It Has the Feel of a Revival

Note: Watching the RNC reminds me of my childhood and going to a Southern Baptist revival in town...twenty miles from my local Church...but further than that in my perception. Forty years later I still remember hearing the stories of faith, healing, and witness that weekend. Ordinary folks who had experienced the power of the Lord in answering their prayers spoke openly of their faith.

In my memory there were no Elizabeth Dole flavored stories: nothing was said then about the sanctity of every life, nothing was said about protecting marriage from an unspecified threat, nothing was said blaming some entity for affronts to our religious traditions. Then it was only the stories of people, and how God had changed their lives.

During parts of the RNC, I felt the revival feeling welling up again...but it had a distinct edge to it that I did not feel comfortable with. GW Bush was presented by the speakers as an almost mythic figure, possessed of extra-ordinary abilities, faith, and personal characteristics. The most frequently used, or misused descriptive word was "leader", but the projection was that he was the One, not simply the preferred candidate for CEO of the United States; but rather a person with semi-divine powers.

GW Bush has been primarily a politician for twenty five years at least...not a rancher, not a businessman, not a missionary...a politician. One who has demonstrated his ease with character assasinations against politial rivals, with alliances of convenience with those who promote positions diametrically opposite to his stated positions, and with a tendency to favor select sections of American society at the expense of disenfranchisement of other segments.

As the playright wrote: "He's just a man, like so many men...". Let's not make GW Bush into something he is not. Judge his performance as America's CEO these past four years and decide if he deserves another term; but please lose the Appointed One bombast. American needs a talented CEO to guide us through the next several years...we do not need to worship a Hero, nor devolve into slavishly favoring a convenient messenger to the exclusion of the important messages.

What's with the rolled up sleeve bit guys?

Ugh...Stupid Here Again:

Note: Have you ever gotten the idea that politicians who want to get your vote, or hucksters trying to win your confidence, employ simple cues to attempt to ingratiate themselves into your perceptions? Nothing shows this better than the "rolled up sleeves" motif.

In this election cycle, Howard Dean never missed an opportunity to roll up the sleeves, (hereafter called RUTS), regardless of the weather, the audience, or the setting. John Kerry showed he could do the RUTS routine as well; as did Edwards, Clark, and even Al Sharpton.
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From Matt Labash: Senior Writer at The Weekly Standard.

DURING THE DEBATE, another dialogue goes off under the stewardship of Anderson Cooper, whom TV critics frequently mistake for "edgy"--though in fairness to Cooper, it's an easy mistake to make since he shares a line-up with Aaron Brown. Over the last few months, candidates have attempted to make inroads into the youth vote: Howard Dean has identified himself as a metrosexual, John Kerry has gigged with Moby, and Dennis Kucinich has consorted with rappers like Noyeek the Grizzly Bear, picking up endorsements such as "Yo, I love this fool."

Throughout the debate, it's clear that young people like to be pandered to, and politicians like to pander--the perfect marriage. This is evident in the 30-second candidate videos (Wes Clark, never known as the class clown, is actually seen having an earnest discussion about the potential break-up of Outkast, before bumping knuckles with a young voter). But it is more evident in the candidates' dress. While a good portion of the young audience are in coat and tie, Dean comes out with no jacket and rolled-up sleeves. John Edwards wears a coat, but no tie. Joe Lieberman and John Kerry, perhaps feeling overdressed, both ditch their jackets before the debate gets started. By the first commercial break, Edwards loses his jacket and rolls up his sleeves. Later, Al Sharpton sheds his jacket and unbuttons his vest. Wesley Clark, in jacket and black mock turtleneck, looks like he's on his way to a humanities professor party. And Dennis Kucinich, wearing the exact same rig, looks as if Clark's mother laid out his clothes. (Clark, perhaps not wanting to be outdone by Lieberman, Kerry, Edwards, and Sharpton, also ends up ditching his jacket.)

That settled, they get onto the issue young people care about most: antebellum racism. An audience member pounces on a tempest-in-a-teapot, Dean's lazily phrased attempt at outreach to southern voters with Confederate flags on their pick-up trucks (allowing grandstanders Edwards and Sharpton to establish, once and for all, that the Democratic party is no longer pro-slavery). There are plenty of non-youth-vote-type questions, on everything from the Cuban embargo to Iraq. But all the questions that are unorthodox, and could only be asked by Rock the Vote-ish audience members, tend to remind observers how painful it is when presidential candidates try to "keep things real," as Cooper implores them to do. (Even Bill Clinton--who was better than anybody at keeping it real in a fake way--let slip to the kids that his favorite musician was Kenny G.)

During the obligatory pot-smoking question, several candidates seem willing to drink bong-water if it would establish their credentials. When one woman asks which of their fellow candidates they'd most like to party with, Lieberman creeps-out the room by saying, "I hope my wife understands this. I'd like to party with the young lady who asked that question." Sharpton takes it further, saying he'd like to party with John Kerry's wife. Kerry sheds his long-faced Easter Island mask, adopts a self-conscious smile, and says he'd wanted to party with Carol Moseley Braun, but now he'd better stick with Sharpton "so I can keep an eye on my wife." Sharpton and Kerry then clasp hands in what is the first, and it is to be hoped last, soul-brother handshake of this election.

Back in the spin room after the debate, the candidates enter one by one. On a TV platform, Gideon Yago is complaining to Paula Zahn that the candidates failed to "really open up a dialogue." Yet they are willing enough to talk freely about their youth-vote outfits. When I ask Wes Clark what was going through his mind when he showed up in the same clothes as Kucinich, he looks as startled as a possum in the high beams, but regains his composure, and answers, "I thought Dennis Kucinich had excellent taste." When I ask Edwards why he stripped down during the debate, he seems to have trouble keeping it real. "Sometimes, formality...can push people away. Especially young people. Sometimes they feel uncomfortable. I want them to feel comfortable."

Outside, I run into a group of middle schoolers from Newton. "You're the children, you're our future, get in there," I say to them, in the interest of establishing a dialogue. They can't get into the party, they complain, because alcohol is being served. The youth issues that concern them most, they tell me, are gay rights and birth control. "It happens every day in our lives," says one 11-year-old girl. I have to admit, I'm taken aback. When I was 11, the only issues I cared about were football cards and "Gilligan's Island" reruns. Ihadn't yet formed my political worldview, unlike the junior-high boy who told me, "I like Al Sharpton. He's awesome! He's not, like, boring."

Being not boring is what it's all about. As Rock the Vote president Jehmu Greene says, "Now that we are done rocking the candidates on live television, for the next month we will keep on rolling and build on the energy and excitement . . . with a Rock the Video contest"--in which youths can select their favorite candidate video--the "perfect way to keep the party going." It gives them, she says, "a direct way to provide feedback." Establishing dialogue is, like, a two-way street.
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Note: The most brazen make-over candidate for the 2004 RUTS Commemorative Award has to be GW Bush, who today: (the second day of the RNC 2004) is featured on the cover of Time, Newsweek, NY TImes, and others in classic RUTS regalia. I wish I had time to see how many photos show GW in RUTS historically. Betcha it wasn't many...and certainly none that were front page.

As distasteful as this craven mechanism is, it could be worse: when global warming becomes so bad we all have to go around wearing hats outdoors, the man-of-the-people RUT move might require some dexterity with the chapeau...or perhaps it might have something to do with bermuda shorts? Ugh

Re-Activist Judges?

For Immediate Release: The White House: Office of the Press Secretary
May 17, 2004
Statement by the President

The sacred institution of marriage should not be redefined by a few activist judges. All Americans have a right to be heard in this debate. I called on the Congress to pass, and to send to the states for ratification, an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of a man and a woman as husband and wife. The need for that amendment is still urgent, and I repeat that call today.
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From Owen in The Silicon Valley:
"Question, the problem for strict constructionists is that the world has changed and continues to change. If we relied on "settled law" much of what we take for granted in terms of rights wouldn't exist...which may be what some people want. On the other hand, only a court presence that combines respect for Constitutional precedent with an honest view of contemporary society and law can address the issues of the 21st century and maintain respect for our judicial system. Besides, at root, all law is medieval (or even more ancient, depending on who you view as source law) until somebody interprets it anew. Why is an activist a bad judge and a reactivist good?
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From an article in the New York Times by Dahlia Lithwick:
"Re-activist judges are able to present themselves as "strict constructionists" or "originalists" by arguing, as does Justice Clarence Thomas, that any case decided wrongly (i.e., not in accordance with the framers of the Constitution) should simply be erased, as though erasure is somehow a passive act. And while there is an urgent normative debate underlying this issue -- over whether the Constitution should evolve or stay static -- no one ought to be allowed to claim that the act of clubbing a live Constitution to death isn't activism.
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Phyllis Schlafly's latest!
The Supremacists: The Tyranny Of Judges And How To Stop It

The gravest threat to American democracy is the supreme power of judges over political, social, and economic policy. In this bracing indictment, Phyllis Schlafly exposes the courts’ 50-year conquest of legislative authority, made possible by presidents, congressmen, and voters who surrendered without a fight. The Supremacists is both a warning that self-government is in peril and a battle plan for overthrowing the tyranny of judges.
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From the Denver Post by Mike Soraqhan:
""Activist judges" difficult to define
As the debate on a gay-marriage ban heats up, legal experts say the term is, at best, imprecise and, at worst, used by people who simply disagree with a ruling.

Washington - Ban supporters will be blaming these black-robed rogues for pushing gay marriage onto the American stage, requiring them to push back with a constitutional amendment. "I do feel the courts are out of hand, and they've gone too far on this particular issue," Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Loveland and the Senate author of the ban, said at a forum last week.

President Bush, too, has lashed out at "activist judges." But confusion reigns over just what is an "activist" judge.

Even legal scholars who rail against them say the term suffers from imprecision. Some legal scholars say an "activist" judge is simply one who made a decision someone didn't like. "I think it's more of an insult than a philosophy," said University of Colorado constitutional law professor Richard Collins.

Others say "activist judges" are simply convenient scapegoats for gay-marriage opponents who don't want to attack gay people directly. "We heard this about 'activist courts' during civil rights," said Wayne Fields, an English professor at Washington University who studies political rhetoric. "Instead of saying, 'We don't want black people going to our schools,' we say, 'We don't want the courts making that decision."'

Conservative legal scholars, however, say activist judges are out there, eroding the Constitution and the ability of people to make decisions through their elected officials. The Massachusetts Supreme Court decision allowing gay marriage, they say, is a textbook example. "Massachusetts is a clear case of judicial activism," said lawyer and Princeton University professor Robert George. "Whether or not an activist decision is good or bad policy, it always is an unconstitutional action. The proper forum to raise these kind of issues is the legislative forum."

The gay-marriage debate highlights a long national tug-of-war over how far judges can go in interpreting the Constitution. As in Massachusetts, the argument is increasingly trickling down to state and local courts.

Generally, the "activist" label is hung on socially liberal decisions. The trend generally took off with the federal courts' role in desegregation, starting with the 1954 Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education decision, and the 1973 Supreme Court decision guaranteeing access to abortion, written by Justice Harry Blackmun.

Conservatives say the trend soared from there, with judges increasingly willing to find new rights, use tenuous theories and overrule elected lawmakers.

Desegregation and civil rights gained acceptance, giving judges a reputation in many quarters for doing what politicians lack the will to do, said University of Colorado law professor Robert Nagel. But he said rulings like those on abortion and banning school prayer inspired sustained bitterness against the courts from social conservatives.

In recent years, liberals charged that conservative jurists developed their own brand of activism, a complaint that reached its zenith when the Supreme Court handed the 2000 presidential election to Bush.

Critics of judicial activism like Princeton's George say there are plenty of examples to offend liberal sensibilities. In the first part of the 20th century, the Supreme Court was tossing worker protections. And he said the 1857 Dred Scott case, which struck down a ban on slavery in the territories, was a case of judicial activism.

"The very institution that was on the right side of racial justice in Brown vs. Board was on the wrong side of Dred Scott vs. Sanford," George said. "The power to do good is also the power to do evil."
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From Sean Cahill in the Advocate:
"Bush’s denunciation of “activist judges” is particularly rich coming from a man who would not occupy the Oval Office were it not for the intervention of a bitterly divided U.S. Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore, a ruling that ignored the will of the American people as expressed in the popular vote.
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From Patridiots.com by Poppy:
"February 25, 2004
Activist Judges?

George Bush, Bill Frist and the other right wing ideologues ludicrously blame "activist judges" for the need for a Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriage. This line of argument is not about gay marriage, but another attack by the American conservative movement on the independence of the judiciary.

The current movement for gay marriage is not a creature of the courts. There has been only one case decision in favor of gay marriage, and that was the recent Massachusetts case. Other than that, the movement has had victories with legal civil unions in Vermont a few years ago and New Jersey just last month, and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and New Mexico's Sandoval County Clerk Victoria Dunlap offering marriage licenses.

That means two legislatures and governors have signed civil union laws, and an elected Mayor and elected County Clerk have offered marriage licenses to same sex couples. Not courts, but legally elected American citizens. Courts have been used to stop Dunlap in New Mexico and are being geared up against Newsom.

This social issue is being handled by the people and not the Courts, and to blame this on "activist courts" is just an effort to minimize the size and energy of the movement. By blaming a few judges off in the hinterlands, Bush and his friends can ignore and obscure the people who support same sex marriage.

The argument that "activist judges" are destroying this country is trotted out every time the right wing is upset over some cultural case they lose. "Activist" is code for liberal, so when a culturally conservative decision comes down they are strangely silent. They were thrilled with the activist Supreme Court decision that put Bush into the White House in 2000. Or the recess appointment of Charles Pickering to the Federal Appeals Court.

The federal judiciary can't be that liberal because the Republican Party has held the White House 24 of the past 36 years, controlling judicial appointment. Seven of the nine Supreme Court Justices were appointed by Republicans. This judiciary is not liberal, but the laws they are charged with interpreting are liberal, as is the Constitution.

The call for a gay marriage amendment is an attempt to appeal to the conservative base, and nothing else. I doubt if the corporations – most of which offer domestic partner benefits – that support the Republicans care that much, but the cultural conservatives do. If the GOP can get Democrats on record voting against the amendment it will make great literature pieces in October, and "prove" that Democrats are on the side of the "activist" judges and not the good working class people of America.

The same tactic was used in 2002 with the authorization for Bush to go to war in Iraq. It worked then, and they are hoping it will work again today.
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From a Ruling in the 1967 Loving vs Virginia Case:
Loving v. Virginia

The Equal Protection Clause requires the consideration of whether the classifications drawn by any statute constitute an arbitrary and invidious discrimination. The clear and central purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to eliminate all official state sources of invidious racial discrimination in the States.

There can be no question but that Virginia's miscegenation statutes rest solely upon distinctions drawn according to race. The statutes proscribe generally accepted conduct if engaged in by members of different races. Over the years, this Court has consistently repudiated "distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry" as being "odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality." At the very least, the Equal Protection Clause demands that racial classifications, especially suspect in criminal statutes, be subjected to the "most rigid scrutiny," Korematsu v. United States (1944), and, if they are ever to be upheld, they must be shown to be necessary to the accomplishment of some permissible state objective, independent of the racial discrimination which it was the object of the Fourteenth Amendment to eliminate. Indeed, two members of this Court have already stated that they "cannot conceive of a valid legislative purpose . . . which makes the color of a person's skin the test of whether his conduct is a criminal offense."

There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification. The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy. We have consistently denied the constitutionality of measures which restrict the rights of citizens on account of race. There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.

II.

These statutes also deprive the Lovings of liberty without due process of law in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.

Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.
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From Borowitzreport.com via Calpundit:
"70% OF EXISTING MARRIAGES MAY ALREADY BE GAY

New Study Jolts White House

The Bush White House’s plan to push for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriages suffered a surprising setback today as a new study revealed that well over seventy percent of existing marriages may already be gay.

The study, conducted by Dr. Charles Cranborn of the University of Minnesota, confirmed what many social scientists have long suspected: that within the first five years of marriages, most men become, for all intents and purposes, gay.

“Soon after marrying, most men stop hitting on women and start shopping for furniture,” Dr. Cranborn said. “Scientifically speaking, how gay is that?”

Within ten years of marriage, Dr. Cranborn added, a significant number of married men stop having sex with women altogether.

“There’s only one way to describe someone who does not have sex with women, does not hit on women, and spends his free time shopping for furniture,” Dr. Cranborn added. “That word, to be scientific about it, is gay.”

FROM borowitzreport.com VIA TBOGG
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From Sen. Orrin Hatch's Website:

"We must amend the Constitution to defend traditional marriage from being undermined by activist judges. The bedrock of American society is the family, and it is traditional marriage that undergirds the American family. But recent court decisions have proven that courts are usurping the role of legislatures by imposing their own definitions of marriage on the people.

I whole-heartedly support the passage of the Allard Amendment to allow the American people — rather than a few activist judges — to define this fundamental unit of our society.

In addition, it is my belief that adhering strictly to the Constitution and the system of government our Founders outlined is the best guarantee of the freedoms we cherish as Americans. We need legislators, judges, and citizens who understand the view of the Constitution envisioned by our Founding Fathers.

I believe strongly in the freedoms enshrined in our Bill of Rights, and that it is the duty of every American to uphold those freedoms. But I also believe that these rights are sometimes misinterpreted by over-reaching judges. We should not take freedom of speech so far as to mean that pornographers may target our children. And we should not turn freedom of religion on its head, reasoning that all references to God must be removed from public life.

Our Constitution is an inspired document that has preserved the unity of our nation, protected the rights of its citizens, and made America a beacon of freedom and prosperity for the world. I consider my pledge to defend the Constitution, and all that it stands for, to be among my most sacred duties.
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And finally, the wrap up from a Feb 25th Washington Post article by Professor Peter Edelman of the Georgetown University Law Center:

""Judicial Activism": What Does It Even Mean Anymore?

Time to Bench 'Judicial Activism'

President Bush, in calling for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, has once again condemned activist judges in Massachusetts for ruling that the state's constitution requires recognition of same-sex marriages. "Judicial activism" is a ubiquitous epithet, especially at election time, but it's time for both liberals and conservatives to enter into a disarmament agreement and give it up. It has become a cliche -- a scare phrase for either side to hurl at the other in place of a substantive argument that a particular judicial decision is wrong on its merits.

From the 1950s until recently, such charges were mainly a staple of conservative rhetoric. Recall "Impeach Earl Warren" billboards and President Richard Nixon's promise to appoint "strict constructionists." But attacks on judicial overreaching are hardly the monopoly of one party. Franklin D. Roosevelt complained: "The Court has been acting not as a judicial body, but as a policy-making body. We must take action to save the Constitution from the Court."

A succession of Warren Court landmark decisions made the judicial activism charge seem the property of one political camp. Signers of the Southern Manifesto condemned Brown v. Board of Education as "a clear abuse of judicial power." Conservatives all over the country decried Miranda and other expansions of the rights of criminal suspects.

Beginning with President Nixon, the rhetoric and the reality diverged. The mantra of "judicial activism" stayed consistent enough from the conservative side. What confused things was the substance. Presidents who campaigned against activist judges appointed 10 justices to the Supreme Court between 1969 and 1992, but it was "their" court that protected abortion and commercial speech, legitimated busing and affirmative action, restricted sex discrimination and aid to parochial schools, and even imposed a moratorium on capital punishment. Liberals, winning more than they expected to, kept quiet about judicial activism.

Over the past 15 years or so, the court has gotten more conservative. Liberals have found ammunition to turn the conservative mantra on its head, and the charges of judicial activism now flow in both directions. It is the liberals who point out that the current Supreme Court has struck down nearly 30 federal laws in the past decade, compared with fewer than 130 during the two centuries after the Constitution was ratified. It is liberals who now ask why the court does not defer to the political majority as expressed through legislative enactments. It is the liberals who now cry "activism" when the court strikes down laws establishing gun-free school zones, set-asides for minority contractors, state damages for discrimination based on age or disability, civil remedies for violence against women, and citizen suits under the Endangered Species Act. To many on the left, judicial activism will forever be defined by the court's decision in Bush v. Gore.

Which brings us back to Massachusetts and President Bush.

Is it judicial activism for that state's highest court to decide that the state constitution protects the rights of gay men and lesbians, or is it simply a decision with which President Bush disagrees? Bush did not use the rhetoric of judicial activism when the mainly conservative Rehnquist Court said last summer that state laws jailing gays for consensual sodomy are unconstitutional, even though he perhaps disagreed with the merits of the decision.

The Massachusetts court is sparking a national debate, just as occurred after Brown, but that debate, properly couched, is not about judicial activism. The issue is whether it is time to broaden the American dream once again by opening up the same basic opportunities to gay men and lesbians that had to be won -- sometimes in the courts -- by women, religious dissidents, racial minorities, disabled people and others without political clout.

Of course, in an election year, between flipping pancakes and kissing babies, politicians of all parties will find time to attack "activist" judges -- meaning different things by the term. The work of courts certainly deserves substantive criticism. But it would improve public debate over the right way to read our Constitution if the politicians agreed to remove the charge of judicial activism from their campaign arsenals. It's a tempting missile to lob at one's opponent, but it confuses far more than it clarifies. All sides would do well to remember Judge Alfred Goodwin's trenchant remark. "If the court makes a decision someone likes," he said, "it's applauded as 'judicial statesmanship.' If not, it's called 'judicial activism.' "

Army Times Magazine Editorial May 2004

Published: May 17, 2004
Editorial: A failure of leadership at the highest levels

Around the halls of the Pentagon, a term of caustic derision has emerged for the enlisted soldiers at the heart of the furor over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal: the six morons who lost the war. Indeed, the damage done to the U.S. military and the nation as a whole by the horrifying photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees at the notorious prison is incalculable.

But the folks in the Pentagon are talking about the wrong morons. There is no excuse for the behavior displayed by soldiers in the now-infamous pictures and an even more damning report by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba. Every soldier involved should be ashamed.

But while responsibility begins with the six soldiers facing criminal charges, it extends all the way up the chain of command to the highest reaches of the military hierarchy and its civilian leadership. The entire affair is a failure of leadership from start to finish. From the moment they are captured, prisoners are hooded, shackled and isolated. The message to the troops: Anything goes.

In addition to the scores of prisoners who were humiliated and demeaned, at least 14 have died in custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army has ruled at least two of those homicides. This is not the way a free people keeps its captives or wins the hearts and minds of a suspicious world.

How tragically ironic that the American military, which was welcomed to Baghdad by the euphoric Iraqi people a year ago as a liberating force that ended 30 years of tyranny, would today stand guilty of dehumanizing torture in the same Abu Ghraib prison used by Saddam Hussein’s henchmen.

One can only wonder why the prison wasn’t razed in the wake of the invasion as a symbolic stake through the heart of the Baathist regime.

Army commanders in Iraq bear responsibility for running a prison where there was no legal adviser to the commander, and no ultimate responsibility taken for the care and treatment of the prisoners.

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, also shares in the shame. Myers asked “60 Minutes II” to hold off reporting news of the scandal because it could put U.S. troops at risk. But when the report was aired, a week later, Myers still hadn’t read Taguba’s report, which had been completed in March. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also failed to read the report until after the scandal broke in the media.

By then, of course, it was too late. Myers, Rumsfeld and their staffs failed to recognize the impact the scandal would have not only in the United States, but around the world.

If their staffs failed to alert Myers and Rumsfeld, shame on them. But shame, too, on the chairman and secretary, who failed to inform even President Bush. He was said to have been left to learn of the explosive scandal from media reports instead of from his own military leaders.

On the battlefield, Myers’ and Rumsfeld’s errors would be called a lack of situational awareness — a failure that amounts to professional negligence. To date, the Army has moved to court-martial the six soldiers suspected of abusing Iraqi detainees and has reprimanded six others.

Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who commanded the MP brigade that ran Abu Ghraib, has received a letter of admonishment and also faces possible disciplinary action. That’s good, but not good enough.

This was not just a failure of leadership at the local command level. This was a failure that ran straight to the top. Accountability here is essential — even if that means relieving top leaders from duty in a time of war.
— Military Times editorial, May 17 issue

A Better Distorted View

The physics of diffusion offers a new way of generating maps
Ivars Peterson

A map can show much more than rivers, roads, and political boundaries. It can express an attitude. Saul Steinberg's famous New Yorker cover illustration, called "View from 9th Avenue," shows a foreshortened map of New York City and its environs. Beyond the city's avenues and the Hudson River, Steinberg's map looks westward toward vaguely defined regions: Jersey, the rest of the United States, the Pacific Ocean, and a barely visible Asia and Europe. The map neatly encapsulates a Manhattanite's self-centered perspective on the world.

A map can also illuminate the way people live. It can incorporate census results, disease incidence, or the number of telephones in use. A simple color code, for example, can show where the incidence of a particular disease is high and where it's low. Such representations, however, can be misleading. Inevitably, cities would show a higher incidence than rural areas merely because the former have larger populations. Plotting per capita incidence takes care of that problem but discards information about where most of the cases occurred.

One solution is to take out variations in population density but still show how many cases occur in each region. This can be done on a distorted map in which the sizes of geographic regions appear in proportion to their populations, whether it's people or goods, or other items. Such a map is known as a cartogram.

Constructing a usable cartogram is challenging. The computer methods currently available sometimes produce maps with overlapping regions or weird distortions. In some cases, the maps are so highly skewed that they're difficult to read or interpret. Moreover, it can take hours of computer time to produce a single cartogram.

Now, two researchers have turned to the physics of diffusion to develop a new, speedy technique for generating cartograms by computer. "Our method is conceptually simple and produces useful, elegant, and easily readable maps," say Mark E.J. Newman and Michael T. Gastner of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. They describe their procedure in the May 18 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

There's an urgent need for a method that really works, says geographer Daniel Dorling of the University of Sheffield in England. The algorithm proposed by Newman and Gastner may "prove to be of huge value in cartography worldwide," he suggests.

Perfect distortion

A geographic map of the continental United States shows a patchwork of states of varying sizes and shapes. Creating a new map in which the area of each state is proportional to its population requires enlarging densely populated states and shrinking sparsely populated ones. On such a map, populous New Jersey would loom large despite its relatively small area and vast Wyoming would turn tiny.

Mathematically, it can be shown that there are infinitely many ways to perform such a transformation, even while making sure that the total area and the basic connectedness, or topology, of the map don't change. With such leeway, geographers and other researchers have proposed many different methods. Dorling himself has invented several ingenious techniques for producing cartograms, but each one has disadvantages.

The "perfect" cartogram, says Dorling, would be one that also minimizes local distortion. "If you were to look in detail at a very small area of the cartogram, it should look very similar to a normal map," he says. For example, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona meet at right angles on a standard map of the United States. These states should also come close to doing so on a cartogram.

Achieving such perfection would be difficult, so researchers have focused on making good-enough cartograms efficiently.

Newman and Gastner started with the observation that, on a population cartogram, the population is spread out evenly. The conversion of a geographic map into a cartogram reminded the physicists of diffusion—the process by which a gas spreads to fill available space until it has a uniform density throughout.

Applied to a map, there would be a flow from areas with high population densities to those with low densities. This flow would take any boundaries with it to create the new map.

Inspired by this analogy, Newman and Gastner turned to an equation that physicists use to describe diffusion. Starting with a mathematical description of the population density for a given map, they used a computer to solve the diffusion equation through a step-by-step process. The result: a map in which the population density is the same everywhere and that has no overlapping regions.

"The programming necessary to make this work is quite involved, so it took a while to produce the first maps," Newman says. "Once we did, however, it rapidly became clear that this was a useful tool."

It's a little surprising that no one had thought to use this approach before. "Perhaps it's reasonable to a physicist—diffusion is something physicists all study as undergraduates—but not to someone in cartography or geography, which is where most people working on this topic are coming from," Newman says.

"The method of Newman and Gastner is elegant," agrees geographer Waldo Tobler of the University of California, Santa Barbara, "but the mathematics is rather difficult."

In the late 1960s, Tobler, who was then at the University of Michigan, was the first to propose a method for the automated computer generation of cartograms. In his original scheme, the initial map is divided into small rectangular or hexagonal cells. Each cell is independently enlarged or contracted to a size proportional to its population. The resized cells are then distorted so that corners match again. The sizing process is repeated again and again until the population density in the cells evens out.

It was an important first step, but Tobler's method was quite slow and sometimes produced unfortunate distortions.

Other researchers tried to improve upon Tobler's effort. One scheme, recently developed by Dorling, also divided a map into tiny cells. With each step of the procedure, cells lying near a boundary would be reassigned as required to meet population requirements. Populous areas would grow larger at the expense of less-populated areas.

Another method permitted the borders of cells to move in response both to space requirements and to theoretical forces exerted by other cells.

Although there were improvements in performance, no method completely solved the problem.

Skewed states

Newman and Gastner have tried out their diffusion method on population data from the 2000 U.S. census. To demonstrate the technique's effectiveness and versatility, they created cartograms displaying the results of the U.S. presidential election of 2000, lung cancer rates among males in the state of New York, and the distribution of wire service news stories by state.

HEADLINE NEWS. The geographical distribution of news stories isn't uniform, Newman and Gastner show. Even allowing for population, a few cities—New York and Washington, in particular—get a surprisingly large fraction of the attention. The researchers extracted the dateline from about 72,000 wire-service news stories from 1994 to 1998 and changed a standard map (top) into a cartogram (bottom) in which the sizes of states are proportional to the frequency of their appearance in datelines.
Newman and Gastner/PNAS

In the close contest between Republican George Bush and Democrat Al Gore, Newman and Gastner's cartogram based on population density reveals a fairly even split. In contrast, using a standard geographic map and simply coloring in each state according to which candidate had received more votes there produces a much larger area in the Republican color—even though Gore finished slightly ahead in the popular vote.

"Clearly then, a simple map is a poor visual representation of the election results, in the sense that it is hard to tell which party got more votes by looking at the map," Newman and Gastner say.

In each of their applications, the researchers had to decide what type of geographic area to choose as a basic unit. For example, in the United States, they could take the population of each state and distribute it uniformly over the state's area, or they could do it county by county or census tract by census tract.

The choice of unit used to establish the so-called population-density function affects the amount of distortion in the resulting cartogram. For example, distributing a state's population over its entire area generally produces a map with more recognizable features than does a county-by-county distribution, because cities cause substantial local distortions.

"Part of the art of making a good cartogram lies in shrewd decisions about the definition of the population-density," Newman and Gastner say in their PNAS paper. Ultimately, the choice of population-density function is up to the user of the method, who must decide what particular features are most desirable in his or her application.

The Newman-Gastner technique generates a cartogram remarkably quickly. "Maps are complicated things, and any calculation takes quite a long time," Newman says. "Our method . . . allows us to speed up the calculations a great deal and complete them in just seconds [rather than hours or days]. This makes a lot of difference to the usability of the method."

The physicists also discovered that their method generates maps that are visually pleasing and easy to read. "If you have correctness, speed, and useful, readable maps, then you have pretty much everything a cartogram needs," Newman says.

So far, Newman and Gastner have applied their technique only to standard examples. They plan to develop a software package that would permit geographers or cartographers to use the method on trickier, more interesting problems without having to write complex computer programs themselves.

Newman and Gastner are working to further increase the method's speed. They are also considering the application of their tool on a global scale.

"We haven't done anything larger than the United States, but that's not because of scaling problems," Newman says. "In fact, the U.S. maps were done on a 1,000-by-1,000 grid, so we already, in effect, had a million regions in those maps, and the calculations were still very quick."

The challenge in creating maps of large portions of the world derives from Earth's curvature. The method that Newman and Gastner used to flatten the area covered by the United States doesn't work for the whole globe.

Going to larger areas "would involve rewriting our computer codes," Newman says. Nonetheless, "in terms of running time, I see no reason why very large maps, including the entire world, should not be possible."

Although Dorling praises the work of Newman and Gastner, he sees the need for additional research on methods for generating global cartograms to get closer to the best cartogram that is theoretically possible.

"Creating [perfect] cartograms remains an algorithmic puzzle," he says. "I've been searching for 15 years to find a Ph.D. student willing to take this problem on. We now have the computational power—we lack the brains. The solution has probably already been found in another area."

"One of the repeated lessons of the field of complex systems in which I work is that there are an awful lot of good ideas out there, and many of them are well known, but few of them are well known in every field," Newman says. "So, people can make significant progress by applying an idea commonplace in one area to a field in which it has less, or no, currency."

Ad claims Kerry cast "98 votes" to raise taxes, but the total is misleading.

Bush Still Fudging the Numbers on Kerry's Tax Votes
From: FactCheck.org
August 30, 2004

The Bush-Cheney campaign released a television ad August 23 accusing Kerry of casting "98 votes for tax increases." The number is an improvement on Bush's earlier claim that Kerry cast 350 votes for "higher taxes," which we described as inflated. But even the new, reduced total is padded.

Of the 98 votes for "tax increases," 43 were cast on budget measures that only set targets and don't actually legislate tax increases. Often, several votes are counted regarding a single tax bill.

The ad also strives to blame Kerry for raising taxes on the "middle class" and says "There's what Kerry says and then there's what Kerry does." But a close look shows the votes cited in this ad are in fact fairly consistent with Kerry's promise only to raise taxes on those making over $200,000 a year.

"Ex-Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell Is Charged With Fraud by U.S.
Aug. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Former Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell was charged with fraud by the U.S. following a five-year investigation into claims he accepted improper payments from contractors seeking city contracts. "

Scientific Integrity in Policy Making
Further investigation of the Bush administration's abuse of science
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This page is part of the introduction from the July 2004 update to the February 2004 UCS report Scientific Integrity in Policymaking.

More than 5,000 scientists have called for an end to these practices, including 48 Nobel Laureates and 62 National Medal of Science recipients.

On February 18, 2004, 62 preeminent scientists including Nobel laureates, National Medal of Science recipients, former senior advisers to administrations of both parties, numerous members of the National Academy of Sciences, and other well-known researchers released a statement titled Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policy Making. In this statement, the scientists charged the Bush administration with widespread and unprecedented "manipulation of the process through which science enters into its decisions."

The scientists’ statement made brief reference to specific cases that illustrate this pattern of behavior. In conjunction with the statement, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released detailed documentation backing up the scientists’ charges in its report, Scientific Integrity in Policy Making.

Since the release of the UCS report in February, the administration has continued to undermine the integrity of science in policy making seemingly unchecked. Many scientists have spoken out about their frustration with an administration that has undermined the quality of the science that informs policy making by suppressing, distorting, or manipulating the work done by scientists at federal agencies and on scientific advisory panels. For instance, Michael Kelly, a biologist who had served at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service for nine years, recently resigned his position and issued an indictment of Bush administration practices. As Kelly wrote, "I speak for many of my fellow biologists who are embarrassed and disgusted by the agency’s apparent misuse of science."1

Scientific Integrity in Policy Making: Further investigation of the Bush administration's abuse of science investigates several new incidents that have surfaced since the February 2004 UCS report. These new incidents have been corroborated through in-depth interviews and internal government documents, including some documents released through the Freedom of Information Act. The cases that follow include:

egregious disregard of scientific study, across several agencies, regarding the environmental impacts of mountaintop removal mining;

censorship and distortion of scientific analysis, and manipulation of the scientific process, across several issues and agencies in regard to the Endangered Species Act;

distortion of scientific knowledge in decisions about emergency contraception;

new evidence about the use of political litmus tests for scientific advisory panel appointees. These new revelations put to rest any arguments offered by the administration that the cases to date have been isolated incidents involving a

few bad actors.
Concern in the scientific community has continued to grow. In the months since the original UCS report, more than 5,000 scientists have signed onto the scientists’ statement. Signers include 48 Nobel laureates, 62 National Medal of Science recipients, and 127 members of the National Academy of Sciences. A number of these scientists have served in multiple administrations, both Democratic and Republican, underscoring the unprecedented nature of this administration’s practices and demonstrating that the issues of scientific integrity transcend partisan politics.

The United States has an impressive history of investing in and reaping the benefits of scientific research. The actions by the Bush administration threaten to undermine the morale and compromise the integrity of scientists working for and advising America’s world-class governmental research institutions and agencies. Not only does the public expect and deserve government to provide it with accurate information, the government has a responsibility to ensure that policy decisions are not based on intentionally or knowingly flawed science. To do so carries serious implications for the health, safety, and environment of all Americans.

Given the lack of serious consideration and response by the administration to concerns raised by scores of prominent scientists, UCS is committed to continuing to investigate and publicize cases—corroborated by witnesses and documentation—in which politics is allowed to stifle or distort the integrity of the scientific process in governmental policy making. UCS—working with scientists across many disciplines, other organizations, and elected officials—will also seek to develop and implement solutions that will protect government scientists from retribution when they bring scientific abuse to light, provide better scientific advice to Congress, strengthen the role of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, strengthen and ensure adherence to conflict of interest guidelines for federal advisory panels, and ensure full access to government scientific analysis that has not been legitimately classified for national security reasons.

US News Article | Reuters.com: "NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators carrying colorful banners and shouting 'no more Bush' took to the streets of New York on Sunday, the day before the Republican convention was to open, to decry the U.S.-led war in Iraq and President Bush's policies. "

UK Seeks Global Support for Stem Cell Research
Sun Aug 29, 2004 07:07 PM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's leading scientific institution said Monday it is urging countries to back a campaign to stop a possible ban on stem cell research as part of a global treaty banning human cloning. The London-based Royal Society is stepping up its drive to push the United Nations to ban the cloning of babies, but to make no ruling on using the technology for medical research, or therapeutic cloning, at its 59th General Session in October. The 191-nation U.N. General Assembly is divided over whether to allow therapeutic cloning to continue or to adopt a broad cloning ban championed by the Bush administration and Costa Rica with strong backing from the U.S. anti-abortion movement and many predominantly Roman Catholic nations.

Last year, the assembly put treaty negotiations on hold for a year after 66 scientific academies around the world expressed support for therapeutic cloning. Cloning research relies on embryo cells, or stem cells, because they can grow into all types of cells and tissues in the body.

Supporters of a broad cloning ban argue therapeutic cloning, in which cells from human embryos are used in medical research, involves taking human lives because the embryos are eventually destroyed.

Although member nations would not be compelled to sign up to it, the Royal Society argues a treaty banning all forms of human cloning would place a major obstacle in the way of stem cell research which could provide new treatments for diseases including diabetes, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

"It is clear that if the convention bans all forms of human cloning, the UK, and other countries which currently permit carefully regulated therapeutic cloning, will not sign up to it," said Professor Richard Gardner, chairman of the Royal Society's working group on stem cell research and cloning, in a statement.

"For countries that have not yet brought in a ban, a UN convention which draws a clear distinction between reproductive cloning and therapeutic cloning will provide invaluable guidance in passing effective legislation."

Some Republicans Who Will Not be Heard during the convention:

On The War in Iraq

by Andrew Gumbel, Independent (London) - August 18, 2002
The Bush administration's plans to go to war against Iraq are causing growing disquiet among eminent members of the President's Republican Party, including congressmen, foreign policy veterans and one close confidant of the first President Bush who was deeply involved in the war against Iraq a decade ago.

The names who have come forward this week to express scepticism or outright opposition to a military invasion could not be more high-profile: Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, Lawrence Eagleburger, Dick Armey, and Chuck Hagel, a senator from Nebraska seen as an expert on intelligence and security.
============================================
In the War On Drugs

WASHINGTON - August 20 - Prominent Republicans are featured in a full-page ad under the headline “the Right response to the War on Drugs”. The ad will run in the New York Sun each day of the Republican National Convention, August 30th – September 2nd.

“Most Republicans simply don’t know that many of their most prominent leaders think the drug war is a disaster,” said Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance. “This ad seemed a good way to let them know, and to plant the seeds for a more vigorous Republican drug policy debate in years to come.”

The publishers of the New York Sun plan a special distribution to make the paper available to every RNC delegate in town as well as thousands of others attending the convention.

Statements from Milton Friedman, William Buckley Jr., Grover Norquist, Gary Johnson and George Shultz are featured in the Drug Policy Alliance ad. Text from the ad includes: "Eighty-five million Americans have experimented with illegal drugs. Since the object of criminal law is to detect and punish the wrongdoer, should we reason that 85 million of us should have spent time in jail?" - William F. Buckley Jr., Syndicated Column, 8/10/96

"...I wouldn't be surprised if in 10 years or so you saw the conservative coalition come out for an end to drug prohibition." - Grover Norquist, Poz website, 6/01

"Can any policy, however high-minded, be moral if it leads to widespread corruption, imprisons so many, has so racist an effect, destroys our inner cities, wreaks havoc on misguided and vulnerable individuals and brings death and destruction to foreign countries?" - Milton Friedman, New York Times 1/11/98

"...We need at least to consider and examine forms of controlled legalization of drugs." - George P. Shultz, Wall Street Journal, 10/27/89

  "Take it from a businessman: The War on Drugs is just money down the drain." - Gary E. Johnson, Intervention Magazine interview, 2004
========================================
The War on Womens Right to Choose

Anyone from the Republicans For Choice PAC

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The War of Apolistatic Christianity and Who Belongs

Not the Mormons

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The War on Stem Cell Research

Proposition 71: The Califormia Initiative for the expansion of Stem Cell Research

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No...and Yes...

In an interview published on Friday in USA Today, Pres. Bush said that Americans will re-elect him to a second term even if they disagree with his decision to invade Iraq.

Bush said voters "know who I am and I believe they're comfortable with the fact that they know I'm not going to shift principles or shift positions based upon polls and focus groups." Bush told USA Today that "the American people have seen me make the hardest of decisions. That's just going to have to be a part of their decision-making process." Bush said his strategy had been "flexible enough" to respond. "We're adjusting to our conditions" in places like Najaf, the paper quoted him as saying.

Note: This reminds me somewhat of Chevy Chase's line: "I'm Chevy Chase, and you're not."
Bush seems to be saying he is not going to change his principles or positions based on input from some people, (those who respond to polls and focus groups); but that he will based on other conditions as they occur. So, it's Yes...and No...Just trust me.

U.S. Court in New York Rejects Partial-Birth Abortion Ban
By JULIA PRESTON
NY Times
Published: August 27, 2004

A federal judge in New York ruled yesterday that a federal law banning a rarely used method of abortion was unconstitutional because it did not exempt cases where the procedure might be necessary to protect a woman's health.

The ruling, by Judge Richard Conway Casey, came in a challenge brought by the National Abortion Federation and seven doctors to a November 2003 law that bans the method known as partial-birth abortion.

Judge Casey determined that the Supreme Court required, in a decision four years ago, that any law limiting abortion must have a clause permitting doctors to use a banned procedure if they determine that the risk to a woman's health would be greater without it.

The Supreme Court ruling "informed us that this gruesome procedure may be outlawed only if there exists a medical consensus that there is no circumstance in which any women could potentially benefit from it," Judge Casey wrote. The Supreme Court's opinion struck down a state law in Nebraska.

The New York case, which was argued by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, was one of three cases challenging the partial-birth abortion law. On June 1, a federal judge in California ruled the law unconstitutional on similar but broader grounds than Judge Casey cited. The Justice Department has appealed that decision. A challenge in Nebraska is still in federal court there.

The ruling is a new blow to legislation that abortion opponents have hailed as one of their most significant victories. President Bush strongly backed the bill.

Attorney General John Ashcroft said in Washington yesterday that the Justice Department would continue to defend the law vigorously and would appeal the ruling. A department statement quoted President Bush, who had said the law would "end an abhorrent practice and continue to build a culture of life in America."

The ruling by Judge Casey, in United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, makes it considerably less likely that the Bush administration will be able to implement the law as it is currently written. It also will shift the focus of the abortion debate back to the Supreme Court and its cornerstone 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade upholding a women's broad right to abortion.

At issue is a procedure, generally used in the second or third trimester of pregnancy, that involves partially extracting an intact fetus from a woman's uterus and then killing it by emptying the brain from the skull. Also known as D and X, for dilation and extraction, it has been used in cases of rare or unanticipated severe medical complications of pregnancy.

After listening to doctors describe the procedure in detail during 16 days of hearings this spring, Judge Casey wrote that it is "gruesome, brutal, barbaric and uncivilized." He cited medical experts' testimony that the procedure subjects the fetus to "severe pain."

He also dismissed much of the testimony by A.C.L.U. witnesses, saying he did not believe that many of their "purported reasons for why D and X is medically necessary are credible; rather they are theoretical or false."

But Judge Casey was even more pointedly critical of Congress, saying that it had voted for the law without seriously examining the medical issues. "This court heard more evidence during its trial than Congress heard over the span of eight years," the judge wrote.

He found that Congress, in writing the law, had ignored furious dissension among doctors over the safety and necessity of the disputed abortion. The lawmakers had overlooked testimony in their own hearings, he said, and based the bill on the conclusion that partial-birth abortion is "never necessary."

The law includes an exception if there is a risk to a woman's life, but not a broader exception if a doctor decides that there is a risk to a patient's health. A violation is a felony punished with up to two years in jail and fines up to $250,000.

The A.C.L.U. suit did not center on defending the procedure, but on contesting the limitations in the law on doctors' and women's ability to determine medical care.

Where Is The Shame?
By BOB HERBERT
NY Times Op-Ed
Published: August 27, 2004

Max Cleland, minus the three limbs he lost in Vietnam, showed up in his wheelchair outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Wednesday to suggest that the president take the simple and decent step of condemning the slime that is being spread by Bush supporters against the war record of John Kerry.

He didn't get very far. The president was busy vacationing and had neither the time nor the inclination to meet with Mr. Cleland, a former U.S. senator who was himself the target of vicious, unconscionable attacks by the G.O.P. slime machine when he ran for re-election in Georgia in 2002.

Later, at a press conference under the hot Crawford sun, Mr. Cleland told reporters: "The question is, where is George Bush's honor? Where is his shame?"

Mr. Cleland reminded reporters of the scurrilous attacks by Bush forces against Senator John McCain in the Republican presidential primary in 2000 and said: "Keep in mind, this president has gone after three Vietnam veterans in four years. That's got to stop."

In what is surely the most important election of the last half-century, we seem trapped in the politics of the madhouse. What is incredible is that these attacks on men who served not just honorably, but heroically, are coming from a hawkish party that is controlled by an astonishing number of men who sprinted as far from the front lines as they could when they were of fighting age and their country was at war.

Among them:

Mr. Bush himself, the nation's commander in chief and the biggest hawk of all. He revels in the accouterments of combat. The story was somewhat different when he was 22 years old and eligible for combat himself. He managed to get into the cushy confines of the Texas Air National Guard at the height of the Vietnam War in 1968 - a year in which more than a half-million American troops were in the war zone and more than 14,000 were killed.

The story gets murky after that. We know the future president breezed off at some point to work on a political campaign in Alabama, skipped a required flight physical in 1972 and was suspended from flying. He supported the war in Vietnam but was never in any danger of being sent there.

Vice President Dick Cheney, another fierce administration hawk. Mr. Cheney asked for and received five deferments when he was eligible for the draft. He told senators at a confirmation hearing in 1989, "I had other priorities in the 60's than military service." Many draft-age Americans had similar priorities - getting an education, getting married and starting a family.

Attorney General John Ashcroft. He is reported to have said, "I would have served, if asked." But with the war raging in Vietnam, he received six student deferments and an "occupational deferment" based on the essential nature of a civilian job at Southwest Missouri State University - teaching business law to undergraduates.

Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary and a fanatical hawk on Iraq. He was not fanatical about Vietnam and escaped the draft with student deferments.

There are many others.

I would like to see at least some of these men, in keeping with their positions as leaders of a great nation, stand up and say it is wrong - just wrong - to try and reap a cheap political gain by defacing the sacrifices of individuals like John Kerry, John McCain and Max Cleland, who put themselves in mortal danger in the service of their country.

It's one thing to decline to serve. It's quite another to throw mud at those who did serve - or to remain silent as allies hurl the mud.

I've interviewed several soldiers and marines who have suffered grave wounds in Iraq, including the loss of limbs. A permanent place of honor should be reserved for them in the pantheon of American heroes. The idea that someone some years from now may trash their service for political gain is beyond disgusting.

George W. Bush ought to call off his dogs. The one thing we ought to be able to do in this hyperpoliticized era is rally in a bipartisan way behind those who have been willing to fight our wars.

The privileged classes no longer feel an obligation to put their lives - or their children's lives - on the line in defense of the nation. The very least they could do is insist that those who have put themselves in harm's way be treated with respect.

Note: As a US Army veteran with service in the 1st Division, RVN at Lai Kai and Dian in the Summer of 1968, I take equal umbridge at this Administration's support of smear tactics against veterans for some of the same reasons stated above by Mr. Herbert.

While Mr. Kerry, Mr. Cleland, and Mr. McCain are public figures having been elected to public office a reasonable person could expect some political action would be mounted against them. However, smear tactics and buying the participation of those willing to lie to discredit a political adversary's service should be condemned, whether it is against Bob Dole, John McCain, John Kerry, or my districts representative in the Georgia Legislature, or me.

Value and speak the truth, while condemning the liars who bear false witness, those who instigate the smears, or finance and support them.

Personal Attention to Those In Need is Great Medicine

New Therapy on Depression Finds Phone Is Effective
By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: August 25, 2004

Debates about the safety and effectiveness of treatments for depression miss a basic reality about the disease: most people affected by it do not seek help at all, and those who do commonly neglect to complete counseling or drug regimens recommended by doctors. For at least a third of the people who try them, treatments of any kind fall short, surveys show.

But improving success rates may be a matter of picking up the phone, according to a report today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. In a large-scale, 18-month study, doctors in Seattle found that they could significantly increase recovery rates for patients taking antidepressants by providing several 30- to 40-minute counseling sessions over the phone.

In previous studies, researchers showed that phone calls from nurses or other clinic staff members providing emotional support could help people trying to quit smoking, stay on medication or shake low moods. The Seattle study is the first to test the effect of a standardized form of counseling, cognitive behavior therapy, delivered entirely over the phone.

It is not clear from the study whether phone counseling will be equally helpful for everyone with depression....

By the end of the study, 80 percent of those who had received phone therapy said their depression was "much improved," compared with 55 percent of those who were given usual care. Of those who received encouragement by phone but not explicit therapy, 66 percent said they were "much improved."

The researchers do not know what component of the phone therapy made it effective or whether the increased attention itself made patients feel better. But for therapists trying to treat patients who are overwhelmed or hard to reach-single parents, low-income people. for example - the study may provide an alternative to in-person care.

Car Buyer?

Dude, Where's My Resale Value?
By DANNY HAKIM
NY Times
Published: August 26, 2004

Detroit's big rebates and interest-free financing deals have strengthened car sales for the last three years. But they have also eroded the resale value of many American automotive brands, and that could cost consumers thousands of dollars when they trade in their vehicles.

None of the traditional American brands are among the 10 vehicles expected to retain the most value over the next half-decade, according to a new report from Kelley Blue Book, a company that tracks used car values. But American brands dominate the other end of the spectrum, the vehicles expected to lose the most value.

Confirming the Charge about Linkage

Bush Campaign's Top Outside Lawyer Resigns
By JIM RUTENBERG and KATE ZERNIKE

Published: August 25, 2004

The Bush campaign's top outside lawyer, who said on Tuesday that he had given legal advice to the group of veterans attacking Senator John Kerry's Vietnam War record, said today that he was resigning from the campaign because his activities were becoming a "distraction" to Mr. Bush' re-election efforts.

The lawyer, Benjamin L. Ginsberg, said that the group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, called him last month to ask for his help and that he had agreed. The group has criticized Mr. Kerry's war record and his antiwar activism in a book, television commercials and appearances on various news programs, especially on cable.

"I cannot begin to express my sadness that my legal representations have become a distraction from the critical issues at hand in this election," Mr. Ginsberg told the president in a letter distributed today by the Bush-Cheney campaign. "I feel I cannot let that continue, so I have decided to resign as national counsel to your campaign to ensure that the giving of legal advice to decorated military veterans, which was entirely within the boundaries of the law, doesn't distract from the real issues upon which you and the country should be focusing."

The Kerry-Edwards campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, said today that Mr. Ginsberg's resignation "confirms the extent of those connections."

"Now we know why George Bush refuses to specifically condemn these false ads," she said. "People deeply involved in his own campaign are behind them, from paying for them, to appearing in them, to providing legal advice, to coordinating a negative strategy to divert the public away from issues like jobs, health care and the mess in Iraq, the real concerns of the American people."

US record industry sues 744 more for online music downloading
www.chinaview.cn 2004-08-26 09:19:28

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 25 (Xinhuanet) -- In its latest wave of crackdown on music piracy, major US record companies have sued 744more people for illegally downloading copyrighted music from file-sharing networks, the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA)said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the RIAA refiled lawsuits against 152 people who were previously sued anonymously but later identified and offered the chance to settle, after they ignored or declined those offers, a RIAA spokesman said.

The 744 defendants' identities remained unknown, but the RIAA filed the lawsuits according to the so-called "John Doe" litigation process, which is used to sue unidentified defendants.

The 744 people reportedly used a variety of peer-to-peer services including Kazaa, eDonkey and Grokster Ltd.

This was the first time that eDonkey users were sued, and RIAA President Cary Sherman called it an attempt to respond to "changing circumstances" in the file-sharing world. "Without a strong measure of deterrence, piracy will overwhelm and choke the creation and distribution of music," he said.

So far, the RIAA has sued nearly 4,700 people since last September in its relentless legal campaign to crack down on music piracy, which it blames for the decline of CD sales that costs themusic industry billions of dollars.

Last week, a federal appeals court held that makers of file-sharing software could not be held liable for certain kinds of copyright infringement, dealing a blow to efforts by the RIAA to tackle piracy at the source.

Meanwhile, peer-to-peer vendors continue to decry the RIAA tactics, calling them "unproductive." Instead of suing music fans,the RIAA should negotiate a way to pay artists with peer-to-peer vendors, said Adam Eisgrau, executive director of P2P United, a trade group representing five peer-to-peer vendors, including Grokster and eDonkey.

"The fact that the RIAA has the right to bring these lawsuits doesn't make them the right thing to do," Eisgrau said

More On the Bush Admin's Media Method in the Swift Boat Affair and Others

From Eric Alterman on MSNBC:

"The LAT editors—and most journos—might want to flip to the back of their paper. "The technique President Bush is using against John F. Kerry was perfected by his father against Michael Dukakis in 1988," says an editorial. "Bring a charge, however bogus. Make the charge simple. But make sure the supporting details are complicated and blurry enough to prevent easy refutation. Then sit back and let the media do your work for you. Journalists have to report the charges, usually feel obliged to report the rebuttal, and often even attempt an analysis or assessment. But the canons of the profession prevent most journalists from saying outright: These charges are false. As a result, the voters are left with a general sense that there is some controversy over Kerry's service in Vietnam. And they have been distracted from thinking about real issues (like the war going on now)."

Josh Marshall's Talkingpointsmemo: August 24th, 2004: Pres. Bush & Moral Cowardice

(August 24, 2004 -- 12:44 AM EDT

With the president descending to the most shameless sort of attack politics to save his presidency, there's an understandable desire on the part of Democrats to reopen every political vulnerability he has that has yet to be fully explored or dissected:

I have no argument with any of this. I think it makes perfect sense. To pick up on the military language that is now so ubiquitous, I think Democrats need to open up on all fronts.

But fighting fire with fire isn't a compelling message. Nor will getting into a tit-for-tat about what each of these guys was doing in 1969 or 1970 or 1971 win this race for the Democrats.

Look at the wrong direction/right direction poll numbers and you see pretty clearly that the country is looking to fire George W. Bush. The president's only hope is to get the debate on to issues like these, shift the dynamic of the race, and convince voters that, whatever their dissatisfactions with his administration, John Kerry isn't an acceptable alternative.

When this stuff comes down the pike, Kerry has to fight back mercilessly. And he can win those fights. But, fundamentally, every day of this campaign that isn't spent talking about the sluggish economy and the president's debacle in Iraq is a day wasted, a strategic failure for the Kerry campaign.

But Democrats don't have to choose between hard-hitting lines of attack on the president himself and focusing on the main issues that are facing the country today. The most damning attacks turn out to be the most compelling, the most relevant for what the country faces, and the most difficult for the president to combat.

I've said several times over recent days that it is an example of the president's moral cowardice that he has such a long record of having others savage his opponents -- for sins of which he is usually more guilty than they -- and then denying any responsibility for what's happening. It's like the moment captured in that recent Kerry campaign spot where John McCain tells Bush to stand by his attacks or apologize, and the now-president is painfully caught off guard, bereft of the protective phalanx of retainers.

He's not used to having to stand behind what he's done. And when McCain comes at him one on one he's jelly. His life has always been a matter of others doing his dirty work for him, others bailing him out. And in that moment it shows.

The current debate about these two men's military service has put the spotlight on physical courage. But that really is a side issue in this campaign, if we're talking substance. The real issue isn't physical bravery but moral cowardice.

President Bush is an examplar of that quality in spades. And it cuts directly to his failures as president. Forget about thirty years ago, just think about the last three years.

Before proceeding on to that, one other point about the two men's service. On the balance sheet of moral bravery, as opposed to physical bravery, the two men are about as far apart as you can be on Vietnam. On the one hand you have Kerry, who already had doubts about whether we should be fighting in Vietnam before he went, and put his life on the line anyway. On the other hand, you have George W. Bush who supported the war, which means he believed the goal was worth the cost in American lives. Only, not his life. He believed others should go; just not him. It's the story of his life.

That is almost the definition of moral cowardice.

We have a more immediate sense of what physical bravery and cowardice are. In fact, when we speak of bravery and cowardice, the physical variety is almost always what we're talking about. It's whether or not you can charge an enemy position while you're be fired at. It's whether you're immobilized by the fear of death.

Moral cowardice is more complex. A moral coward is someone who lacks the courage to tell the truth, to accept responsibility, to demand accountability, to do what's right when it's not the easy thing to do, to clean up his or her own messes. Perhaps we could say that moral bravery is having both the courage of your convictions as well as the courage of your misdeeds.

As I've been saying here for the last couple days, the issue isn't that Bush ducked service in Vietnam. It's that he tries to smear other people's meritorious service without taking responsibility for what he's doing. He gets other people to do his dirty work for him. Again, that image of McCain calling him on his shameless antics and his look of fear, his look of feeling trapped.

The key for the Kerry campaign to make is that the president's moral cowardice is why we're now bogged down in Iraq. It's a key reason why almost a thousand Americans have died there. President Bush has set the tone for this administration and his moral cowardice permeates it.

Consider only the most obvious examples.

The president didn't think he could convince the public of the merits of his reasons for going to war. So he lied to them. He greatly exaggerated what was thought to be the evidence of weapons of mass destruction and completely manufactured a connection between Iraq and al Qaida. He couldn't get the country behind him on the up-and-up. So he took the easy way out; he took a shortcut; he deceived them. And now the country is paying a terrible price for it.

He and his advisors knew that if they levelled with the public about the costs of war -- in dollars, years, soldiers -- he'd have a very hard time convincing them. So he didn't level with them. He took the easy way out.

The sort of forward planning that would have made a big difference in post-war Iraq was scuttled or attacked because it would make the job of selling the war harder. Those who sounded the alarm had their careers cut short.

Once we were in Iraq and it was clear that we had been wrong about the weapons of mass destruction -- a judgement that's been clear for more than a year -- he wouldn't admit it. And he still hasn't. A year and a half after we invaded Iraq and he still can't level with the American people about this. He still relies on his vice president to try to fool people into thinking Hussein was tied to al Qaida and the 9/11 attacks.

More importantly, once it became clear that the president's plans for post-war Iraq were producing poor results, he refused to shift policy or to reshuffle his team. He refused to demand accountability from his own team because of how it would have reflected on him. He's preferred to continue on with demonstrably failed policies because to do otherwise would be to admit he'd made a mistake and open himself to all the political fall-out that entails. And that's not something he's willing to do.

The stubborn refusal ever to change course, which the president tries to pass off as a sign of leadership or devotion to principle, is actually an example of his cowardice.

For the same reasons, he runs from soldiers' funerals like they were burying victims of the plague -- because it's the easy way out. If there's a problem, he denies it or finds someone else to take the fall for him.

Everyone has these tendencies in their measure. No one is perfect. But they define George W. Bush.

The same sort of moral cowardice that led him to support the Vietnam war but decide it wasn't for him, run companies into the ground and let others pay the bill, play gutter politics but run for the hills when someone asks him to say it to their face, those are the same qualities that led the president to lie the country into war, fail to prepare for the aftermath and then refuse to take responsibility for any of it when the bill started to come due.

That's the argument John Kerry needs to be making. And he needs to make it right now.
-- Josh Marshal

The Essential Krugman: "The Rambo Coalition"

The Rambo Coalition
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NY Times Op-Ed
Published: August 24, 2004

Almost a year ago, on the second anniversary of 9/11, I predicted "an ugly, bitter campaign - probably the nastiest of modern American history." The reasons I gave then still apply. President Bush has no positive achievements to run on. Yet his inner circle cannot afford to see him lose: if he does, the shroud of secrecy will be lifted, and the public will learn the truth about cooked intelligence, profiteering, politicization of homeland security and more.

But recent attacks on John Kerry have surpassed even my expectations. There's no mystery why. Mr. Kerry isn't just a Democrat who might win: his life story challenges Mr. Bush's attempts to confuse tough-guy poses with heroism, and bombast with patriotism.

One of the wonders of recent American politics has been the ability of Mr. Bush and his supporters to wrap their partisanship in the flag. Through innuendo and direct attacks by surrogates, men who assiduously avoided service in Vietnam, like Dick Cheney (five deferments), John Ashcroft (seven deferments) and George Bush (a comfy spot in the National Guard, and a mysterious gap in his records), have questioned the patriotism of men who risked their lives and suffered for their country: John McCain, Max Cleland and now John Kerry.

How have they been able to get away with it? The answer is that we have been living in what Roger Ebert calls "an age of Rambo patriotism." As the carnage and moral ambiguities of Vietnam faded from memory, many started to believe in the comforting clichés of action movies, in which the tough-talking hero is always virtuous and the hand-wringing types who see complexities and urge the hero to think before acting are always wrong, if not villains.

After 9/11, Mr. Bush had a choice: he could deal with real threats, or he could play Rambo. He chose Rambo. Not for him the difficult, frustrating task of tracking down elusive terrorists, or the unglamorous work of protecting ports and chemical plants from possible attack: he wanted a dramatic shootout with the bad guy. And if you asked why we were going after this particular bad guy, who hadn't attacked America and wasn't building nuclear weapons - or if you warned that real wars involve costs you never see in the movies - you were being unpatriotic.

As a domestic political strategy, Mr. Bush's posturing worked brilliantly. As a strategy against terrorism, it has played right into Al Qaeda's hands. Thirty years after Vietnam, American soldiers are again dying in a war that was sold on false pretenses and creates more enemies than it kills.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Mr. Bush - who must defend the indefensible - has turned to those who still refuse to face the truth about Vietnam.

All the credible evidence, from military records to the testimony of those who served with Mr. Kerry, confirms his wartime heroism. Why, then, are some veterans willing to join the smear campaign? Because they are angry about his later statements against the war. Yet making those statements was itself a heroic act - and what he said then rings truer than ever.

The young John Kerry spoke of leaders who sent others to their deaths because they wanted to seem tough, then "left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude." Fifteen months after George Bush strutted around in his flight suit, more and more Americans are echoing Gen. Anthony Zinni, who received a standing ovation from an audience of Marine and Navy officers when he talked about the debacle in Iraq and said of those who served in Vietnam: "We heard the garbage and the lies, and we saw the sacrifice. I ask you, is it happening again?"

Mr. Kerry also spoke of the moral cost of an ill-conceived war - of the atrocities soldiers find themselves committing when they can't tell friend from foe. Two words: Abu Ghraib.

Let's hope that this latest campaign of garbage and lies - initially financed by a Texas Republican close to Karl Rove, and running an ad featuring an "independent" veteran who turns out to have served on a Bush campaign committee - leads to a backlash against Mr. Bush. If it doesn't, here's the message we'll be sending to Americans who serve their country: If you tell the truth, your courage and sacrifice count for nothing.

Josh has it right...he's a coward.

August 24th, 2004
From TalkingPointsMemo.com
By Josh Marshall

There was a brief hubbub over the web earlier this afternoon when it seemed that President Bush had denounced the Swift Boat ads. Needless to say, of course, he had done no such thing. He simply repeated the line Scott McClellan has been peddling for days -- that he denounces all independent expenditure ads.

Here's the exchange ....

QUESTION: But why won't you denounce the charges that your supporters are making against Kerry?

BUSH: I'm denouncing all the stuff being on TV, all the 527s. That's what I've said. I said this kind of unregulated soft money is wrong for the process. And I asked Senator Kerry to join me in getting rid of all that kind of soft money, not only on TV, but to use for other purposes as well.

I, frankly, thought we'd gotten rid of that when I signed the McCain-Feingold bill. I thought we were going to once and for all get rid of a system where people could just pour tons of money in and not be held to account for the advertising. And so, I'm disappointed with all those kinds of ads.

QUESTION: This doesn't have anything to do with other 527 ads. You've been accused of mounting a smear campaign.

Do you think Senator Kerry lied about his war record?

BUSH: I think Senator Kerry served admirably and he ought to be proud of his record.

But the question is who best to lead the country in the war on terror? Who can handle the responsibilities of the commander in chief? Who's got a clear vision of the risks that the country faces?

QUESTION: Some Republicans such as Bob Dole and some Republican donors such as Bob Perry have contributed and endorsed the message of those 527 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads.

QUESTION: When you say that you want to stop all...

BUSH: All of them.

QUESTION: So, I mean...

BUSH: That means that ad, every other ad.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)

BUSH: Absolutely. I don't think we ought to have 527s.

I can't be more plain about it. And I wish -- I hope my opponent joins me in saying -- condemning these activities of the 527s. It's -- I think they're bad for the system. That's why I signed the bill, McCain-Feingold.

I've been disappointed that for the first, you know, six months of this year, 527s were just pouring tons of money -- billionaires writing checks. And, you know, I spoke out against them early. I tried to get others to speak out against them as well. And I just don't -- I think they're bad for the system.
<------------------------------------->

He won't say it. He won't embrace it. He won't denounce it. He won't say he doesn't have an opinion. He won't say he won't get drawn into the debate. Nothing. He hides behind words and behind his friends.

As it happens, as Atrios notes, this isn't even Bush's position -- at least it wasn't until it became political advantageous. He opposed the provisions he's now hanging his hat on.

But of course the bigger point is that President Bush won't denounce the ads. If someone asks me to denounce Joseph Stalin and I say, "Well, yes, I'm against all politicians who support the death penalty" then I haven't denounced Joseph Stalin, right? This is the same thing.

(MSNBC, of course, fell for it. Their headline -- as of 4:57 PM -- is "Bush: Vets Should Halt anti-Kerry Ads".)
The full text of the interview is here.

Now, let's step back and consider where we are. Everyone in the country seems to have an opinion on this -- just go see the chat shows, the opinion columns and talk radio. Everybody has an opinion but George W. Bush, the man at the center of it all.

The reason, as we said earlier, is that the president is a coward -- a fact for which this dust-up constitutes merely an example. And as we'll discuss in a post later this evening, President Bush's moral cowardice -- not his physical cowardice or bravery, of which we know little and which is simply a side issue -- is the essence of this campaign.
-- Josh Marshall

Update:
Great moments in headlines written with a straight face ... or, the never ending decline of CNN. Right now -- 5:59 PM -- CNN headline: "Bush urges Kerry to condemn attack ads."

Also, Bob Dole "suggests Kerry apologize". Which lead to the following:

...Dole added: "And here's, you know, a good guy, a good friend. I respect his record. But three Purple Hearts and never bled that I know of. I mean, they're all superficial wounds. Three Purple Hearts and you're out."

Kerry campaign spokesman Chad Clanton said: "It's unfortunate that Senator Dole is making statements that official U.S. Navy records prove false. This is partisan politics, not the truth."

Other Kerry supporters also rose to his defense.

"Senator Kerry carries shrapnel in his thigh as distinct from President Bush who carries two fillings in his teeth from his service in the Alabama National Guard, which seems to be his only time that he showed up," John Podesta, former chief of staff in the Clinton White House, said on ABC's "This Week."

Note: Ya Gotta Love These Guys !!

Dell Founder Sells Shares
By DOW JONES/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON, Aug. 20 (Dow Jones/AP) - The founder and former chief executive of Dell Inc., Michael S. Dell, sold $350 million of company common stock this week, according to a filing Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

From Wednesday to Friday, Mr. Dell sold 10 million shares for $34.71 to $35.19 each, according to the filing.

Mr. Dell stepped down as chief executive last month, ceding the post to Kevin Rollins. Mr. Dell remains chairman of the company.
<======================================>
Note: But don't fret...there are over 2.5 billion shares of common stock outstanding at about $35/share, so Michael's not going to bankrupt the company anytime soon...however, there might be more to it than that according to a commentary on fool.com

Kerry: Slo-Mo on Swifties
By MAUREEN DOWD
NY Times
Published: August 22, 2004
Note: An Op-Ed by Dowd that gives a non-flattering re/view of G.W.'s approved method of attacking with surrogates; a practice that depends on projecting falsehoods to a receptive audience, "first-out" charges by the media that are not refuted until they exact damage on their target, and unrestrained jingoism.

Dowd is right though: the Kerry Campaign should have expected these kinds of slim attacks, should have had a clear plan to deal with it, and should not have allowed the Bush campaign a free ride on these allegations about Kerry's military service.

The Xinhuan newspaper suggests this episode is a measure of Mr. Kerry's ability to deal with situations like this; and though the Kerry Campaign and related 527 Committee's did respond in a worthwhile manner, it was a defensive response that will have to fight hard just to get the discourse back to neutral.

At least one Democrat must sincerely hope the Kerry Campaign has a plan, like Kerry's Vietnam Silver Star winning tactic, of courageously attacking an enemy when it was not expected such action. The Far Left would probably go farther and pencil in the plan a picture of Bush as the "Kid in a Loincloth".

Fraud ruled out in Chavez's victory
www.chinaview.cn 2004-08-21 11:05:35

CARACAS, Aug. 20 (Xinhuanet) -- The National Electoral Council (CNE) of Venezuela on Friday ruled out any possibility of fraud, as claimed by the opposition, in the victory of President Hugo Chavez in the recall referendum held last Sunday.

A senior official of the CNE, Tibisay Lucena, said no irregularity has been spotted in the auditing of 150 electoral centers, as confirmed by the international observers.

In 15 percent of the audited centers, "we have not drawn a single ballot showing any irregularity," she added.

Representatives of the Organization of American States (OAS) and the US-based Carter Center, which jointly carried out the audit Thursday with the CNE at the request of the opposition, said that until Thursday, 35 percent of the random sampling of 150 voting centers, out of a total of 12,358, had been checked.

The audit, made on a random sampling of 400 voting machines, aimed to dispel fraud charges from the opposition in the referendum, which accused the government of tampering with electronic voting machines to give Chavez 59 percent of the vote, compared with 41 percent backing its recall.

However, opposition leaders boycotted the audit, saying it was not stringent enough, and demanded a far wider audit to include the touch-screen machines used in the referendum.

Chavez, who was elected in 1998 and reelected to a six-year term in 2000, rejected his opponents' accusation and said they are trying to stir up anti-government unrest in Venezuela.

On Friday, CNE Director Jorge Rodriguez also said the auditing of the votes of the recall referendum has "very over whelming" results of the legitimacy of the process.

The auditing was carried out although there was no formal charges of fraud as claimed by the opponents of President Chavez, he noted.

Rodriguez insisted that until now, the CNE has not received a single charge of fraud. "Everything will be sufficiently cleared up by the time we present the auditing results which, from my perspective are overwhelming," he said.

"This is the last auditing by the CNE in order to bring calm to people who have been bombarded by a series of denunciations that are, from our perspective, unfounded," said Rodriguez.

Meanwhile, both the Carter Center and the OAS have expressed their attitude toward the fairness of the referendum.

"Based on our prior examination of the voting machines, we expect the audit will confirm the results," said Jennifer McCoy, leader of the Carter Center observer mission.

"If there is a significant pattern, ... this audit will demonstrate it," she added.

On Thursday, the OAS said the fact that the same results of the recall referendum were registered in different voting machines "is not suspicious."

At a press conference, mission representative Edgar Castro saidthe results were similar in 47 voting machines.

According to a communique issued by the OAS, its international electoral observation mission validated the victory of Chavez, saying the results were "compatible with the internal controls effected by the mission."

"The electronic-voting system and the broadcasting of the results of the electoral journey were adequately audited, with all due conditions to ensure the secrecy and fidelity of the vote," it added.

Beside the international observers, many foreign countries have recognized Chavez's win. The United States, the biggest buyer of Venezuela's oil, has said that "the process was credible and met international standards."

About 10 million Venezuelans cast their votes in Sunday's referendum to decide whether President Chavez should finish the remaining two years of his six-year term or step down.

A massive turnout forced the authorities to twice extend the closing time of the referendum and keep polling stations open well after midnight.

Bush campaign fires adviser on veterans issues
www.chinaview.cn 2004-08-23 01:44:13

WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 (Xinhuanet) -- The Bush campaign dismissed an adviser on veterans issues late Saturday after learning he was part of an independent group that has been running anti-Kerry ads,news reports said Sunday.

The Bush campaign said Kenneth Cordier, a retired colonel and former prisoner of war, who appeared in an advertisement to be aired by the anti-Kerry group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, would no longer serve in his voluntary position on President George W. Bush's veterans steering committee.

A spokesman for the Bush campaign said Cordier had not previously informed the campaign that he had been involved with the group, but the campaign of Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, said the matter provided evidence supporting its complaint to the Federal Election Commission alleging illegal cooperation between the Bush campaign and the independent group.

Cordier's connection to the Bush campaign was made public Saturday by the Kerry campaign, which found that Cordier had been named on the Bush web site earlier this month as a member of the veterans committee but that his name had subsequently been removed.

The ads by the Swift Boat group, named for the type of boat Kerry commanded during the Vietnam War, has been causing a furiousdebate between the campaigns, with Kerry demanding that Bush condemn the ads that suggest that Kerry did not earn his war decorations and the he betrayed his fellow veterans by his later anti-war activity.

Under US law, groups like the one that sponsored the anti-Kerry advertisement are required to remain independent of either candidate's campaign.

Bush v McCain 2000 smells just like Bush v Kerry 2004: Disgusting !!

John McCain's comment and confrontation to George Bush about Bush's participation in the smear campaign against McCain in the 2000 Campaign. Unfortunately it worked for Bush in South Carolina in 2000 so he has every reason to believe it will work for him again versus Kerry.

Note: When G.W. Bush became President in 2001, a close friend said she thought G.W. was an evil man. I didn't think so then; but rather just considered him a politician who would do whatever it took to win an election. But at some point, as a citizen who is subject to the affects and effects of our President on the world, it doesn't really matter.

What does matter is the direct affect the policies and orientation of the President have on society. Bush has shown himself to be: a Greek Chuckle-boy who hands out nicknames to acquaintences; an uncertain CEO who has essentially nothing positive to show for his stewardship of his former businesses; a well documented disdain for handling disparate information; a willingness to surround himself with highly conservative social, religious, legal, and entertainment people; a preference for assisting well-to-do people and organizations that reflect his views combined with a drive to use any means at his disposal to destroy anyone who disagrees with his views.

I still do not think he is evil...nasty: yes; brutish: yes; short: yes; a black-and-white man in a grey world: yes; a pretender: yes; someone who I would invite into my home: no; an honest man: no; a statesman: no.

In short, he reminds me of a fellow I knew as a kid: Roger Hartlein, a bully who stopped growing at about age 12, and discovered the only way he could continue was to befriend older, bigger bullies who he could hide behind when the need arose. Pres. Bush strikes me as that person, just older; not as a strong leader, more like a bratish, mini-bully who is adept at manipulation. I want more for my country, and for my children. I'm not convinced Kerry will do a better job; but I am absolutely convinced Pres. Bush has failed as the Chief Executive Officer of America Inc., and must be replaced.

Officer From Another Swift Boat Breaks Silence and Defends Kerry
By JIM RUTENBERG

A Vietnam veteran who served with Senator John Kerry on a Swift boat mission broke a 35-year silence this weekend to support Mr. Kerry's version of events from one of their operations together and to chastise veterans critical of the senator as having "splashed doubt on all of us."

The veteran, William B. Rood, is now an editor at The Chicago Tribune, which ran on its Web site yesterday and in Sunday's paper a 1,750-word first-person article in which Mr. Rood recounted the mission. His account added to a growing debate over the most serious claims from the group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. And it ensured that questions swirling around the veracity of the group's claims, and the Kerry campaign's accusations that the group was connected to the Mr. Bush campaign, would dominate the contest for yet another day.

Mr. Rood stepped forward after Mr. Kerry called him and another veteran on Mr. Rood's boat as members of the Swift boat group blanketed cable television and radio talk shows to repeat their claim, also made in a book and a television advertisement, that Mr. Kerry had fabricated his military accomplishments to win medals.

Mr. Kerry's phone calls were part of his campaign's first concerted push to address the group's claims, which surfaced weeks ago. That push also included the release of a new Internet advertisement on Saturday highlighting accusations made about Senator John McCain by military supporters of Mr. Bush in 2000 and a public call by Mr. Kerry's running mate, Senator John Edwards, for Mr. Bush to tell the group to cease running advertisements against Mr. Kerry.

The Swift boat group, which garnered much of its initial financing from men who have supported Mr. Bush and his father's political endeavors, has been ready to defend itself and quickly provided a statement Saturday saying Mr. Rood's article was politically motivated. The group continues to raise money and on Friday introduced an advertisement with former prisoners of war recounting the pain Mr. Kerry's 1971 antiwar comments caused them when they were being held by the Vietcong.

Mr. Bush's campaign confirmed on Saturday a Kerry campaign accusation that one of the veterans in the that advertisement was a member the campaign's veterans' advisory committee. The Bush campaign said in a statement that it did not know that the man, retired Col. Kenneth Cordier, was going to appear in the advertisement and because of that he was no longer a volunteer.

The Bush campaign denies involvement with the Swift boat group and on Saturday released a statement to the Federal Election Commission saying that the Kerry campaign's accusations of coordination were untrue. The Bush camp has declined to tell the group to stop running advertisements, but aides said Mr. Kerry should join Mr. Bush in calling for all outside groups to stop advertising.

In his article Mr. Rood disputed a claim the Swift boat group made in its book, "Unfit for Command," that Mr. Kerry had received his Silver Star for chasing down a lone Vietcong teenager "in a loincloth" who may or may not have been armed on Feb. 28, 1969.

Mr. Rood was the skipper of one of three boats involved in the mission with Mr. Kerry, conducting a sweep for the enemy through a tributary of the Bay Hap River. "I have no idea how old the gunner Kerry chased that day was," Mr. Rood wrote, but "he was a grown man, dressed in the kind of garb the VC usually wore." He also wrote that Mr. Kerry had devised a plan to face into enemy fire, a breach of typical procedure.

He added, referring to John O'Neill, a co-author of "Unfit for Command" and a leader of the Swift boat group: "The man Kerry chased was not the 'lone' attacker at that site, as O'Neill suggests. There were others who fled. There was also firing from the tree line well behind the spider holes and at one point, from the opposite riverbank as well."

Mr. Rood also noted that Roy F. Hoffmann, a retired rear admiral who was the Swift boat group's commander, lauded the operation at the time in glowing terms. Mr. Hoffmann is, with Mr. O'Neill, one of the main engineers of the anti-Kerry group's effort.

The Swift boat group released a statement yesterday from Mr. O'Neill saying he stood by its account. He said the account was consistent with those of two biographies of Mr. Kerry, "Tour of Duty" and "John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography By The Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best," and that of Larry Lee, a crewman on Mr. Rood's boat. Mr. O'Neill said he had tried to contact Mr. Rood for his book and that Mr. Rood's decision to come forward now was "an obvious political move."

The biographies do say that Mr. Kerry was running after the man he shot, but the books do not describe him as a teenager and they say he was armed with a rocket launcher. The Globe account that the group cites says the man had begun to run away, but also quotes Mr. Kerry saying that he had not shot him in the back and that he believed the man would fire again.

Mr. Rood said he confirmed the details of his recollection with the leading petty officer on his boat, Jerry Leeds. Mr. Leeds, who lives in Kansas, said in a brief interview that he had not read The Tribune and could not comment on it. He said the boats were under significant enemy fire and at great risk.

Mr. Leeds said Mr. Kerry had phoned him, too, last week. He said Mr. Kerry did not ask for his support or for any statements on his behalf. "Mostly we just visited about that day," Mr. Leeds said.

Mr. Rood acknowledged in his article that Mr. Kerry's calls did affect his decision to write it but also wrote, "What matters most to me is that this is hurting crewmen who are not public figures and who deserved to be honored for what they did." He added, "My intent is to tell the story here and to never again talk publicly about it."

The idea to contact Mr. Rood came from Mr. Kerry himself, aides said.

The candidate called Thomas Vallely, a longtime Kerry supporter, a former Massachusetts state legislator and a marine who now runs the Vietnam program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. "He said 'We've got to find Billy Rood,' " Mr. Vallely said in an interview on Saturday. "John said, 'He's a reporter in Chicago,' that's all he knew."

Mr. Rood had been watching the dispute unfold and considering what to do. He wrote in his article that he had long been reluctant to talk about his experience and had even refused to grant an interview to his own newspaper. But watching Mr. O'Neill on TV incensed Mr. Rood, Mr. Vallely said.

"He was very, very angry, he was on his feet," Mr. Vallely recalled. "I said, 'Would you talk to John?' " Mr. Rood agreed to a phone call.

Mr. Vallely also called Mr. Leeds, the leading petty officer on Mr. Rood's boat, and asked both men if they would speak with a reporter from The New York Times last week. The two men said they wanted to think about it for a few days, and the result was two stories in The Tribune, a news account and Mr. Rood's first-person article. "They wanted to do it their way," Mr. Vallely said.

Meanwhile on Saturday, Mr. Kerry's campaign continued on the offensive.

It sent out a new Internet advertisement to supporters highlighting an exchange between Mr. McCain, of Arizona, and Mr. Bush during a debate in 2000. In that debate Mr. McCain confronted Mr. Bush for playing host at an event where the leader of a veterans group that Mr. McCain characterized as "fringe" questioned Mr. McCain's commitment to veterans.

The spot includes an on-screen heading that says, "George Bush is up to his old tricks." Steve Schmidt, a Bush campaign spokesman, said, "The president has made clear that he regards John Kerry's service as noble service." And he chastised Mr. Kerry for statements from campaign surrogates last week questioning Mr. Bush's National Guard service. He also criticized Mr. Kerry for failing to call on liberal groups who have run $63 million worth of advertisements against Mr. Bush to stop. Some of the liberal groups have connections to Mr. Kerry's campaign and political party.

On Saturday night, at a fund-raiser in East Hampton, N.Y., Mr. Kerry suggested that his political opponents were trying to undercut his military record because he had been persuading voters he would make an effective commander in chief. "In the past month, they've seen me climbing in America's understanding that I know how to fight a smarter, more effective war," Mr. Kerry said. "That's why they're attacking my credibility. That's why they're personally going after me."

Word Play

Author Unknown
<------------------------------------->

The Energizer Bunny has been arrested and charged with battery.
A pessimist's blood type is always B negative.
A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother.
Shotgun wedding: A case of wife or death
I used to work in a blanket factory, but it folded.
If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
Corduroy pillows are making headlines.
Sea captains don't like crew cuts.
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
When you dream in color, it's a pigment of your imagination.
Reading while sunbathing makes you well-red.
When two egotists meet, it's an I for an I.
Alarms: What an octopus is
Dockyard: A physician's garden
Khakis: What you need to start the car in Boston
Propaganda: A gentlemanly goose
Toboggan: Why we go to an auction

Biblical Inerrancy: A Primer

BIBLICAL INERRANCY AND INFALLIBILITY:
Description, problems & implications

Description of biblical inerrancy?

Followers of many religions believe that their own sacred texts are inerrant. This is particularly true within the conservative wings of the world's major religions. For example:

Fundamentalist and other Evangelical Christians generally believe the entire Bible to be inerrant. Their belief in inerrancy is based, in part, on 2 Timothy 3:16 which states that the Scriptures are "God-breathed."

Muslims generally believe the Qur'an to be dictated to Muhammad by the archangel Gabriel, and is thus inerrant.

Members of the Baha'i world Faith believe that the writings of their founder, Baha'u'llah, are inerrant.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recognize four canonized scriptures. Most Mormons consider three to be inerrant in their original form: the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price.

Since the religious texts of various religions and denominations differ greatly from one another, only one of them (at most) can be truly inerrant. The rest must be false - at least to some degree.

There are a number of additional Christian terms that are often used in connection with "Inerrancy:"

"Plenary" means that the Scriptures are sufficiently complete and adequate to communicate God's will to mankind.

"Infallible" means that the Bible passages "never deceive nor mislead."

"Authoritative" means that the Bible is "binding on all people" Everyone will eventually have to "give an account for how they lived in light of its teaching." 1 This concept has obvious difficulties when it is applied to persons who have never heard of the gospel or the Bible, or perhaps even Christianity itself.

"Autograph copies" refer to the original, hand-written copies of the books of the Bible. It is important to remember that none of the original copies exist. We only have access to copies of copies of copies of.....

"Inspiration" is the belief that God monitored the authors of the Bible and prevented them from making errors in their writings. More details

Problems with inerrancy:

A major concern occurs when the Bible is considered to be totally inerrant, in its teaching of theology, morals, beliefs, geology, geography, history, etc. If it is so considered, then it leaves the individual's faith vulnerable. Even one proven error can shatter the whole belief system and make the Bible seem useless to some believers: "If in actual fact Caesar Augustus did not really order a census while Quirinius was governor of Syria - if it turns out there really was only one Gadarene demonaic rather than two - then the entire Bible becomes worthless and every tenet of Christian faith falls flat. If one single discrepancy emerges, it's all over. This makes Christian faith an easy target for skeptics, and drives believers to unimaginable lengths to 'defend' the Bible." 2

There are other problems with inerrancy:

Interpretation Conflicts: This is perhaps the most serious problem associated with inerrancy. Some biblical passages can be interpreted in so many different ways, that there is no way to know which interpretation is the correct one.

People bring different foundational beliefs to the Bible. This causes them to reach very different conclusions about what it says. One example involves the roles of men and women:

The folks at The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood believe that men and women should be restricted to very different roles within the family, church organizations, and the rest of society. 12 Typically, they view positions of leadership and authority to be reserved for males only.

Christians for Biblical Equality teach that men and women were both created in the image of God, and that the Bible intends that they function in a full and equal partnership. Talents, including the ability to preach and to lead, exist throughout both genders. 3

Both groups are conservative Christian. Both believe that the Bible is the authoritative Word of God. But both groups find many biblical passages which support their position and which negate the other group's beliefs.

A second, more widespread, example involves the Christian organizations in North America, which number in excess of 1,000. All or essentially all believe that their group's beliefs are based on the Bible. Many take the position that they are the "true" church. Yet their belief systems differ. There appears to be no way to resolve these different interpretations. Some have suggested that believers assess the will of God on theological matters. But this appears to be ineffective.

Translation errors due to source ambiguity: Inerrancy of the Bible refers only to the original, autograph copies of each book, as written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. Hebrew is an extremely ambiguous language. Some passages in the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) may be interpreted in many different ways. At most, only one of those translations would be correct, and thus be inerrant. But there is no way in which we can know for certain which translation is the correct one. Consider Leviticus 18:22. According to one source, a word-for-word translation is:

"And with a male thou shall not lie down in beds of a woman; it is an abomination."

(The word "abomination" is a mistranslation, in terms of modern English. The Hebrew word means something like "ritually impure". Some other examples of "abominations" are: a person eating lobster, the offering of an animal which has a blemish for ritual sacrifice, a man getting a haircut or shaving his beard, or a woman wearing jeans or slacks, a person eating a cheeseburger.) This passage is normally interpreted in English as something similar to:

"You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination" (RSV)

That rendering would condemn all male-male sexual activity. Or, if the translators really wanted to stretch the meaning of the passage well beyond what the original Hebrew states, they might want to write a condemnation of lesbianism into the translation, as in:

"Do not practice homosexuality; it is a detestable sin. (NLT)

But it could be argued that an equally accurate rendering is:

"Men must not engage in homosexual sex while on a woman's bed; it is an abomination"

That is, homosexual activity is only condemned if it is done in the wrong location: on a woman's bed. Bible translators, scholars and individual believers debate endlessly over the precise meaning of individual passages such as this one. If people attribute multiple meanings to various verses, then only one (perhaps none) could be inerrant. We can try to compare a passage with other similar verses in the Bible in order to determine which interpretation is most likely. But, we have no absolutely reliable method of determining which interpretation is true.

The inclusion/exclusion of the Apocraypha: The Bible used by Jesus, his disciples, and the early Christian movement was the Septuagint (a.k.a. LXX). This was a Greek translation from the original Hebrew. It included a number of books that are commonly called the Apocrypha. These books appear in the translations of the Bible used by Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and some Anglican churches, but have been deleted in the translations used by Protestants and most Anglicans. One reason for this rejection was a passage which implies the existence of Purgatory. Thus, the range of books in the Bible which are to be considered inerrant is open to debate.

The selection of the Christian Scriptures: There were three main movements within early Christianity: the Jewish Christians, Pauline Christians and Gnostics. Among them, there were on the order of fifty gospels, probably hundreds of epistles (letters), and many examples of apocalyptic literature similar to Revelation. All were considered authorative by various early Christian groups. When the Bishops fixed the official canon, they selected the Hebrew Scriptures, and 27 books: four gospels, Acts, 21 epistles, and Revelation. The concept of inerrancy requires that they did not err in their selection: that the authors of precisely these 27 books were inspired by God and wrote without error. This would imply that their selection process must have been guided by God so that fraudulent books were not chosen. The Gospel of John was almost rejected by the early Church because of its Gnostic content. Revelation almost did not make it into the Bible either, because it described God in angry, hateful terms that seemed incompatible with the loving Abba (Dad) that Jesus prayed to. When Emperor Constantine ordered 50 copies of the Bible to be copied, they included The Letter of Barnabas and The Shepard of Hermes -- two books that do not appear in today's Bibles.

"The Canon evolved obscurely over many centuries. Books were accepted by some and banned by others. Books accepted for centuries were rejected later. Rival church factions excluded each other's scriptures. Personality clashes and rival ambitions were responsible for the disappearance of much that scholars would like to read today." 11

Grammatical errors: Biblical scholars have noted that almost every page of the Bible, whether written in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek contains both spelling and grammatical errors. Although some spelling errors could be attributed to mistakes by later copyists, it appears reasonable to assume that some of the grammatical errors were in the original copy. If one assumes that the Bible is not inerrant, then one would expect errors of all types to creep into the Bible: errors in fact, errors in belief, errors in spelling and errors in grammar. But if the Bible is inerrant, one wonders why the original writings were not free of errors in grammar.

Intentional translation errors: No Bible translation is free of bias. Essentially all versions are the product of translators who come from a similar theological background. Being human, they sometimes produce versions of the Bible that tend to match their own belief systems. For example:

The original Hebrew and Greek texts contain a number of different concepts for the place where people will live after death: Sheol, Gehenna, Hades. Some translations transliterate these place names, and so they appear in the English text in their original forms as "Sheol," "Gehenna," and "Hades." The reader is thus aware that they refer to different beliefs about life after death. But other Bible versions are homogenized by rendering all three locations as "Hell." This makes the Bible appear more internally consistent than it really is, and clouds the meaning of the original text.

Many Bible translations contain what appear to be intentional errors in relation to some acts. Exodus 22:18, in the original Hebrew orders the death penalty for "m'khashepah" The word means a woman who uses spoken spells to harm others - e.g. causing their death or loss of property. Clearly "evil Sorceress" or "woman who does evil, black magic" would be a clear translation. But many versions of the Bible render this word as "witch," thus inverting the meaning of the original text. (Witches and other Neopagans are prohibited by their Wiccan Rede from doing harm to others.) A similar intentional mistranslation in some versions of the Bible relates to the Greek word "pharmakia" from which the English word "pharmacy" is derived. It refers to the practice of preparing poisonous potions to harm or kill others. "Poisoner" or simply "murderer" would be an accurate translation here. But many versions of the Bible invert the meaning of the original text by render the word as "witch." These inverted translations have caused a few modern-day, devout Christians to persecute Neopagans, believing that they are following the will of God.

Copying Errors: A small number of conservative Christians believe that a particular English translation of the Bible is inerrant. Often this is the King James Version, prepared in 1611 CE. Most believe that it is only the original autograph copy as written by the author in Hebrew, Aramaic and/or Greek that is inerrant. This leaves open the possibility that subsequent manual copying introduced mistakes into the book. Thus, later copies may be errant. Often, we have no way of detecting where errors or later insertions have occurred.

Symbolic vs. Literal Interpretation: Not all passages in the Bible can be interpreted literally. For example: John 15:1 describes Jesus as saying:

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman." (ASV)

In this case, Jesus is obviously not a vine. He is using symbolic language. Other passages in the Bible are more ambiguous; they might be translated literally or symbolically. For example, Genesis 3:15 describes Jehovah talking to the serpent in the Garden of Eden. He says:

"and I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: he shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." (ASV)

Some Bible scholars interpret the verse literally, that the men and women who are descendants of Eve (i.e. the entire human race) and the descendants of the serpent (i.e. all the snakes in the world) will hate and attack each other. The phrase "he shall" is interpreted in the collective sense to refer to all of humanity. Other Bible scholars interpret the verse symbolically. They believe that it is linked to Romans 16:20:

"The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet."

The "he shall bruise thy head" phrase in Genesis refers to Jesus triumphing over Satan. As a result of this interpretation, Genesis 3:15 is sometimes referred to as the "protoevangelium", the first gospel. 3

There are many Bible Passages that have been interpreted literally by some groups and symbolically by others. This generally leads to conflict, and has historically led to many church schisms.

Multiple Authorship: Some passages in the Bible appear at first glance to be completely written by a single author: e.g. the Pentateuch (Genesis to Deuteronomy) state that they were written down by Moses. The book of Isaiah was written by Isaiah; the Book of Daniel by Daniel; the Gospel of Mark by a single author. But analysis of content and style reveals that the Pentateuch was written by several authors from different traditions over many centuries. The books were probably edited later by still other unknown persons. Isaiah also appears to be written by multiple authors. The Book of Daniel appears to have been written over 4 centuries after Daniel's death by an unknown author. The Gospel of Mark originally ended abruptly at Mark 16:8. Some other writer subsequently added verses 9 to 20, to make a "longer ending" to Mark; it was apparently based on Luke, John and some other sources. 4 Another writer created a "shorter ending" consisting of two sentences after verse 8. It was a later addition, probably based on Matthew. Some translations include both endings. Still other Bible versions include additional material after verse 14. All of this multiple authorship raises the question whether the later additions by unknown authors are inerrant, or merely attempts by later believers to augment the text to better match some early Christian group's belief system.

Multiple Versions: There appears to have been two versions of Mark: "Secret Mark", "for those who had attained a higher degree of initiation in to the church than the common crowd." 5 and the shorter, edited version that has survived to the present time. The latter was the freely available, public version, and was probably a later, smaller version. This raises the question as to which version should be considered inerrant.
bullet More interpretation conflicts: Sometimes, the Bible will contain passages whose interpretation is unclear or ambiguous. For example, the Bible contains many references to parents using physical punishment in order to discipline their children. All but one of these passages come from the book of Proverbs. The book itself says that they were written by Solomon. The author appears to consider corporal punishment of children as the preferred method of discipline. One can assume that he followed his own advice in the raising of his son Rehoboam. The son became a widely hated ruler after his father's death. He had to make a hasty retreat to avoid being assassinated by his own people: 1 Kings 12:13-14 and 1 Kings 12:18 describe that he was so evil towards the people that they killed his representative. Ultimately, Rehoboam fled Jerusalem to avoid being assassinated by the subjects that he mistreated. The passages from Proverbs and 1 Kings can be interpreted in at least two ways:

Some conservative Christians accept the verses in Proverbs at their face value: Proverbs requires all believers to use corporal punishment on their children as the preferred method of discipline.

Liberal Christians might interpret Proverbs as accurately representing Solomon's parenting style, and interpret 1 Kings as indicating the horrible outcome of that form of discipline. Thus, 1 Kings is a warning to parents to not follow Solomon's advice, to avoid hitting their children, and to rely on other forms of discipline.

Since these two interpretations are mutually exclusive, at least one is probably false. But a consensus cannot be reached at this time as to which is in error. The secular belief that hitting children is counter-productive appears to be gaining ground at this time.

Internal Conflicts: Various passages in the Bible appear to be in conflict with each other. To liberal Christians, these disagreements are inevitable because they believe that the various books of the Bible were written over a period of about 1 millennium, by authors with very different religious views. But to conservative Christians who believe in Biblical inerrancy, conflicts present a problem. If all passages of the Bible are inerrant, then no passage can truly contradict any other passage. Most conflicts can be handled by interpreting one passage in its literal sense, and other, apparently conflicting passages either in some narrow sense or symbolically. Some passages cannot be harmonized in this way. Conservatives usually believe that the latter passages can be resolved, but not with our present knowledge. Books harmonizing hundreds of apparent conflicts have been written. One attempts to solve over 500 such difficulties. 6

Nature of Truth - Absolute or Relative: It is sometimes not obvious whether a portion of the Bible refers only to a particular society and era, or whether its teaching is applicable for all locations and all time. For example:

St. Paul in 1 Corinthians, chapters 11 and 14 advises the Christians at Corinth to restrict the roles of women to positions without power and under the domination of men. These passages are often quoted in debates over whether women can be ordained as clergy. Other passages, particularly from the Hebrew Scriptures, describe the position of women as greatly inferior to men, often as an item of property. Some liberal Christians believe that Paul's instructions to the church at Corinth was in response to a specific problem in that city in which women were disrupting services; they might interpret limits on the roles of women in the Hebrew Scriptures as being accurate representations of early Jewish society. But they might also believe that such passages are not applicable in today's society where limitations and restrictions on women have been largely removed after decades of effort by the feminist movement. Many conservative Christians regard St. Paul's instructions to the Corinthians as being equally valid today for all persons.

The Bible has many references to slavery. Much of the conflict that led to the American civil war was fueled by differences in interpretation of Biblical passages on this topic. Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, said that slavery "was established by decree of Almighty God...it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation." Various Christian leaders of the time made such statements as: "There is not one verse in the Bible inhibiting slavery, but many regulating it. It is not then, we conclude, immoral." (Rev. Alexander Campbell), and "The right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example." (Rev. R. Furman). Abolitionist forces argued that the teachings of Jesus made the ownership of human beings a sin. Many of the arguments over slavery revolved around whether the institution was an acceptable practice for all times and all societies, or whether it was no longer permissible in 19th century North America. Clearly, the matter could not be resolved theologically at the time. It was eventually settled by a political consensus in Canada and, much later, by a civil war in the US.

The combination of source ambiguity, intentional translation errors, copying errors, symbolic vs. literal interpretation, multiple authorship, multiple versions, interpretation conflicts, internal conflicts, the nature of truth, etc. make it quite impossible to be certain that a particular passage in an English translation of the Bible is inerrant. Or if it is regarded as inerrant, it is not necessarily obvious how the passage is to be interpreted.

One can hope to minimize the effect of intentional translational errors by accessing many versions of the Bible to compare the full range of translations. One can hope to understand passages better by comparing verses on the same topic in various parts of the Bible in order to get a consensus of what the Biblical authors wrote. But we are largely stuck with the remaining factors.

Problems with infallibility:

As noted above, the term infallible refers to the fully trustworthy nature of the Bible, i.e. its text does not deceive the reader into falsehood.

As Wayne Jackson wrote in Evidence for Bible Inspiration: "Traditionally, Protestants have reserved the term [infallible]...to refer to the Bible as the only true source of faith and doctrine." 7 But this concept assumes that accurate beliefs and doctrine can be extracted from biblical passages.

The concept of infallibility implies that when a thoughtful, devout, studious, intelligent and prayerful Christian examines the Bible, she/he will not be led to believe an untruth. But different Christians are, in practice, led to believe in untruths.

Liberal and conservative Christians have different sets of fundamental theological beliefs and thus develop different sets of moral truths regarding such topics as abortion, homosexuality, physican assisted suicide, etc. Each group bases their conclusions on the Bible. Since these positions are diametrically opposed, the Bible must have led at least one group to hold false beliefs.

Even within the conservative wing of Christianity teachings differ greatly on topics such as divorce, hell, the millennium, rapture, salvation, the Book of Revelation, and creation/evolution, etc.. At least two Evangelical Christian companies, InterVarsity Press and Zondervan, have published books by leading conservative Christian theologians on these topics. The books take the form of debates between three, four or five experts. Each writer presents a different, mutually exclusive, point of view. Each argues that his own belief is derived from biblical passages, and thus is the only true viewpoint. Again, only one of the writers can hold correct views; the others must have been led by the Bible to hold false beliefs.

References:

1. Dave Miller, "Why I Believe in the Inerrancy of the Scriptures" http://www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/1992/4/
2. Mark Mattison, "Is the Bible inerrant?," at: http://www.auburn.edu/~allenkc/openhse/
3. Christians for Biblical Equality has a home page promoting non-discrimination on the basis of gender . See: http://www.cbeinternational.org
4. S.H.T. Page, "Powers of Evil: A Biblical Study of Satan and Demons," Baker Books, Grand Rapids, Mich, (1995),Page 20 to 23.
5. C.M. Laymon, "The Interpreter's One-Volume Commentary on the Bible," Abingdon Press, Nashville TN, (1991) Pages 670 - 671.
6. Robert J. Miller, Ed., "The Complete Gospels", Polebridge Press, Sonoma CA, (1992), Pages 402-405
7. Wayne Jackson, "Evidence for Bible Inspiration," Reason and Revelation 3, (1983-FEB), Pages 7-10.
8. B.M. Metzger & M.D. Coogan, "The Oxford Companion to the Bible," Oxford University Press, New York, NY, (1993), Pages 302 to 304
9. M. J. Sawyer, "Theories of Inspiration" at: http://www.bible.org/docs/theology/biblio/theorins.htm
10. Christians for Biblical Equality has a home page promoting non-discrimination on the basis of gender . See: http://www.cbeinternational.org
11. Richard Nicholson, "Constantine, Eusebius and Jerome," at: http://www1.xlibris.com/bookstore/book_excerpt
12. The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) has a home page at: http://www.cbmw.org/index.html

Note: And if there is any doubt about how conservative Christian denominations view inerrancy, go here for an alternate view to the above discussion. .

Remember the "Mid-Terms" Episode of West Wing?

West Wing Skewers Laura Schlessinger
On October 18, 2000, NBC aired an episode of the Emmy winning television show The West Wing in which the character President Josiah Bartlet, played beyond description by Martin Sheen, absolutely skewers a character, named "Dr. Jenna Jacobs," who bears striking similarities to our very own, dear, Laura Schlessinger, in a dialogue very similar in theme to the "Dear Dr. Laura" letter which was wending its way about the net not that many months ago.

President Josiah Bartlet: You're Dr. Jenna Jacobs, right?

Jenna Jacobs: Yes, sir.

Bartlet: ...Forgive me, Dr. Jacobs. Are you an M.D.?

Jacobs: A Ph.D.

Bartlet: A Ph.D.

Jacobs: Yes, sir.

Bartlet: Psychology?

Jacobs: No, sir.

Bartlet: Theology?

Jacobs: No.

Bartlet: Social work?

Jacobs: I have a Ph.D. in English literature.

Bartlet: I'm asking because on your show, people call in for advice and you go by the name Dr. Jacobs on your show, and I didn't know if maybe your listeners were confused by that and assumed you had advanced training in psychology, theology or health care.

Jacobs: I don't believe they are confused, no, sir.

Bartlet: Good. I like your show. I like how you call homosexuality an abomination.

Jacobs: I don't say homosexuality is an abomination, Mr. President, the Bible does.

Bartlet: Yes, it does. Leviticus.

Jacobs: 18:22.

Bartlet: Chapter and verse. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions while I had you here. I'm interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. She's a Georgetown sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, always cleared the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be? While thinking about that, can I ask another? My chief of staff, Leo McGarry, insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or is it okay to call the police? Here's one that's really important because we've got a lot of sports fans in this town. Touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean. Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point? Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side-by-side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads? Think about those questions, would you? One last thing, while you may be mistaking this for your monthly meeting of the Ignorant Tight-Ass Club, in this building, when the President stands, nobody sits.

[originally transcribed by Rex Wockner. (Very few) Edits by Deborah Levinson]

August 20, 2004
The Chávez Victory
NY Times
By JUAN FORERO

CARACAS, Venezuela, Aug. 19 - When President Hugo Chávez was ousted in a coup two years ago, the Bush administration celebrated, calling the ouster his own doing. The rest of Latin America was left fuming by the overthrow and expressed strong support for Mr. Chávez as he was almost immediately swept back into power in a popular uprising.

On Sunday, when Mr. Chávez triumphed over his adversaries in a referendum on whether he should be recalled from office, countries from Brazil to Argentina, Colombia to Spain heartily congratulated him. The United States remained silent for more than a day, until a State Department spokesman, Adam Ereli, offered tepid backing for the "preliminary results."

The resounding victory was a blow to the Bush administration, which has struggled with how to deal with Mr. Chávez, a leftist firebrand who presides over the world's fifth-largest oil exporter and has opposed Washington on every major initiative in Latin America. "There's no doubt in my mind that at least in the White House - I don't know about the State Department - there was a deep desire to see Chávez lose," said former President Jimmy Carter, whose Carter Center monitored the election and who has briefed American officials on his efforts to broker a peace between the government and its opponents.

Now, the United States has the challenge of constructing, from the ground up, a new relationship with Mr. Chávez, who has done everything imaginable to antagonize what he calls "the colossus to the north."

He has used an expletive to describe President Bush, threatened to hold back oil sales if the United States invaded, and expanded Venezuela's ties with Cuba. His campaign to win in the vote was built largely on demonizing the United States.

"The Bush government will be defeated on Sunday," Mr. Chávez told reporters three days before the recall vote. "The confrontation in Venezuela is not really with this opposition. The opposition has a master, whose name is George W. Bush."

American diplomats privately say they do not think that Mr. Chávez believes his public statements, and that he manipulates latent anti-Americanism for political gain. But American policy has been largely counterproductive, only contributing to Mr. Chávez's increasingly hostile barbs.

The United States long ago threw its lot in with an opposition movement that is being discredited by foreign diplomats and many Venezuelans for insisting that fraud took place when the preponderance of evidence indicates it did not.

The United States has also provided money to groups like Súmate, which violated elections norms early on Monday by distributing results of a survey of voters leaving the polls that showed Mr. Chávez losing by a wide margin. Mr. Chávez seized on this financing of anti-government groups, channeled through the National Endowment for Democracy, to whip his supporters into an anti-American frenzy.

"The United States is stuck in a time warp," said Riordan Roett, director of Latin American studies at The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. "It is using tools from the cold war, when money from the National Endowment for Democracy was useful in funding anti-Communist movements."

The United States policy has largely been out of step with the rest of the region. Washington has been unable to grasp the widespread reaction against free market changes across Latin America, changes now being rolled back by left-leaning leaders. In Venezuela, the United States has operated on the presumption that Mr. Chávez's opponents had more support, clearly underestimating that most Venezuelans would vote to keep him in office.

"It's not that the U.S. is not paying attention, it's that their calculation and strategy was wrong," said Eduardo Gamarra, a Bolivian who is director of the Latin America and Caribbean Center at Florida International University in Miami. "And it's been wrong because it's been based on the false assumption that Chávez is not popular, on the false assumption that he's a dictator."

After Mr. Chávez's resounding win, the Bush administration set itself apart from the rest of the region, calling on the Venezuelan government's electoral board to "allow a transparent audit," though international monitors pronounced the election free and fair. On Tuesday, Mr. Ereli, the State Department spokesman, dodged questions from reporters about why the United States was not congratulating Mr. Chávez.

A senior State Department official later said the United States' reticence was intended to defuse tensions in Venezuela, not to dismiss the results. He said Washington would issue a broader statement backing the results after a final audit.

Not all of Washington's diplomatic moves here have failed. Ambassador Charles Shapiro, newly arrived in Venezuela when Mr. Chavez was briefly ousted in 2002, met frequently with him, patching up a relationship that was battered after the White House expressed support for the interim government that replaced him. The United States has also remained a loyal buyer of Venezuelan crude oil. American giants like Exxon Mobil and ChevronTexaco are producing oil and eyeing an expansion into largely undeveloped natural gas fields that are open to foreign investment. Those companies, and other major multinational businesses, provided Venezuela with much-needed foreign earnings when the opposition called nationwide strikes that battered the economy.

Those commercial links can strengthen the bond between Venezuela and the United States, which is dependent on Venezuelan crude.

"The business sector, the large business sector, has understood better the making of foreign policy than our government," Mr. Gamarra said. "They looked at it from the perspective of what business opportunities ought to be.'' Better relations with Mr. Chávez are possible. With his presidency more secure since the vote, he has appeared open to reconciliation. He has invited opposition leaders to lunch and has expressed the wish for a new beginning with the United States.

"I would hope that President Chávez would now cool that anti-U.S. rhetoric," Mr. Carter said. "There's no doubt that Chávez is a charismatic figure, very fiery in his rhetoric, which I deplore. But that's his personal characteristic, one of the avenues of his popularity among Venezuelans. I think now, though, that he is not campaigning for anything."

Kerry's Vietnam Service: A Review

Veterans Battle Over the Truth
* An ad calls Kerry a liar. His Vietnam crew sees a hero. Memories, and agendas, are in conflict.
By Maria L. La Ganga and Stephen Braun, Times Staff Writers

A television ad that has aired in three key battleground states and a new book have created a political furor over John F. Kerry's Vietnam War record, calling into question his character, credibility and a central tenet of his campaign — that his combat experience helps qualify him to be president.

The ad, the book and the people behind them have become staples of conservative talk shows and Internet sites. The claims — that Kerry lied about his war experiences, didn't deserve his medals and betrayed soldiers everywhere by protesting the war after serving in it — also have been recited in the mainstream media, along with denials of the allegations.

What military documentation exists and has been made public generally supports the view put forth by Kerry and most of his crewmates — that he acted courageously and came by his Silver Star, Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts honestly. This view of Kerry as war hero is supported by all but one of the surviving veterans who served with him on the two boats he commanded.

None of the critics quoted in the ad actually served on the boats with Kerry. Some of them also have given contradictory accounts and offered conflicting recollections.

But what actually happened about 35 years ago along the remote southern coast of Vietnam remains murky. Some of Kerry's own recollections over the years, as presented in two biographies and many interviews, also have been inconsistent.

Most of the documents offered by critics of the Democratic candidate are signed affidavits by 13 Swift boat veterans — notarized memories of events that they say they witnessed from a boat or two away.

The Kerry campaign has launched a vociferous defense, denying the charges raised in the ad. It also denounced the group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, as a Republican-backed effort. His staff has directed critics to the Massachusetts senator's military records, which have been posted on his website.

"The Swift boat ad is full of lies. Thirteen men who never served with John Kerry lie about knowing him and viciously attack his record," said Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill in an e-mail to supporters last week. "It is a new low for the Republicans."

A liberal independent organization is weighing in on the controversy with a new ad today, demanding that President Bush urge that the ad be taken off the air.

The Bush campaign, for its part, says it has nothing to do with the Swift boat group attacking Kerry and has kept a distance — neither endorsing nor denouncing the ad, which is airing in Ohio, Wisconsin and West Virginia. When asked about it Thursday on "Larry King Live," Bush said he had not seen it.

Kerry, long accused of hair-splitting and nuance in his political positions, has left himself open to criticism by giving subtly varying accounts over the years of his Vietnam service and postwar activism. But his critics also have provided conflicting recollections.

"War is by definition chaotic, and people are not taking notes in battle," said Jeffrey Berry, a political science professor at Tufts University in Medford, Mass. "In terms of the type of evidence that might be ideal for making a convincing case, there probably are some holes. They give an opening for people who want to say Kerry was embellishing."

Members of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth say they have received $300,000 in new donations since the ad began airing Aug. 5. The group's initial ad buy was $500,000.

The group's leaders confirmed that Robert J. Perry, a Texas homebuilder, was their biggest original financier. Perry has given money to Bush's last four campaigns and is a major GOP donor in Texas.

John O'Neill, a former Swift boat commander who served in Vietnam and a longtime Kerry foe, has been promoting his book — "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry" — on cable-TV talk shows such as "Crossfire" and "Hardball." The book, which amplifies the charges in the ad, began trickling into stores last week. It already tops the Amazon.com bestseller list, and a chapter has been posted on a conservative website.

It is too soon to tell whether the claims are resonating with voters, but political observers say they could pose a serious risk for the Democratic candidate, particularly in such a close race.

"If the attacks on [Kerry's] character continue and they start to take hold with swing voters and casual voters, it would be a big problem," said Stuart Rothenberg, publisher of a nonpartisan political newsletter. "The Kerry folks can't concede this…. A charge like this that's ignored is a charge that's believed."

The anti-Kerry ad begins with footage of Sen. John Edwards, Kerry's running mate, saying, "If you have any question about what John Kerry's made of, just spend three minutes with the men who served with him 30 years ago."

Then eight words appear on the screen — "Here's what those men think about John Kerry" — and the allegations begin. They include comments such as: "John Kerry betrayed the men and women he served with in Vietnam," and "He lacks the capacity to lead."

Many in the Swift boat group seem to be motivated as much by anger about Kerry's protest activities as they are about his actions in combat. In their affidavits, several write about Kerry's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

In his April 1971 statement to the Senate panel, Kerry cited Vietnam atrocities that had been alleged by his group of antiwar veterans. And in blunt rhetoric, he questioned government policy that widened the toll among soldiers and civilians: "We learned the meaning of free-fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed cheapness on the lives of Orientals."

In the anti-Kerry ad, former Navy Lt. Cmdr. George Elliott, one of Kerry's immediate commanders, says: "John Kerry has not been honest about what happened in Vietnam."

In his affidavit, Elliott said that when Kerry returned from Vietnam, he was "comparing his other commanders and me to Lt. Calley of My Lai, comparing the American armed forces to the army of Genghis Khan, and making similar misstatements."

Joe Ponder, a Swift boat crewman who did not serve on either of Kerry's two boats, says in the ad that Kerry "dishonored his country." In his affidavit, Ponder says he was badly wounded in an ambush in Vietnam. But "the greatest wounds I have ever suffered were from John F. Kerry, who dishonored my country, my honor and my friends by falsely charging the United States Army Forces with war crimes, claiming that all of us, living and dead, were war criminals."

Although these are powerful statements, they are not entirely accurate.

In his Senate testimony, Kerry did liken some American actions to Genghis Khan's. But he did not mention Elliott by name, nor did he mention his Navy superiors. And he did not claim that every soldier was a war criminal. Rather, he cited atrocities described by veterans who opposed the war. Kerry has acknowledged that, at times, he used a poor choice of words as a young man protesting the war, but he has continued to insist that atrocities were committed.

During the war, Elliott gave Kerry high marks in fitness reports and recommended Kerry for the Silver Star and the Bronze Star. "John was one of 50 young officers who performed extremely well," Elliott said in an interview in May. "I wrote his fitness report, and I stand by that."

But in his affidavit, Elliott backed away from the Silver Star nomination he wrote for Kerry in 1969. Kerry won the award for chasing down and killing a wounded Viet Cong guerrilla who had confronted his boat with a grenade launcher.

In his affidavit, Elliott questioned Kerry's actions, suggesting he might have shot the guerrilla in the back. Elliott was not present during the action, and there have been no credible eyewitness accounts affirming his version.

Kerry's Swift boat mates have long insisted that Kerry's action was appropriate and saved their lives.

A day after the ad appeared, Elliott said in an interview with the Boston Globe that he regretted signing the affidavit and that he believed Kerry still deserved the Silver Star. Then he issued a second affidavit standing by his first sworn statement, saying he had been misquoted by the Globe.

But in his second affidavit, Elliott also admitted, "I do not claim to have personal knowledge as to how Kerry shot the wounded, fleeing Viet Cong."

There are three other allegations raised by the anti-Kerry group — questioning his first Purple Heart, his Bronze Star and a Christmas Eve mission to the Cambodian border.

The awarding of Kerry's first Purple Heart has been challenged by a former surgeon at the Navy base at Cam Ranh Bay. "I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart because I treated him for that injury," Dr. Louis Letson said in the television ad.

In a Times interview in May, the retired Alabama doctor said he recalled administering treatment to Kerry for a flesh wound incurred on Dec. 2, 1968.

Kerry had been on a mission in a "skimmer" boat north of Cam Ranh Bay. Noticing Viet Cong on a beach, Kerry fired on the guerrillas. Two crewmates, Bill Zaladonis and Pat Runyon, have confirmed that they also fired on the fleeing guerrillas.

That same night, Jim Wasser, who was stationed on a boat near Kerry's and who would later serve on Kerry's Swift boat, heard a radio report from Kerry's boat that "someone had a slight wound."

The next morning, according to Letson, Kerry showed up at the Cam Ranh Bay medical unit asking for treatment. Letson said the wound was slight and that he removed a tiny shard of shrapnel with tweezers. He said Kerry reported being in a firefight with Viet Cong guerrillas.

But later, Letson said, he learned from some medical corpsmen that other crewmen had confided that there was no exchange of fire and that Kerry had accidentally wounded himself as he fired at the guerrillas.

Letson said he didn't know if the crewmen giving this account were in the boat with Kerry or on other boats. The crewmen "were just talking to my guys," Letson said. "We weren't prying into it. There was not a firefight — that's what the guys related. They didn't remember any firing from shore. It's Kerry who made the issue of him being a war hero. That opens it up for some question."

In a June interview, Kerry described taking fire from the guerrillas but was unsure whether he was wounded by others or by himself. "I didn't see where it came from," he said.

The Kerry campaign has questioned Letson's role, noting that a medical account detailing Kerry's treatment is signed by a "J. Carreon" — not Letson. But Letson insisted he was the one who treated Kerry. Carreon was a Filipino corpsman, a "hospitalman first class," not a doctor, Letson said, and routinely made entries on his behalf.

Kerry won the Purple Heart for the wound, but Letson said he did not deserve it because it was too slight and reportedly self-inflicted. Letson conceded in The Times interview that he made no effort then to officially question Kerry's account.

Navy rules during the Vietnam War governing Purple Hearts did not take into account a wound's severity — and specified only that injuries had to be suffered "in action against an enemy."

Self-inflicted wounds were awarded if incurred "in the heat of battle, and not involving gross negligence." Kerry's critics insist his wound would not have qualified, but former Navy officials who worked in the service's awards branch at the time said such awards were routine.

A Times review of Navy injury reports and awards from that period in Kerry's Swift boat unit shows that many other Swift boat personnel won Purple Hearts for slight wounds of uncertain origin.

When Kerry reported the injury to his commander, Lt. Cmdr. Grant Hibbard, he only asked Hibbard to file an injury report, Kerry told The Times.

In a Swift Boat Veterans for Truth affidavit, Hibbard said Kerry came into his office "to apply for a Purple Heart," but that he turned down Kerry's "Purple Heart request." He said he was "shocked to later learn that [Kerry] subsequently received an undeserved Purple Heart for his wound."

But in a conflicting interview this summer, Hibbard said Kerry did not directly ask for the medal but a medical report. (The report would have been automatically forwarded to Navy administrators in Saigon who oversaw Purple Heart awards.) Hibbard said he believed the wound was too minor to warrant a report but that later he "took some heat" from military superiors for refusing to write it up.

Kerry acknowledged to The Times that he later asked about the Purple Heart. He said he "asked a guy where it was or something," but could not recall whom he pressed for the award.

The decoration was approved by Navy administrators in Saigon before he left Vietnam in March 1969.

The second specific allegation was made by Van Odell, who served as a gunner on PCF-23, one of the boats involved in the incident that earned Kerry the Bronze Star. "John Kerry lied to get his Bronze Star. I know. I was there," Odell says in the ad.

Kerry received the Bronze Star for rescuing Army Lt. Jim Rassmann, a Green Beret who had been knocked off Kerry's Swift boat on March 13, 1969, when a mine exploded nearby, disabling another craft. Kerry also received a Purple Heart for being injured in the process.

In one of the defining moments of the Democratic primary season, Rassmann, who is a Republican, reunited with the candidate in an emotional meeting. He talked about Kerry's bravery and his gratitude. Since then, he has campaigned for him regularly.

Kerry's website gives a brief account of the rescue and then quotes the Bronze Star citation signed by Vice Adm. Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr., then the Navy's top commander in Vietnam:

"Lt. Kerry directed his gunners to provide suppressing fire, while from an exposed position on the bow, his arm bleeding and in pain, with disregard for his personal safety, he pulled the man aboard. Lt. Kerry's calmness, professionalism and great personal courage under fire were in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. naval service."

Rassmann, in a Times interview, said Kerry and several of his crew were on shore as Rassmann and his unit took small arms fire from Viet Cong guerrillas. The U.S. troops then moved to destroy a cache of contraband rice they suspected was being used to supply the enemy.

Kerry and Rassmann hurled grenades at the contraband, and from the resulting explosion they were hit with shrapnel, including some that lodged in Kerry's buttocks.

Later that day, Rassmann recalled, he was sitting on the side of Kerry's Swift boat eating a chocolate chip cookie just as PCF-94 was heading out of the Bay Hap River toward the Gulf of Siam. One mine went off underwater, and then a second.

Rassmann fell overboard, he recounted, "and John got thrown off the bulkhead. I went to the bottom, dumped my gear, and when I came up the boats were gone. The VC are shooting at me." Then, Rassmann said, he saw a boat coming to his rescue. From the edge of the Swift boat, the wounded Kerry "kneeled down and grabbed my arm and pulled me over. Neither of us said a word. I grabbed an M-16 and fired back. I burned the barrel out. We finally got out of this kill zone."

There are discrepancies in the official stories and documentation about the incident.

The Bronze Star citation describes Kerry's arm as bleeding, as do two biographies, "Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War" by Douglas Brinkley, and "John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography By The Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best."

But the official March 13 Navy report of Kerry's injuries said that "Lt. Kerry suffered shrapnel wounds in his left buttocks and contusions on his right forearm when a mine detonated close aboard PCF-94."

His wounds also earned him his third Purple Heart and allowed him to leave Vietnam early — in late March 1969 — after four months of a yearlong tour.

Several others, who are now members of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, were on nearby boats on the Bay Hap River during the incident. They say that there was no hostile gunfire when Kerry pulled Rassmann out of the water and that one of their own, Jack Chenoweth, was already speeding to Rassmann's aid.

"I'm here to tell you there was no fire from either bank. The only incident was the mine, detonated under the … boat," Chenoweth said in an interview.

The Swift boat group members critical of Kerry said that he wrote the after-action reports that led to his getting the Bronze Star. They said they saw no blood on his arm as described in the citation for the Bronze Star. And they argue that the buttock wound that that led to the Purple Heart was caused by his own grenade.

They also say they did not complain 35 years ago because they did not see the reports until Kerry posted them online.

But the anti-Kerry faction has not definitively proved that Kerry was the sole source of the Bronze Star battle account. And according to Elliott, Kerry's immediate commander, Swift boat officers involved in battles normally were involved in drafting the after-action report, which in this case described repeated fire from small arms and automatic weapons.

Rassmann, whose life was saved, stands by Kerry.

"Their new charges are false; their stories are fabricated, made up by people who did not serve with Kerry in Vietnam," he wrote in a commentary last Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal. "They insult and defame all of us who served in Vietnam."

A third and new allegation surfaced last week as part of the publicity campaign for O'Neill's new book.

O'Neill and several members of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth allege that in statements to Congress and in news accounts, Kerry lied in claiming that on Christmas Eve 1968, his Swift boat — PCF-44 — sailed into a Cambodian river.

Cambodia was supposed to be off-limits to the U.S. military because it was not an official combatant. However, U.S. troops made secret incursions into the country to stem Viet Cong operations and supply lines.

"I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia," Kerry said in a March 1986 Senate speech. "I remember what it was like to be shot at by the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians."

At other times, Kerry has said he was near — but not in — Cambodia.

In a Times interview last June, Kerry said: "I celebrated Christmas Eve on the border of Cambodia." And he added that on a later mission, "I went into Cambodia with the CIA."

Kerry's critics have seized on his varying recollections to impugn his credibility and suggest he has embellished his war record.

Steven Gardner, the only member of Kerry's former crews to join Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and actively campaign against Kerry, has told some reporters that PCF-44 was 50 miles away from Cambodia that Christmas Eve.

But two of Kerry's crewmates — Wasser and Zaladonis — both told The Times the boat was in the vicinity of the Cambodian border and even fought an engagement with a Viet Cong sampan on Christmas Eve day.

"We patrolled a river on the border," Zaladonis said last week. "Unless I'm out of my mind or mistaken, that river was part of the border."

There are no after-action reports that pinpoint where Kerry's boat was in late December 1968. But a file from Navy archives in Washington obtained by The Times provides support for both sides.

An entry in a monthly summary of engagements for December 1968 reports that on Christmas Eve, "PCF-44 fired on junk on beach. Results: 1 sampan destroyed."

The entry was made by then-Capt. Roy Hoffmann, the overall commander of Swift boats and now one of Kerry's most vocal critics. There is no written location for the engagement, but it contains a coordinate used by the military to plot locations. The coordinate points to an area about 40 to 50 miles south of the Cambodian border, near an island called Sa Dec.

The entry also notes that the incident took place about 7 a.m., which would have given Kerry's boat another 12 hours to make it to the Cambodian border by nightfall. At a cruising speed of 23 knots, the boat could have covered the distance in about two hours.

This would be consistent with the contention of Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan that Kerry was in Sa Dec but reached the Cambodian border later the same day.

Since the anti-Kerry ad first surfaced, Kerry's crewmates have fanned out in his defense. Along with Rassmann, crewmates Del Sandusky, leading petty officer with Kerry on PCF-94, and Gene Thorson decried the allegations as politically inspired "garbage."

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a Vietnam veteran who has endorsed Bush, called the ad "dishonest and dishonorable." He said that "none of these individuals served on the boat [Kerry] commanded," adding that he believed "John Kerry served honorably in Vietnam."

In a lengthy interview between the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's first news conference in May and the controversy last week, Kerry called the group's allegations pure "politics."

"Some of them don't like the fact that I opposed the war, and 35 years later some people still want to argue about that," Kerry said in the June interview. "It's way beyond me, can I tell you? It's so far beyond and past now. I feel sad about it."

He said he respected the service all Swift boat crews gave to their country and lauded their courage.

"So I'm at peace with myself, and I'm sorry they feel the way they do," Kerry said, "because I respect them. I really do."

Political Humor Site

Need to know what's happening with the latest political satire? Check out the Specious Report here.

File-Sharing Sites Found Not Liable for Infringement
By MATT RICHTEL
NY Times
Published: August 20, 2004

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 19 - Affirming a lower court decision, a federal appellate court ruled Thursday that the distributors of software used by millions of people to exchange music files over the Internet cannot be held liable for aiding copyright infringement.

The decision, by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, upholds a ruling issued in April 2003 by a federal judge in Los Angeles. The decision gives distributors of peer-to-peer file-sharing software a significant victory in their long battle with the record and movie industries, legal experts said.

Judge Sidney R. Thomas, writing for the panel, found that the two distributors, Grokster and StreamCast Networks, which offers the Morpheus file-sharing service, are not liable for aiding copyright infringement because they do not have the ability to monitor or control how users of their software exchange files.

"David's won another round," said Wayne Rosso, former president of Grokster, comparing the record industry to Goliath.

The plaintiffs in the case, the music and movie industries, have argued that file-sharing networks are forums for mass copyright piracy. The software of both companies, which can be downloaded over the Internet, allows users to share music, video and other digital files that they store on their computers. Ninety percent of the files shared, according to music and movie industry executives, include copyrighted material.

Mitch Bainwol, chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America, issued a statement saying the appellate court ruling, "does not absolve these businesses from their responsibility as corporate citizens to address the rampant illegal use of their networks."

Mr. Bainwol said the record industry would continue to seek legal and legislative remedies to address the "ongoing illegal activity." He did not say whether the industry would pursue an appeal.

Critics say the software distributors make money by selling advertisements that appear on computer screens when users exchange files. Thus, they benefit financially when more people exchange files, including those that contain copyrighted material.

The appellate court, however, said it is not up to the courts to adapt copyright law to the effects created by new technologies.

"We live in a quicksilver technological environment with courts ill-suited to fix the flow of Internet innovation," Judge Thomas wrote. "The introduction of new technology is always disruptive of old markets, and particularly to those copyright owners whose works are sold through well-established distribution mechanisms. Yet, history has shown that time and market forces often provide equilibrium in balancing interests, whether the new technology be a player piano, a copier, a tape recorder, a video recorder, a personal computer, a karaoke machine or an MP3 player."

He added that "it is prudent for courts to exercise caution before restructuring liability theories for the purpose of addressing specific market abuses, despite their apparent present magnitude. Indeed, the Supreme Court has admonished us to leave such matters to Congress."

Jonathan Zittrain, an expert in Internet law at Harvard Law School, said the court's ruling might compel copyright holders to focus more energy on lobbying legislators to change the law. The copyright holders, Mr. Zittrain said, "may be reaching the limit of what the federal judiciary is prepared to do to help them in their cause."

The lawsuits against the file-sharing networks are only part of a multipronged attack by the record and movie industries to prevent copyright infringement.

The record industry has also filed lawsuits against some 3,900 individuals, accused by the industry of illegally downloading copyrighted files. In addition, the record and movie industries have pushed hard for legislation to combat file-swapping networks. In June, legislation supported by the industries was introduced in the Senate that would explicitly extend copyright liability to distributors of file-sharing software.

Copyright owners have had success in the courts, dating back to their victory in February 2001 against Napster, the pioneering file-sharing network. The Napster case, which was also decided by the appellate court for the Ninth Circuit, found that network aided copyright violations because it maintained and controlled servers that searched out the location of available files for its users.

By contrast, the court found that Grokster and StreamCast are decentralized and do not have that level of control. Rather, individual users of the software exchange files directly, using the network to find each other over the Internet.

Art Brodsky, the communications director of Public Knowledge, a public interest advocacy group focusing on intellectual property and copyright policy, said Thursday's ruling did not absolve individual users of potential liability for sharing copyrighted files. "It says the makers of the software can't be liable," Mr. Brodsky said. "It doesn't say anything about the individual users."

Mark F. Radcliffe, an expert in intellectual property law at Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich, a Palo Alto law firm, said the appellate court decision was also significant in that it pointed out that file-sharing services, like Grokster, could be used for legitimate purposes.

In a footnote in its ruling, the appellate court said that even if only 10 percent of the files exchanged were done so with permission of copyright holders, it would mean that there were "hundreds of thousands of legitimate file exchanges."

Mr. Radcliffe said the decision might cause the record industry to intensify its antipiracy efforts against individual file sharers. "They can still sue individual people for copyright infringement," Mr. Radcliffe said. "But that's a long chase for the music industry."

The West Wing Episodes & Aaron Sorkin

Season One Episode Guide:
Season Two Episode Guide:
Season Three Episode Guide:
Season Four Episode Guide:
Season Five Episode Guide::
Season Six Episode Guide:

Remember the Viewer's Choice 2004 Show on Bravo?
Here are the top ten.

Gee...do you wonder about Aaron Sorkin's Politics? See the Federal Elections DB for his financial contributions.

And what is Mr. Sorkin doing lately? Info is here circa Summer 2004.

Annoying Ads: Ditech.com

Company Profile:

The information superhighway can make for a rough ride. Just ask those at ditech.com, one of the biggest online mortgage lenders in the US. In its short history, it's fired executives indicted for extortion, and seen founder Paul Reddam resign and sue parent General Motors Acceptance Corp. (GMAC). The online lender offers first mortgage loans, high-loan-to-value (HLTV) first and second mortgage loans, and home equity lines of credit.

Known for its aggressive (read: annoying) marketing campaigns, ditech.com advertises through cable television, freeway billboards, and on the radio. The majority of the company's business is conducted from its main office in Costa Mesa, California.

Note: There are a few sites devoted specifically to customers experienced problems with this company. Here, and here.

Doc Holiday vs Johnny Ringo

I'm Your Huckleberry!
by Lawson Stone

On and off I hear discussions in which people speculate on the exact origin and meaning is of the quaint idiom used by Doc Holliday in the movie "Tombstone." I've heard some wild suggestions, including "huckleberry" meaning "pall-bearer" suggesting "I'll bury you."

Still others think it has something to do with Mark Twain's character, Huckleberry Finn, and means "steadfast friend, pard." This is unlikely, since the book of that title was not written until 1883. Tom Sawyer was written in 1876, but nowhere there is the term "huckleberry" used to mean "steadfast friend" or the like.

Still others claim that a victor's crown or wreath of huckleberry is involved, making the statement "I'm your huckleberry" something like "I'll beat you!" But no such reference can be found in the historical materials supporting the use of this term in 19th century America. Additionally, "huckleberry" was native to North America so it's unlikely it was used in ancient Britain as a prize!

"Huckleberry" was commonly used in the 1800's in conjunction with "persimmon" as a small unit of measure. "I'm a huckleberry over your persimmon" meant "I'm just a bit better than you." As a result, "huckleberry" came to denote idiomatically two things. First, it denoted a small unit of measure, a "tad," as it were, and a person who was a huckleberry could be a small, unimportant person--usually expressed ironically in mock self-depreciation. The second and more common usage came to mean, in the words of the "Dictionary of American Slang: Second Supplemented Edition" (Crowell, 1975):

"A man; specif., the exact kind of man needed for a particular purpose. 1936: "Well, I'm your huckleberry, Mr. Haney." Tully, "Bruiser," 37. Since 1880, archaic.

The "Historical Dictionary of American Slang" which is a multivolume work, has about a third of a column of citations documenting this meaning all through the latter 19th century.

So "I'm your huckleberry" means "I'm just the man you're looking for!"

Nation's Charter Schools Lagging Behind, U.S. Test Scores Reveal
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO

Published: August 17, 2004

WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 - The first national comparison of test scores among children in charter schools and regular public schools shows charter school students often doing worse than comparable students in regular public schools.

The findings, buried in mountains of data the Education Department released without public announcement, dealt a blow to supporters of the charter school movement, including the Bush administration.

The data shows fourth graders attending charter schools performing about half a year behind students in other public schools in both reading and math. Put another way, only 25 percent of the fourth graders attending charters were proficient in reading and math, against 30 percent who were proficient in reading, and 32 percent in math, at traditional public schools.

Because charter schools are concentrated in cities, often in poor neighborhoods, the researchers also compared urban charters to traditional schools in cities. They looked at low-income children in both settings, and broke down the results by race and ethnicity as well. In virtually all instances, the charter students did worse than their counterparts in regular public schools.

Charters are expected to grow exponentially under the new federal education law, No Child Left Behind, which holds out conversion to charter schools as one solution for chronically failing traditional schools.

"The scores are low, dismayingly low," said Chester E. Finn Jr., a supporter of charters and president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, who was among those who asked the administration to do the comparison.

Mr. Finn, an assistant secretary of education in the Reagan administration, said the quality of charter schools across the country varied widely, and he predicted that the results would make those overseeing charters demand more in the way of performance.

"A little more tough love is needed for these schools," Mr. Finn said. "Somebody needs to be watching over their shoulders."

Mr. Finn and other backers of charter schools contended, however, that the findings should be considered as "baseline data," and could reflect the predominance of children in these schools who turned to charters after having had severe problems at their neighborhood schools.

The results, based on the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly known as the nation's report card, were unearthed from online data by researchers at the American Federation of Teachers, which provided them to The New York Times. The organization has historically supported charter schools but has produced research in recent years raising doubts about the expansion of charter schools.

Charters are self-governing public schools, often run by private companies, which operate outside the authority of local school boards, and have greater flexibility than traditional public schools in areas of policy, hiring and teaching techniques.

Federal officials said they did not intend to hide the performance of charter schools, and denied any political motivation for failing to publicly disclose that the data were available. "I guess that was poor publicity on our part," said Robert Lerner, the federal commissioner for education statistics. Mr. Lerner said further analysis was needed to put the data in its proper context.

But others were skeptical, saying the results proved that such schools were not a cure-all. "There's just a huge distance between the sunny claims of the charter school advocates and the reality," said Bella Rosenberg, an special assistant to the president of the American Federation of Teachers. "There's a very strong accountability issue here."

Of the nation's 88,000 public schools, 3,000 are charters, educating more than 600,000 students. But their ranks are expected to grow as No Child Left Behind identifies thousands of schools for possible closing because of poor test scores.

Once hailed as a kind of free-market solution offering parents an escape from moribund public schools, elements of the charter school movement have prompted growing concern in recent years. Around the country, more than 80 charter schools were forced to close, largely because of questionable financial dealings and poor performance, said Luis Huerta, a professor at Columbia University Teachers College. In California, the state's largest charter school operator has just announced the closing of at least 60 campuses, The Los Angeles Times reported on Monday, stranding 10,000 children just weeks before the start of the school year.

The math and reading tests were given to a nationally representative sample of about 6,000 fourth graders at 167 charter schools in February 2003. Some 3,200 eighth graders at charter schools also took the exams, an insufficient number to make national comparisons.

The results are not out of line with earlier local and state studies of charter school performance, which generally have shown charters doing no better than traditional public schools. But they offered the first nationally representative comparison of children attending both types of schools, and are expected influence public debate.

Amy Stuart Wells, a sociology professor at Columbia University Teachers College, called the new data "really, really important."

"It confirms what a lot of people who study charter schools have been worried about," she said. "There is a lack of accountability. They're really uneven in terms of quality."

Detractors have historically accused charters of skimming the best students, those whose parents are most committed, from the poorest schools. But supporters of charter schools said the data confirmed earlier research suggesting that charters take on children who were already performing below average. "We're doing so much to help kids that are so much farther behind, and who typically weren't even continuing in school," said Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform, in Washington, which represents charter schools. She said the results reflect only "a point in time," and said nothing about the progress of students in charter schools.

That, she said, could be measured only by tracking the performance of charters in future tests. For the moment, however, the National Assessment Governing Board has no plans to survey charters again.

One previous study, however, suggests that tracking students over time might present findings more favorable to the charter movement. Tom Loveless, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, who conducted a two-year study of 569 charter schools in 10 states found that while charter school students typically score lower on state tests, over time they progress at faster rates than students in traditional public schools.

The new test scores on charter schools went online last November, along with state-by-state results from the national assessment. Though other results were announced at a news conference, with a report highlighting the findings, federal officials never mentioned that the charter school data were publicly available.

Researchers at the American Federation of Teachers were able to gain access to the scores from the national assessment's Web site only indirectly: by gathering results based on how schools identified themselves in response to a question.

In a significant departure from earlier releases of test scores, Mr. Lerner said the charter school findings would be formally shown only as part of a larger analysis that would adjust results for the characteristics of charter schools and their students.

In the 1990's, the National Assessment Governing Board had rejected requests from states for such analyses, with Mr. Finn, then a member of the board, contending that explanatory reports would compromise the credibility of the assessment results by trying to blame demographic and other outside factors for poor performance.

But Mr. Lerner said he thought such an analysis was necessary to put the charter school test scores in context. He called the raw comparison of test scores "the beginning of something important," and said, "What one has to do is adjust for many different variables to get a sense of what the effects of charter schools are."

Bereuter: War in Iraq not justified
BY DON WALTON / Lincoln Journal Star
In a dramatic departure from the Bush administration, Republican Rep. Doug Bereuter says he now believes the U.S. military assault on Iraq was unjustified.

"I've reached the conclusion, retrospectively, now that the inadequate intelligence and faulty conclusions are being revealed, that all things being considered, it was a mistake to launch that military action," Bereuter wrote in a letter to constituents in the final days of his congressional career.

That's especially true in view of the fact that the attack was initiated "without a broad and engaged international coalition," the 1st District congressman said.

"Knowing now what I know about the reliance on the tenuous or insufficiently corroborated intelligence used to conclude that Saddam maintained a substantial WMD (weapons of mass destruction) arsenal, I believe that launching the pre-emptive military action was not justified."

As a result of the war, he said, "our country's reputation around the world has never been lower and our alliances are weakened."

Bereuter is a senior member of the House International Relations Committee and vice chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

His four-page letter represented a departure from his support for a 2002 House resolution authorizing the president to go to war.

His vote to authorize the use of military force - even pre-emptive force - was based on faulty, or misrepresented, intelligence that led to the fear Saddam Hussein would share weapons of mass destruction with terrorists, Bereuter said.

"Left unresolved for now is whether intelligence was intentionally misconstrued to justify military action," he said.

In a floor statement accompanying his 2002 vote, Bereuter urged that the international coalition be broadened and the administration adequately plan for the consequences of war and not divert resources from the battle against al-Qaida and the stabilization of Afghanistan.

Despite acknowledged intelligence failures and failure to locate weapons of mass destruction, President Bush continues to forcefully argue the war was justified because Saddam represented a threat to the United States, his neighbors and the people of Iraq.

While criticizing the manner in which the administration went to war, Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry has said he still would have voted for the authorizing resolution knowing what he knows today.

Bereuter pointed to a list of negative consequences arising from the war.

"The cost in casualties is already large and growing," he said, "and the immediate and long-term financial costs are incredible.

"From the beginning of the conflict, it was doubtful that we for long would be seen as liberators, but instead increasingly as an occupying force.

"Now we are immersed in a dangerous, costly mess, and there is no easy and quick way to end our responsibilities in Iraq without creating bigger future problems in the region and, in general, in the Muslim world."

Bereuter sent the letter to constituents who have contacted him about the war.

"I felt I should send you a forthright update of my views and conclusions on that subject before I leave office," he said.

Bereuter will depart the House after 26 years to become president of the Asia Foundation on Sept. 1.

Congress and the administration "must learn from the errors and failures" related to the attack and its aftermath, he said.

"The toll in American military casualties and those of civilians, physical damages caused, financial resources spent, and the damage to the support and image of America abroad all demand such an assessment and accounting."

In addition to "a massive failure or misinterpretation of intelligence" concerning weapons of mass destruction, Bereuter said, the Bush administration made a number of errors in prosecuting the war despite warnings about the consequences.

"American and coalition forces were inadequate in number to take effective control of Iraq when the initial military action was completed," he said.

Other mistakes included disbanding the Iraqi army and placing responsibility for reconstruction with the Department of Defense instead of the Department of State, he said

Population Boom Predicted In Poor Nations

The starkly uneven pace of population growth between most developing and industrialized nations represents the world%92s major demographic fault line. The Population Reference Bureau%27s 2004 World Population Data Sheet demonstrates that nearly 99 percent of all population increase takes place in poor countries%2C while population size is static or declining in the rich nations. Among the major industrialized nations%2C only the United States now has significant population growth.%0D%0AAs a consequence%2C by 2050 industrialized countries are projected to increase their population by merely 4 percent. In contrast%2C the population of developing countries is expected to expand by 55 percent. For example%2C Western European populations will shrink%2C while Western Asian nations are expected to gain about 186 million people by 2050. Overall%2C world population will likely reach 9.3 billion by mid-century."

The Carter Center Vote Certification Team Needs to Be in Florida in November !!!

Saving the Vote
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NY Times Op-Ed
Published: August 17, 2004

Everyone knows it, but not many politicians or mainstream journalists are willing to talk about it, for fear of sounding conspiracy-minded: there is a substantial chance that the result of the 2004 presidential election will be suspect.

When I say that the result will be suspect, I don't mean that the election will, in fact, have been stolen. (We may never know.) I mean that there will be sufficient uncertainty about the honesty of the vote count that much of the world and many Americans will have serious doubts.

How might the election result be suspect? Well, to take only one of several possibilities, suppose that Florida - where recent polls give John Kerry the lead - once again swings the election to George Bush.

Much of Florida's vote will be counted by electronic voting machines with no paper trails. Independent computer scientists who have examined some of these machines' programming code are appalled at the security flaws. So there will be reasonable doubts about whether Florida's votes were properly counted, and no paper ballots to recount. The public will have to take the result on faith.

Yet the behavior of Gov. Jeb Bush's officials with regard to other election-related matters offers no justification for such faith. First there was the affair of the felon list. Florida law denies the vote to convicted felons. But in 2000 many innocent people, a great number of them black, couldn't vote because they were erroneously put on a list of felons; these wrongful exclusions may have put Governor Bush's brother in the White House.

This year, Florida again drew up a felon list, and tried to keep it secret. When a judge forced the list's release, it turned out that it once again wrongly disenfranchised many people - again, largely African-American - while including almost no Hispanics.

Yesterday, my colleague Bob Herbert reported on another highly suspicious Florida initiative: state police officers have gone into the homes of elderly African-American voters - including participants in get-out-the-vote operations - and interrogated them as part of what the state says is a fraud investigation. But the state has provided little information about the investigation, and, as Mr. Herbert says, this looks remarkably like an attempt to intimidate voters.

Given this pattern, there will be skepticism if Florida's paperless voting machines give President Bush an upset, uncheckable victory.

Congress should have acted long ago to place the coming election above suspicion by requiring a paper trail for votes. But legislation was bottled up in committee, and it may be too late to change the hardware. Yet it is crucial that this election be credible. What can be done?

There is still time for officials to provide enhanced security, assuring the public that nobody can tamper with voting machines before or during the election; to hire independent security consultants to perform random tests before and during Election Day; and to provide paper ballots to every voter who requests one.

Voters, too, can do their bit. Recently the Florida Republican Party sent out a brochure urging supporters to use absentee ballots to make sure their votes are counted. The party claims that was a mistake - but it was, in fact, good advice. Voters should use paper ballots where they are available, and if this means voting absentee, so be it. (Election officials will be furious about the increased workload, but they have brought this on themselves.)

Finally, some voting activists have urged a last-minute push for independent exit polling, parallel to but independent of polling by media groups (whose combined operation suffered a meltdown during the upset Republican electoral triumph in 2002). This sounds like a very good idea.

Intensive exit polling would do triple duty. It would serve as a deterrent to anyone contemplating election fraud. If all went well, it would help validate the results and silence skeptics. And it would give an early warning if there was election tampering - perhaps early enough to seek redress.

It's horrifying to think that the credibility of our democracy - a democracy bought through the courage and sacrifice of many brave men and women - is now in danger. It's so horrifying that many prefer not to think about it. But closing our eyes won't make the threat go away. On the contrary, denial will only increase the chances of a disastrously suspect election

Colonoscopies Overdone, U.S. Study Suggests
Mon Aug 16, 2004 06:25 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Doctors may be overdoing it a bit on colonoscopies, a procedure to screen for colon cancer using a tiny camera, even though they can save lives, researchers reported on Monday

Patients who had a low-risk polyp removed in a first colonoscopy do not need to have repeat colonoscopies as often as many doctors are prescribing them, the researchers report in this week's issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

"We believe colonoscopy can be a life-saving procedure, but it shouldn't be done more often than necessary," said Dr. Pauline Mysliwiec, an assistant professor of gastroenterology at the University of California Davis.

"When it's used inappropriately, it strains health care resources and puts patients at unnecessary risk."

Colonoscopies involve threading a tiny camera through the rectum into the colon and are the most accurate way to screen for colon cancer. People over 50 are advised to undergo the procedure every 10 years.

The American Cancer Society estimates that 147,000 Americans will be diagnosed with colorectal cancer this year and 57,000 will die from the disease.

Mysliwiec and colleagues at the National Cancer Institute surveyed gastroenterologists and general surgeons about their colonoscopy recommendations in 1999 and 2000.

Medical guidelines on how often patients should have a followup colonoscopy do not call for surveillance after removal of a hyperplastic polyp, a benign growth not believed to become cancerous.

People with such growths should only have the recommended colonoscopy every 10 years after age 50.

Yet they found that 24 percent of the gastroenterologists and 54 percent of the general surgeons surveyed recommended surveillance colonoscopy every three to five years for a small, hyperplastic polyp.

"Overuse of colonoscopy taxes the health care system and may compromise the quality of care," the researchers wrote.

"Long waiting times of several months are already occurring in some parts of the country and could mean reduced access for symptomatic patients and those with limited means."

A colonoscopy costs between $1,500 to $1,700 in the United States.

In a second report, the American Society of Clinical Oncology issued new recommendations saying patients who have been successfully operated on for stage II colon cancer do not need any chemotherapy.

Writing in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, they said patients who get chemotherapy after surgery have only about a 4 percent to 5 percent greater chance of survival five years after surgery, compared with patients who had surgery alone.

"It is critical for each patient to weigh the risk of therapy and any potential benefit," said Dr. Al Benson, director of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center's Clinical Investigations Program at Northwestern University.

Not Quite Ready for Prime-Time?

Microsoft Pushes Back Automatic Delivery of SP2
By Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft Watch
August 16, 2004

Monday, August 16, was set to be D-day for the automatic delivery of Microsoft's Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2).

But at the last minute, the Redmond software vendor decided to push back by at least nine days the Windows Update/Automatic Update launch date for its collection of security fixes and features. Microsoft cited customer demand as the reason for the delay. A number of corporate customers are not ready to deploy SP2 and need to use Microsoft's recently introduced toolkit for temporarily blocking SP2 delivery until they can adequately test the release with their custom and third-party software.

Estate Tax Repeal? No Stick = No Carrot?

NEW CBO STUDY FINDS THAT ESTATE TAX REPEAL
WOULD SUBSTANTIALLY REDUCE CHARITABLE GIVING
by David Kamin

A new Congressional Budget Office study on the effect of the estate tax on charitable giving finds that elimination of the estate tax would cause charitable contributions to fall by large amounts.[1] CBO estimates that if estate-tax repeal had been in effect in 2000, charitable donations would have been reduced by $13 billion to $25 billion that year.[2] The amount by which CBO finds that charitable donations would fall exceeds the total amount of corporate charitable donations in the United States, which equaled $11 billion in 2000. The amount by which charitable donations would shrink also approaches the total amount that foundations contribute for charitable causes each year.

Moreover, with the growth in wealth over time and the coming increases in the size of the elderly population — and, subsequently, in the number of people who die — the loss in charitable donations that would result from repeal of the estate tax would be even larger in the future.

As the CBO report explains, the estate tax leads affluent individuals to donate more than they otherwise would, since estate tax liability is reduced through donations made both during life and at death. CBO divides the effect of the estate tax on charitable giving between two types of donations:

* Charitable contributions made during life. CBO finds that, as of 2000, repeal of the estate tax would have reduced charitable contributions made during life by between 6 percent and 11 percent. While a 6 percent to 11 percent reduction may not sound large, substantial amounts of donations are involved. CBO reports that charitable contributions from individuals totaled $196 billion in 2000. A reduction of 6 percent to 11 percent would shrink charitable contributions by approximately $11 billion to $21 billion.

* Bequests at death. CBO reports that estate tax repeal would have an even larger effect, in percentage terms, on bequests. Repeal of the estate tax in 2000 would have led to a reduction in charitable bequests of 16 percent to 28 percent, CBO estimates.

Although the percentage reduction in bequests is larger than the percentage reduction in charitable contributions made during life, smaller dollar amounts are involved. In 2000, there were $16 billion in charitable bequests (as compared to $196 billion in charitable contributions made during life).[3] A reduction in bequests of 16 percent to 28 percent would amount to a loss in charitable donations through bequests of about $3 billion to $4 billion.[4]

The total reduction in charitable giving due to estate tax repeal — from both charitable contributions made during life and bequests — would have equaled about $13 billion to $25 billion in 2000, the study concluded. This is a substantial drop. As noted above, the decrease in contributions from repeal of the estate tax would exceed total corporate giving in the United States. According to the American Association of Fundraising Counsel’s Trust for Philanthropy, total corporate contributions to charitable services equaled approximately $11 billion in 2000.

The drop in contributions that CBO projects also would approach the total amount of giving by foundations. Total foundation giving equaled $25 billion in 2000.[5]

As these CBO findings document, the estate tax acts as a powerful incentive in encouraging affluent Americans to donate more to charity than they otherwise would. The estate tax makes charitable giving considerably less expensive than it otherwise would be.

An example may help illustrate this concept. If the assets in an estate above a certain level are subject to a 55 percent estate-tax rate, a charitable bequest of $100 reduces the tax bill that the estate must pay by $55, since bequests are exempt from taxation. The charitable bequest of $100 thus costs the estate only $45. Without the estate tax, however, a charitable bequest of $100 would reduce bequests to other beneficiaries of an estate by the full $100, as there would be no tax saving from the contribution. In this way, the estate tax makes charitable bequests much less expensive and encourages wealthy individuals to donate more.

The issuance of the CBO study comes at a time when the federal estate tax faces an uncertain future. The 2001 tax-cut legislation provided for the gradual phase-down of the estate tax, and its elimination in 2010. Prior to passage of the 2001 tax law, the exemption from the estate tax was scheduled to increase gradually from $675,000 for an individual in 2001 ($1.35 million for a married couple) to $1 million by 2006 ($2 million for a couple). The top estate tax rate stood at 55 percent. Under the 2001 law, the estate-tax exemption level will increase by considerably larger amounts through 2009, and the top tax rate is being reduced. In 2009, the year before repeal of the estate tax, the exemption will be $3.5 million ($7 million for a married couple), and the top estate-tax rate will be 45 percent. The estate tax will then be eliminated in 2010.

The repeal of the estate tax currently is scheduled to last only one year and to expire after 2010, along with all of the other tax cuts included in the 2001 tax-reduction legislation. After 2010, the estate tax is slated to revert to prior law (i.e., to the law as it stood before enactment of the 2001 legislation), with a $1 million individual exemption ($2 million for a married couple) and a top tax rate of 55 percent.

Yet few observers expect this to occur. The 2001 tax cut was made temporary not for reasons of policy, but as a budget gimmick to hold down the official cost of the 2001 tax-cut package. In its current budget, the Administration proposes making permanent the 2001 tax cut, including repeal of the estate tax. Many in Congress also favor permanent elimination of the estate tax. The likely alternative is to reform the estate tax rather than to repeal it — for instance, by making permanent the estate-tax policy that will be in place in 2009, with an exemption of $3.5 million for individuals and $7 million for couples and a top rate of 45 percent.

The new CBO study finds that a reformed estate tax would still serve as an important tool in encouraging charitable giving. In the study, CBO analyzed the effect on charitable giving of raising the estate-tax exemption. CBO found that in 2000, raising the estate-tax exemption to either $2 million or $3.5 million (with the exemption being double these amounts for a married couple) would have reduced total charitable giving by about $1 billion to $6 billion. This is a modest fraction of the loss of $13 billion to $25 billion in charitable donations that CBO estimates will occur if the estate tax is eliminated.

What America is Saying...About Wal-Mart

American Progress Org Report
August 9, 2004

On June 22, U.S. District Judge Martin J. Jenkins' ruled to allow a sex-discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. proceed to trial as a class action suit, which may escalate into the largest private employer civil rights case in American history. The case has reignited debate about Wal-Mart's employment and labor practices. The issues being discussed go beyond criticism of pay disparity between men and women – they include disapproval of Wal-Mart's discriminatory hiring practices, low wages, and poor benefits. Here is a sample of what America is saying about Wal-Mart.

Muncie, Ind. – The Star Press
August 5, 2004 – Letter to the editor

"Communities across the nation are saying "no" to Wal-Mart. Here are some facts to consider. Wal-Mart drives out businesses owned and operated by your neighbors, while paying its employees near minimum wage with only token benefits. It is common for some of these workers to further drain the community via welfare, free school lunches, etc.

San Gabriel, Calif. – San Gabriel Valley Tribune
July 13, 2004 – Letter to the editor – link unavailable

"According to this report [by the U.S. House of Representatives Democratic staff of the Committee on Education and the Workplace], the average hourly wage of Wal-Mart employees is $8.23, and only 41-46 percent of these workers get any health coverage from Wal-Mart.

"Those workers that do get health benefits still end up bearing 42 percent of health- care costs themselves [the national average for large-firm employees is 16 percent.] The report also details other labor abuses by Wal-Mart such as forcing employees to work overtime with no compensation and firing workers who try to organize.

Rock Hill, S.C. – The Herald
July 13, 2004 – Editorial – link unavailable

"Wal-Mart officials say much of the opposition stems from unfair and inaccurate criticism. Opponents, however, point to the well-documented results of Wal-Mart's entry into some communities. Most notably, they complain that Wal-Mart drives smaller, local retailers out of business and that the giant retailer doesn't invest in the community like local business owners do.

'The foremost consideration in favor of giving Wal-Mart the green light would be the local tax base. Local governments can't rely on residential taxpayers alone to support a thriving community. They need commercial development - businesses such as Wal-Mart - to support schools and other local needs without greatly increasing the demand on services.

"We hope local residents will look carefully at both sides of this proposal before jumping to conclusions."

Buffalo, N.Y. – Speakupwny.com
July 22, 2004 – Letter to the editor

'Wal-Mart refuses to be denied and seems over time to "win over" municipal government agencies that reach office and favor their predator business policies that adversely impact the socio-economic status of a community.

"Wal-Mart, good neighbor – NOT!"

New York, N.Y. – New York Times
July 25, 2004 – Editorial

"This could be the central battle of the 21st century: Earth people versus the
Wal-Martians.

"By 2000, measures of mere size – bigger than General Motors! richer than Switzerland! – no longer told the whole story. It's the velocity of growth that you need to measure now: two new stores opening and $1 billion worth of U.S. real estate bought up every week; almost 600,000 American employees churned through in a year (that's a 44% turnover rate).


"Some stores encourage their employees to apply for food stamps and welfare; many take second jobs. Critics point out that Wal-Mart has consumed $1 billion in public subsidies, but that doesn't count the expenditures required to keep its associates alive.

"Wal-Mart is facing class-action suits for sex discrimination and nonpayment for overtime work (meaning no payment at all), as well as accusations that employees have been locked in stores overnight, unable to get help even in medical emergencies.

"These are the kind of conditions we associate with third-world sweatshops, and in fact, Wal-Mart fails at least five out of ten criteria set by Worker Rights Consortium, which monitors universities' sources of logoed apparel – making it the worlds largest sweatshop.

"Earth to Wal-mars, or wherever you come from: Live with us or go back to the mother ship."

New York, N.Y. - The New York Times
August 1, 2004 - Letter to the editor

"While Wal-Mart proudly purports to exemplify the entrepreneurial spirit that made this country great, it engages in the wholesale exploitation of its work force; the 44 percent turnover rate…speaks for itself.

"The much-ballyhooed business values of this megacompany are not tempered by human values, like fairness and justice, nor by the dignity of a living wage.

"Now faced with class-action suits for sex discrimination and nonpayment for overtime work, management may be contemplating a more employee-friendly workplace. Consumers and investors can further encourage this change of heart by leveraging buying power and not doing business at stores that don't respect the rights of workers, supporting instead companies that practice sound labor and environmental practices."

Kansas City, Kan. – The Kansas City Star
August 4, 2004 – Letters to the editor – link unavailable

"My family has boycotted Wal-Mart for two generations. My mother started her boycott after she looked at Wal-Mart for her investment club. I started my boycott after I heard about their employment practices. Timemagazine recently reported on the Wal-Mart discrimination lawsuit (over) paying women considerably less than male employees. As a health care provider, I am concerned about the employees of Wal-Mart who cannot afford their health insurance because of low wages and purposely high premiums. Uninsured employees utilize the county- and state-funded medical and mental health care in any community that has a Wal-Mart, draining local resources.

Las Vegas, Nev. – Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 4, 2004 – Letter to the editor

"His [syndicated columnist Thomas Sowell] July 25 column clearly betrays how misinformed he is about the general status of working women in this country, and the status of female employees at Wal-Mart in particular.

"First, someone should inform Mr. Sowell that in 2004 women are not only interested in doing work traditionally done by men, we are actually doing work traditionally done by men. The women in the class-action suit against Wal-Mart want to get paid the same as their male counterparts for the work that women already do at Wal-mart.

"Richard Drogen, a professor emeritus of statistics at the University of California, Hayward found that full-time female Wal-Mart employees make $1,150 less per year than men in similar jobs, a 6.2 percent gap. Women store managers make an average of $89,280 a year, $16,400 less than men.

"Second, someone should explain to Mr. Sowell that 65 percent of Wal-Mart staff are women, yet they earn an average of 37 cents less than men. Wal-Mart is, in fact, hiring women instead of men to keep costs down. How do you think Wal-Mart keeps its prices so low?

"In my voting district, nearly 25 percent of all households are headed by single women with children. These women need to put bread on the table; they need to save for their children's college tuition. I imagine many women who have taken part in the class-action lawsuit against Wal-Mart are similar to the women in my voting district. These women are not selfish money-grubbers, as Mr. Sowell implied. They simply want compensation commiserate with what their male counterparts, and their male counterparts' families, receive."

San Francisco, Calif. – The San Francisco Chronicle
August 4, 2004 – Letter to the editor

"A recent study by UC Berkeley's Institute for Industrial Relations concluded that Wal-Mart underpays its employees so much, the taxpayers must take up the slack. California taxpayers pay an average of $1,952 per Wal-Mart worker. The average public-assistance cost per worker at other large retailers with at least 1,000 employees is $1,401. The difference between the Big Retailer and the little retailer is that the Big Guy makes billions in profits, and the little guy struggles just to keep his business from dying when a Wal-Mart-like mega- store moves into town.

"If we taxpayers are going to pay welfare payments to the largest corporations on the planet, we may as well throw in the towel on promoting capitalism as a way to self-reliance."

Akron, Ohio – Akron Beacon Journal
August 6, 2004 – Letter to the editor

"If the residents of Brimfield and surrounding communities object to a new Wal-Mart, I say, good. But don't just be opposed to it quietly -- speak out. Call or write Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. Tell your local council and state representatives.

"A Wal-Mart Supercenter, which is the size of 17 football fields, requires 1.2 million square feet of pavement. That has the potential to cause huge drainage problems. In fact, this May, Wal-Mart agreed to pay a settlement of $3.1 million for violating the Clean Water Act, the result of poor construction of 24 stores in nine states.

"As for the promise of bringing new jobs and tax revenue, I suggest you call council members in Streetsboro, where it's not clear whether Wal-Mart has paid its share of taxes or abided by the abatement agreement it was granted when it came to town years ago."
<------------------------------------->
Note: Wal-Mart has two things going for it: a) it offers a lot of stuff under one roof, and 2) it sells many products for less than it's competitors. What it has against it are: a) a huge parking lot and store that takes an inordinate amount of time to navigate; 2) usually a long line at checkouts; 3) employees who have no stake or interest in, or respect for the company or management; 4) a very high rate of employee churn; 5) a terrible record of bullying behavior, with regulators, employees, unions, vendors, government agencies, and women; 6) an undeniable record of sucking the economic life out of long established rural, suburban, and city centers; 7) a race-to-the-bottom business plan where the main objective is to enter, engulf, enlarge, and extract from sellers and buyers alike; 8) a corporate structure with an overwhelming preference for "market" concerns combined with an almost palatable disdain for it's customers and employees; and 9) a massive appetite for retail sales that seeks to dominate every landscape by it's clout, and gives almost no consideration whatever to its footprint on communities, or accepts any social responsibility for physical plant beautification, environmental degradation of land, water, or air near its stores.

Sam Walton sold stuff to the middle 60% of American society, knowing that as long as the stuff was new, and cheaper than they could find elsewhere, they would buy from him. Nothing else really mattered to him...or to those who are choosing to send their money to Arkansas rather than keep it in their hometown. Small businesses earn and spend their money locally including any profit they make from their work which helps support the local community. Wal-Mart stores sole purpose is to feed the Walton Empire, and woe to any store manager who fails to meet the corporate financial expectations.

President Bush: Flip-Flopper-In-Chief

American Progress Report
July 7, 2004

From the beginning, George W. Bush has made his own credibility a central issue. On 10/11/00, then-Gov. Bush said: "I think credibility is important.It is going to be important for the president to be credible with Congress, important for the president to be credible with foreign nations." But President Bush's serial flip-flopping raises serious questions about whether Congress and foreign leaders can rely on what he says.

1. Social Security Surplus

BUSH PLEDGES NOT TO TOUCH SOCIAL SECURITY SURPLUS... "We're going to keep the promise of Social Security and keep the government from raiding the Social Security surplus." [President Bush, 3/3/01]

...BUSH SPENDS SOCIAL SECURITY SURPLUS The New York Times reported that "the president's new budget uses Social Security surpluses to pay for other programs every year through 2013, ultimately diverting more than $1.4 trillion in Social Security funds to other purposes." [The New York Times, 2/6/02]

2. Patient's Right to Sue

GOVERNOR BUSH VETOES PATIENTS' RIGHT TO SUE... "Despite his campaign rhetoric in favor of a patients' bill of rights, Bush fought such a bill tooth and nail as Texas governor, vetoing a bill coauthored by Republican state Rep. John Smithee in 1995. He... constantly opposed a patient's right to sue an HMO over coverage denied that resulted in adverse health effects." [Salon, 2/7/01]

...CANDIDATE BUSH PRAISES TEXAS PATIENTS' RIGHT TO SUE... "We're one of the first states that said you can sue an HMO for denying you proper coverage... It's time for our nation to come together and do what's right for the people. And I think this is right for the people. You know, I support a national patients' bill of rights, Mr. Vice President. And I want all people covered. I don't want the law to supersede good law like we've got in Texas." [Governor Bush, 10/17/00]

...PRESIDENT BUSH'S ADMINISTRATION ARGUES AGAINST RIGHT TO SUE "To let two Texas consumers, Juan Davila and Ruby R. Calad, sue their managed-care companies for wrongful denials of medical benefits ‘would be to completely undermine' federal law regulating employee benefits, Assistant Solicitor General James A. Feldman said at oral argument March 23. Moreover, the administration's brief attacked the policy rationale for Texas's law, which is similar to statutes on the books in nine other states." [Washington Post, 4/5/04]

3. Tobacco Buyout

BUSH SUPPORTS CURRENT TOBACCO FARMERS' QUOTA SYSTEM... "They've got the quota system in place -- the allotment system -- and I don't think that needs to be changed." [President Bush, 5/04]

...BUSH ADMINISTRATION WILL SUPPORT FEDERAL BUYOUT OF TOBACCO QUOTAS "The administration is open to a buyout." [White House spokeswoman Jeanie Mamo, 6/18/04]

4. North Korea

BUSH WILL NOT OFFER NUCLEAR NORTH KOREA INCENTIVES TO DISARM... "We developed a bold approach under which, if the North addressed our long-standing concerns, the United States was prepared to take important steps that would have significantly improved the lives of the North Korean people. Now that North Korea's covert nuclear weapons program has come to light, we are unable to pursue this approach." [President's Statement, 11/15/02]

...BUSH ADMINISTRATION OFFERS NORTH KOREA INCENTIVES TO DISARM"Well, we will work to take steps to ease their political and economic isolation. So there would be -- what you would see would be some provisional or temporary proposals that would only lead to lasting benefit after North Korea dismantles its nuclear programs. So there would be some provisional or temporary efforts of that nature." [White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, 6/23/04]

5. Abortion

BUSH SUPPORTS A WOMAN'S RIGHT TO CHOOSE... "Bush said he...favors leaving up to a woman and her doctor the abortion question." [The Nation, 6/15/00, quoting the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, 5/78]

...BUSH OPPOSES A WOMAN'S RIGHT TO CHOOSE "I am pro-life." [Governor Bush, 10/3/00]

6. OPEC

BUSH PROMISES TO FORCE OPEC TO LOWER PRICES... "What I think the president ought to do [when gas prices spike] is he ought to get on the phone with the OPEC cartel and say we expect you to open your spigots...And the president of the United States must jawbone OPEC members to lower the price." [President Bush, 1/26/00]

...BUSH REFUSES TO LOBBY OPEC LEADERS With gas prices soaring in the United States at the beginning of 2004, the Miami Herald reported the president refused to "personally lobby oil cartel leaders to change their minds." [Miami Herald, 4/1/04]

7. Iraq Funding

BUSH SPOKESMAN DENIES NEED FOR ADDITIONAL FUNDS FOR THE REST OF 2004... "We do not anticipate requesting supplemental funding for '04" [White House Budget Director Joshua Bolton, 2/2/04]

...BUSH REQUESTS ADDITIONAL FUNDS FOR IRAQ FOR 2004 "I am requesting that Congress establish a $25 billion contingency reserve fund for the coming fiscal year to meet all commitments to our troops." [President Bush, Statement by President, 5/5/04]

8. Condoleeza Rice Testimony

BUSH SPOKESMAN SAYS RICE WON'T TESTIFY AS 'A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE'... "Again, this is not her personal preference; this goes back to a matter of principle. There is a separation of powers issue involved here. Historically, White House staffers do not testify before legislative bodies. So it's a matter of principle, not a matter of preference." [White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, 3/9/04]

...BUSH ORDERS RICE TO TESTIFY: "Today I have informed the Commission on Terrorist Attacks Against the United States that my National Security Advisor, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, will provide public testimony." [President Bush, 3/30/04]

9. Science

BUSH PLEDGES TO ISSUE REGULATIONS BASED ON SCIENCE..."I think we ought to have high standards set by agencies that rely upon science, not by what may feel good or what sounds good." [then-Governor George W. Bush, 1/15/00]

...BUSH ADMINISTRATION REGULATIONS IGNORE SCIENCE "60 leading scientists—including Nobel laureates, leading medical experts, former federal agency directors and university chairs and presidents—issued a statement calling for regulatory and legislative action to restore scientific integrity to federal policymaking. According to the scientists, the Bush administration has, among other abuses, suppressed and distorted scientific analysis from federal agencies, and taken actions that have undermined the quality of scientific advisory panels." [Union of Concerned Scientists, 2/18/04]

10. Ahmed Chalabi

BUSH INVITES CHALABI TO STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS...President Bush also met with Chalabi during his brief trip to Iraq last Thanksgiving [White House Documents 1/20/04, 11/27/03]

...BUSH MILITARY ASSISTS IN RAID OF CHALABI'S HOUSE "U.S. soldiers raided the home of America's one-time ally Ahmad Chalabi on Thursday and seized documents and computers." [Washington Post, 5/20/04]

11. Department of Homeland Security

BUSH OPPOSES THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY..."So, creating a Cabinet office doesn't solve the problem. You still will have agencies within the federal government that have to be coordinated. So the answer is that creating a Cabinet post doesn't solve anything." [White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, 3/19/02]

...BUSH SUPPORTS THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY "So tonight, I ask the Congress to join me in creating a single, permanent department with an overriding and urgent mission: securing the homeland of America and protecting the American people." [President Bush, Address to the Nation, 6/6/02]

12. Weapons of Mass Destruction

BUSH SAYS WE FOUND THE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION..."We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories...for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them." [President Bush, Interview in Poland, 5/29/03]

...BUSH SAYS WE HAVEN'T FOUND WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION "David Kay has found the capacity to produce weapons.And when David Kay goes in and says we haven't found stockpiles yet, and there's theories as to where the weapons went. They could have been destroyed during the war. Saddam and his henchmen could have destroyed them as we entered into Iraq. They could be hidden. They could have been transported to another country, and we'll find out." [President Bush, Meet the Press, 2/7/04]

13. Free Trade

BUSH SUPPORTS FREE TRADE... "I believe strongly that if we promote trade, and when we promote trade, it will help workers on both sides of this issue." [President Bush in Peru, 3/23/02]

...BUSH SUPPORTS RESTRICTIONS ON TRADE "In a decision largely driven by his political advisers, President Bush set aside his free-trade principles last year and imposed heavy tariffs on imported steel to help out struggling mills in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, two states crucial for his reelection." [Washington Post, 9/19/03]

14. Osama Bin Laden

BUSH WANTS OSAMA DEAD OR ALIVE... "I want justice. And there's an old poster out West, I recall, that says, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive.'" [President Bush, on Osama Bin Laden, 09/17/01]

...BUSH DOESN'T CARE ABOUT OSAMA "I don't know where he is.You know, I just don't spend that much time on him... I truly am not that concerned about him."[President Bush, Press Conference, 3/13/02]

15. The Environment

BUSH SUPPORTS MANDATORY CAPS ON CARBON DIOXIDE... "[If elected], Governor Bush will work to...establish mandatory reduction targets for emissions of four main pollutants: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and carbon dioxide." [Bush Environmental Plan, 9/29/00]

...BUSH OPPOSES MANDATORY CAPS ON CARBON DIOXIDE "I do not believe, however, that the government should impose on power plants mandatory emissions reductions for carbon dioxide, which is not a 'pollutant' under the Clean Air Act." [President Bush, Letter to Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), 3/13/03]

16. WMD Commission

BUSH RESISTS AN OUTSIDE INVESTIGATION ON WMD INTELLIGENCE FAILURE... "The White House immediately turned aside the calls from Kay and many Democrats for an immediate outside investigation, seeking to head off any new wide-ranging election-year inquiry that might go beyond reports already being assembled by congressional committees and the Central Intelligence Agency." [NY Times, 1/29/04]

...BUSH SUPPORTS AN OUTSIDE INVESTIGATION ON WMD INTELLIGENCE FAILURE "Today, by executive order, I am creating an independent commission, chaired by Governor and former Senator Chuck Robb, Judge Laurence Silberman, to look at American intelligence capabilities, especially our intelligence about weapons of mass destruction." [President Bush, 2/6/04]

17. Creation of the 9/11 Commission

BUSH OPPOSES CREATION OF INDEPENDENT 9/11 COMMISSION... "President Bush took a few minutes during his trip to Europe Thursday to voice his opposition to establishing a special commission to probe how the government dealt with terror warnings before Sept. 11." [CBS News, 5/23/02]

...BUSH SUPPORTS CREATION OF INDEPENDENT 9/11 COMMISSION "President Bush said today he now supports establishing an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks." [ABC News, 09/20/02]

18. Time Extension for 9/11 Commission

BUSH OPPOSES TIME EXTENSION FOR 9/11 COMMISSION... "President Bush and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) have decided to oppose granting more time to an independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks." [Washington Post, 1/19/04]

...BUSH SUPPORTS TIME EXTENSION FOR 9/11 COMMISSION "The White House announced Wednesday its support for a request from the commission investigating the September 11, 2001 attacks for more time to complete its work." [CNN, 2/4/04]

19. One Hour Limit for 9/11 Commission Testimony

BUSH LIMITS TESTIMONY IN FRONT OF 9/11 COMMISSION TO ONE HOUR... "President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have placed strict limits on the private interviews they will grant to the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, saying that they will meet only with the panel's top two officials and that Mr. Bush will submit to only a single hour of questioning, commission members said Wednesday." [NY Times, 2/26/04]

...BUSH SETS NO TIMELIMIT FOR TESTIMONY "The president's going to answer all of the questions they want to raise. Nobody's watching the clock." [White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 3/10/04]

20. Gay Marriage

BUSH SAYS GAY MARRIAGE IS A STATE ISSUE... "The state can do what they want to do. Don't try to trap me in this state's issue like you're trying to get me into." [Gov. George W. Bush on Gay Marriage, Larry King Live, 2/15/00]

...BUSH SUPPORTS CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT BANNING GAY MARRIAGE "Today I call upon the Congress to promptly pass, and to send to the states for ratification, an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of man and woman as husband and wife." [President Bush, 2/24/04]

21. Nation Building

BUSH OPPOSES NATION BUILDING... "If we don't stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road." [Gov. George W. Bush, 10/3/00]

...BUSH SUPPORTS NATION BUILDING "We will be changing the regime of Iraq, for the good of the Iraqi people." [President Bush, 3/6/03]

22. Saddam/al Qaeda Link

BUSH SAYS IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEEN AL QAEDA AND SADDAM... "You can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror." [President Bush, 9/25/02]

...BUSH SAYS SADDAM HAD NO ROLE IN AL QAEDA PLOT "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in Sept. 11." [President Bush, 9/17/03]

23. U.N. Resolution

BUSH VOWS TO HAVE A UN VOTE NO MATTER WHAT... "No matter what the whip count is, we're calling for the vote. We want to see people stand up and say what their opinion is about Saddam Hussein and the utility of the United Nations Security Council. And so, you bet. It's time for people to show their cards, to let the world know where they stand when it comes to Saddam." [President Bush 3/6/03]

...BUSH WITHDRAWS REQUEST FOR VOTE "At a National Security Council meeting convened at the White House at 8:55 a.m., Bush finalized the decision to withdraw the resolution from consideration and prepared to deliver an address to the nation that had already been written." [Washington Post, 3/18/03]

24. Involvement in the Palestinian Conflict

BUSH OPPOSES SUMMITS... "Well, we've tried summits in the past, as you may remember. It wasn't all that long ago where a summit was called and nothing happened, and as a result we had significant intifada in the area." [President Bush, 04/05/02]

...BUSH SUPPORTS SUMMITS "If a meeting advances progress toward two states living side by side in peace, I will strongly consider such a meeting. I'm committed to working toward peace in the Middle East." [President Bush, 5/23/03]

25. Campaign Finance

BUSH OPPOSES MCCAIN-FEINGOLD... "George W. Bush opposes McCain-Feingold...as an infringement on free expression." [Washington Post, 3/28/2000]

...BUSH SIGNS MCCAIN-FEINGOLD INTO LAW "[T]his bill improves the current system of financing for Federal campaigns, and therefore I have signed it into law." [President Bush, at the McCain-Feingold signing ceremony, 03/27/02]

Group to Propose New High-Speed Wireless Format
Thu Aug 12, 2004 12:46 PM ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A group of technology companies including Texas Instruments Inc. (TXN.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , STMicroelectronics (STM.PA: Quote, Profile, Research) and Broadcom Corp. (BRCM.O: Quote, Profile, Research) , on Thursday said they will propose a new wireless networking standard up to 10 times the speed of the current generation.

The group says they are submitting a plan for a new standard for a popular short range wireless networking technology known as Wi-Fi -- which is used in airports, hotels and coffee shops to access the Web without wires.

The group, calling itself "WWiSE," said their version of an 802.11n standard would be compatible with the technology currently in use, known by various code names such as 802.11b and 802.11g. Their technology could operate at speeds up to 540 megabits per second.

The group said they planned to submit their proposal to the task force at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers charged with developing an 802.11n standard.

The group's proposed version of the standard would peak at a speed of 540 Mbps, requiring using a larger communications channel for the signal than most jurisdictions allow. Using the more standard channel size, their 802.11n proposal would peak at 135 Mbps.

They also said they would license their patents necessary to implement their version of 802.11n on a royalty-free basis.

Other companies taking part in the WWiSE group are Airgo Networks, Bermai, and Conexant Systems Inc. (CNXT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) .

Congressional Budget Office Report:
Bush Tax Cuts Tilted to Rich
Fri Aug 13, 2004 08:30 PM ET
By Vicki Allen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One-third of President Bush's tax cuts have gone to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, shifting more burden to middle-income taxpayers, congressional analysts said on Friday.

The report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and calculations by congressional Democrats based on the CBO findings fueled the debate over the cuts between Bush and his Democratic challenger in November, Sen. John Kerry.

Using the CBO's figures, Democrats in Congress said the top 1 percent, with incomes averaging $1.2 million per year, will receive an average tax cut of $78,460 this year, and have seen their share of the total tax burden fall roughly 2 percentage points to 20.1 percent.

In contrast, the report showed that households in the middle 20 percent, with incomes averaging $57,000 per year, will receive an average cut of $1,090 while their share of the tax burden would move to 10.5 percent from 10.4 percent.

The CBO report said about two-thirds of the benefits from the cuts went to households in the top 20 percent, with an average income of $203,740.

People with earnings in the lowest 20 percent, which averaged $16,620, saw their effective tax rate fall to 5.2 percent from 6.7 percent, the CBO said. But Democrats said that meant their average tax cut was only $250.

Democrats said the CBO calculations, which they requested, confirm the view of independent tax analysts that the tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 have heavily favored the wealthiest taxpayers.

"It is bad enough that George Bush has no plan to help middle-class families squeezed by declining wages and skyrocketing costs for healthcare, energy and college tuition," Kerry said in a statement.

"Now we find that he is deliberately stacking the deck against them. This is the straw that will break the back of middle-class families."

But Republicans said the CBO numbers showed Bush has provided tax relief for people of all income levels.

Rep. Bill Thomas of California, chairman of the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, said the report showed Bush's tax cuts "have made the tax code more progressive and taxpayers across the income spectrum will be saddled with higher tax burdens if the tax cuts are not made permanent."

Bush has said the cuts provided crucial support to the U.S. economy after the Sept. 11 attacks and the three-year decline in U.S. stocks.

But Kerry, who wants to roll back the cuts for households whose incomes top $200,000 a year, has said the cuts did little for the economy, and helped cause the federal budget to swing from a more than $100 billion surplus in 2001 to a projected deficit exceeding $400 billion this year.

Bush's Own Goal
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NY Times Op-Ed
Published: August 13, 2004

A new Bush campaign ad pushes the theme of an "ownership society," and concludes with President Bush declaring, "I understand if you own something, you have a vital stake in the future of America."

Call me naïve, but I thought all Americans have a vital stake in the nation's future, regardless of how much property they own. (Should we go back to the days when states, arguing that only men of sufficient substance could be trusted, imposed property qualifications for voting?) Even if Mr. Bush is talking only about the economic future, don't workers have as much stake as property owners in the economy's success?

But there's a political imperative behind the "ownership society" theme: the need to provide pseudopopulist cover to policies that are, in reality, highly elitist.

The Bush tax cuts have, of course, heavily favored the very, very well off. But they have also, more specifically, favored unearned income over earned income - or, if you prefer, investment returns over wages. Last year Daniel Altman pointed out in The New York Times that Mr. Bush's proposals, if fully adopted, "could eliminate almost all taxes on investment income and wealth for almost all Americans." Mr. Bush hasn't yet gotten all he wants, but he has taken a large step toward a system in which only labor income is taxed.

The political problem with a policy favoring investment returns over wages is that a vast majority of Americans derive their income primarily from wages, and that the bulk of investment income goes to a small elite. How, then, can such a policy be sold? By promising that everyone can join the elite.

Right now, the ownership of stocks and bonds is highly concentrated. Conservatives like to point out that a majority of American families now own stock, but that's a misleading statistic because most of those "investors" have only a small stake in the market. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that more than half of corporate profits ultimately accrue to the wealthiest 1 percent of taxpayers, while only about 8 percent go to the bottom 60 percent. If the "ownership society" means anything, it means spreading investment income more widely - a laudable goal, if achievable.

But does Mr. Bush have a way to get us there?

There's a section on his campaign blog about the ownership society, but it's short on specifics. Much of the space is devoted to new types of tax-sheltered savings accounts. People who have looked into plans for such accounts know, however, that they would provide more tax shelters for the wealthy, but would be irrelevant to most families, who already have access to 401(k)'s. Their ability to invest more is limited not by taxes but by the fact that they aren't earning enough to save more.

The one seemingly substantive proposal is a blast from the past: a renewed call for the partial privatization of Social Security, which would divert payroll taxes into personal accounts. Mr. Bush campaigned on that issue in 2000, but he never acted on it. And there was a reason the idea went nowhere: it didn't make sense.

Social Security is, basically, a system in which each generation pays for the previous generation's retirement. If the payroll taxes of younger workers are diverted into private accounts, there will be a gaping financial hole: who will pay benefits to older Americans, who have spent their working lives paying into the current system? Unless you have a way to fill that multitrillion-dollar hole, privatization is an empty slogan, not a real proposal.

In 2001, Mr. Bush's handpicked commission on Social Security was unable to agree on a plan to create private accounts because there was no way to make the arithmetic work. Undaunted, this year the Bush campaign once again insists that privatization will lead to a "permanently strengthened Social Security system, without changing benefits for those now in or near retirement, and without raising payroll taxes on workers." In other words, 2 - 1 = 4.

Four years ago, Mr. Bush got a free pass from the press on his Social Security "plan," either because reporters didn't understand the arithmetic, or because they assumed that after the election he would come up with a plan that actually added up. Will the same thing happen again? Let's hope not.

As Mr. Bush has said: "Fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - can't get fooled again."

IBM tells employees not to install Windows XP update
Big Blue internal memo warns users of compatibility issues with SP2
By Joris Evers, IDG News Service August 09, 2004

While developers at Microsoft Corp. may be celebrating that they finished work on Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Windows XP, IT departments around the world now face the question on whether they should update their systems, or not.

IBM Corp., for one, is holding off on installing the security-focused update for Windows XP. In a note headlined "To patch -- or not to patch" posted Friday on its corporate intranet, IBM tells its employees not to download SP2 when it becomes available because of compatibility issues. A copy of the note was obtained by IDG News Service.

"While this patch may be good news for other Microsoft Windows XP owners, IBM is directing XP users not to install SP2," the note states. With close to 400,000 desktops, IBM is a very large Microsoft customer.

"IBM's large number of Web applications will need to be tested and some modified to work correctly with SP2. Currently, some high profile, business-critical applications are also known to conflict with SP2," IBM tells its employees in the note. "When the current issues and concerns have been addressed, IBM will deploy a customized version of SP2."

An IBM spokeswoman declined to comment on the company's internal IT issues.

IBM alerted its users on the same day Microsoft started the process of delivering SP2 to end users by announcing release to manufacturing (RTM) of the service pack. The Windows XP update will be available soon through downloads, retail distribution and free CDs, as well as on new PCs. A network installation package will be available for enterprise users.

SP2 for Windows XP is more than the usual roll-up of bug fixes and updates. Microsoft has made something of a trade-off, focusing on security at the expense of compatibility. As a result, SP2 can render existing applications inoperable. Microsoft has urged developers and IT professionals to test the update.

Not only IBM is showing evidence of compatibility issues with XP SP2. Microsoft's own software is also affected. Earlier this week the software vendor released an update for Microsoft CRM (Customer Relationship Management) 1.2 because SP2 will prevent the original application from running correctly.

Because of the broad changes, analysts have compared the XP service pack to a Windows upgrade instead of a simple update. Business users typically take much longer to install a new version of Windows than a service pack because of compatibility testing.

Thomas Smith, manager of desktop engineering at a large Houston-based company, hopes to be able to equip his 5,000 desktops with a customized version of the service pack before Microsoft pushes it out on Windows Update, he said.

Many of the desktops Smith manages are scattered throughout North America and connected using common high-speed Internet connections such as DSL (digital subscriber line) or cable. While the company uses a remote management tool supplied by Altiris Inc., Smith said he relies on Windows Update for patching. If the standard Windows XP SP2 distribution is applied to his machines, it will block access to several corporate Web applications, Smith said.

Microsoft will help users in Smith's position, said Barry Goffe, a group manager in Microsoft's Windows group. The software maker plans to offer simple ways to set a unique registry key on XP desktops that will instruct the systems to skip Service Pack 2, but still download other critical updates through Windows Update and Automatic Update, Goffe said. "We want to give customers some breathing room," he said.

Nevertheless, Microsoft urges all users to install SP2 as soon as they can, Goffe said.

"This is not about fun and games. SP2 is about improving the security of our customers' infrastructure. We have spent a lot of time making sure that this delivers a lot of value to all our customers. We're urging all customers to deploy SP2 as soon as possible," he said.

Business users obviously need to test, but Microsoft can't be blamed if users are now unpleasantly surprised by SP2, said Michael Cherry, a lead analyst at Directions on Microsoft Inc., in Kirkland, Washington.

"Microsoft has been more than forthcoming about the number of changes in this service pack and making it available for testing," Cherry said. "I would say to IT departments that they want to get their testing done quickly because there are significant improvements in this service pack and I am not sure you would want to forego those."

A first beta of Windows XP SP2 was released in December, followed by Release Candidate 1 in March and a second release candidate in June. Hundreds of thousands of developers and IT professionals have already tried out the software. The service pack represents one of Microsoft's most broadly tested products to date, the company has said.

Gee...what a concept !

TV Nudeswomen to Reveal the Bare Facts
Thu Aug 12, 2004 12:21 PM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - It aims to be, literally, the naked truth.

Starting nightly from Aug. 16, Get Lucky TV will broadcast via satellite to European audiences the daily news read by a series of nubile young women who will gradually -- but tastefully -- remove their clothes on camera.

"We are quite sensitive to certain issues, one of course being death," newsreader Samantha Page told Reuters Television on Wednesday. "We try to be as respectful as we can, and what we tend to do is we leave our clothes on."

Just in case people get the wrong idea, Page pointed out that she has a degree in psychology and zoology and a black belt in karate. Fellow Naked News presenter Lily Kwan exhibited a similar candor. "I got into Naked News very accidentally. I was actually studying to become a dental hygienist. I was attending school when I soon realized that I needed something a bit more creative to cultivate my creativity," she said. She said she had no qualms about stripping in front of a television audience. "I do enjoy wearing clothes. But it is quite liberating to take your clothes off as well -- especially in public," Kwan added.

The phenomenon of nude news reading first started in Russia and spread to Canada where Naked News started in 1999. The Toronto-based firm is now hoping to emulate its North American success this side of the Atlantic.

Not Quite Half Full...

Cisco Raises Fear of Recovery's Strength
Wed Aug 11, 2004 09:14 AM ET
By Ben Klayman

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The resurgence in technology spending may be faltering, judging from cautious comments, rising inventories and a weaker-than-expected sales outlook at Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) , as well as bad news from other technology companies.

Cisco, the world's largest maker of equipment that directs Internet traffic, late Tuesday posted a record quarterly profit on strong sales, but investors fretted about Chief Executive John Chambers' comments about customer caution. Shares of Cisco fell almost 9 percent in trading on INET before the market opened on Wednesday.

Also on Tuesday, National Semiconductor Corp. (NSM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , a maker of analog semiconductors, reversed its previous outlook by forecasting that sales in its current quarter would fall on lower-than-expected demand.

Chip equipment maker Kulicke & Soffa Industries Inc. (KLIC.O: Quote, Profile, Research) warned that sales in its current quarter would fall short of its prior forecast by as much as 31 percent, citing growing customer caution.

"It was not just Cisco. National Semi preannounced weakness in handsets. We saw in the last month or two, software companies preannounced earnings shortfalls. Generally guidance from a lot of companies are more cautious into the third quarter," Bear Stearns analyst Wojtek Uzdelewicz said.

"There is a major deceleration in technology spending, although (the growth is) still healthy," he added.

Cisco on Tuesday said profits surged 41 percent and sales rose 26 percent. However, the San Jose, California-based company also said sales in the current quarter would be flat to up 2 percent from the prior quarter, below analysts' expectations.

Chambers also raised red flags for some investors with his cautious comments.

"Most of the CEOs that I talk with view the economy as growing at a modest level and are a little more cautious ... than they were a quarter ago," he said on a conference call with analysts.

Cisco also said its inventories rose 9 percent from the previous quarter, more than Wall Street had been expecting. Company officials said they were not concerned, but a rise in inventories was one of the first signs of trouble before the telecom bubble burst in 2001. Cisco took a $2.2 billion charge in 2001 to write off excess inventory.

Investors see Cisco as a benchmark for corporate and government spending because about 75 percent of its revenue comes from those customers. The rest comes from the telecom sector.

Why is this photo so ludicrous?

A Dumb Photo

Note: The extensible purpose of camoflaged clothing is to blend into the background. The extensible purpose of a business-class white shirt is to show integrity and professionalism. The extensible purpose of a turban is to show devotion. Wristwatches, especially with leather bands are an affectation of the wealthy. Put all of this together and you have Osama from a few years ago.

This fellow has the right idea !

Seen on a T-Shirt at a rally for Kerry-Edwards

"It is precisely when the great democratic nations of the West are in the process of deciding their future peacefully, through the ballot box, they become vulnerable to terror."

Mole Row Reveals U.S. Intelligence Disarray
Tue Aug 10, 2004 09:55 AM ET

By Jon Boyle

PARIS (Reuters) - The unmasking of an al Qaeda mole after a U.S. security alert points to disarray within U.S. intelligence and could mean President Bush is accused of playing politics with security, the top U.S. election issue.

Washington raised its security alert to high on August 1 and disclosed a man held in secret by Pakistan was the source of information that justified the alert.

U.S. officials next morning confirmed a media report naming the man as Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, a computer expert arrested secretly in July and used by Pakistan to track down al Qaeda militants in Britain and America.

Pakistani intelligence told Reuters that Khan was still working undercover when the U.S. security status was raised to orange and his name appeared in a U.S. newspaper.

Security analysts said the outing of the source was a major blunder that forced Britain to arrest 12 terrorism suspects in a hurry; nine are still in custody. Washington said the arrests, which included an alleged top al Qaeda figure, were a success.

Anthony Glees, director of Brunel University's Center for Intelligence and Security Studies, London, said compared to MI5, Britain's domestic spy agency, U.S. intelligence gathering was "in a state of some disarray."

"America is getting the worst of all possible worlds. On the one hand it needs to show itself alert to the security dangers and as gathering intelligence as fast as it can ... On the other hand, it is doing this against a track record of discord, disharmony and failure," he said.

David Wright-Neville, of the Monash Global Terrorism Research Unit, said that if Khan was still an active al Qaeda mole when his name was leaked, his loss was a serious blow.

"If it's true, at the very least it would suggest a breakdown in communication between the Pakistanis and the Americans," the Melbourne-based security expert said.

"At worst, it smacks of political opportunism and, if that is indeed the case, it suggests that political survival ranks more highly than generating potentially valuable information on the extent of the network."

CAPITOL QUESTIONS

A U.S. senators from both major parties have already demanded the White House explain why Khan's name was leaked to the press. Charles Schumer (Dem. NY) said the outing of Khan may have hurt the war on terror.

Security is the top issue of the U.S. presidential election, and although Democrat challenger John Kerry has stopped short of accusing Bush of playing politics with the issue, critics say Bush is vulnerable to the charge.

A British security source said that even if the raising of the US security status was not political, "they did it in a fairly clumsy way, opening themselves up to such criticism."

Claude Moniquet, head of the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center, said the United States was notoriously bad at cooperating on security, even with allies. But if politicians did sometimes use intelligence for political gain, recent maulings meant they were unlikely to go along with that now.

"They have already had to carry the can for the politicians over preparations for the war in Iraq, so I don't think they would continue to do so," the Brussels-based expert said.

POST 9/11 TRAUMA

Glees said the Khan controversy highlighted the failure of the United States to deal with the trauma of the September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. landmarks that killed almost 3,000 people.

"9/11 was a seismic catastrophe and the ripples are still being felt. It was a bit like Chernobyl (nuclear reactor explosion in 1986) and Communism -- it threw into stark relief all the problems America faces in the post-Cold War world.

"This is the election of 9/11 and the very fact that Kerry has taken up the challenge that the fight on terror really is the most important issue just shows that America is at the moment tottering.

"It is precisely when the great democratic nations of the West are in the process of deciding their future peacefully, through the ballot box, they become vulnerable to terror."

Poll: Older Americans Unhappy with Medicare Changes
Tue Aug 10, 2004 06:11 PM ET

By Joanne Kenen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Older Americans are confused and unhappy about upcoming changes in the federal Medicare health program, according to a nonpartisan survey released on Tuesday that indicates the issue could help Democrats win the November vote.

The Kaiser Family Foundation-Harvard School of Public Health found that 47 percent of the 1,223 Medicare beneficiaries surveyed had an unfavorable view of Medicare reforms like the prescription drug benefit, 26 percent viewed the reforms favorably, and 25 percent said they didn't know. The drug benefit will be implemented in 2006.

Even Republicans were closely split, with 38 percent in favor of the reforms and 36 against them.

LA Council Backs Anti-Wal-Mart Measure
Tue Aug 10, 2004 06:46 PM ET
By Gina Keating

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday gave preliminary approval to a proposed ordinance that could hamper plans by Wal-Mart Stores Inc.(WMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research) to build supercenters within city limits.

The council overwhelmingly endorsed a proposal that would require Wal-Mart and other retailers to show that their nonunion discount stores would not hurt jobs, wages or businesses in the surrounding area, as union leaders and competitors claim.

The vote comes after a nearly five-month strike by unionized grocery workers in Southern California who said the looming threat of Wal-Mart's superstores forced down wages and gutted health benefits at supermarkets. Wal-Mart did prevail in its efforts to stop an outright ban on supercenters.

Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart has prospered by locating its nonunion stores near small towns and suburbs. But plans to expand into urban U.S. markets have met resistance from lawmakers and labor activists who accuse the world's largest retailer of paying poverty-level wages and encouraging its workers to apply for welfare and state health services.

State Controller Steve Westly and other Democrat leaders had urged the Los Angeles council to pass the measure, citing a University of California study that concluded that low-wage Wal-Mart jobs cost the state $86 million a year in social services. In a letter to the council, Westly said he was concerned about "a race to the bottom" as Wal-Mart jobs displace better paying positions at retailers that are forced to cut wages to compete or are put out of business by the superstores.

Wal-Mart spokeswoman Cynthia Lin called the vote "a huge victory" for consumers and the retailer, which she said had been battling union-backed efforts by to pass an outright ban on supercenters in the city of Los Angeles. "This ordinance ... in no way restricts the sale of groceries at supercenters," she said. "In our opinion, this ordinance, in reality, is redundant."

In April, residents of the blue-collar city of Inglewood rejected a bid by Wal-Mart to locate a sprawling shopping center in the heart of their town without conducting planning studies or public hearings. The Inglewood City Council had opposed the superstore plan on the grounds that it would put local mom-and-pop stores out of business and pay lower wages to its employees.

Microsoft has a 350+ member legal department in Redmond
How Many Lawyers Work For You?

Microsoft Says Japan Battle Hurting Image
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 10, 2004

TOKYO (AP) -- The head of Microsoft Corp.'s Japan unit acknowledged Tuesday that the U.S. software giant's battle with Japanese anti-monopoly authorities over a controversial licensing clause has hurt its corporate image here.

But Michael Rawding, Microsoft Japan's president and chief executive, said the company will continue to oppose a Fair Trade Commission ruling last month ordering Microsoft to retroactively remove the clause from its licensing agreements.

The clause prevents companies from suing Microsoft over patent and copyright infringement if they suspect their own software technology has ended up in the Windows operating system. The Fair Trade Commission has said it suspects the clause helps Microsoft unlawfully infringe patents.

Spin the Payrolls
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NY Times Op-Ed
Published: August 10, 2004

When Friday's dismal job report was released, traders in the Chicago pit began chanting, "Kerry, Kerry." But apologists for President Bush's economic policies are frantically spinning the bad news. Here's a guide to their techniques.

First, they talk about recent increases in the number of jobs, not the fact that payroll employment is still far below its previous peak, and even further below anything one could call full employment. Because job growth has finally turned positive, some economists (who probably know better) claim that prosperity has returned - and some partisans have even claimed that we have the best economy in 20 years.

But job growth, by itself, says nothing about prosperity: growth can be higher in a bad year than a good year, if the bad year follows a terrible year while the good year follows another good year. I've drawn a chart of job growth for the 1930's; there was rapid nonfarm job growth (8.1 percent) in 1934, a year of mass unemployment and widespread misery - but that year was slightly less terrible than 1933.

So have we returned to prosperity? No: jobs are harder to find, by any measure, than they were at any point during Bill Clinton's second term. The job situation might have improved somewhat in the past year, but it's still not good.

Second, the apologists give numbers without context. President Bush boasts about 1.5 million new jobs over the past 11 months. Yet this was barely enough to keep up with population growth, and it's worse than any 11-month stretch during the Clinton years.

Third, they cherry-pick any good numbers they can find.

The shocking news that the economy added only 32,000 jobs in July comes from payroll data. Experts say what Alan Greenspan said in February: "Everything we've looked at suggests that it's the payroll data which are the series which you have to follow." Another measure of employment, from the household survey, fluctuates erratically; for example, it fell by 265,000 in February, a result nobody believes. Yet because July's household number was good, suddenly administration officials were telling reporters to look at that number, not the more reliable payroll data.

By the way, over the longer term all the available data tell the same story: the job situation deteriorated drastically between early 2001 and the summer of 2003, and has, at best, improved modestly since then.

Fourth, apologists try to shift the blame. Officials often claim, falsely, that the 2001 recession began under Bill Clinton, or at least that it was somehow his fault. But even if you attribute the eight-month recession that began in March 2001 to Mr. Clinton - a very dubious proposition - job loss during the recession wasn't exceptionally severe. The reason the employment picture looks so bad now is the unprecedented weakness of job growth in the subsequent recovery.

Nor is it plausible to continue attributing poor economic performance to terrorism, three years after 9/11. Bear in mind that in the 2002 Economic Report of the President, the administration's own economists predicted full recovery by 2004, with payroll employment rising to 138 million, 7 million more than the actual number.

Finally, many apologists have returned to that old standby: the claim that presidents don't control the economy. But that's not what the administration said when selling its tax policies. Last year's tax cut was officially named the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 - and administration economists provided a glowing projection of the job growth that would follow the bill's passage. That projection has, needless to say, proved to be wildly overoptimistic.

What we've just seen is as clear a test of trickledown economics as we're ever likely to get. Twice, in 2001 and in 2003, the administration insisted that a tax cut heavily tilted toward the affluent was just what the economy needed. Officials brushed aside pleas to give relief instead to lower- and middle-income families, who would be more likely to spend the money, and to cash-strapped state and local governments. Given the actual results - huge deficits, but minimal job growth - don't you wish the administration had listened to that advice?

Oh, and on a nonpolitical note: even before Friday's grim report on jobs, I was puzzled by Mr. Greenspan's eagerness to start raising interest rates. Now I don't understand his policy at all.

Two Sets of Statements on This...

Republican-funded Group Attacks Kerry's War Record
From Factcheck.org
August 10, 2004

Ad features vets who claim Kerry "lied" to get Vietnam medals. But other witnesses disagree.

More on the Specifics of the Charges by the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth"

Thursday, August 05, 2004
Swift Boat Liars

Over at Kos, DCBlues has a fascinating post, assumming he's correct that it was Larry Thurlow that was on Inside Politics today (can anyone confirm? I caught a bit of it, but never caught the name. Will check when transcript comes out). In any case, assuming it was Thurlow, he was arguing that in a mission where Kerry got a bronze star, the one where Kerry saved his pal Rassmann, as described by him at the DNC, that they didn't actually take any fire.

As DCBlues discovers, Thurlow himself also received a bronze star for the very same mission.
<------------------------------------->
...here's the transcript:

THURLOW: Yes, I do. My thought is that since no mine was detected on the other side of the river, no blast was seen, no noise heard, there's two things that are inconsistent with my memory.

Our boats immediately put automatic weapons fire on to the left bank just in case there was an ambush in conjunction with the mine. It soon became apparent there was no ambush.

The rescue efforts began on the 3-boat (ph). And at this time, the second boat in line, mine being the third boat on the left bank, began to do this.

Now, two members in this boat, keep in mind, are in the river at that time. They're picked up. The boat that picks them up starts toward Lieutenant Rassmann at this time, that's the 23-boat (ph). But before they get there, John does return and pick him up. But I distinctly remember we were under no fire from either bank.
<------------------------------------->

Here's the account from Brinkley:

Almost casually, the Swifts formed up and headed out from the village. The five boats had gone about half a mile when the blast came. Right where they had been hit on an earlier mission, a mine exploded directly beneath Lieutenant James Rassman's PCF-3 near Kerry's port side. Rassman's Swift lifted about two feet up out of the water, engulfed in mud and spray, then settled, rocking so hard from side to side that the boat started zigzagging from the banks to the middle of the river. Everybody on board PCF-3 was wounded. "At the same moment, we came under a hail of small-arms fire from both banks," Kerry recorded in his journal. "I turned the boat into the fire on the left with the intention of trying to get the troops ashore on the outskirts of the ambush, but Sandusky, who was driving the boat and who had his eyes glued on the crippled 3 boat, pointed out to me how badly hit they had been. We veered back toward her then and tried to provide cover from the engaged side.

Suddenly another explosion went off right beside us, and the concussion threw me violently against the bulkhead on the door, and I smashed my arm. At the same instant, Jim Rassman was blown overboard, although nobody knew it. But we continued sidling up to the 3, and as we came closer I could see that her twin-.50 mount over the pilothouse had been completely blown out of its stand and had landed on the gunner. No one was moving on the stern. [PCF-3 crewman] Ken Tryner, on his first real river expedition, was kneeling dazed in the doorway with a small trickle of blood down his face, aimlessly firing his M-79."

Thurlow had maneuvered his PCF-53 over by this time, and he hopped aboard PCF-3 to offer assistance. The boat was a shambles, but they were still shooting too hard to assess the damage. "Someone on the fantail must have noticed Jim swimming in back of us, ducking against the fire that was trying to pick him off because I suddenly heard the yell of 'man overboard' and looked back to see the bullets splashing in the water beside him," Kerry reported. "We turned around with the engines screaming against each other -- one full astern, the other full forward -- and then charged the several hundred yards back into the ambush where Jim was trying to find some cover.

Everyone on board must have been firing without pause to keep the sniper heads down." Kerry, thanking God the scramble nets were over the bow, struggled to get Rassman on board. "It must have looked like a comedy," he recalled. "Jim was exhausted from swimming and my right arm hurt and I couldn't pull very hard with it. Everyone else was firing a machine gun or something, except for Sandusky, who was maneuvering the boat, trying not to run over Jim but also trying to get near him as quickly as possible. Christ knows how, but somehow we got him on board and I didn't get the bullet in the head that I expected, and we managed to clear the ambush zone and move down near the 3 boat that was still crawling [on] a snail-like zigzag through the river."

Thurlow was struggling to get PCF-3's wounded gunner out of his hole and onto the deck when the damaged Swift ran aground hard on a shoal on the right side of the river, sending Thurlow somersaulting into the water. At the same moment, the five Swifts came under fire from the right side again, and Kerry remembered thinking that was it -- they were going to get completely cut off and annihilated in a crossfire.

Spontaneously, however, every boat there stood its ground and filled the entire right bank of the river with .50-caliber, M-79, M-16 and any other firepower they had, while one of the Swifts moved in and retrieved Thurlow, who had picked himself up out of the mud. PCF-94 then moved in and attached a line to the damaged boat's stern to try to tow PCF-3 out, but the tether snapped. Kerry put another line on, and this one held. "We managed to get her clear of the kill zone," he exulted. Finally, the tumult subsided. "The wounded were transferred to another of the Swifts, which set off at full speed with a cover boat to take them out to the LST to be medevaced."

Kerry and the other wounded men received medical attention aboard a Coast Guard cutter, which was the closest ship capable of treating them. Along with a third Purple Heart for the injury to his right arm, Kerry was also awarded a Bronze Star for his bravery, as was Larry Thurlow.

By any standard, John Kerry had become a bona fide war hero. When the commander of Coastal Division 11, Charles F. Horne, recommended him for the Bronze Star on March 23, 1969, he pointed out that the 25-year-old lieutenant had previously earned two Purple Hearts (on December 2, 1968, and February 20, 1969) and the Silver Star (on March 6, 1969). Kerry became, along with Larry Thurlow, one of the most decorated officers in the "brown water navy." Yet he had also become a more uncommitted soldier than ever in the wake of the combat experiences for which he had earned a chestful of shiny medals and the horrific memories that came with them.
<------------------------------------->

Remember something like this four years ago in South Carolina???

Anti-Kerry Ad Is Condemned by McCain
By JIM RUTENBERG
NY Times
Published: August 6, 2004

WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 - Senator John McCain on Thursday repudiated a new advertisement accusing Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts of lying about his Vietnam War record and called on the President Bush to do the same. "I think the Bush campaign should specifically condemn the ad,'' The Associated Press quoted Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona and a Vietnam War veteran, as saying.

Mr. Bush's campaign did not do so, but Nicolle Devenish, Mr. Bush's campaign communications director, said, "We have never and will never question John Kerry's service.'' She did not address the content of the advertisement, from a group of anti-Kerry veterans calling themselves Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

Asked in a briefing Thursday if the Bush campaign would repudiate the advertisement, the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, said, "The president deplores all the unregulated soft money activity.''

In the advertisement, running on stations in Ohio, West Virginia and Wisconsin, men who served on Swift boats say Mr. Kerry "is no war hero'' and "lied to get his Bronze Star.'' The spot opens with some of the men saying "I served with John Kerry.'' None of the men served with Mr. Kerry on his Swift boat but claim to have served on boats that were often near his.
<------------------------------------->
The Kerry campaign has denounced the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, saying none of the men in the ad served on the boat that Kerry commanded. The leader of the group, retired Adm. Roy Hoffmann, said none of the 13 veterans in the commercial served on Kerry's boat but rather were in other swiftboats within 50 yards of Kerry's.

Jim Rassmann, an Army veteran who was saved by Kerry, said there were only six crewmates who served with Kerry on his boat. Five support his candidacy and one is deceased.
<------------------------------------->
Note: And more nastiness from these same folks.

Internet "Whispering Campaigns" Falsely Accuse Teresa Heinz Kerry
Bogus e-mail messages claim she's given millions to "radical" groups, some linked to terrorists, and located Heinz factories overseas. Both claims are false.

August 4, 2004
Modified:August 4, 2004
factcheck.org Summary

False allegations about Kerry's wife have been circulating for months, but the velocity of the Internet "whispering campaign" picked up substantially with the approach of the Fall campaign.

One false message claims Teresa Heinz Kerry gave $4 million to a foundation that used the funds to support a list of "radical" groups including one with alleged links to Hamas and another that is said to have offered to provide a lawyer for Saddam Hussein. But public records show otherwise. Heinz Kerry's foundation money was directed to projects such as "Sustainable Pittsburgh," which promotes "smart growth" strategies.

Another widely circulated e-mail claims Kerry and his wife "own" dozens of H.J. Heinz Company factories in Europe and Asia. It accuses Kerry of hypocrisy for denouncing offshoring of US jobs while "making millions off that cheap labor."

That's also false: neither of them own Heinz. Public records show Heinz Kerry isn't an officer of the company, isn't on the company's board of directors, and isn't even close to being the largest shareholder. The Heinz Endowments do own Heinz stock -- less than 4% of the company -- but income from that stock goes to charity, not to the Kerrys personally.

Haliburton Gets Sued Again !

Suit Accuses Halliburton of Fraud in Accounting
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON

Four former finance employees at the Halliburton Company contend that a high-level and systemic accounting fraud occurred at the company from 1998 to 2001, according to a new filing in a class-action lawsuit on behalf of investors who bought the company's shares.

The filing accuses the company of accounting improprieties that go far beyond those outlined by the Securities and Exchange Commission in its civil suit against Halliburton, which the company settled on Tuesday, paying $7.5 million.

The charges in the complaint and in the S.E.C.'s action cover the two years when Vice President Dick Cheney was Halliburton's chief executive. But he was not named as a defendant in the new filing nor in the regulatory proceeding. S.E.C. officials said Mr. Cheney provided testimony and willingly cooperated in their inquiry and his lawyer, Terrence O'Donnell, said Mr. Cheney's conduct as chief executive of Halliburton was "proper in all respects." He added that the S.E.C. "investigated this matter very, very thoroughly and did not find any responsibility for nondisclosure at the board level or the C.E.O. level."

According to the new filing, the four former employees, who are not identified in the suit but were managers in financial or accounting positions, say that Kellogg Brown & Root, Halliburton's engineering and construction unit, inflated its financial results by overbilling for services, overstating its accounts receivable due from customers and understating accounts payable owed to vendors. The filing also noted that one former employee in the accounting department said superiors had told her to do "whatever it took" to make projects appear profitable and to meet Wall Street estimates for the company's earnings.

The filing also asserts that executives at Halliburton misled investors in the fall of 2001 about asbestos liabilities faced by the company's subsidiary, Harbison-Walker, which it had acquired in the September 1998 purchase of Dresser Industries. Even though the company had lost a major case in a Texas court and was ordered to pay $130 million to plaintiffs, top Halliburton executives told analysts unaware of the verdict that the news regarding its asbestos obligations was "positive" and that there had been "no adverse developments at all" relating to Harbison-Walker.

Only on Dec. 7, 2001, when the verdict became public, did investors learn of Halliburton's obligations as a result of it, the suit said. The company's stock plummeted, losing 42 percent of its value that day.

The suit names Halliburton as a defendant as well as four executives who it said had control over the company's accounting and the contents of its reports to investors. They are David J. Lesar, Halliburton's chief executive, who took over in that job when Mr. Cheney became vice president; Douglas L. Foshee, a former chief financial officer who is now chief executive officer of the El Paso Corporation; Gary V. Morris, a former chief financial officer who is retired; and Robert Charles Muchmore Jr., former controller of the company.

"What we found to be compelling about this is that there appeared to be a series of schemes designed to bolster Halliburton's financial health that did not allow people to really understand the true financial picture at the company," said David Scott, a lawyer at Scott & Scott in Colchester, Conn. "We found that this was not just one isolated event; it appears to be a course of conduct designed to deceive the public."

Halliburton called the lawsuit abusive and an effort to smear the company and extort money from its shareholders. In a statement, the company said: "On June 7, 2004, the federal court in Dallas preliminarily approved Halliburton's settlement of approximately 20 class-action securities cases (including two filed previously by Scott & Scott) and ordered that no further complaints be filed. Apparently hoping to generate publicity, while violating the spirit but not the letter of that order, Scott & Scott has filed a motion seeking the court's permission to file this latest complaint and attached the complaint to that motion as an exhibit.

"Thus," the statement continued, "they abuse the broad immunity from defamation actions enjoyed by litigants and get their publicity at the same time. It is also noteworthy that this is the third lawsuit arising out of the same general series of events filed by Scott & Scott. Many of their complaints have already been asked and already been answered. It is virtually a recycled lawsuit."

The court filing was made on Tuesday in United States District Court in Dallas, the same day the S.E.C. announced an enforcement action against Halliburton, Mr. Morris and Mr. Muchmore. The S.E.C. contended that the company had misled investors about its financial results in 1998 and 1999 by failing to disclose a change it had made to one of its accounting practices. As a result of the change, Halliburton's earnings were considerably higher than they would have been under the method the company had used previously.

Halliburton and Mr. Muchmore settled with regulators, neither admitting nor denying wrongdoing. The company paid $7.5 million in the settlement. Mr. Morris declined to settle and was sued by the commission in federal court in Houston.

Lawyers for Mr. Muchmore and Mr. Morris did not return phone calls seeking comment; neither did Mr. Foshee.

According to a quarterly filing it also made on Tuesday, Halliburton is under investigation by the Justice Department over possible overbilling on government services work done in the Balkans from 1996 through 2000, when Mr. Cheney was the company's chief executive. The filing also noted that the Justice Department and the S.E.C. were investigating a project in Nigeria in which Halliburton participated and which might involve illegal payments under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

The company said it was too early to assess the impact the inquiry might have. The four former finance officials at Halliburton cited in the Texas court document worked at the company from as early as 1989 until 2003 and were interviewed by investigators for Scott & Scott in the course of researching the case. In the complaint, the former employees describe an accounting department that was decidedly lax in its controls, employing an antiquated computer system in which entries were manually entered and that did not provide details of the invoices or payments underlying revenues or expenses. Such details allow outside auditors to test a company's financial statements.

One former employee said that manipulation of monthly profit and loss statements at K.B.R. "was systemic and indeed a matter of policy." The accounting improprieties were necessary, the filing said, because they helped conceal burgeoning problems related to Halliburton's exposure to asbestos claims.

Because customers of Kellogg Brown & Root paid the company over long periods of time for its engineering work, the Halliburton unit used project plans based on the contract price and the schedule for completion. These plans projected costs to be incurred monthly based on a percentage of the job completed and the profit margins expected. If the costs of a project began to exceed estimates associated with the job, the company's finance directors told project accountants to change the books before the entries went into K.B.R.'s accounting information system, according to the complaint.

One former employee cited in the filing said that the company would routinely overbill but not bother to collect. Neither did the company add to reserves for doubtful accounts, the former employee said. She noted that at one point, the company had $20 million in accounts receivable that were more than six months old. The reserve for doubtful accounts, meanwhile, was $700,000.

The filing stated that the alleged accounting fraud also enabled Halliburton executives to sell shares at inflated prices. Mr. Lesar sold shares worth $1.64 million during the period that the profit manipulations were made, the filing said. The complaint noted that Mr. Lesar's stock sales during the period amounted to twice the sales he had made in almost three years prior to 1998.

Mr. Scott, along with a partner, Neil Rothstein, specializes in class-action securities litigation.

As one of three firms appointed to the executive committee in the Halliburton class action, Scott & Scott has objected to the $6 million settlement announced last year by lead counsel for the class. Calling the settlement inadequate, Mr. Scott said: "The importance of the $7.5 million fine by the S.E.C. this week against the $6 million settlement is telling. What I can't understand is why there has not been a greater outcry among shareholders on the terms of this settlement."

David C. Godbey, the judge presiding over the case, is expected to rule later this month on whether the settlement is fair.

Official Policy:
Politicians who Support Abortions are to be Denied Communion in the Catholic Church

U.S. Archbishop Burke Orders Priests to Refuse Communion for Anti-Life Politicians

Diocese communications director says the decree is binding on priests

LA CROSSE, Wisconsin, January 9, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Archbishop Raymond L. Burke, of the La Crosse Diocese, has issued an official order stating that politicians who support abortion or euthanasia are to be refused Holy Communion. The notification, published yesterday in the diocesan paper The Catholic Times begins by quoting extensively from authoritative Vatican documents explaining that support for abortion by Catholic politicians is gravely sinful. "

Note: This follows on the heels of the statement from the Vatican in the past week casting aspersions on the role of feminism in the modern world. Communion for a Catholic is the central act of worship which was instituted at the Last Supper, and in which bread and wine are consecrated and consumed in remembrance of Jesus's death.

The Archbishops and Cardinals herein single out politicians for this dishonor. What about doctors, priests, family counselors, police, and military administrators among others who support abortions in select cases? Are they to be denied too? As stated in the Bible, Jesus did not support this concept of limiting access to His Grace based solely on a believers support of a procedure that was in the best interest of the concerned parties.

Fie on any Organized Religion who proporting to be in service to humanity would withhold their sacred rites from parishioners who exercise their judgement in support of a womans right to have control over their own body. Oh how I wish they could be made to bear a child from a rape themselves, and support it for the rest of their lives !!!

Holy City

Note: What's with the constant use of these words in the 'News' when used to describe some town or province in Iraq as in: "The Holy City of Najaf", or "The Holy City of Karbala"? The Old World is full of places that several thousand years ago had something to brag about: The Upper Nile, Nippur, Karbala, Abydos, Kairouan, Mecca, Jerusalem, Bukhara, and to a lesser degree, The Vatican and Athens; but so what! Attempting to put some mystical sheen on these arid wastelands is close to obscene.

Were it just Fox, the Daily Mirror, and the junk journals that refer to these cities in that way, I could ignore it and leave it for their native audience; but now NPR, PBS, the Atlantic Monthly, the NY Times and others do it with equal fervor. Do these 'journalists' not recognize that these 'Holy Cities' have the most horrid record on civil rights, respect for basic human dignity, individual liberty, and adherence to the stated laws of their own prophets? What might be accurate is to call them: "The Ancient Holy City of XYZ"; but again, why is that necessary.

Curiouser and Curiouser...

The Reconstruction Racket
American Progress Report: August 5th, 2004

$1.9 billion in contracts for Halliburton and other American contractors that were supposed to be financed with money approved by the U.S. have been paid for with Iraqi money. Why? According to The Washington Post, the Iraqi funds "were governed by fewer restrictions and less rigorous oversight." The use of Iraqi money allowed the (now-defunct) U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority "to bypass U.S. contracting rules on competition, oversight and monitoring for controversial projects." One contract was shifted over to Iraqi funds after a company that was contracted to create new media outlets chartered a jet "to fly in a Hummer H2 and a Ford pickup truck for the program manager's use." According to Anthea Lawson, an analyst for Christian Aid, "American firms [were] charging 10 times as much as Iraqi firms for construction work."

CPA DISHONEST ABOUT HOW IRAQI FUNDS WERE SPENT: Previously, the U.S.-controlled Coalition Provisional Authority had claimed "that most of the contracts paid from Iraqi money [from oil sales] went to Iraqi companies." But in total, "at least 85 percent of the total $2.26 billion [of Iraqi money] was obligated to U.S. companies." The contracts awarded to U.S. firms "may be worth several hundred million more once the work is completed."

NO RECORDS, NO COMPETITION: Moreover, newly released documents reveal "the CPA at times violated its own rules, authorizing Iraqi money when it didn't have a quorum or proper Iraqi representation at meetings, and kept such sloppy records that the paperwork for several major contracts could not be found." During the first part of the occupation the CPA "depended heavily on no-bid contracts that were questioned by auditors." Iraqi officials were given "little say in the use of their own country's money." Iraqi companies were not able to "get through the heavily guarded gates of the occupation headquarters in the Green Zone to meet with contracting officers."

HALLIBURTON SHOWERED WITH IRAQI CASH: Most of the Iraqi funds - $1.66 billion – were paid to Halliburton subsidiary KBR to import fuel for Iraq. That contract – tacked onto a no-bid contract – is now "the subject of several investigations after allegations surfaced that a subcontractor for Houston-based KBR overcharged by as much as $61 million for the fuel." Before the KBR contract was expanded, Mohammed Aboush, who was a director general in the oil ministry during the occupation, told the Americans at the CPA "that the Iraqis felt KBR's performance had been inadequate and that he'd prefer that another company take over its work."

INVESTIGATIONS INTO HALLIBURTON MALFEASANCE MOUNT: The SEC announced yesterday "the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission expanded an investigation into payments related to a $5 billion Nigerian contract when the company was led by Dick Cheney." There are allegations that the payments were bribes. Halliburton also faces "a Justice Department investigation into business with Iran when Cheney was chief executive and a Pentagon inquiry into allegations of overpayment in Iraq, where it is now the largest U.S. contractor." On Tuesday, "Halliburton agreed...to pay $7.5 million to settle a commission investigation that said the company secretly changed accounting practices to increase net profit for 1998 and 1999," while the company was under Cheney's control.

THE FORGOTTEN VICTIMS: Stockholders and high-level management have profited handsomely from the enormous government contracts given to U.S. firms in Iraq. Meanwhile, at least 110 contractors working for U.S. firms have died. The number could be even higher: "the Pentagon does not keep an official count, and many companies do not announce when their employees in Iraq are killed." Seven contractors died during the first Gulf War. The death toll this time around has "created an overlooked subculture of war-related grief, one in which contractors' families confront a bureaucracy that is largely inventing procedures on the fly."

CPA Inspector General Interim Report: July 2004

Exerpts from the Audit Report #04-011, Dated July 26, 2004 prepared by the Office of the Inspector General Coalition Provisional Authority:

"This report is the first in a series resulting from our review of the management of the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program III contract and the associated Task Order 0044. This report discusses accountability and control of material assets used to support the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Bagdad, Iraq"

"Task Order 0044 was issued by the Department of the Army to KBR...to provide logistics and life support for the CPA Regional Offices. As of April 2004, KBR, (Kellogg Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton), had performed a reported $308,529,772 of work on Task Order 0044. The cost of actual completed work and an additional forecast for work in progress was reported by KBR to be $633 million as of March 27, 2004. As part of Task Order 0044, KBR property records show they managed 20,531 items valued at over $61.1 million in Bagdad, Iraq."

"We projected that KBR could not account for 6,975 (34%) property items from an inventory of 20,531 records. Further we projected that 1,425 (6.9%) property items were on-hand but were not recorded on hand receipts. In addition, we projected that 5,920 (28.8%) hand receipts were not on file or had not been prepared. As a result, we projected that property valued at more than $18.6 million was not accurately accounted for or was missing."

Note: KBR reported they did $308 million of work on Task Order 0044, had another $325 million of work in progress, and only used $61 million, (19.8%), worth of property items for this work. Of that amount, 34% of the items could not be accounted for directly, and that 30.4% of the money spent on these assets were not accurately accounted for or were missing.

In other words, KBR spent 80% of their funding for things other than property items that could be inventoried, and of the other 20% spent on property items, at least 30% were missing in action.

Gee, I wonder how much of the $246 million in non-property items was unaccounted for? And since the CPA probably did not pay any significant rent, utilities, insurance, etc did the 80% go toward human resources?

OMB Projections & Center on Budget & Policy Report: July 2004

DEFICITS AND THE MID-SESSION REVIEW
Center On Budget & Policy Report
The Administration’s Efforts to Make Harmful Deficits Appear Benign
by David Kamin, Richard Kogan, and Robert Greenstein

On July 30, the Office of Management and Budget released new projections stating that the budget deficit will grow to $445 billion in fiscal year 2004. This is $70 billion larger than the 2003 deficit, which stood at $375 billion. Despite the recovery, the deficit has continued to rise significantly. The $445 billion projected deficit also is more than $700 billion worse than what the Administration projected for fiscal year 2004 in its first budget, submitted in February 2001. At that time, the Administration forecast a $262 billion surplus for 2004.

In the face of this dramatic fiscal deterioration, the Administration is now attempting to downplay the deficits and is citing the new figures as evidence it is making progress on the fiscal front. In spinning the new deficit numbers, the Administration and others have made several dubious claims.

The 2004 deficit. The Administration has hailed the 2004 projected deficit as evidence that its policies are working. The Administration notes that the $445 billion deficit it now forecasts for 2004 represents a significant improvement compared with the larger, $521 billion deficit it projected last February. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported at that time, however, the Administration’s February forecast artificially inflated the projected deficit for 2004, apparently so that subsequent downward adjustments in the deficit estimate could be presented as progress rather than as being, in significant part, the substitution of more realistic estimates for overstated ones.[1]

Furthermore, as noted above, the $445 billion deficit now forecast for 2004 represents a deterioration from the level of the deficit in 2003, when the deficit stood at $375 billion.

Stronger economic growth. The Administration also is portraying the drop in the projected 2004 deficit as a sign of stronger-than-expected economic growth. Such a portrayal is not accurate. Overall economic growth has been no faster than the Administration forecast earlier this year. The economy grew at a 3.9 percent annual real rate in the first three quarters of the fiscal year, in line with what the Administration projected when it released its earlier deficit projection in February. Indeed, economic growth has been below the growth rate the Congressional Budget Office projected at the start of the year.

Revenues coming in modestly higher than expected. Although economic growth has not been faster than expected, revenues are coming in modestly above what CBO projected in February. (At the time of CBO’s projection, we noted that there already was evidence suggesting its revenue estimate would prove too low.) Possible factors that may help to explain the higher revenues include a greater-than-expected concentration of income among high-income individuals and higher-than-expected inflation (see box on page 5). Even so, revenues remain at unusually low levels. The Administration’s new projection shows that federal revenues this year will be at their lowest level since 1959, measured as a share of the economy.

Cutting the deficit in half by 2009. The Administration is again contending that under its proposed budget policies, the deficit would be cut in half by 2009. But, the Administration uses a further set of unrealistic budget estimates for years after 2004 to make this case; the Administration omits major costs from its projections for those years, such as the costs of continuing relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax, something that the Administration has made clear it favors. Moreover, the Administration’s budget figures are provided for five years rather than ten, leaving out the years from 2010-2014 when the baby-boom generation will begin to retire in large numbers and the deficit is expected to rise.

Causes of the deficit. On a related front, a number of policymakers and activists with an ideological axe to grind have claimed the recent tax cuts have had little or nothing to do with the deterioration of the budget outlook. The Administration’s own data show, however, that among the deficit-increasing factors over which policymakers have had control, the tax cuts constitute the single largest cause of the shift from surpluses to deficits. Table 7 of the mid-session review shows that tax cuts account for 57 percent of the budget deterioration in 2004 that has been caused by legislation enacted since the start of 2001.

Examining overall spending and revenue as a share of the economy provides further evidence that it is the low level of revenues, not a high spending level, that is driving the deficit. As noted above, revenues will fall this year to their lowest level, measured as a share of the economy, since 1959. By contrast, spending as a share of the economy, is below its average level of the past four decades.

"The Case Against George W. Bush": Ron Reagan in the Sept 2004 Edition of Esquire

Note: Ron Reagan was and is proud of his Dad, former President Reagan; but he has a different opinion of Pres. George W. Bush.

"The Bush administration can't be trusted. The parade of Bush officials before various commissions and committees—Paul Wolfowitz, who couldn't quite remember how many young Americans had been sacrificed on the altar of his ideology; John Ashcroft, lip quivering as, for a delicious, fleeting moment, it looked as if Senator Joe Biden might just come over the table at him—these were a continuing reminder. The Enron creeps, too—a reminder of how certain environments and particular habits of mind can erode common decency. People noticed. A tipping point had been reached. The issue of credibility was back on the table. The L-word was in circulation. Not the tired old bromide liberal. That's so 1988. No, this time something much more potent: liar.

Politicians will stretch the truth. They'll exaggerate their accomplishments, paper over their gaffes. Spin has long been the lingua franca of the political realm. But George W. Bush and his administration have taken "normal" mendacity to a startling new level far beyond lies of convenience. On top of the usual massaging of public perception, they traffic in big lies, indulge in any number of symptomatic small lies, and, ultimately, have come to embody dishonesty itself. They are a lie. And people, finally, have started catching on.

None of this, needless to say, guarantees Bush a one-term presidency. The far-right wing of the country—nearly one third of us by some estimates—continues to regard all who refuse to drink the Kool-Aid (liberals, rationalists, Europeans, et cetera) as agents of Satan. Bush could show up on video canoodling with Paris Hilton and still bank their vote. Right-wing talking heads continue painting anyone who fails to genuflect deeply enough as a "hater," and therefore a nut job, probably a crypto-Islamist car bomber. But these protestations have taken on a hysterical, almost comically desperate tone. It's one thing to get trashed by Michael Moore. But when Nobel laureates, a vast majority of the scientific community, and a host of current and former diplomats, intelligence operatives, and military officials line up against you, it becomes increasingly difficult to characterize the opposition as fringe wackos.

Keep Up with the Electoral Vote Predictor

August 4th Predition on Electoral Votes: Kerry = 307, Bush = 231. Watch the updates here.

American Progress Report: The 9/11 Commission Strikes Back: August 4th, 2004

The Commission Strikes Back

This week, President Bush claimed he was embracing the bold institutional changes proposed by the 9/11 Commission by creating this national intelligence director. In reality, he is resisting key elements of the proposal, such as putting the new position in the Cabinet (and thus ensuring the new director would stay in the loop), giving the director the power to hire and fire, or granting the director control of his budget. The result? A weak figurehead without power to effectively oversee the 15 agencies in the U.S. intelligence community. Key 9/11 Commissioners joined members of Congress yesterday to argue that the proposed national intelligence director must have the power to hire, fire, and control a budget. Period.

NO PICKING AND CHOOSING: Commissioners John Lehman, a Republican, and Bob Kerrey, a Democrat, expressed their disapproval to the House Government Reform Committee yesterday. "The person that has the responsibility needs the authority," Kerrey told the Committee. "Absent that, they're not going to be able to get the job done." Lehman was blunt: "Our recommendations are not a Chinese menu. I would strongly recommend that these be viewed as a whole, that the powers needed to carry out these recommendations be enacted as a whole package." Former Republican Sen. Slade Gorton of Washington, a member of the Commission, agreed: ''No one is going to listen to this individual'' absent his or her ability to hire and fire and control budgets.

BUDGET FUNDING: President Bush does not want the new intelligence director to control his own budget. Without the power of the purse, the job lacks the necessary clout to be effective. Lehman flatly stated, "Those powers must be given." And senators yesterday agreed. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, (D-WV), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, questioned Bush's decision, saying that "if the new director cannot control the budgets of intelligence agencies, this new position will be no more than window dressing." Republican lawmakers backed him up. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) said: "We ought to take the bull by the horns, create this new national director . . . and really provide some authority, including budget authority." Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), a former chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, agreed, charging the new director must be "someone with total control and accountability. That's the budget too."

HIRED AND FIRED: President Bush's approach would not allow the new director to have the power to hire and fire. Lehman said yesterday, "He has to have hiring and firing power, and not just budget coordination authority but budget appropriations and programming authority." True, said Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA). "If you don't have the authority to pick the people, isn't a national director just a shell game and a shell operation?" Sen. Henry Waxman (D-CA) heartily agreed: "in this city, if you have a fancy title but you are not in the chain of command and you don't control the budget, you are a figurehead, and another figurehead is not what the 9/11 Commission recommended and what our nation needs."

RUMSFELD THE ROADBLOCK: Much of the opposition to an effective director of intelligence can be chalked up to a turf war. Bush's decision to limit the proposed intelligence chief's authority came after lobbying by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who has been adamantly against the creation of a centralized intelligence czar. In his testimony before the Commission in March, Mr. Rumsfeld said then that an intelligence czar would do the nation "a great disservice" by creating reliance on a single, centralized source of information. It would also reallocate funds; currently, 80% of the estimated $40 billion spent on intelligence in the U.S. is under the control of Rumsfeld's Department of Defense. Democratic Commissioner Bob Kerrey didn't mince words, saying since the Defense Department opposed the proposal, "next time there's a dust-up and there's a failure, don't call the director of Central Intelligence up here. Kick the crap out of DOD because they're the ones with the statutory authority over budget."

FIRST DO NO HARM: Creating a director of intelligence while hamstringing his power would be counterproductive to overall intelligence efforts. The 9/11 Commission Staff Director Philip D. Zelikow – who served on Bush's 2001 transition team for the National Security Council – says there's no room for compromise when it comes to national intelligence: "Creating a national intelligence director that just superimposes a chief above the other chiefs without taking on the fundamental management issues we identify, is a step that could be worse than useless." The Director of the Intelligence Policy Center at the RAND Corporation agreed: "If it's set up correctly it has the potential to be a good idea. Otherwise it will be more harmful if we had not done it at all…Because it will create another layer of bureaucracy which will add to the already complex structure that already oversees intelligence."

EDITORIAL PAGE: The New York Times this week sided with lawmakers and 9/11 Commissioners in chastising President Bush's foot dragging. "At a time when Americans need strong leadership and bold action, President Bush offered tired nostrums and bureaucratic half-measures…He wanted to appear to be embracing the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, but he actually rejected the panel's most significant ideas, and thus missed a chance to confront the twin burdens he faces at this late point in his term: the need to get intelligence reform moving whether he's re-elected or not, and the equally urgent need to repair the government's credibility on national security."

LAWMAKER, HEAL THYSELF: While Congress is rightly pressing the administration to implement the Commission's recommendations, Republican lawmakers are also reluctant to make any internal changes. The New York Times reports, "The Senate leadership has yet to identify members of a select working group who are supposed to map a plan for streamlining Congressional oversight. The Republican chairmen of the House and Senate armed services committees - two panels that might have to relinquish significant power - have not offered their views." Several lawmakers admonished their colleagues not to let political considerations play a part in internal restructuring: "We have to make sure we are driven more by 9-11 than by 11-2," said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL). At least one congressional Republican promises he'll fight for the overhaul, however. Rep. Chris Shays (R-CT) said, "I will not vote for any rules of the House next year that don't create this strong oversight."

Wall Street Hurt by High Oil Prices, Data
Tue Aug 3, 2004 05:03 PM ET
By Rachel Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks tumbled on Tuesday after oil prices surged to a new record above $44 per barrel and a report showed consumer spending in June took its biggest plunge in almost 3 years.

Bush Ad Claims Kerry Voted Against "Protections for Pregnant Women"
It's a misleading ad. What Kerry really voted against was the "Unborn Victims of Violence Act."

July 12, 2004
Modified: July 12, 2004
Annenberg Political Fact Check

Summary
In an ad released July 8, (Priorities), the Bush campaign attacks John Kerry for missing many Senate votes but still finding time " to vote against the Laci Peterson law that protects pregnant women from violence." It's literally accurate, but artfully worded to avoid tipping off viewers to the real controversy over the bill Kerry opposed -- the legal right to abortion.

What Kerry and 34 other Democrats actually voted against was the "Unborn Victims of Violence Act ." The new law recognizes an "unborn child" as a second victim if injured or killed during certain federal crimes of violence against the mother. The bill was backed by anti-abortion groups while opponents called it an attempt to undermine abortion rights. Kerry voted for an alternative measure to accomplish the same end but without making specific reference to an "unborn child."

The ad is also misleading when it says Kerry "missed a vote to lower health-care costs by reducing frivolous lawsuits against doctors." It is true that Kerry missed that vote -- two, actually. But as we've noted before, most studies show that capping damage awards to victims of medical malpractice won't do much to slow the rising cost of health care. Besides, Kerry's vote would not have made a difference either way.

And when the ad faults Kerry for missing a vote to fund our troops, it leaves out the fact that the bill passed both houses of Congress without a single vote against it.

Get the facts on Recent Political Ads from factcheck.org

Note: The Annenberg Center is maintaining a website that attempts to offer a meaningful analysis of the 'facts' that are being produced in ads by both political parties and their candidates. Visit there after seeing/hearing an ad to see, as Paul Harvey suggests, "...the rest of the story."

Quote from former Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."

Radio Ad Attacks Nader Over GOP Support
Group run by Democrats says "right-wing Republicans" and "extremists" aid Nader to help Bush. Characterizations aside, they've got a point.

July 14, 2004
Modified:July 15, 2004
Factcheck.org Report

Naderfactor.com -- an anti-Nader group staffed by former Dean, Clark, and Gephardt campaigners -- released a new radio ad July 13 saying Nader is getting help from Republicans in three key states in hopes of stripping votes away from Kerry.

It says, "The same right-wing Republicans that are anti-choice and anti-environment are suddenly pro-Nader."

The ad's use of the terms "right wing" (which it uses six times) and "extremist" (used twice) are debatable, as is the term "anti-environment." But it is well documented that some Republican-leaning groups have worked for Nader, and that a few wealthy Republican donors have given money to the Nader campaign.

Reading the Script
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NY Times Op-Ed
Published: August 3, 2004

A message to my fellow journalists: check out media watch sites like campaigndesk.org, mediamatters.org and dailyhowler.com. It's good to see ourselves as others see us. I've been finding The Daily Howler's concept of a media "script," a story line that shapes coverage, often in the teeth of the evidence, particularly helpful in understanding cable news.

For example, last summer, when growth briefly broke into a gallop, cable news decided that the economy was booming. The gallop soon slowed to a trot, and then to a walk. But judging from the mail I recently got after writing about the slowing economy, the script never changed; many readers angrily insisted that my numbers disagreed with everything they had seen on TV.

If you really want to see cable news scripts in action, look at the coverage of the Democratic convention.

Commercial broadcast TV covered only one hour a night. We'll see whether the Republicans get equal treatment. C-Span, on the other hand, provided comprehensive, commentary-free coverage. But many people watched the convention on cable news channels - and what they saw was shaped by a script portraying Democrats as angry Bush-haters who disdain the military.

If that sounds like a script written by the Republicans, it is. As the movie "Outfoxed" makes clear, Fox News is for all practical purposes a G.O.P. propaganda agency. A now-famous poll showed that Fox viewers were more likely than those who get their news elsewhere to believe that evidence of Saddam-Qaeda links has been found, that W.M.D. had been located and that most of the world supported the Iraq war.

CNN used to be different, but Campaign Desk, which is run by The Columbia Journalism Review, concluded after reviewing convention coverage that CNN "has stooped to slavish imitation of Fox's most dubious ploys and policies." Seconds after John Kerry's speech, CNN gave Ed Gillespie, the Republican Party's chairman, the opportunity to bash the candidate. Will Terry McAuliffe be given the same opportunity right after President Bush speaks?

Note: Indeed !! CNN used to be different; but no longer. The way we chose to obtain relatively unfiltered convention coverage was by watching GPTV, (Georgia Public Television) with Jim Lerner as the moderator. The other channels had way too much "ambush journalism", including CNN which had one Democratic personality being quizzed by four Republican "panel members".

Commentators worked hard to spin scenes that didn't fit the script. Some simply saw what they wanted to see. On Fox, Michael Barone asserted that conventioneers cheered when Mr. Kerry criticized President Bush but were silent when he called for military strength. Check out the video clips at Media Matters; there was tumultuous cheering when Mr. Kerry talked about a strong America.

Another technique, pervasive on both Fox and CNN, was to echo Republican claims of an "extreme makeover" - the assertion that what viewers were seeing wasn't the true face of the party. (Apparently all those admirals, generals and decorated veterans were ringers.)

It will probably be easier to make a comparable case in New York, where the Republicans are expected to feature an array of moderate, pro-choice speakers and keep Rick Santorum and Tom DeLay under wraps. But in Boston, it took creativity to portray the delegates as being out of the mainstream. For example, Bill Schneider at CNN claimed that according to a New York Times/CBS News poll, 75 percent of the delegates favor "abortion on demand" - which exaggerated the poll's real finding, which is that 75 percent opposed stricter limits than we now have.

But the real power of a script is the way it can retroactively change the story about what happened.

On Thursday night, Mr. Kerry's speech was a palpable hit. A focus group organized by Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, found it impressive and persuasive. Even pro-Bush commentators conceded, at first, that it had gone over well.

But a terrorism alert is already blotting out memories of last week. Although there is now a long history of alerts with remarkably convenient political timing, and Tom Ridge politicized the announcement by using the occasion to praise "the president's leadership in the war against terror," this one may be based on real information. Regardless, it gives the usual suspects a breathing space; once calm returns, don't be surprised if some of those same commentators begin describing the ineffective speech they expected (and hoped) to see, not the one they actually saw.

Luckily, in this age of the Internet it's possible to bypass the filter. At c-span.org, you can find transcripts and videos of all the speeches. I'd urge everyone to watch Mr. Kerry and others for yourself, and make your own judgment.

Reports That Led to Terror Alert Were Years Old, Officials Say
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON, Aug. 2 -Much of the information that led the authorities to raise the terror alert at several large financial institutions in the New York City and Washington areas was three or four years old, intelligence and law enforcement officials said on Monday. They reported that they had not yet found concrete evidence that a terrorist plot or preparatory surveillance operations were still under way.

But the officials continued to regard the information as significant and troubling because the reconnaissance already conducted has provided Al Qaeda with the knowledge necessary to carry out attacks against the sites in Manhattan, Washington and Newark. They said Al Qaeda had often struck years after its operatives began surveillance of an intended target.

Taken together with a separate, more general stream of intelligence, which indicates that Al Qaeda intends to strike in the United States this year, possibly in New York or Washington, the officials said even the dated but highly detailed evidence of surveillance was sufficient to prompt the authorities to undertake a global effort to track down the unidentified suspects involved in the surveillance operations.

"You could say that the bulk of this information is old, but we know that Al Qaeda collects, collects, collects until they're comfortable,'' said one senior government official. "Only then do they carry out an operation. And there are signs that some of this may have been updated or may be more recent.''

Frances Fragos Townsend, the White House homeland security adviser, said on Monday in an interview on PBS that surveillance reports, apparently collected by Qaeda operatives had been "gathered in 2000 and 2001.'' But she added that information may have been updated as recently as January.

The comments of government officials on Monday seemed softer in tone than the warning issued the day before. On Sunday, officials were circumspect in discussing when the surveillance of the financial institutions had occurred, and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge cited the quantity of intelligence from "multiple reporting streams'' that he said was "alarming in both the amount and specificity of the information.''

The officials said on Monday that they were still analyzing computer records, photos, drawings and other documents, seized last month in Pakistan, which showed that Qaeda operatives had conducted extensive reconnaissance.

"What we've uncovered is a collection operation as opposed to the launching of an attack," a senior American official said.

Still, the official said the new trove of material, which was being sifted for fresh clues, combined with more recent flows of intelligence, had demonstrated that Al Qaeda remains active and intent on attacking the United States.

Three Years And Counting...
And the new CIA Director will be [ ]...

Bush Backs Creation of U.S. Intelligence Director
Mon Aug 2, 2004 04:47 PM ET

By Steve Holland
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Under election-year pressure, President Bush on Monday overruled some of his most senior advisers and called on Congress to create a national intelligence director recommended by the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

"We are a nation in danger. We're doing everything we can in our power to confront the danger," Bush said, as authorities in New York and Washington moved to protect financial institutions after receiving information that al Qaeda might attack them.

Bush, appearing in the White House Rose Garden with top national security aides, stopped short of recommending the new intelligence director be located in the executive office of the presidency, as the commission had recommended.

There have been bipartisan fears that putting the director in the White House could politicize the job. Bush has been accused of exaggerating intelligence on Iraq to justify war.

Democrats accused Bush of dragging his feet on setting up the position nearly three years after the Sept. 11 attacks and not giving it sufficient spending authority to direct the operations of 15 agencies that gather intelligence.

"I think the fact that it's taken us three years to get here makes its own statement about urgency ... We cannot afford reluctance in the protection of our country," Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry said.

Without real control of the intelligence budget, "That's a recipe for failure," said Rep. Jane Harman, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card countered that the director would have "an awful lot of input into the development of any budgets in the intelligence community." Bush said the new director would coordinate the budget.

Note: In old-fashioned language, if you cannot hire, fire, promote/demote, or affect an entities compensation you do not control it. Do we want an adviser or an administrator? The 9/11 Commission recommended an administrator. Tom Ridge said it plainly: if X, it would create more bureaucratic layers...not real change.

Democrats also called on the Republican leadership to call the Congress back from recess to take up legislation to overhaul intelligence. The White House said committees with oversight in this area were already holding rare August meetings.

POLITICAL PRESSURE

Bush, who initially opposed the establishment of the Sept. 11 commission, is under political pressure in an election year to respond swiftly to the panel's recommendations amid fears of another terrorist attack.

Card said Bush wanted Congress to act quickly, but deliberately, on the recommendations. He insisted "this is not about politics."

"These are big decisions. And as you know, this is a model that will be there for many presidents. And so we'd like to get it right," Card said.

Bush asked Congress to set up the position as part of an overhaul of the 1947 National Security Act that established the CIA and the National Security Council.

The president also proposed setting up a national counter-terrorism center to prepare a daily terrorism report for the president and act as the government's "knowledge bank" about terrorism.

Aides said Bush is expected to nominate in the next few days a new CIA director to replace George Tenet, who resigned.

Kerry, who has called for quick adoption of the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations, said he believed Bush administration policies were encouraging recruitment of terrorists, a statement Bush said was a "ridiculous notion."

The White House acknowledged a "healthy debate" within the administration over creating what amounts to an intelligence czar and breaking with decades of giving agencies relative autonomy.

At least three members of the Bush's national security team, such as Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, had argued there was no need for a national intelligence director, saying it would create more bureaucratic layers.

But Bush said he opted for the new position "because I think it was the right thing to do." White House officials said having the job in the West Wing could lead to undue influence on that person.

Bush said the panel investigating the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq should consider whether the U.S. government should establish a separate office to coordinate counter-proliferation efforts.

The Sept. 11 commission report found that "deep institutional failings" by the U.S. government led to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.

"Israel to build 600 new homes in W. Bank settlement

www.chinaview.cn 2004-08-03 01:47:47

JERUSALEM, Aug. 2 (Xinhuanet) -- Israel will build 600 new houses in a major West Bank settlement although it has reached an agreement with Washington not to expand Jewish enclaves on occupiedland, Israeli political sources said Monday.

The sources said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz had approved two months ago the housing plan at the settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim, a few kilometers east of Jerusalem.

They admitted that the plan could breach an understanding with the United States which says no more homes should be built beyond the existing settlements in West Bank.

However, US President George W. Bush told Sharon in April that Israel could retain some West Bank land under any future peace dealwith Palestinians if it implements a unilateral disengagement plan to withdraw from Gaza, they added.

Ma'aleh Adumim, with almost 30,000 people, is one of several large West Bank settlements Sharon wants to keep while evacuating the much smaller Jewish settler population in Gaza.

The great majority of the 240,000 Jews living on the land captured by Israel during the 1967 Middle East war are in a few large West Bank settlement blocs. Only around 8,000 settlers live in Gaza. "

"Financial Institutions Prepared For Threats Aug. 2, 2004

Business-continuity plans are in order and the sector is open for business as usual.

By Steven Marlin

One day after Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge raised the terrorism threat level from yellow to orange for financial institutions in New York, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C., banks reiterated their preparedness against a Sept. 11-type attack, and restated their commitment to safeguarding their physical and technology assets."

Washingtonpost.com: Scaife -- Funding Father of the Right

Funding Father of Right
Part One: May 2, 1999

Richard Mellon Scaife, the Pittsburgh billionaire who has financed numerous anti-Clinton activities, helped fund the creation of the modern conservative movement in America. By compiling a computerized record of nearly all his contributions over four decades, The Washington Post found that Scaife and his family's charitable entities played a central role in the rise of the right, giving at least $340 million to conservative causes and institutions."

Att: Conspiracy Theorists !! Raw Meat Here !!!

Pakistan Says Al Qaeda Men Gave 'Strong Information'
Mon Aug 2, 2004 09:40 AM ET

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistani security services got a lot of information from two al Qaeda men captured recently, a government minister said Monday, but he refused to confirm reports this had led to a security alert in the United States.

U.S. media reports said information gleaned from Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani and a computer expert named by the New York Times as Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, also known as Abu Talha, prompted a high level alert against a possible attack by al Qaeda on financial institutions in New York and Washington.

Pakistan's Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said a computer expert had been arrested but refused to name him or draw any link between what his interrogators had discovered and the alert in the United States.

"We have arrested a computer expert, but I have said nothing about the information that he gave to us," the minister said. "All I have said was that we arrested one man and learned some strong information from him."

He also said the capture of Tanzanian-born Ghailani, wanted for his role in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998 that killed 224 people, had given intelligence officers more material to work on.

"We have got some very important information out of Ghailani," he said.

Ghailani, who had a $5 million bounty on his head, was captured last weekend along with 13 others, including three women and five children, after a shootout in the city of Gujarat, 175 km (110 miles) southeast of Islamabad.

Police also seized a computer and several discs in the operation, intelligence sources said.

Ghailani and his comrades had been hiding out in Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal lands, but fled after an army offensive against foreign Islamic militants and their supporters among local tribes.

According to the U.S. reports, the computer expert had been caught earlier in July.
Note: Computer expert caught early in July, before the DNC Convention according to US reports? That's odd. This is the first mention of it anywhere in the Western news sources. Apparently the Intelligence Agencies did not want to tip their hat about it as to give Al Qaeda operatives no warning about their operations being potentiallly compromised. Any other reading of this development would likely hint at US Government manipulation of intelligence information to aid Pres. Bush's reelection wouldn't it? And we know that's not the case, right?

Study Shows Cancer Cells May Revert
By REUTERS
Published: August 1, 2004

WASHINGTON, July 31 (Reuters) - A cloning experiment in mice indicates that for one type of cancer, at least, cancerous cells may be able to revert to normal.

But the study does not reveal a way to cure cancer. Instead, it addresses a theoretical question about the genetic nature of one type of cancer.

In their experiment, published in the current issue of the journal Genes and Development, the investigators cloned mouse embryos from a melanoma skin cancer cell. Using cells from these embryos, they created healthy adult mice who had some cells derived from the cloned cancer cells, showing that malignancy is not the inevitable fate of such cells.

Dr. Rudolf Jaenisch of the Whitehead Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology worked on the study and is one of the country's leading experts in cloning. He said that while the genetic elements of cancer could not be reversed, the epigenetics, how the genes are actually turned on and off, could be.

Other experts cautioned that the study involved basic research with animals and was far from leading to a cancer cure for humans.

"This is actually an incredibly early basic science study done in animals," said Dr. Otis Brawley, a cancer researcher and professor at the Winship Cancer Institute at Emory University.

"Translating this sort of thing to human benefit would take years, maybe even decades," Dr. Brawley said. "Is this going to help some poor guy with melanoma today or some poor guy diagnosed with melanoma five years from now? No way."

In their paper, Dr. Jaenisch and his colleagues said they took the nucleus from a melanoma cell and injected it into a hollowed-out mouse egg cell. This started the egg growing as if it had been fertilized by sperm.

They did not allow this embryonic mouse to develop but harvested from it embryonic stem cells.

"It's important to note that the stem cells from the cloned melanoma were incorporated into most, if not all, tissues of adult mice, showing that they can develop into normal, healthy cells," said Dr. Robert Blelloch, one of the study investigators.

This could happen only if the cancer cells had lost their malignant qualities, at least temporarily, the researchers said.

The Press as Willing Servant to the Trivial

Triumph of the Trivial
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NY Times OpEd
Published: July 30, 2004

Under the headline "Voters Want Specifics From Kerry," The Washington Post recently quoted a voter demanding that John Kerry and John Edwards talk about "what they plan on doing about health care for middle-income or lower-income people. I have to face the fact that I will never be able to have health insurance, the way things are now. And these millionaires don't seem to address that."

Mr. Kerry proposes spending $650 billion extending health insurance to lower- and middle-income families. Whether you approve or not, you can't say he hasn't addressed the issue. Why hasn't this voter heard about it?

Well, I've been reading 60 days' worth of transcripts from the places four out of five Americans cite as where they usually get their news: the major cable and broadcast TV networks. Never mind the details - I couldn't even find a clear statement that Mr. Kerry wants to roll back recent high-income tax cuts and use the money to cover most of the uninsured. When reports mentioned the Kerry plan at all, it was usually horse race analysis - how it's playing, not what's in it.

On the other hand, everyone knows that Teresa Heinz Kerry told someone to "shove it," though even there, the context was missing. Except for a brief reference on MSNBC, none of the transcripts I've read mention that the target of her ire works for Richard Mellon Scaife, a billionaire who financed smear campaigns against the Clintons - including accusations of murder. (CNN did mention Mr. Scaife on its Web site, but described him only as a donor to "conservative causes.") And viewers learned nothing about Mr. Scaife's long vendetta against Mrs. Heinz Kerry herself.

There are two issues here, trivialization and bias, but they're related.

Somewhere along the line, TV news stopped reporting on candidates' policies, and turned instead to trivia that supposedly reveal their personalities. We hear about Mr. Kerry's haircuts, not his health care proposals. We hear about George Bush's brush-cutting, not his environmental policies.

Even on its own terms, such reporting often gets it wrong, because journalists aren't especially good at judging character. ("He is, above all, a moralist," wrote George Will about Jack Ryan, the Illinois Senate candidate who dropped out after embarrassing sex-club questions.) And the character issues that dominate today's reporting have historically had no bearing on leadership qualities. While planning D-Day, Dwight Eisenhower had a close, though possibly platonic, relationship with his female driver. Should that have barred him from the White House?

And since campaign coverage as celebrity profiling has no rules, it offers ample scope for biased reporting.

Notice the voter's reference to "these millionaires." A Columbia Journalism Review Web site called campaigndesk.org, says its analysis "reveals a press prone to needlessly introduce Senators Kerry and Edwards and Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, as millionaires or billionaires, without similar labels for President Bush or Vice President Cheney."

As the site points out, the Bush campaign has been "hammering away with talking points casting Kerry as out of the mainstream because of his wealth, hoping to influence press coverage." The campaign isn't claiming that Mr. Kerry's policies favor the rich - they manifestly don't, while Mr. Bush's manifestly do. Instead, we're supposed to dislike Mr. Kerry simply because he's wealthy (and not notice that his opponent is, too). Republicans, of all people, are practicing the politics of envy, and the media obediently go along.

In short, the triumph of the trivial is not a trivial matter. The failure of TV news to inform the public about the policy proposals of this year's presidential candidates is, in its own way, as serious a journalistic betrayal as the failure to raise questions about the rush to invade Iraq.

P.S.: Another story you may not see on TV: Jeb Bush insists that electronic voting machines are perfectly reliable, but The St. Petersburg Times says the Republican Party of Florida has sent out a flier urging supporters to use absentee ballots because the machines lack a paper trail and cannot "verify your vote."

P.P.S.: Three weeks ago, The New Republic reported that the Bush administration was pressuring Pakistan to announce a major terrorist capture during the Democratic convention. Hours before Mr. Kerry's acceptance speech, Pakistan announced, several days after the fact, that it had apprehended an important Al Qaeda operative.

Breaking the Silence
By HENRY LOUIS GATES JR.
NY Times OpEd
Published: August 1, 2004

Go into any inner-city neighborhood," Barack Obama said in his keynote address to the Democratic National Convention, "and folks will tell you that government alone can't teach kids to learn. They know that parents have to parent, that children can't achieve unless we raise their expectations and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white." In a speech filled with rousing applause lines, it was a line that many black Democratic delegates found especially galvanizing. Not just because they agreed, but because it was a home truth they'd seldom heard a politician say out loud.

Why has it been so difficult for black leaders to say such things in public, without being pilloried for "blaming the victim"? Why the huge flap over Bill Cosby's insistence that black teenagers do their homework, stay in school, master standard English and stop having babies? Any black person who frequents a barbershop or beauty parlor in the inner city knows that Mr. Cosby was only echoing sentiments widely shared in the black community.

"If our people studied calculus like we studied basketball," my father, age 91, once remarked as we drove past a packed inner-city basketball court at midnight, "we'd be running M.I.T." When my brother and I were growing up in the 50's, our parents convinced us that the "blackest" thing that we could be was a doctor or a lawyer. We admired Hank Aaron and Willie Mays, but our real heroes were people like Thurgood Marshall, Dr. Benjamin Mays and Mary McLeod Bethune.

Yet in too many black neighborhoods today, academic achievement has actually come to be stigmatized. "We are just not the same people anymore," says the mayor of Memphis, Dr. Willie W. Herenton. "We are worse off than we were before Brown v. Board," says Dr. James Comer, a child psychiatrist at Yale. "And a large part of the reason for this is that we have abandoned our own black traditional core values, values that sustained us through slavery and Jim Crow segregation."

Making it, as Mr. Obama told me, "requires diligent effort and deferred gratification. Everybody sitting around their kitchen table knows that."

"Americans suffer from anti-intellectualism, starting in the White House," Mr. Obama went on. "Our people can least afford to be anti-intellectual." Too many of our children have come to believe that it's easier to become a black professional athlete than a doctor or lawyer. Reality check: according to the 2000 census, there were more than 31,000 black physicians and surgeons, 33,000 black lawyers and 5,000 black dentists. Guess how many black athletes are playing professional basketball, football and baseball combined. About 1,400. In fact, there are more board-certified black cardiologists than there are black professional basketball players. "We talk about leaving no child behind," says Dena Wallerson, a sociologist at Connecticut College. "The reality is that we are allowing our own children to be left behind." Nearly a third of black children are born into poverty. The question is: why?

Scholars such as my Harvard colleague William Julius Wilson say that the causes of black poverty are both structural and behavioral. Think of structural causes as "the devil made me do it," and behavioral causes as "the devil is in me." Structural causes are faceless systemic forces, like the disappearance of jobs. Behavioral causes are self-destructive life choices and personal habits. To break the conspiracy of silence, we have to address both of these factors.

"A lot of us," Mr. Obama argues, "hesitate to discuss these things in public because we think that if we do so it lets the larger society off the hook. We're stuck in an either/or mentality - that the problem is either societal or it's cultural."

It's important to talk about life chances - about the constricted set of opportunities that poverty brings. But to treat black people as if they're helpless rag dolls swept up and buffeted by vast social trends - as if they had no say in the shaping of their lives - is a supreme act of condescension. Only 50 percent of all black children graduate from high school; an estimated 64 percent of black teenage girls will become pregnant. (Black children raised by female "householders" are five times as likely to live in poverty as those raised by married couples.) Are white racists forcing black teenagers to drop out of school or to have babies?

Mr. Cosby got a lot of flak for complaining about children who couldn't speak standard English. Yet it isn't a derogation of the black vernacular - a marvelously rich and inventive tongue - to point out that there's a language of the marketplace, too, and learning to speak that language has generally been a precondition for economic success, whoever you are. When we let black youth become monolingual, we've limited their imaginative and economic possibilities.

These issues can be ticklish, no question, but they're badly served by silence or squeamishness. Mr. Obama showed how to get the balance right. We've got to create as many opportunities as we can for the worst-off - and "make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life." But values matter, too. We can't talk about the choices people have without talking about the choices people make.