Flexible Reality
Thursday, November 13, 2003
DISPATCH FROM GREENVILLE, S.C.
Democrats Out of Step in South
Los Angeles Times
By John Johnson, Times Staff Writer
Once a stronghold, the region was swept by Bush in 2000. Many voters say the party has strayed too far from the mainstream. The writer offers these observations:
GREENVILLE, S.C. —
1. "Not rich enough" to be a Republican, he said, he's a Ralph Nader man who can't understand what's happened to the Democratic Party in the South.
2. "Now they're preoccupied "with all this negative stuff," he said, meaning the gay rights movement. Hudson doesn't mind people living their lives the way they want in private, but "they don't have to be out there having parades."
3.- about wanting to appeal to guys with Confederate flags on their pickups...
4. Confederate flag wavers are "not a group that votes very much of the time. Or if they did, they wouldn't think that a New England Democrat would represent them," But Dean's broader point, that the Democrats need to find a way to reach out to working-class white voters, is on target.
5. The truth is in the numbers. President Bush defeated Al Gore, 57% to 41%, in South Carolina's 2000 presidential voting on his way to sweeping the South.
6. The Republicans... have exploited the worst fears of whites by opposing Democratic efforts to achieve racial justice. "What changed in this state is race," he said. "They've painted the Democrats as the black party."
7.Some whites...are troubled by the way Democrats seem to be courting one special interest group or another. If the issue isn't gay pride, it's abortion rights.
8. That's not to say no one here is struggling to make ends meet. It's just that there are not enough low-wage earners to fuel class rage, Erwin said.
9. Although unemployment in South Carolina is up a tick or two to 7%,...there's not enough pain out there right now to threaten Bush in South Carolina next year.
10. Rather than rail against Bush policies, however, people sipping beers at the Blind Horse Saloon were more inclined to blame Northerners for their woes.
11. Sharon Blake, 59, moved here from Connecticut with her husband two years ago to retire. A onetime liberal-leaning social worker, she said she has grown more conservative with age. Still, Blake said, she had to adjust to some of the things that make the South unique, like the huge influence of religion here. "There's got to be 500 Baptist churches in Greenville," she said.
12. When you start talking politics to people in coffee shops and bars, you'll still hear complaints that Republicans are for the rich. But the passion starts to boil when talk turns to gay pride parades, civil unions or outlawing religion in the classroom while certain Hollywood movies depict a moral wasteland.
13. "They're not for the working man anymore," Jerry, who refused to give his last name, said of the Democrats.
14. To many here, Democrats have become a party of scolding parents demanding that the South change its nasty habits. That just makes some want to dig in their heels more.
15. "They ought to leave that flag alone," said Bohler.
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Bizmarts says:
"From all indications I've seen and heard lately, Southerners see Republicans as: "for the rich", "overly evangelical", "not beholding to minority social groups", "for the nuclear family", "tough on crime", "morally sound", and "predominately white prosperous professionals", "oriented toward frontiersman concerns", "favorably disposed toward the US Military", and "a lot like me".
They see Democrats as "morally relativistic", "pushy on Gay/Lesbian issues", "overly concerned with minorities", "snobbishly Northeastern", "either a socialist or a low-life grifter", "concerned with things that don't matter", "not patriotic", "whiny", "female-centric concerns", "wanting to take assets from "productive people; ie, me" and give to others who don't deserve it", "not friendly toward religion or the nuclear family", and "not good stewards of resources".
The Democratic achievements are viewed as "something that happened in the past", and Southerners believe "nothing bad is going to happen" to Medicaid, Medicare, the US Dollar, Main Street, America's place in the World, Financial Markets, or with regard to crime and drugs because "our current system is taking pretty good care of these things now".
Professional class concerns about pre-emptive war, insider trading, corporate dishonesty, budget deficits, unilateral interventions in foreign countries opposed by the World community, abrogation of treaties, dismantilation of the social safety net, environmental degradation not being opposed by the Federal Governement, extensive suburbanization of the country, static and declining fertility rates for native born citizens, religious jingoism, the destructive role of money in politics, limitations and repeal of constitutional laws and practices, and declining citizen participation in community activities all do not register as being important concerns.
The Trojan Horse
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NY Times
Published: November 14, 2003
What are we going to do about Medicare? That should be the subject of an open national debate. But right now Congressional leaders are trying to settle the question by stealth, with legislation that purports to be doing something else.
An aging population and rising medical costs will eventually require the nation to provide Medicare with more money or to cut benefits, or both. Meanwhile, there are demands for a new benefit: a gradual shift away from hospital treatment and toward the use of drugs has turned the program's failure to cover prescription drugs into a gaping hole.
A Congressional conference is now trying to agree on prescription drug legislation. But beware of politicians bearing gifts — the bill will contain measures that have nothing to do with prescription drugs, and a lot to do with hostility to Medicare as we know it. Indeed, it may turn out to be a Trojan horse that finally allows conservative ideologues, who have unsuccessfully laid siege to Medicare since the days of Barry Goldwater, to breach its political defenses.
Alabama Panel Ousts Judge Over Ten Commandments Monument
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: November 14, 2003
NY Times
MONTGOMERY, Ala., Nov. 13 — A special ethics panel on Thursday ousted Alabama's chief justice, Roy S. Moore, who was lionized by the religious right for his refusal to remove a titanic monument of the Ten Commandments he had put in the lobby of the state judicial building.
The head of the ethics panel, William Thompson, said he and his colleagues were given little choice because "the chief justice placed himself above the law" by defying a federal court order to remove the monument.
Do You Know Who I Am?
A crowded United Airlines flight was canceled. A single agent was rebooking a long line of inconvenienced travelers. Suddenly an angry passenger pushed his way to the desk. He slapped his ticket on the counter and said "I HAVE to be on this flight and it has to be FIRST CLASS."
The agent replied, "I am sorry, sir. I'll be happy to try to help you, but I've got to help these folks first, and I'm sure we'll be able to work something out." The passenger was unimpressed. He asked loudly, so that the passengers behind him could hear, "DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHO I AM?"
Without hesitating, the agent smiled and grabbed her public address microphone, "May I have your attention
please, "she began, her voice heard clearly throughout the terminal. We have a passenger here at Gate 14 WHO DOES NOT KNOW WHO HE IS. If anyone can help him find his identity, please come to Gate 14."
With the folks behind him in line laughing hysterically, the man glared at the United agent, gritted his teeth and
swore "F**k You!". Without flinching, she smiled and said, "I'm sorry, sir, but you'll have to get in line for that too".
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
Which of the most prominent public figures around today served in the US Military?
Republican Party Leaders Who Did Not Serve List:
Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert - did not serve.
Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey - did not serve.
House Majority Leader Tom Delay - did not serve
House Majority Whip Roy Blunt - did not serve
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist - did not serve
Majority Whip Mitch McConnell, R-KY - did not serve
Rick Santorum, R-PA, third ranking Republican in the Senate - did not serve.
Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott - did not serve.
VP Dick Cheney - did not serve.
Att'y Gen. John Ashcroft - did not serve
Jeb Bush, Florida Governor - did not serve.
Karl Rove - did not serve
Former Speaker Newt Gingrich - did not serve
Phil Gramm - did not serve
Senator Don Nickles - did not serve
Senator Richard Shelby - did not serve
Senator Jon Kyl - did not serve
Senator Tim Hutchinson - did not serve
Senator Saxby Chambliss - did not serve
Rep. JC Watts - did not serve
Eliot Abrams - did not serve
Paul Wolfowitz - did not serve
Richard Perle - did not serve
Rudy Giuliani - did not serve
Michael Bloomberg - did not serve
George Pataki - did not serve
John Engler - did not serve
Linsey Graham - did not serve
Pundits, Pros, and Preachers Who Did Not Serve List:
George Will - did not serve
Chris Matthews - did not serve
Bill O'Reilly - did not serve
Bill Bennett - did not serve
Pat Buchanan - did not serve
Rush Limbaugh - did not serve
John Wayne - did not serve
Pat Robertson - did not serve
Kenneth Starr - did not serve
Antonin Scalia - did not serve
Clarence Thomas - did not serve
Ralph Reed - did not serve
And those who did serve:
Senator John McCain - USN
Gen. Colin Powell - USA
Pres. Jimmy Carter - USN
VP Walter Mondale - USA
Senator John Glenn - USAF
Pres. George Herbert Walker Bush - USAF
Tom Ridge - USA
Senator Ted Stevens - USAF
Pres. Gerald Ford - USN
Senator Strom Thurmond - (Served Unk Branch)
Pres. George W. Bush - NG
Richard Gephardt - NG
Tom Daschle - USAF
Al Gore - USA
Senator Bob Kerrey - USN
Senator John Kerry - USN
Senator Charles Rangel - USA
Senator Ted Kennedy - USA
Senator Tom Harkin - USN
Senator Fritz Hollings - USA
Jesse Ventura - USN
Senator Jim Jeffords - USN
(Veterans Day 2003 Inspired a reconsidered Feb. 2000)
More on the Republican Primary: Feb. 2000 in South Carolina:
salon.com | Feb. 11, 2000
South Carolina is home to an estimated 400,000 veterans, so Bush and McCain's mad dash for these votes is understandable. As Bush travels around the state, he asks his traveling "Veterans for Bush" team to stand and be honored with applause. That Cronauer lives in Virginia, and Davis in Georgia, doesn't seem to matter. Nor that Bush doesn't seem to know the name of supporter John Baker -- Bush stumbled over identifying the Medal of Honor recipient from Columbia, S.C., -- who's often at hand as well. Bush, a National Guardsman during that era, is eager to at least try to compete with McCain's military cred.
Perhaps too eager. Fresh off his New Hampshire primary loss, Bush held a veterans-related rally in Sumter, S.C., where he was introduced by J. Thomas Burch Jr. Standing on the dais with Bush, Burch said McCain "had the power to help the veterans," but instead he "came home [from Vietnam] and forgot us."
Immediately, the McCain camp returned fire. The campaign released a list of the dozens of legislative efforts McCain has made on behalf of veterans, including laws pertaining to controversial issues like Agent Orange and Gulf War Syndrome, and an investigation into POW/MIAs.
Then the five Vietnam veterans in the Senate -- Max Cleland, D-Ga., Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., John Kerry, D-Mass., Chuck Robb, D-Va. and Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., four Democrats and a McCain supporter -- fired off a letter to Bush calling on him to "publicly disassociate" himself from the "false" allegations.
"We believe it is inappropriate to associate yourself with those who would impugn John McCain's character and so maliciously distort his record on these critical issues," the letter said.
Other letters followed, from seven other former POWs who served with McCain, from South Carolina legislators and so on.
Bush refused to do so, however, responding that Burch was "entitled to his opinion."
On Tuesday, Medal of Honor recipient Michael Thornton, a former Navy SEAL and McCain supporter -- born and raised in Spartanburg, S.C., and now a Texan -- confronted Bush on the campus of North Greenville College. Bush still didn't back down.
Fueled by half a tank of outrage and another half of good ol' fashioned politics, a small band of "Veterans for McCain" have thus been following Bush around the state, protesting Burch's comments and Bush's refusal to repudiate them. Outside a Bush event Wednesday evening at a National Guard Armory in Gaffney, I spoke to a few of them, including Thornton.
"I flew in because I was outraged by the statement Thomas Burch made," Thornton says. "I told [Bush] he needed to apologize. He said John McCain was a great American and a great veteran -- but he doesn't control what Burch says. But the man was standing up on the platform, elbow to elbow with him! He shook his hand!"
What did Thornton say to Bush after that?
"I said, 'Yessir, but you should be responsible. You should say, "This is not true," or apologize.' He said, 'Well, I have no control over what people say.' And I said, 'Sir, your father wouldn't have stood for that and you shouldn't either.' And after that, he just didn't say nothing."
Another "Veteran for McCain" chirped in. "Here's a guy [Burch] who trashed George's father!" shouted Col. Philip Butler, an Army veteran who was once chief of staff at Fort Jackson, S.C.
Butler said he couldn't believe Bush would associate himself with a man who was -- according to the letter to Bush from the five Senate Vietnam combat veterans -- "a leading critic of President Reagan's and your father's policies on POW/MIA issues."
And in 1988, the veterans group Burch chairs, the National Vietnam Veterans Coalition, slammed then-Vice President George Bush for selecting a National Guardsman, Dan Quayle, as his running mate.
"We believe Bush and his people are sandbagging on the Quayle issue," said NVVC's then-vice chairman, Jerry Kiley, to the Associated Press in 1988. "The issue is how he got in [to the Guard]. By doing that, Quayle bumped somebody off that list, and it's likely the person he bumped went to Vietnam. But what makes this worse is here's a hawk, a man clamoring to send our boys into battle but who did not have the courage of his own convictions to go himself."
That was NVVC's position in 1988. And that, of course, was long before Bush's son -- a National Guardsman who also managed to avoid serving in Vietnam -- decided that Burch was an endorsement that could help him get in good with South Carolina veterans.
Published on Monday, February 21, 2000
The South Carolina Primary:
Bush Wins, America Loses
by Dr Nancy Snow
Lee Atwater must be smiling somewhere. The originator of the establishment South Carolina firewall, he was the 1988 Bush campaign manager who made his celebrity from happy-go-lucky hatchet politics. Favorite pastimes were intentionally mispronouncing the names of Bush opponents’ Cuomo and Dukakis and going negative for the entertainment value. Atwater’s close friend was none other than George W. Bush, a pairing the Washington Post reported as a “giggling, laughing, Beavis and Butt-head relationship.”
It wasn’t until Atwater was near death in 1991 at age 40 from a brain tumor that he expressed regrets over his negative techniques.
In Election 2000, the ghost of Lee Atwater is very much alive, but this time it’s on steroids. Lesson numero uno to present and future political science majors: (The lowest of) negative campaigns work. Lesson number two: political language has lost all meaning.
First, a disclaimer. I spent the last ten days of the South Carolina Primary observing and occasionally volunteering my time for the John McCain campaign. I am a registered independent from New Hampshire on semester’s leave from my teaching position in political science at New England College and as executive director of Common Cause in New Hampshire. I went to South Carolina buoyed by McCain’s huge victory in New Hampshire (despite being outspent by Bush 5:1) and to see how his messages of campaign reform and `inspiring a generation of young Americans to causes greater than their own self-interest’ would play. I came away crestfallen at the despicable campaign tactics the Bush campaign and its allies used to pull out a 11 percent victory margin on Saturday, this after both McCain and Bush had run positive campaigns in New Hampshire and referred to each other as friends.
There’s no doubt that McCain’s 19 percent victory over Bush in New Hampshire caused a panic rethink strategy in the Bush team. Their response was to drop the “compassionate conservative” that had failed Bush in New Hampshire and wage a nonstop barrage of negative attacks to kill the messenger McCain. Nothing was too low to rule out. The nadir moment occurred February 3rd when a smiling Bush stood in front of television cameras as a fringe Vietnam veteran, Thomas Burch, denounced McCain as a POW who “came home and forgot us.” Governor Bush knows Burch well. The same Thomas Burch had accused President Bush of abandoning veterans during his administration, but alas, all old wounds must have been healed in time to neutralize McCain’s war hero factor.
Push polling by Bush activists was standard fare and leaflets distributed by Bush allies described McCain as “pro-abortion” and “the fag candidate” (because McCain was the only Republican presidential candidate to meet with the gay Republican men’s group, Log Cabin Republicans). One particularly offensive missive distributed via the Internet and to the press was from the Christian Fundamentalist Bob Jones University, where Bush had staked his Christian conservative claim one day after the NH Primary. A professor named Richard Hand wrote that McCain “chose to sire children without marriage,” among other hallucinations.
McCain fought back (much like a sailboat might take on a battleship) with a regrettable political ad in which he accused Governor Bush of using campaign tactics that were “twisting the truth like Clinton.” Clinton is the Anti-Christ to conservative Republicans in South Carolina and Bush was able to use the Clinton comparison to his full advantage throughout the campaign. By the weekend of the primary vote, more South Carolinians blamed McCain for going negative than they did Bush, despite the fact that McCain pulled all broadcast political advertisements critical of Governor George Bush in the last week of the campaign and promised that “I will not take the low road to the highest office in the land.” (McCain pulled his ads after hearing the story of Donna Duren, who told McCain at a February 10th Spartanburg Town Hall Meeting that her 14-year-old son, who considers McCain his hero, had been push polled and told that McCain was a “liar, cheat, and a fraud.” )
Like Bill Bradley haplessly defending his health care plan too late after Gore spent months using the attack-a-day plan, McCain came across as negative if he said anything on the stump. His resources were no match to Bush’s $3.1 million negative radio and television air war. And Bush kept pouring gasoline onto the fire with ads that said, “John McCain promised a clean campaign, then attacked Governor Bush with misleading ads.” Over a ten-day period, McCain’s unfavorability rating went from 4 percent to 18 percent while Bush’s dropped from 26 percent to 20 percent. On the campaign trail, Bush said, “It’s sad, isn’t it? The true nature of John McCain is evidently coming out.”
Lesson number two: language has lost all meaning in politics. In South Carolina, the 70 million dollar man Bush redefined himself as the “reformer with results” and exit polls among voters identified Bush more often than McCain as a “real reformer.” Bush told CNN after his win that South Carolina voters “responded overwhelmingly for me because I ran a positive campaign, a campaign that clearly enunciated what I want to do.”
McCain’s promise to break the iron triangle of “lobbyists, big money and legislation” was turned on its head in Bush’s victory speech: “They oftentimes talk about an iron triangle in Washington. We’ve got an iron triangle here in South Carolina. And that’s my three co-chairmen.” Make that a virtual Empire of Establishment support.
Ultimately Bush may pay a high price in the general election. One McCain volunteer turned to me while watching the results and said, “You might as well start calling him President Al Gore,” signaling that Bush’s win came on the strength of the religious right. McCain’s political director John Weaver said, “Ralph Reed, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are to be congratulated.”
The higher price is the disillusionment the South Carolina primary will cast on those who witnessed it at the ground level. The clean campaign tactics in New Hampshire inspired me. South Carolina reinforces that the low road in American politics is the fastest way to the White House.
Dr. Nancy Snow, Assistant Professor, Political Science at New England College in Henniker, NH , can be reached at snowmachine@conknet.com
Josiah Bartlett
1729-1795
-Signers of the Declaration
Josiah Bartlett, the first of the New-Hampshire delegation who signed the Declaration of Independence, was born in Amesbury, Massachusetts, in 1729.
Dr. Bartlett's political career began in 1765 with his appointment as a provincial legislator, an office which he filled annually until the revolution. Here he frequently opposed the royal policy. Governor Wentworth, hoping to gain his support, appointed him a magistrate and later, in 1770, to the command of a militia regiment. His staunch support of the cause of the Patriots led to his dismissal from the post of justice of the peace by the Royal Governor and presumably, to the burning of his house.
In 1774, the loss of his house prevented his serving as delegate to the first continental congress, but he was reelected to the second and was present when the Declaration was adopted and signed. As the roll was called from north to south, it was Dr. Bartlett who cast the very first vote for independence on July 4, 1776 as the senior member representing New Hampshire
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President Josiah Bartlett: West Wing Episode:
'It was not a spaceship from another planet, just another time. A long since abandoned Soviet satellite, one of its booster rockets didn't fire and it couldn't escape the earths orbit--a sad reminder of a time when two powerful nations challenged each other and then boldly raced into outer space.
What will be the next thing that challenges us . . . ? That makes us work harder and go farther? . . . Surely, we can do it again. As we did in the time when our eyes looked toward the heavens, and with outstretched fingers, we touched the face of God.
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President George W. Bush quotes:
"I think anybody who doesn't think I'm smart enough to handle the job is underestimating."
--U.S. News & World Report, April 3, 2000
"Rarely is the question asked: is our children learning"
--Florence, SC, Jan. 11, 2000
"Actually, I -- this may sound a little West Texan to you, but I like it. When I'm talking about -- when I'm talking about myself, and when he's talking about myself, all of us are talking about me."
--Hardball, MSNBC, May 31, 2000
"It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it."
--Reuters, May 5, 2000
"I think we agree, the past is over."
--On his meeting with John McCain, Dallas Morning News, May 10, 2000
"Laura and I really don't realize how bright our children is sometime until we get an objective analysis."
--Meet the Press, April 15, 2000
"I was raised in the West. The west of Texas. It's pretty close to California. In more ways than Washington, D.C., is close to California."
--Los Angeles Times, April 8, 2000
"We want our teachers to be trained so they can meet the obligations; their obligations as teachers. We want them to know how to teach the science of reading. In order to make sure there's not this kind of federal cufflink."
--Fritsche Middle School, Milwaukee, March 30, 2000
"The fact that he relies on facts -- says things that are not factual -- are going to undermine his campaign."
--New York Times, March 4, 2000
"It is not Reaganesque to support a tax plan that is Clinton in nature."
--Los Angeles, Feb. 23, 2000
"I understand small business growth. I was one."
--New York Daily News, Feb. 19, 2000
"How do you know if you don't measure if you have a system that simply suckles kids through?"
--Explaining the need for educational accountability, Beaufort, S.C.,Feb.16, 2000
"The senator has got to understand if he's going to have he can't have it both ways. He can't take the high horse and then claim the low road."
--To reporters in Florence, S.C., Feb. 17, 2000
---(Priceless !!)ed.
"If you're sick and tired of the politics of cynicism and polls and principles, come and join this campaign."
--Hilton Head, S.C., Feb. 16, 2000
"We ought to make the pie higher."
-South Carolina Republican Debate, Feb. 15, 2000
"I've changed my style somewhat, as you know. I'm less, I pontificate less, although it may be hard to tell it from this show. And I'm more interacting with people."
--Meet The Press, Feb. 13, 2000
"I think we need not only to eliminate the tollbooth to the middle class, I think we should knock down the tollbooth."
--Nashua, N.H., as quoted by Gail Collins, New York Times, Feb. 1, 2000
"The most important job is not to be governor, or first lady in my case."
--Pella, Iowa, as quoted in the San Antonio Express News, Jan. 30, 2000"
"This is Preservation Month. I appreciate preservation. It's what you do when you run for president. You gotta preserve."
--Speaking during Perseverance Month at Fairgrounds Elementary School in Nashua, N.H.
"I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family."
--Greater Nashua, N.H., Chamber of Commerce, Jan. 27, 2000
"This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses."
--At a South Carolina oyster roast; quoted in the Financial Times, Jan.14, 2000
"There needs to be debates, like we're going through. There needs to be townhall meetings. There needs to be travel. This is a huge country."
--Larry King Live, Dec. 16, 1999
"The important question is, How many hands have I shaked?"
--Answering a question about why he hasn't spent more time in New Hampshire; quoted in the New York Times, Oct. 23, 1999
"Keep good relations with the Grecians."
--Quoted in the Economist, June 12, 1999
"I don't remember debates. I don't think we spent a lot of time debating it. Maybe we did, but I don't remember."
--On discussing the Vietnam War as an undergraduate at Yale, in the Washington Post, July 27, 1999
"Put the 'off' button on."
--South Carolina, February 14, 2000
"I did denounce it. I de-I denounced it. I denounced interracial dating. I denounced anti-Catholic bigacy... bigotry."
--Referring to his Bob Jones University visit and the subsequent criticism, Virginia, February 25, 2000
"We believe in opportunity for all Americans: Rich and poor, black and white...."
--From a speech at Bob Jones Univ., in South Carolina, 2/2/00
"We must all hear the universal call to like your neighbor just like you like to be liked yourself."
--George W. Bush puts an interesting twist on Jesus Christ's proverb: "Love thy neighbor." (Quote is from the Financial Times)
"I would have said yes to abortion if only it was right. I mean, yeah it's right. Well no it's not right that's why I said no to it."
--South Carolina, February 14,2000
"My [tax cut] plan is realistic because it avoids meaningless 15-year projections."
--George W. Bush goes to extraordinary lengths to defend his tax cut plan. (Quote is from a Bush speech in Iowa, 12/1/99)
"The fundamental question is: 'Will I be a successful president when it comes to foreign policy?' I will be, but until I'm the president, it's going to be hard for me to verify that I think I'll be more effective."
--New York Times, 7/28/99
"There ought to be limits to freedom"
--at a Press conference at the Texas State House, May 21, 1999, referring to GWBush.com
"We have struggle to not proceed but to preceed to the future of a nation's child."
--Journal Gazette 11/12/00
"My opponent seems to think that Social Security is a federal program. I believe that money is yours and you should be able to invest it yourself."
-The final Presidential debate
"Down in Washington they're playing with Social Security like it's some kind of government program!"
-NBC Nightly News (Date unknown, anyone out there know?)
"The reason we start a war is to fight a war, win a war, thereby causing no more war!"
--The first Presidential debate
"They said, 'You know, this issue doesn't seem to resignate [sic] with the people.' And I said, you know something? Whether it resignates [sic] or not doesn't matter to me, because I stand for doing what's the right thing, and what the right thing is hearing the voices of people who work.
--Portland, Ore., Oct. 31, 2000
"It's your money. You paid for it."
--LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000
"It's important for us to explain to our nation that life is important. It's not only life of babies, but it's life of children living in, you know, the dark dungeons of the Internet.
-Arlington Heights, Ill., Oct. 24, 2000
"If affirmative action means what I just described, what I'm for, then I'm for it."
--The Presidential Debates. St. Louis, Mo., October 18, 2000
"It's going to require numerous IRA agents."
--On Gore's tax plan, Greensboro, N.C., Oct. 10, 2000
"I don't think we need to be subliminable [sic] about the differences between our views on prescription drugs."
--Orlando, Fla., Sept. 12, 2000. He then repeatedly mispronounced the word after his press conference.
"I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully"
--Saginaw, Mich., Sept. 29, 2000
"Will the highways on the Internet become more few?"
--Concord, N.H., Jan. 29, 2000
"It is clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from overseas."
--Beaverton, Ore., Sep. 25, 2000
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier...just as long as I'm the dictator..."
--Washington, DC, Dec 18, 2000, during his first trip to Washington as President-Elect
"They misunderestimated me."
--Bentonville, Ark., Nov. 6, 2000
"That's a chapter, the last chapter of the 20th, 20th, the 21st century that most of us would rather forget. The last chapter of the 20th century. This is the first chapter of the 21st century."
--On the Lewinsky scandal, Arlington Heights, Ill., Oct. 24, 2000"
"Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream."
—LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000"
"There's a huge trust. I see it all the time when people come up to me and say, 'I don't want you to let me down again.'"
— Boston, Massachusetts, October 3, 2000
"I think if you know what you believe, it makes it a lot easier to answer questions. I can't answer your question"
--Reynoldsburg, Ohio, October 4, 2000
"You teach a child to read and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test."
--February 21, 2001 - President Bush at Townsend Elementary School, touting his education reform plans.
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Got That?????
Nov. 11, 2003, 11:23PM
Houston Chronicle
Secret CIA report warns tide turning against U.S.
Top American official in Iraq said to agree
By JONATHAN S. LANDAY
Knight-Ridder Tribune News
RESOURCES
WASHINGTON -- A new, top-secret CIA report from Iraq warns that growing numbers of Iraqis are concluding that the U.S.-led coalition can be defeated and are supporting the resistance. The report paints a bleak picture of the political and security situation in Iraq and cautions that the U.S.-led drive to rebuild the country as a democracy could collapse unless corrective actions are taken immediately.
L. Paul Bremer, head of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, who arrived unexpectedly in Washington for strategy sessions on Tuesday, essentially endorsed the CIA's findings, said a senior administration official. The report's bleak tone and Bremer's private endorsement differ sharply with the upbeat public assessments that President Bush, his chief aides and Bremer are giving as part of an aggressive publicity campaign aimed at countering rising anxieties at home over increasing U.S. casualties in Iraq.
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
Concrete Argument
From Tom Paine Weblog
Nov. 11th, 2003
In the latest example of how right-wing thuggery has been used to block access to safe abortions, a Texas construction company has backed out of a project to build a Planned Parenthood clinic in Austin after concrete suppliers boycotted the job. Building stopped when the San Antonio-based Browning Construction Co. pulled out last week after a boycott was announced by a right-wing coalition of Republicans and religious activists. Subcontractors for Browning Construction Company said they were harassed and feared for their safety.
And today, Planned Parenthood announced that it will serve as its own contractor to build the clinic.The development follows a Texas legislative session hostile to reproductive rights, with two new bills passed that place further restrictions on already stringent state abortion regulations.
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U.N. Estimates Israeli Barrier Will Disrupt Lives of 600,000
By GREG MYRE
NY Times
Published: November 12, 2003
JERUSALEM, Nov. 11 — The route for Israel's planned boundary barrier would put nearly 15 percent of West Bank land on the Israeli side and disrupt the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, according to a United Nations report released Tuesday.
Where's the Outrage?
By Allan Sloan
Newsweek's Wall Street Editor
Tuesday, November 11, 2003; Page E03
If you're an investment professional who's hell-bent on picking people's pockets, try to follow these simple rules. Get caught when the stock market's rising. Take a little money from a lot of people, so you won't create dramatic, sympathetic victims. Make sure you're doing something so complicated that it takes at least two sentences to explain. And, finally, try not to have Washington connections that will turn your sleazy behavior into a political story.
If you follow all these rules, you don't have to worry about being reviled on the front pages and on TV day after day, the way the likes of Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling of Enron, Bernie Ebbers of WorldCom, and Jack Grubman of Salomon Brothers were. These guys, firmly established as villains, haven't been convicted of anything and, in some cases, not even indicted. But they made a lot of money acting badly while other people lost their life savings. Today, though, mutual fund perps are admitting wrongdoing right and left -- and no one outside the business world knows their names.
Last week produced the first congressional mutual fund hearings, and showed how the fund story hasn't stirred emotions the way Enron did. Fitzgerald's hearing produced a lot of light: Regulators served up the shocking assertion that about half the fund companies they've looked at were breaking rules designed to protect investors.
Even better, Fitzgerald -- who comes from a business family and understands numbers -- managed to explain this scandal in emotional rather than intellectual terms, calling it "the world's biggest skimming operation." That evokes wonderful images of bad guys at casinos, and is exactly right. Because, to cut through the technicalities, fund companies have let a handful of investors skim relatively small amounts of money from millions of other investors.
A major reason you don't hear ordinary investors screaming about these outrages involves nomenclature. When Spitzer got a big hedge fund, Canary Capital, to cop to feathering its own nest at the expense of investors in four mutual fund families, his filings used the term "market timing," which in most contexts (but not this one) is a legitimate and legal investment technique. The Canaries of the world call what they're doing -- taking unfair advantage of mutual fund investors -- market timing because it sounds so much nicer than "skimming" or "stealing" or "looting." Wall Street, after all, is big on euphemisms.
Let's think for a minute about many of the transactions that regulators have described. Well-connected investors get real-time information about what's in mutual funds' portfolios, information that's not available to the public. Then these Connected Ones use that information to make profits. "If it's material, nonpublic and they're trading on it to their advantage, it's insider trading," says Stephen Cutler, director of enforcement at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Exactly so.
Why aren't regulators and the media using terms like "insider trading"? Because we're trained to be careful and -- don't snicker, now -- we occasionally try to be fair. In this case, though, we've been way too nice.
That could change soon, I think, because we'll learn that some fund-company malefactors were even worse than we thought. And that some of them, not content with their high pay and the profits they skimmed from their own companies' funds, bought and sold securities in anticipation of what their funds would do. That would be "front running," another nice, emotional term. Maybe we'll have an individual villain or two to focus on, finally, rather than an entire diffuse industry.
And who knows? Someone may find a potent political connection between some fund bad guys and the political elite, the way Enron's Lay was linked to George W. Bush through ties of fundraising and mutual back-scratching. Let that happen, and the fund story will leap the species barrier and become a political story. Then, finally, this story will attract the attention it deserves and we'll fix the fund industry. And the villains will get what they deserve: infamy everlasting.
Sloan is Newsweek's Wall Street editor. His e-mail address is sloan@panix.com
Soros's foundation left 'paralysed' after raid
November 12, 2003
By Sapa-AFP
Moscow - Fifteen years since it started work in post-Soviet Russia, US billionaire financier George Soros's foundation has been "paralysed" after 50 camouflage-clad men seized its Moscow offices and removed computer records and archives. Yekaterina Geniyeva, the head of Soros's Open Society Institute in Russia, told journalists yesterday that the raid, ordered by the building's owner ostensibly because of a dispute over rent, appeared to be politically motivated.
The raid, at about midnight on Thursday, came just days after Soros publicly criticised the jailing of Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky as "persecution" that would force business to submit to the state. The organisation had lost all information on its 1 000 grant recipients, Geniyeva said.
"This means that the work of the Soros foundation is paralysed. We can't work without our financial framework." "I really hope that there is no connection between the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and what happened with our building ... But I cannot rule this out completely. There are too many coincidences: the interview of Soros, the arrest of Khodorkovsky, the seizure of the Soros building and the removal of documents. We do not understand why they were needed.
"The Soros foundation has been stripped bare. There is nothing left but the walls. We will try to resurrect our activities but we cannot be certain when," Geniyeva said. The foundation is involved in promoting civil society and the development of democratic ideas, chiefly in former Soviet bloc countries.
Khodorkovsky, the former boss of oil giant Yukos, has been in jail since October 25 on seven charges including fraud and tax evasion. A Moscow court yesterday turned down an appeal by Khodorkovsky to be released from jail after a two-hour bailhearing that was held behind closed doors, Sapa-AP reported.
An anti-profiteering amendment to the Iraqui supplemental appropriations bill was stripped out of the bill at the last minute by House Republicans.
The provision — included during the Senate Appropriations Committee markup with unanimous support but removed in conference — would have subjected those who deliberately defrauded the United States or Iraq to jail terms of up to 20 years and costly fines."
Humourous Truths About Government
1. *Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
--Mark Twain
2. *A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
--George Bernard Shaw
3. *Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
--James Bovard, Civil Libertarian (1994)
4. *Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.
--Douglas Casey, at Georgetown U.(1992)
5. *I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
--Will Rogers
6. *If you want government to intervene domestically, you're a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you're a
conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you're a moderate. If you don't want government to intervene
anywhere, you're an extremist.
--Joseph Sobran, Editor of the National Review at one time
(1995)
7. *Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you.
--Pericles (430 B.C.)
8. *No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.
--Mark Twain (1866)
9. *Talk is cheap-except when Congress does it.
--(Unknown)
10. *The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings.. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.
--Winston Churchill
11. *The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.
--Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903)
12. *There is no distinctly native American criminal class save Congress.
--Mark Twain
13. *What this country needs are more unemployed politicians.
-- Edward Langley, Artist 1928-1995
FORTY THINGS YOU'D LOVE TO SAY OUT LOUD TO THE CLUELESS
1. I can see your point, but I still think you're full of s***.
2. I don't know what your problem is, but I'll bet it's hard to pronounce.
3. How about never? Is never good for you?
4. I see you've set aside this special time to humiliate yourself in public.
5. I'm really easy to get along with once you people learn to see it my way.
6. I'll try being nicer if you'll try being smarter.
7. I'm out of my mind, but feel free to leave a message.
8. I don't work here. I'm a consultant.
9. It sounds like English, but I can't understand a damn word you're saying.
10. Ahhh...I see the screw-up fairy has visited us again...
11. I like you. You remind me of myself when I was young and stupid.
12. You are validating my inherent mistrust of strangers.
13. I have plenty of talent and vision; I just don't give a damn.
14. I'm already visualizing the duct tape over your mouth.
15. I will always cherish the initial misconceptions I had about you.
16. Thank you. We're all refreshed and challenged by your unique point of view.
17. The fact that no one understands you doesn't mean you're an artist.
18. Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
19. What am I? Flypaper for freaks!?
20. I'm not being rude. You're just insignificant.
21. It's a thankless job, but I've got a lot of Karma to burn off.
22. Yes, I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial.
23. And your crybaby whiny-assed opinion would be...?
24. Do I look like a people person?
25. This isn't an office. It's Hell with fluorescent lighting.
26. I started out with nothing & still have most of it left.
27. Sarcasm is just one more service we offer.
28. If I throw a stick, will you leave?
29. Errors have been made. Others will be blamed.
30. Whatever kind of look you were going for, you missed.
31. I'm trying to imagine you with a personality.
32. A cubicle is just a padded cell without a door.
33. Can I trade this job for what's behind door #1?
34. Too many freaks, not enough circuses.
35. Nice perfume. Must you marinate in it?
36. Chaos, panic, & disorder, my work here is done.
37. How do I set a laser printer to stun?
38. I thought I wanted a career; turns out I just wanted a salary.
39. Who lit the fuse on your tampon?
40. Oh I get it... like humor... but different
<------------------------------------->
Monday, November 10, 2003
Howard Dean says he is opting out of the public campaign financing plan:
Dean is the first Democrat in history to forgo the taxpayer-financed system that encourages small donations by matching them with federal funds, freeing him to exceed the $45-million spending cap that comes with the money. Dean said he was forced to opt out to compete with President Bush, who already had said he would forgo matching funds and that he, (Pres. Bush), was aiming to raise $175 million before the Republican National Convention in September 2004.
Illegal travelers to Cuba get judicial notices
By Rafael Lorente
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration for the first time is beginning judicial proceedings against dozens of people accused of visiting Cuba illegally, even as Republicans and Democrats in Congress move to end enforcement of the four-decade-old U.S. travel ban to the island
As Prepared for Delivery
By Al Gore
November 9, 2003
(Full Text in HTM Format)
FREEDOM AND SECURITY
Thank you, Lisa, for that warm and generous introduction. Thank you Zack, and thank you all for coming here today
I want to thank the American Constitution Society for co-sponsoring today’s event, and for their hard work and dedication in defending our most basic public values.
And I am especially grateful to Moveon.org, not only for co-sponsoring this event, but also for using 21st Century techniques to breathe new life into our democracy.
For my part, I’m just a “recovering politician” – but I truly believe that some of the issues most important to America’s future are ones that all of us should be dealing with.
And perhaps the most important of these issues is the one I want to talk about today: the true relationship between Freedom and Security.
So it seems to me that the logical place to start the discussion is with an accounting of exactly what has happened to civil liberties and security since the vicious attacks against America of September 11, 2001 – and it’s important to note at the outset that the Administration and the Congress have brought about many beneficial and needed improvements to make law enforcement and intelligence community efforts more effective against potential terrorists.
But a lot of other changes have taken place that a lot of people don’t know about and that come as unwelcome surprises. For example, for the first time in our history, American citizens have been seized by the executive branch of government and put in prison without being charged with a crime, without having the right to a trial, without being able to see a lawyer, and without even being able to contact their families.
President Bush is claiming the unilateral right to do that to any American citizen he believes is an “enemy combatant.” Those are the magic words. If the President alone decides that those two words accurately describe someone, then that person can be immediately locked up and held incommunicado for as long as the President wants, with no court having the right to determine whether the facts actually justify his imprisonment.
Now if the President makes a mistake, or is given faulty information by somebody working for him, and locks up the wrong person, then it’s almost impossible for that person to prove his innocence – because he can’t talk to a lawyer or his family or anyone else and he doesn’t even have the right to know what specific crime he is accused of committing. So a constitutional right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness that we used to think of in an old-fashioned way as “inalienable” can now be instantly stripped from any American by the President with no meaningful review by any other branch of government.
How do we feel about that? Is that OK?
Here’s another recent change in our civil liberties: Now, if it wants to, the federal government has the right to monitor every website you go to on the internet, keep a list of everyone you send email to or receive email from and everyone who you call on the telephone or who calls you – and they don’t even have to show probable cause that you’ve done anything wrong. Nor do they ever have to report to any court on what they’re doing with the information. Moreover, there are precious few safeguards to keep them from reading the content of all your email.
Everybody fine with that?
If so, what about this next change?
For America’s first 212 years, it used to be that if the police wanted to search your house, they had to be able to convince an independent judge to give them a search warrant and then (with rare exceptions) they had to go bang on your door and yell, “Open up!” Then, if you didn’t quickly open up, they could knock the door down. Also, if they seized anything, they had to leave a list explaining what they had taken. That way, if it was all a terrible mistake (as it sometimes is) you could go and get your stuff back.
But that’s all changed now. Starting two years ago, federal agents were given broad new statutory authority by the Patriot Act to “sneak and peak” in non-terrorism cases. They can secretly enter your home with no warning – whether you are there or not – and they can wait for months before telling you they were there. And it doesn’t have to have any relationship to terrorism whatsoever. It applies to any garden-variety crime. And the new law makes it very easy to get around the need for a traditional warrant – simply by saying that searching your house might have some connection (even a remote one) to the investigation of some agent of a foreign power. Then they can go to another court, a secret court, that more or less has to give them a warrant whenever they ask.
Three weeks ago, in a speech at FBI Headquarters, President Bush went even further and formally proposed that the Attorney General be allowed to authorize subpoenas by administrative order, without the need for a warrant from any court.
What about the right to consult a lawyer if you’re arrested? Is that important?
Attorney General Ashcroft has issued regulations authorizing the secret monitoring of attorney-client conversations on his say-so alone; bypassing procedures for obtaining prior judicial review for such monitoring in the rare instances when it was permitted in the past. Now, whoever is in custody has to assume that the government is always listening to consultations between them and their lawyers.
Does it matter if the government listens in on everything you say to your lawyer? Is that Ok?
Or, to take another change – and thanks to the librarians, more people know about this one – the FBI now has the right to go into any library and ask for the records of everybody who has used the library and get a list of who is reading what. Similarly, the FBI can demand all the records of banks, colleges, hotels, hospitals, credit-card companies, and many more kinds of companies. And these changes are only the beginning. Just last week, Attorney General Ashcroft issued brand new guidelines permitting FBI agents to run credit checks and background checks and gather other information about anyone who is “of investigatory interest,” - meaning anyone the agent thinks is suspicious - without any evidence of criminal behavior.
So, is that fine with everyone?
Listen to the way Israel’s highest court dealt with a similar question when, in 1999, it was asked to balance due process rights against dire threats to the security of its people:
“This is the destiny of democracy, as not all means are acceptable to it, and not all practices employed by its enemies are open before it. Although a democracy must often fight with one hand tied behind its back, it nonetheless has the upper hand. Preserving the Rule of Law and recognition of an individual’s liberty constitutes an important component in its understanding of security. At the end of the day they (add to) its strength.”
I want to challenge the Bush Administration’s implicit assumption that we have to give up many of our traditional freedoms in order to be safe from terrorists.
Because it is simply not true.
In fact, in my opinion, it makes no more sense to launch an assault on our civil liberties as the best way to get at terrorists than it did to launch an invasion of Iraq as the best way to get at Osama Bin Laden.
In both cases, the Administration has attacked the wrong target.
In both cases they have recklessly put our country in grave and unnecessary danger, while avoiding and neglecting obvious and much more important challenges that would actually help to protect the country.
In both cases, the administration has fostered false impressions and misled the nation with superficial, emotional and manipulative presentations that are not worthy of American Democracy.
In both cases they have exploited public fears for partisan political gain and postured themselves as bold defenders of our country while actually weakening not strengthening America.
In both cases, they have used unprecedented secrecy and deception in order to avoid accountability to the Congress, the Courts, the press and the people.
Indeed, this Administration has turned the fundamental presumption of our democracy on its head. A government of and for the people is supposed to be generally open to public scrutiny by the people – while the private information of the people themselves should be routinely protected from government intrusion.
But instead, this Administration is seeking to conduct its work in secret even as it demands broad unfettered access to personal information about American citizens. Under the rubric of protecting national security, they have obtained new powers to gather information from citizens and to keep it secret. Yet at the same time they themselves refuse to disclose information that is highly relevant to the war against terrorism.
They are even arrogantly refusing to provide information about 9/11 that is in their possession to the 9/11 Commission – the lawful investigative body charged with examining not only the performance of the Bush Administration, but also the actions of the prior Administration in which I served. The whole point is to learn all we can about preventing future terrorist attacks,
Two days ago, the Commission was forced to issue a subpoena to the Pentagon, which has – disgracefully – put Secretary Rumsfeld’s desire to avoid embarrassment ahead of the nation’s need to learn how we can best avoid future terrorist attacks. The Commission also served notice that it will issue a subpoena to the White House if the President continues to withhold information essential to the investigation.
And the White House is also refusing to respond to repeated bipartisan Congressional requests for information about 9/11 – even though the Congress is simply exercising its Constitutional oversight authority. In the words of Senator Main, “Excessive administration secrecy on issues related to the September 11 attacks feeds conspiracy theories and reduces the public’s confidence in government.”
In a revealing move, just three days ago, the White House asked the Republican leadership of the Senate to shut down the Intelligence Committee’s investigation of 9/11 based on a trivial political dispute. Apparently the President is anxious to keep the Congress from seeing what are said to have been clear, strong and explicit warnings directly to him a few weeks before 9/11 that terrorists were planning to hijack commercial airliners and use them to attack us.
Astonishingly, the Republican Senate leadership quickly complied with the President’s request. Such obedience and complicity in what looks like a cover-up from the majority party in a separate and supposedly co-equal branch of government makes it seem like a very long time ago when a Republican Attorney General and his deputy resigned rather than comply with an order to fire the special prosecutor investigating Richard Nixon.
In an even more brazen move, more than two years after they rounded up over 1,200 individuals of Arab descent, they still refuse to release the names of the individuals they detained, even though virtually every one of those arrested has been "cleared" by the FBI of any connection to terrorism and there is absolutely no national security justification for keeping the names secret. Yet at the same time, White House officials themselves leaked the name of a CIA operative serving the country, in clear violation of the law, in an effort to get at her husband, who had angered them by disclosing that the President had relied on forged evidence in his state of the union address as part of his effort to convince the country that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of building nuclear weapons.
And even as they claim the right to see the private bank records of every American, they are adopting a new policy on the Freedom of Information Act that actively encourages federal agencies to fully consider all potential reasons for non-disclosure regardless of whether the disclosure would be harmful. In other words, the federal government will now actively resist complying with ANY request for information.
Moreover, they have established a new exemption that enables them to refuse the release to the press and the public of important health, safety and environmental information submitted to the government by businesses – merely by calling it “critical infrastructure.”
By closely guarding information about their own behavior, they are dismantling a fundamental element of our system of checks and balances. Because so long as the government’s actions are secret, they cannot be held accountable. A government for the people and by the people must be transparent to the people.
The administration is justifying the collection of all this information by saying in effect that it will make us safer to have it. But it is not the kind of information that would have been of much help in preventing 9/11. However, there was in fact a great deal of specific information that WAS available prior to 9/11 that probably could have been used to prevent the tragedy. A recent analysis by the Merkle foundation, (working with data from a software company that received venture capital from a CIA-sponsored firm) demonstrates this point in a startling way:
“In late August 2001, Nawaq Alhamzi and Khalid Al-Midhar bought tickets to fly on American Airlines Flight 77 (which was flown into the Pentagon). They bought the tickets using their real names. Both names were then on a State Department/INS watch list called TIPOFF. Both men were sought by the FBI and CIA as suspected terrorists, in part because they had been observed at a terrorist meeting in Malaysia.
These two passenger names would have been exact matches when checked against the TIPOFF list. But that would only have been the first step. Further data checks could then have begun.
Checking for common addresses (address information is widely available, including on the internet), analysts would have discovered that Salem Al-Hazmi (who also bought a seat on American 77) used the same address as Nawaq Alhazmi. More importantly, they could have discovered that Mohamed Atta (American 11, North Tower of the World Trade Center) and Marwan Al-Shehhi (United 175, South Tower of the World Trade Center) used the same address as Khalid Al-Midhar.
Checking for identical frequent flier numbers, analysts would have discovered that Majed Moqed (American 77) used the same number as Al-Midhar.
With Mohamed Atta now also identified as a possible associate of the wanted terrorist, Al-Midhar, analysts could have added Atta’s phone numbers (also publicly available information) to their checklist. By doing so they would have identified five other hijackers (Fayez Ahmed, Mohand Alshehri, Wail Alsheri, and Abdulaziz Alomari).
Closer to September 11, a further check of passenger lists against a more innocuous INS watch list (for expired visas) would have identified Ahmed Alghandi. Through him, the same sort of relatively simple correlations could have led to identifying the remaining hijackers, who boarded United 93 (which crashed in Pennsylvania).”
In addition, Al-Midhar and Nawaf Alhamzi, the two who were on the terrorist watch list, rented an apartment in San Diego under their own names and were listed, again under their own names, in the San Diego phone book while the FBI was searching for them.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but what is needed is better and more timely analysis. Simply piling up more raw data that is almost entirely irrelevant is not only not going to help. It may actually hurt the cause. As one FBI agent said privately of Ashcroft: “We’re looking for a needle in a haystack here and he (Ashcroft) is just piling on more hay.”
In other words, the mass collecting of personal data on hundreds of millions of people actually makes it more difficult to protect the nation against terrorists, so they ought to cut most of it out.
And meanwhile, the real story is that while the administration
manages to convey the impression that it is doing everything possible to protect America, in reality it has seriously neglected most of the measures that it could have taken to really make our country safer.
For example, there is still no serious strategy for domestic security that protects critical infrastructure such as electric power lines, gas pipelines, nuclear facilities, ports, chemical plants and the like.
They’re still not checking incoming cargo carriers for radiation. They’re still skimping on protection of certain nuclear weapons storage facilities. They’re still not hardening critical facilities that must never be soft targets for terrorists. They’re still not investing in the translators and analysts we need to counter the growing terror threat.
The administration is still not investing in local government training and infrastructures where they could make the biggest difference. The first responder community is still being shortchanged. In many cases, fire and police still don’t have the communications equipment to talk to each other. The CDC and local hospitals are still nowhere close to being ready for a biological weapons attack.
The administration has still failed to address the fundamental disorganization and rivalries of our law enforcement, intelligence and investigative agencies. In particular, the critical FBI-CIA coordination, while finally improved at the top, still remains dysfunctional in the trenches.
The constant violations of civil liberties promote the false impression that these violations are necessary in order to take every precaution against another terrorist attack. But the simple truth is that the vast majority of the violations have not benefited our security at all; to the contrary, they hurt our security.
And the treatment of immigrants was probably the worst example. This mass mistreatment actually hurt our security in a number of important ways.
But first, let’s be clear about what happened: this was little more than a cheap and cruel political stunt by John Ashcroft. More than 99% of the mostly Arab-background men who were rounded up had merely overstayed their visas or committed some other minor offense as they tried to pursue the American dream just like most immigrants. But they were used as extras in the Administration’s effort to give the impression that they had caught a large number of bad guys. And many of them were treated horribly and abusively.
Consider this example reported in depth by Anthony Lewis:
“Anser Mehmood, a Pakistani who had overstayed his visa, was arrested in New York on October 3, 2001. The next day he was briefly questioned by FBI agents, who said they had no further interest in him. Then he was shackled in handcuffs, leg irons, and a belly chain and taken to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. Guards there put two more sets of handcuffs on him and another set of leg irons. One threw Mehmood against a wall. The guards forced him to run down a long ramp, the irons cutting into his wrists and ankles. The physical abuse was mixed with verbal taunts.
“After two weeks Mehmood was allowed to make a telephone call to his wife. She was not at home and Mehmood was told that he would have to wait six weeks to try again. He first saw her, on a visit, three months after his arrest. All that time he was kept in a windowless cell, in solitary confinement, with two overhead fluorescent lights on all the time. In the end he was charged with using an invalid Social Security card. He was deported in May 2002, nearly eight months after his arrest.
The faith tradition I share with Ashcroft includes this teaching from Jesus: “whatsoever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me.”
And make no mistake: the disgraceful treatment suffered by many of these vulnerable immigrants at the hands of the administration has created deep resentments and hurt the cooperation desperately needed from immigrant communities in the U.S.and from the Security Services of other countries.
Second, these gross violations of their rights have seriously damaged U.S. moral authority and goodwill around the world, and delegitimized U.S.efforts to continue promoting Human Rights around the world. As one analyst put it, “We used to set the standard; now we have lowered the bar.” And our moral authority is, after all, our greatest source of enduring strength in the world.
And the handling of prisoners at Guantanomo has been particularly harmful to America’s image. Even England and Australia have criticized our departure from international law and the Geneva Convention. Sec. Rumsfeld’s handling of the captives there has been about as thoughtful as his “postwar” plan for Iraq.
So the mass violations of civil liberties have hurt rather than helped. But there is yet another reason for urgency in stopping what this administration is doing. Where Civil Liberties are concerned, they have taken us much farther down the road toward an intrusive, “Big Brother”-style government – toward the dangers prophesized by George Orwell in his book “1984” – than anyone ever thought would be possible in the United States of America.
And they have done it primarily by heightening and exploiting public anxieties and apprehensions. Rather than leading with a call to courage, this Administration has chosen to lead us by inciting fear.
Almost eighty years ago, Justice Louis Brandeis wrote “Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. . . . They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty.” Those who won our independence, Brandeis asserted, understood that “courage [is] the secret of liberty” and "fear [only] breeds repression."
Rather than defending our freedoms, this Administration has sought to abandon them. Rather than accepting our traditions of openness and accountability, this Administration has opted to rule by secrecy and unquestioned authority. Instead, its assaults on our core democratic principles have only left us less free and less secure.
Throughout American history, what we now call Civil Liberties have often been abused and limited during times of war and perceived threats to security. The best known instances include the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798-1800, the brief suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, the extreme abuses during World War I and the notorious Red Scare and Palmer Raids immediately after the war, the shameful internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and the excesses of the FBI and CIA during the Vietnam War and social turmoil of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
But in each of these cases, the nation has recovered its equilibrium when the war ended and absorbed the lessons learned in a recurring cycle of excess and regret.
There are reasons for concern this time around that what we are experiencing may no longer be the first half of a recurring cycle but rather, the beginning of something new. For one thing, this war is predicted by the administration to “last for the rest of our lives.” Others have expressed the view that over time it will begin to resemble the “war” against drugs – that is, that it will become a more or less permanent struggle that occupies a significant part of our law enforcement and security agenda from now on. If that is the case, then when – if ever – does this encroachment on our freedoms die a natural death?
It is important to remember that throughout history, the loss of civil liberties by individuals and the aggregation of too much unchecked power in the executive go hand in hand. They are two sides of the same coin.
A second reason to worry that what we are witnessing is a discontinuity and not another turn of the recurring cycle is that the new technologies of surveillance – long anticipated by novelists like Orwell and other prophets of the “Police State” – are now more widespread than they have ever been.
And they do have the potential for shifting the balance of power between the apparatus of the state and the freedom of the individual in ways both subtle and profound.
Moreover, these technologies are being widely used not only by the government but also by corporations and other private entities. And that is relevant to an assessment of the new requirements in the Patriot Act for so many corporations – especially in the finance industries – to prepare millions of reports annually for the government on suspicious activities by their customers. It is also relevant to the new flexibility corporations have been given to share information with one another about their customers.
The third reason for concern is that the threat of more terror strikes is all too real. And the potential use of weapons of mass destruction by terrorist groups does create a new practical imperative for the speedy exercise of discretionary power by the executive branch – just as the emergence of nuclear weapons and ICBMs created a new practical imperative in the Cold War that altered the balance of war-making responsibility between Congress and the President.
But President Bush has stretched this new practical imperative beyond what is healthy for our democracy. Indeed, one of the ways he has tried to maximize his power within the American system has been by constantly emphasizing his role as Commander-in-Chief, far more than any previous President – assuming it as often and as visibly as he can, and bringing it into the domestic arena and conflating it with his other roles: as head of government and head of state – and especially with his political role as head of the Republican Party.
Indeed, the most worrisome new factor, in my view, is the aggressive ideological approach of the current administration, which seems determined to use fear as a political tool to consolidate its power and to escape any accountability for its use. Just as unilateralism and dominance are the guiding principles of their disastrous approach to international relations, they are also the guiding impulses of the administration’s approach to domestic politics. They are impatient with any constraints on the exercise of power overseas – whether from our allies, the UN, or international law. And in the same way, they are impatient with any obstacles to their use of power at home – whether from Congress, the Courts, the press, or the rule of law.
Ashcroft has also authorized FBI agents to attend church meetings, rallies, political meetings and any other citizen activity open to the public simply on the agents’ own initiative, reversing a decades old policy that required justification to supervisors that such infiltrations has a provable connection to a legitimate investigation;
They have even taken steps that seem to be clearly aimed at stifling dissent. The Bush Justice Department has recently begun a highly disturbing criminal prosecution of the environmental group Greenpeace because of a non-violent direct action protest against what Greenpeace claimed was the illegal importation of endangered mahogany from the Amazon. Independent legal experts and historians have said that the prosecution – under an obscure and bizarre 1872 law against “sailor-mongering” – appears to be aimed at inhibiting Greenpeace’s First Amendment activities.
And at the same time they are breaking new ground by prosecuting Greenpeace, the Bush Administration announced just a few days ago that it is dropping the investigations of 50 power plants for violating the Clean Air Act – a move that Sen. Chuck Schumer said, “basically announced to the power industry that it can now pollute with impunity.”
The politicization of law enforcement in this administration is part of their larger agenda to roll back the changes in government policy brought about by the New Deal and the Progressive Movement. Toward that end, they are cutting back on Civil Rights enforcement, Women’s Rights, progressive taxation, the estate tax, access to the courts, Medicare, and much more. And they approach every issue as a partisan fight to the finish, even in the areas of national security and terror.
Instead of trying to make the “War on Terrorism” a bipartisan cause, the Bush White House has consistently tried to exploit it for partisan advantage. The President goes to war verbally against terrorists in virtually every campaign speech and fundraising dinner for his political party. It is his main political theme. Democratic candidates like Max Cleland in Georgiawere labeled unpatriotic for voting differently from the White House on obscure amendments to the Homeland Security Bill.
When the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, Tom DeLay, was embroiled in an effort to pick up more congressional seats in Texas by forcing a highly unusual redistricting vote in the state senate, he was able to track down Democratic legislators who fled the state to prevent a quorum (and thus prevent the vote) by enlisting the help of President Bush’s new Department of Homeland Security, as many as 13 employees of the Federal Aviation Administration who conducted an eight-hour search, and at least one FBI agent (though several other agents who were asked to help refused to do so.)
By locating the Democrats quickly with the technology put in place for tracking terrorists, the Republicans were able to succeed in focusing public pressure on the weakest of the Senators and forced passage of their new political redistricting plan. Now, thanks in part to the efforts of three different federal agencies, Bush and DeLay are celebrating the gain of up to seven new Republican congressional seats in the next Congress.
The White House timing for its big push for a vote in Congress on going to war with Iraqalso happened to coincide exactly with the start of the fall election campaign in September a year ago. The President’s chief of staff said the timing was chosen because “from a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.”
White House political advisor Karl Rove advised Republican candidates that their best political strategy was to “run on the war”. And as soon as the troops began to mobilize, the Republican National Committee distributed yard signs throughout Americasaying, “I support President Bush and the troops” – as if they were one and the same.
This persistent effort to politicize the war in Iraqand the war against terrorism for partisan advantage is obviously harmful to the prospects for bipartisan support of the nation’s security policies. By sharp contrast, consider the different approach that was taken by Prime Minister Winston Churchill during the terrible days of October 1943 when in the midst of World War II, he faced a controversy with the potential to divide his bipartisan coalition. He said, “What holds us together is the prosecution of the war. No…man has been asked to give up his convictions. That would be indecent and improper. We are held together by something outside, which rivets our attention. The principle that we work on is, ‘Everything for the war, whether controversial or not, and nothing controversial that is not bona fide for the war.’ That is our position. We must also be careful that a pretext is not made of war needs to introduce far-reaching social or political changes by a side wind.”
Yet that is exactly what the Bush Administration is attempting to do – to use the war against terrorism for partisan advantage and to introduce far reaching controversial changes in social policy by a “side wind,” in an effort to consolidate its political power.
It is an approach that is deeply antithetical to the American spirit. Respect for our President is important. But so is respect for our people. Our founders knew – and our history has proven – that freedom is best guaranteed by a separation of powers into co-equal branches of government within a system of checks and balances – to prevent the unhealthy concentration of too much power in the hands of any one person or group.
Our framers were also keenly aware that the history of the world proves that Republics are fragile. The very hour of America’s birth in Philadelphia, when Benjamin Franklin was asked, “What have we got? A Republic or a Monarchy?” he cautiously replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
And even in the midst of our greatest testing, Lincoln knew that our fate was tied to the larger question of whether ANY nation so conceived could long endure.
This Administration simply does not seem to agree that the challenge of preserving democratic freedom cannot be met by surrendering core American values. Incredibly, this Administration has attempted to compromise the most precious rights that Americahas stood for all over the world for more than 200 years: due process, equal treatment under the law, the dignity of the individual, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, freedom from promiscuous government surveillance. And in the name of security, this Administration has attempted to relegate the Congress and the Courts to the sidelines and replace our democratic system of checks and balances with an unaccountable Executive. And all the while, it has constantly angled for new ways to exploit the sense of crisis for partisan gain and political dominance. How dare they!
Years ago, during World War II, one of our most eloquent Supreme Court Justices, Robert Jackson, wrote that the President should be given the “widest latitude” in wartime, but he warned against the “loose and irresponsible invocation of war as an excuse for discharging the Executive Branch from the rules of law that govern our Republic in times of peace. No penance would ever expiate the sin against free government,” Jackson said, “of holding that a President can escape control of executive powers by law through assuming his military role. Our government has ample authority under the Constitution to take those steps which are genuinely necessary for our security. At the same time, our system demands that government act only on the basis of measures that have been the subject of open and thoughtful debate in Congress and among the American people, and that invasions of the liberty or equal dignity of any individual are subject to review by courts which are open to those affected and independent of the government which is curtailing their freedom.”
So what should be done? Well, to begin with, our country ought to find a way to immediately stop its policy of indefinitely detaining American citizens without charges and without a judicial determination that their detention is proper.
Such a course of conduct is incompatible with American traditions and values, with sacred principles of due process of law and separation of powers.
It is no accident that our Constitution requires in criminal prosecutions a “speedy and public trial.” The principles of liberty and the accountability of government, at the heart of what makes Americaunique, require no less. The Bush Administration’s treatment of American citizens it calls “enemy combatants” is nothing short of un-American.
Second, foreign citizens held in Guantanamo should be given hearings to determine their status provided for under Article V of the Geneva Convention, a hearing that the United Stateshas given those captured in every war until this one, including Vietnamand the Gulf War.
If we don’t provide this, how can we expect American soldiers captured overseas to be treated with equal respect? We owe this to our sons and daughters who fight to defend freedom in Iraq, in Afghanistanand elsewhere in the world.
Third, the President should seek congressional authorization for the military commissions he says he intends to use instead of civilian courts to try some of those who are charged with violating the laws of war. Military commissions are exceptional in American law and they present unique dangers. The prosecutor and the judge both work for the same man, the President of the United States. Such commissions may be appropriate in time of war, but they must be authorized by Congress, as they were in World War II, and Congress must delineate the scope of their authority. Review of their decisions must be available in a civilian court, at least the Supreme Court, as it was in World War II.
Next, our nation’s greatness is measured by how we treat those who are the most vulnerable. Noncitizens who the government seeks to detain should be entitled to some basic rights. The administration must stop abusing the material witness statute. That statute was designed to hold witnesses briefly before they are called to testify before a grand jury. It has been misused by this administration as a pretext for indefinite detention without charge. That is simply not right.
Finally, I have studied the Patriot Act and have found that along with its many excesses, it contains a few needed changes in the law. And it is certainly true that many of the worst abuses of due process and civil liberties that are now occurring are taking place under the color of laws and executive orders other than the Patriot Act.
Nevertheless, I believe the Patriot Act has turned out to be, on balance, a terrible mistake, and that it became a kind of Tonkin Gulf Resolution conferring Congress’ blessing for this President’s assault on civil liberties. Therefore, I believe strongly that the few good features of this law should be passed again in a new, smaller law – but that the Patriot Act must be repealed.
As John Adams wrote in 1780, ours is a government of laws and not of men. What is at stake today is that defining principle of our nation, and thus the very nature of America. As the Supreme Court has written, “Our Constitution is a covenant running from the first generation of Americans to us and then to future genera?tions.” The Constitution includes no wartime exception, though its Framers knew well the reality of war. And, as Justice Holmes reminded us shortly after World War I, the Constitution’s principles only have value if we apply them in the difficult times as well as those where it matters less.
The question before us could be of no greater moment: will we continue to live as a people under the rule of law as embodied in our Constitution? Or will we fail future generations, by leaving them a Constitution far diminished from the charter of liberty we have inherited from our forebears? Our choice is clear.
Justices to Hear Case of Detainees at Guantánamo
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
NY Times
Published: November 11, 2003
WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 — Setting the stage for a historic clash between presidential and judicial authority in a time of military conflict, the Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide whether prisoners at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are entitled to access to civilian courts to challenge their open-ended detention.
The court said it would resolve only the jurisdictional question of whether the federal courts can hear such a challenge and not, at this stage, whether these detentions are in fact unconstitutional. Even so, the action was an unmistakable rebuff of the Bush administration's insistence that the detainees' status was a question "constitutionally committed to the executive branch" and not the business of the federal courts, as Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson argued in opposition to Supreme Court review
GLOBAL ECONOMIC VIEWPOINT
EUROPEAN VIEWPOINT
NOBEL LAUREATES 10/22/02
JIANG'S VISIT TO BUSH RANCH CONFUSES AMERICA'S FRIENDS
By Wei Jingsheng
Wei Jingsheng, perhaps China's most famous dissident, was expelled from that country in 1997. He now lives in exile in New York and is chairman of the Overseas Chinese Democracy Coalition.
NEW YORK -- When we invite a guest to our home to entertain, we usually regard this guest as a good friend. At least, such a guest would be a lawful person and would not bring trouble. Otherwise we would rather meet the guest in our office.
When a U.S. president invites the president of another nation to his private ranch and entertains him with enthusiasm, one would assume the guest is the head of an ally country or the leader of a trustworthy nation. At least the guest must not be a dictator of a totalitarian state, not a president of a nation that may bring trouble for the United States. Since President George W. Bush has enthusiastically invited China's President Jiang Zemin to his private farm for entertainment, we cannot help but ask: Is this invitation appropriate?
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Pres. Bush has been reluctant to say who has been a guest at the Crawford, TX ranch. And if you really want to know about Pres. Bush's property check this out.
Known Guests at the Bush Ranch:
Vladimir Putin: (Russia)
Jiang Zemin: (China)
Junichiro Koizumi: (Japan)
Silvio Berlusconi: (italy) Visited Twice !
John Howard: (Australia)
Prince Bandar bin Sultan: (Saudi Arabia)
Crown Prince Abdullah: (Saudi Arabia)
Vincente Fox: (Mexico)
Jose Maria Aznar: (Spain)
Tony Blair: (England)
Gen. Tommy Franks: (US Army)
While sleep-in guests of the Bushs' at the White House average five per month. as of Aug. 2002
Has anyone done research of the funds paid by the US Government for "homestead" upgrading at sitting Presidents' private residences during their term of office? Pres. Bush may have been a millionaire when he came into office, and his ranch at 1,600 acres may have cost a few dollars initially; but reading the site report for his Crawford, Texas ranch one gets the idea that a considerable amount of government money has been spent to accomodate these international guests at the ranch. How much?
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The complete text of the joint press conference between Presidents Bush and Putin in Slovenia on June 16, 2001. wherein President Bush made the 'looked into his soul' comment...note that what he actually said was:
"BUSH: I will answer the question. I looked the man in the eye, (Putin). I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul, a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country. And I appreciated so very much the frank dialogue. There was no kind of diplomatic chit chat, trying to throw each other off balance. There was a straightforward dialogue, and that's the beginning of a very constructive relationship. I wouldn't have invited him to my ranch if I didn't trust him.
(LAUGHTER)
"This was a very good meeting, and I look forward to my next meeting with President Putin in July. I very much enjoyed our time together. He's an honest, straightforward man who loves his country. He loves his family. We share a lot of values. I view him as a remarkable leader. I believe his leadership will serve Russia well. Russia and America have the opportunity to accomplish much together. We should seize it, and today we have begun."
Notes:
Pres. Bush says: "I was able to get a sense of his soul", not as currently reported: "I sensed his soul", or "I looked into his soul". There is also no direct quote in the transcript where Pres. Bush said Putin was a "good man": Perhaps most striking is Pres. Bush's comment: "We share a lot of values." "He (Putin) is an honest, straightforward man...". It might have something to do with their close involvement in the Intelligence communities of their respective countries, as both leaders had considerable exposure to that World, with Putin in the KGB, and Bush as the son of the CIA Director.
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12 JAN 2003 > Return to Opinions Index
NATO invitation presents new obligations
By JURIS MAZUTIS
We cannot render benefits to those from whom we receive them, or only seldom. But the benefits we receive must be rendered again line for line, deed for deed, to somebody.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, 1836
"...It is also not coincidence that Mr. Putin has restored the red star symbol to his army, the Soviet hymn to official occasions, and the statue of Feliks Dzershinsky, founder of the Cheka (later the KGB), in Lubyanka Square. Together with muzzling of the media, these steps signal regression into strong man rule. Then, as though the rest of us have no memory, Mr. Putin talks about "respecting Soviet achievements." Those include the horrors of the Gulag, for which no one has been held accountable. Can he not at least find the moral backbone to set the historical record straight for his own people? No. He will protect his KGB comrades, above all. This "partner" has not renounced a dangerous agenda. One media moment, in which President George Bush "looked into his soul" and "found a good man," does not reassure us. Mr. Putin must have been smirking all the way back to the Kremlin.
