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Saturday, September 18, 2004 Bush stalling for time The commission that proposed three presidential candidate debates says time is running out for the Bush and Kerry campaigns to agree on details so organizers can finalize their plans. The Commission on Presidential Debates last week sent a letter to the two campaigns asking for a meeting about their concerns, but has heard nothing back. The first scheduled debate is a little more than two weeks away, on Sept. 30 in Coral Gables, Fla. -clip- The commission needs 10 days' time to produce its first proposed debate, Brown said. The other two presidential debates are scheduled for Oct. 8 and Oct. 13, with a vice presidential debate set for Oct. 5. Sen. John Kerry's campaign agreed in August to the all venues, dates and moderators proposed by the commission, but President Bush's campaign has not said whether it will agree. Seriously, what's the problem here? Either Bush is afraid of the debates or doesn't respect the American people enough to participate in them. Neither one is an acceptable reason. And why is Commission being so polite about this? Like the Prospect says: Just tell each candidate you're hosting the debates and if Bush doesn't want to show up, the hell with him. Let Kerry speak to the audience alone for 90 minutes. (Thanks to August for the reminder on this.) posted by chris at 1:46 PM   ------------------ Friday, September 17, 2004 Bush events for faithful only A woman wearing a T-shirt with the words "President Bush You Killed My Son" and a picture of a soldier killed in Iraq was detained Thursday after she interrupted a campaign speech by first lady Laura Bush. As shouts of "Four More Years" subsided, Niederer, standing in the middle of a crowd of some 700, continued to shout about the killing of her son. When Bush mentioned the troops abroad, Niederer shouted, "When are yours going to serve?" referring to Bush's 22-year-old twin daughters, who aren't in the armed services. -clip- Event planners were ready for such a disruption, stationing volunteers like Karolina Zabawa, 20, in the crowd. "If anybody acts up, I just start chanting, 'Four more years!'" said Zabawa, a Drexel University student. "Event planners were ready for such a disturbance" and planted people in the crowd to chant "four more years." Amazing. And it's not just preparation for a "disturbance." Press covers these events too and with enough people planted in the audience, it looks like Bush and Company have quite the successful events. Too bad they're all plants or they had to sign endorsement forms before entering. posted by chris at 2:14 PM   Slash and burn Example 1: The Bush administration wants to trim the Federal Aviation Administration's budget for buying new air traffic control equipment at a time when more planes are in the air. Example 2: The White House put government agencies on notice this month that if Bush is reelected, his budget for 2006 may include $2.3 billion in spending cuts from virtually all domestic programs not mandated by law, including education, homeland security and others central to Bush's campaign. All this money going to defense spending, being blown up in Iraq and as a result, domestic programs start getting slashed. But dammit, we've gotta push those tax cuts through! posted by chris at 1:33 PM   Blackmail? Soldiers from a Fort Carson combat unit say they have been issued an ultimatum - re-enlist for three more years or be transferred to other units expected to deploy to Iraq. Hundreds of soldiers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team were presented with that message and a re-enlistment form in a series of assemblies last Thursday, said two soldiers who spoke on condition of anonymity. -clip- "They said if you refuse to re-enlist with the 3rd Brigade, we'll send you down to the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which is going to Iraq for a year, and you can stay with them, or we'll send you to Korea, or to Fort Riley (in Kansas) where they're going to Iraq," said one of the soldiers, a sergeant. The second soldier, an enlisted man who was interviewed separately, essentially echoed that view. "They told us if we don't re-enlist, then we'd have to be reassigned. And where we're most needed is in units that are going back to Iraq in the next couple of months. So if you think you're getting out, you're not," he said. What do they do when they run out of soldiers? Reinstate the draft? posted by chris at 1:28 PM   Graphic Two bar graphs detailing US soldiers wounded and killed in Iraq since the beginning of the invasion. (via Kos.) posted by chris at 1:22 PM   How many reports do we need? One more time: there were no weapons of mass destruction. A new report on Iraq's illicit weapons program is expected to conclude that Saddam Hussein's government had a clear intent to produce nuclear, chemical and biological weapons if United Nations sanctions were lifted, government officials said Thursday. But, like earlier reports, it finds no evidence that Iraq had begun any large-scale program for weapons production by the time of the American invasion last year, the officials said. In its current form, the report reaffirms previous interim findings that there is no evidence that Iraq possessed stockpiles of illicit weapons at the time of the American invasion in March 2003, the officials said. Prewar intelligence estimates that said Iraq actually possessed chemical and biological arsenals and was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program were cited by the Bush administration as the major rationale for war. Remember, in the run-up to the attack on Iraq, Bush assured us that Saddam already had WMD. It wasn't until well after they couldn't find any weapons of mass destruction did he turn to other excuses like "intent to produce them" and bringing freedom to the Iraqi people. posted by chris at 1:13 PM   ------------------ Thursday, September 16, 2004 Reframing the Iraq debate If, suddenly, it starts sounding like everything's going great in Iraq, this might be why: The visit [to the U.S.] by Iraq's charismatic interim leader, who will also speak to the U.N. General Assembly and be part of a sustained media effort, could provide a boost to President Bush's campaign by reframing the controversial U.S. intervention in Iraq in terms of accomplishments rather than problems, U.S. officials said. Allawi is expected to emphasize the transformation of Iraq since the ouster of Saddam Hussein, to thank the United States on behalf of the Iraqi people and to appeal for ongoing support to complete the job, they said. posted by chris at 5:25 PM   First, money. Second, power. Third, more money and power. The record shows that over the last decade, Cheney was willing first to do business with countries on the U.S. government’s terror list, then to travel abroad and condemn U.S. counter-terrorism policy when it got in his way. In the process, Cheney proved repeatedly he could be trusted to put Halliburton’s bottom line ahead of his country’s national security. As Secretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush, Cheney helped lead a multinational coalition against Iraq and was one of the architects of a post-war economic embargo designed to choke off funds to the country. He insisted the world should “maintain sanctions, at least of some kind,” so Saddam Hussein could not “rebuild the military force he’s used against his neighbors.” But less than six years later, as a private businessman, Cheney apparently had more important interests than preventing Hussein from rebuilding his army. While he claimed during the 2000 campaign that, as CEO of Halliburton, he had “imposed a ‘firm policy’ against trading with Iraq,” confidential UN records show that, from the first half of 1997 to the summer of 2000, Halliburton held stakes in two firms that sold more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq while Cheney was in charge. Halliburton acquired its interest in both firms while Cheney was at the helm, and continued doing business through them until just months before Cheney was named George W. Bush’s running mate. Perhaps even more troubling, at the same time Cheney was doing business with Iraq, he launched a public broadside against sanctions laws designed to cut off funds to regimes like Iran, which the State Department listed as a state sponsor of terrorism. In 1998, Cheney traveled to Kuala Lumpur to attack his own country's terrorism policies for being too strict. Under the headline, “Former US Defence Secretary Says Iran-Libya Sanctions Act ‘Wrong,’” the Malaysian News Agency reported that Cheney “hit out at his government" and said sanctions on terrorist countries were "ineffective, did not provide the desired results and [were] a bad policy.” Two years later, Cheney traveled to another country to demand America weaken restrictions on doing business with Iran’s petroleum industry, despite Clinton administration warnings that Iranian oil revenues could be used to fund terrorism. “We're kept out of [Iran] primarily by our own government, which has made a decision that U.S. firms should not be allowed to invest significantly in Iran,” he told an oil conference in Canada. “I think that's a mistake.” Seems like Cheney is perfectly happy to work with terrorists when it suits his purpose. (via Kos.) posted by chris at 5:03 PM   That ol' "big government" ruse Seeking to gain ground against Sen. John Kerry, President Bush said Thursday that his Democratic opponent "wants to expand government" in education, health care, taxes and virtually every other area of domestic policy. Yeah, cause you know, it's so much better to slash funding for education and health care and let corporations get rich off of privitization plans that don't solve the problems of poor education and inadequate health care. Or just slash funding for everything and give all the money to the military industrial complex so we can have us another unjustified and unnecessary war. That's the way to a prosperous society! This from the man: --who created the biggest bureaucracy the nation had seen in a long time; --who's rung up the highest deficit in the nation's history; --under whose watch federal spending has increased at its fastest rate in 30 years; --who supports federal preemption (but only when it suits him, of course), and --whose plan for the next four years STILL costs more then Kerry's plan. This guy IS Big Government! More from Slate and the American Conservative magazine. posted by chris at 2:04 PM   A safe Iraq, but at what cost? From an article I highlighted last week: The administration has been secretive about the cost of the war and the likely impact that the bulging defense budget and continuing cost of tax cuts will have on domestic spending next year. The White House put government agencies on notice this month that if Bush is reelected, his budget for 2006 may include $2.3 billion in spending cuts from virtually all domestic programs not mandated by law, including education, homeland security and others central to Bush's campaign. So if we're cutting the homeland security budget, tell me again how the war in Iraq is making America safer? (via Americablog.) posted by chris at 1:48 PM   Organic food in the school cafeteria While fried chicken nuggets and cheeseburgers still reign supreme in most cafeterias, a small but growing number of schools are turning to organic food as a way to improve children's health and fight obesity. The Seattle school district recently adopted a new policy banning junk food and encouraging organic food in school cafeterias. California school districts in Berkeley, Santa Monica, and Palo Alto have organic food programs. And through a program sponsored by the organic yogurt company Stonyfield Farm, schools in Rhode Island, California, Massachusetts, New York, New Hampshire and Connecticut have or are getting new vending machines stocked with all-organic treats. Story. posted by chris at 1:46 PM   Ridiculous Republican state Senator Anna Cowin, head of the Florida Senate Ethics and Elections Committee, keeps shooting down proposals from black lawmakers to come up with legislation to restore voting rights to former felons. In the October 2004 issue of Vanity Fair, she explains why: "It makes elections very expensive...because you have all these thousands and thousands of people – I mean tens of thousands of people – to send literature to…The people don't come to vote, anyway." From the Progress Report. posted by chris at 1:41 PM   Prospects for Iraq not so good A classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush in late July spells out a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq, government officials said Wednesday. The estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war, the officials said. The most favorable outcome described is an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms. "There's a significant amount of pessimism," said one government official who has read the document, which runs about 50 pages. The officials declined to discuss the key judgments - concise, carefully written statements of intelligence analysts' conclusions - included in the document. Sad. posted by chris at 10:07 AM   ------------------ Wednesday, September 15, 2004 A view from out in the world Bob Harris recently came back from Greece (for the Olympics) with stopovers in Turkey and Egypt and he has a story to share. An hour earlier [in Egypt] I was accosted by a tall and angry fellow shouting "I hate America!" over and over, in a tone half-accusing, half-demanding-an-explanation. But he wasn't a mugger or anything; actually, he was well-dressed and clean-shaven and looked more like an accountant out for a stroll who was just pissed off about the news and took it out on the white guy. I nodded and gestured for him to join me as I was walking, letting him vent. Which he did. (Hoo-boy.) I think he assumed I was German, since that's the language we wound up butchering the most for a while. I didn't stop him for a good stretch. When it was my turn, I struggled with the words, so I eventually pointed at the sole of my shoe (the dirtiest part of the body) while saying the word "Bush," then mentioned Iraq and mimed my own broken heart. (Both of these gestures were entirely accurate, I think.) And then, feeling safer once he understood I wasn't his enemy, I reaffirmed that I was an American. You should have seen this guy's face -- a blank look for a moment, a cursor while his hard drive spun... and then the anger was completely gone, replaced with curiosity and a little, I dunno... hope, even. It was apparently news to him -- good news -- that Americans don't all support Bush, and all he wanted to know was how many more of us there were. (Yes, the media there sucks even worse than it does here.) Oh, man. Suddenly he didn't hate "America" anymore. He certainly didn't hate me. He freakin' wanted to buy me a meal, people, just to hear more. I could go on, (and I intend to, in a book I'm trying to find time to write, called Almost Seven Wonders about this last trip). But the point is, we have many, many, many friends in this world who are reluctantly -- reluctantly, I tell you -- becoming enemies, and furious enemies at that. It's not just about Bush, although he is almost universally disliked and/or little-respected, my hand to God, not just in the Islamic world, but damn near everywhere, once you leave these borders. (I think it's fair to guess that Bush has become the most widely-despised president in all of U.S. history, and probably by a wide margin. I certainly can't think of a precedent that comes close.) Bush got us into this mess, and he deserves all the scorn he gets. But what happens next is up to us. People are people; when you actually sit down and talk openly and honestly with people and hash out your differences, you can come to a basic understanding and even friendship, across all sorts of cultural, relgious and ethnic barriers. Unfortunately, our current foreign policy is a really bad advertisement for the United States and it's not setting that sort of conciliatory tone that could soothe over alot of the bad vibes. It's up to us to elect a President who will reach out to the world with an open hand instead of a clenched authoritative fist. posted by chris at 4:06 PM   ------------------ Tuesday, September 14, 2004 Bush omits a few key facts Like how much his plan to destroy for America will cost: The expansive agenda President Bush laid out at the Republican National Convention was missing a price tag, but administration figures show the total is likely to be well in excess of $3 trillion over a decade. A staple of Bush's stump speech is his claim that his Democratic challenger, John F. Kerry, has proposed $2 trillion in long-term spending, a figure the Massachusetts senator's campaign calls exaggerated. But the cost of the new tax breaks and spending outlined by Bush at the GOP convention far eclipses that of the Kerry plan. Bush's pledge to make permanent his tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of 2010 or before, would reduce government revenue by about $1 trillion over 10 years, according to administration estimates. His proposed changes in Social Security to allow younger workers to invest part of their payroll taxes in stocks and bonds could cost the government $2 trillion over the coming decade, according to the calculations of independent domestic policy experts. And Bush's agenda has many costs the administration has not publicly estimated. For instance, Bush said in his speech that he would continue to try to stabilize Iraq and wage war on terrorism. The war in Iraq alone costs $4 billion a month, but the president's annual budget does not reflect that cost. Bush's platform highlights the challenge for both presidential candidates in trying to lure voters with attractive government initiatives at a time of mounting budget deficits. This year's federal budget deficit will reach a record $422 billion, and the government is expected to accumulate $2.3 trillion in new debt over the next 10 years, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported last week. The president has had little to say about the deficit as he barnstorms across the country, which has prompted Democrats and some conservative groups to say Bush refuses to admit there will not be enough money in government coffers to pay for many of his plans. posted by chris at 2:32 PM   ------------------ Monday, September 13, 2004 Project Censored Project Censored is a media research project out of Sonoma State University which compiles an annual list of the most significant news items that have been overlooked or under-reported by the mainstream media outlets. This year's Top 25 stories has been posted to their website. Reading these lists several years ago probably got me started on this kind of information gathering and dissemination that I'm trying to do with this website. It's well worth a look. posted by chris at 5:12 PM   Prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Evidence of prisoner abuse and possible war crimes at Guantánamo Bay reached the highest levels of the Bush administration as early as autumn 2002, but Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, chose to do nothing about it, according to a new investigation published exclusively in the Guardian today. -clip- [Journalist Seymour] Hersh provides details of how President George Bush signed off on the establishment of a secret unit that was given advance approval to kill or capture and interrogate "high-value" suspects - considered by many to be in defiance of international law - an officially "unacknowledged" programme that was eventually transferred wholesale from Guantánamo to the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Hersh, who broke the story of the My Lai massacre in the Vietnam war, makes his revelations in a new book, Chain of Command, which leaves senior figures in the Bush administration far more seriously implicated in the torture scandal than had been previously apparent. -clip- Mr Rumsfeld told reporters on Friday he had approved the use of harsh interrogation measures, but that they had only been meant for Guantánamo. He said the measures ought to be contrasted with those of terrorists. "Does it rank up there with chopping someone's head off on television?" he asked. "It doesn't." So that's the standard we've set for ourselves? Just being better than the terrorists? posted by chris at 8:43 AM   ------------------ Sunday, September 12, 2004 It's 8 weeks til Election Day And we got work to do. MoveOn PAC has got ads from famous people (ooooh!) and opportunities to get involved. America Coming Together has ways to volunteer and register voters in swing states. Kos has a list of Democratic candidates in important House and Senate races that could use a few bucks. The DNC could use some cash. So could the Green Party, if you're so inclined. If you don't have time to volunteer or hand out flyers, at least give a few bucks for a worthy cause. This country simply can't handle four more years of George W. Bush. posted by chris at 3:57 PM   ------------------

    

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