serious than terrorism.

Sir David King, the Government's chief scientific adviser, says in an article today in the journal Science that America, the world's greatest polluter, must take the threat of global warming more seriously.

"In my view, climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism," Sir David says.

The Bush administration was wrong to pull out of the Kyoto protocol, the international effort to limit the emission of greenhouse gases, and wrong to imply the protocol could adversely affect the US economy, Sir David says. "As the world's only remaining superpower, the United States is accustomed to leading internationally co-ordinated action. But the US government is failing to take up the challenge of global warming.

"The Bush administration's strategy relies largely on market-based incentives and voluntary action ... But the market cannot decide that mitigation is necessary, nor can it establish the basic international framework in which all actors can take their place."Much more at link

Bush Climate policy could, if left unchecked, mean the end of civilzation as we know it. This is not an alarmist position. It is one shared by anyone with a long term view, and working knowledge of the issues. Earth Trends is a great resource. I learned about it while watching PBS' fabulous Earth on Edge.

It has always been short sighted not to put the environment first. If the U.S. is going to be the model for environmental regulation, this planet will become a very sterile place with virtually nothing but pests, livestock and human beings as it inhabitants. We deserve better than this. The first step in responsible global climate stewardship is replacing that fellow residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Our future truly is at stake.

U.S. job growth disappointingly flat

The Employment number is just a number. It's the trend that matters. That being said, today's numbers are quite a shock.

Nonfarm payrolls increased by 1,000 in December, far below forecasts.

Job growth in the previous four months was revised lower by a total of 66,000. Over the past five months, payrolls have increased by 278,000, according to the survey of some 300,000 business establishments.

The separate household survey showed employment fell by 54,000 in December to 138.5 million. Unemployment fell by 255,000 to 8.4 million, the lowest since October 2002. The labor force decreased by 309,000.

The weak labor market is holding down pay increases. Average hourly earnings rose 0.2 percent to $15.50. Over the past year, earnings are up 2 percent, the lowest year-over-year gain since 1987.

Poor weather during the survey week may have depressed the workweek. The average workweek dropped by 12 minutes to 33.7 hours, while hours in manufacturing fell by 6 minutes to 40.7 hours despite a 6-minute increase in overtime to 4.6 hours.

Total hours worked in the economy fell 0.6 percent.

Hiring weakened in December after job gains of 43,000 in November and 100,000 in October. In December, 50.4 percent of industries were hiring, down from 54.3 percent in November.

Goods-producing industries cut 12,000 jobs, including 26,000 in manufacturing. Hopes had risen among economists that the long drought of hiring in the factory sector might finally be ending after the employment index of the Institute for Supply Management index hit a three-year high.

Services-producing industries added 13,000 jobs. Retail jobs fell by 38,000, as cautious retailers kept staffs lean heading into the holiday season. Fewer hires in November and December will likely mean fewer layoffs than expected in January, which could boost the seasonally adjusted data.

Professional and business services added 45,000 jobs, including 30,000 temporary help workers. Health services added 14,000 jobs.

The average length of unemployment fell to 19.6 weeks in December from 20 weeks in November. Of the 8.4 million counted as unemployed, 1.9 million or 22.3 percent have been out of work longer than six months.

I see the unemployment number pegged at 5.7%. I think you'll see a downward revision here.

Much of the data is troubling. Wage and hours worked are cause for concern, as is the sheer size of the 'employment miss.'

Of course the data do not include the large number of Americans that are no longer seeking work, but does give a rough idea of the strength of the job market as reflected in the earnings report, and the hours per week worked.

In case you're wondering where all of this data is mined from, see the U.S. Dept. of Labor's Employment Situation tables and summary.

I just peeked at the opening on Wall Street and it appears that in reaction to the jobs report, the major indices are approximately .75% lower.

I'm sure that the employment numbers will be very closely monitored after today's weak showing. The shocking weakness in the employment report is likely to keep the Fed from moving rates at their next meeting..expect the January 24 release notes to read like the following:

"The Committee continues to believe that an accommodative stance of monetary policy, coupled with robust underlying growth in productivity, is providing important ongoing support to economic activity. The evidence accumulated over the intermeeting period confirms that output is expanding briskly, and the labor market appears to be improving modestly. Increases in core consumer prices are muted and expected to remain low.

"The Committee perceives that the upside and downside risks to the attainment of sustainable growth for the next few quarters are roughly equal. The probability of an unwelcome fall in inflation has diminished in recent months and now appears almost equal to that of a rise in inflation. However, with inflation quite low and resource use slack, the Committee believes that policy accommodation can be maintained for a considerable period."

In simple terms, no change in bias or rate movement at this time.

On Edit: The dollar is trading at yet another all time low vs. the Euro.