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A MAN OF HIS WORD???

10.31.04 (12:45 pm) [edit]

I often criticize statements by President Bush, so today let me praise some of his real wisdom:

• [i]Oct. 11, 2000: "If we're an arrogant nation, [foreigners] will resent us. If we're a humble nation but strong, they'll welcome us. ... We've got to be humble[/i]."

It's a good thing Mr. Bush tried to be humble, or the U.S. would have an approval rating even lower than 5 percent in Jordan, and Osama bin Laden's approval rating in Pakistan would be higher than 65 percent.

• [i]Feb. 27, 2001: "I hope you will join me to pay down $2 trillion in debt during the next 10 years. ... We should approach our nation's budget as any prudent family would[/i]."

But Mr. Bush, with the help of a weak economy, has transformed the Clinton budget surpluses into huge deficits. Since Mr. Bush took office, the federal debt has increased by $2.1 trillion, or 40 percent.

• [i]Sept. 25, 2000: "It is clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from overseas[/i]."

Hmm. And many of our exports go abroad. Meanwhile, despite the lackluster economy, oil imports are 1.3 million barrels per day higher than in Mr. Clinton's last year in office.

• [i]June 11, 2001: "My administration is committed to a leadership role on the issue of climate change[/i]."

Great! Because America's carbon dioxide emissions, associated with global warming, have risen 1.7 percent since then.

• [i]June 26, 2003: "Notorious human rights abusers, including, among others, Burma, Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Zimbabwe, have long sought to shield their abuses from the eyes of the world by staging elaborate deceptions and denying access to international human rights monitors[/i]."

It takes a big man to admit mistakes, like his administration's practice of hiding certain Arab prisoners from Red Cross and other inspectors.

• [i]Nov. 5, 2003: "In the debate about the rights of the unborn, we are asked to broaden the circle of our moral concern. ... We're asked by our convictions and tradition and compassion to build a culture of life, and make this a more just and welcoming society[/i]."

Abortions declined in the U.S. in the Clinton years; the abortion rate dropped by 22 percent in the 1990's. But while data are incomplete, abortions appear to have increased sharply since Mr. Bush took office. Glen H. Stassen, a Christian pro-life theologian, estimates that 52,000 more abortions occurred in 2002 than would have been expected based on the previous trend. Professor Stassen attributes the rise in abortions in part to the troubled economy and concerns among pregnant women that they cannot afford to have babies.

• [i]May 25, 2004: "One of the challenges we face is to make sure the health care system responds to the needs of the citizens[/i]."

But five million more Americans don't have health insurance, compared with when Mr. Bush took office.

• [i]Sept. 9, 2003: "We must focus early to make sure every child can read and write and add and subtract[/i]."

But Mr. Bush's budget guidelines translate into inflation-adjusted reductions in 2006 alone of more than $900 million for Head Start and childhood education.

• [i]May 24, 2003: "We will not tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea[/i]."

On Mr. Bush's watch, North Korea is generally believed to have gone from two nuclear weapons to about eight.

• [i]2001: "Not on my watch[/i]."

Scrawled note by Mr. Bush on a report to him about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda that had occurred under President Clinton.

That's reassuring to the 100,000 or more people in Darfur who have died in a spasm of murder and rape that Mr. Bush acknowledges as genocide.

• [i]Sept. 30, 2004: "The biggest threat facing this country is weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terrorist network[/i]."

But the single most important step to reducing the risk that a nuclear weapon will destroy New York is to secure loose nukes abroad, and Mr. Bush has been lackadaisical about that. Only 135 out of 600 metric tons of Russian nuclear materials have been given comprehensive upgrades, and Mr. Bush initially proposed cutting funds for that program.

• [i]Sept. 2, 1999: "Effective reform requires accountability. ... It is a sad story. High hopes, low achievement. Grand plans, unmet goals. My administration will do things differently[/i]."

Oh?

[b]By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF[/b], http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1...

This Election Represents A National I.Q. Test for America (Are You Stupid or What?)

10.31.04 (9:52 am) [edit]

[b]Studies show Bush supporters are misled on Bush policies and the news. [/b]

Oh, you sweet, innocent, carefree citizens in non-swing states. You have no idea how much fun and slime you are missing.

In the swingers, wolves stalk us mercilessly (as the pro-wolf lobby points out indignantly, no one has ever been killed by wolves on U.S. soil, but try arguing that in the face of the relentless new TV ad campaign). Breaking news everywhere – 380 tons of high explosives in Iraq left unattended, stock market down to year's low, leading economic indicators down, more tragedy in Iraq, the Swift Boat Liars are back, more Halliburton scandal, George Tenet says the war in Iraq is "wrong" – it feels like you're dodging meteorites here in the Final Days.

Actually, the best evidence suggests we need to slow way down and go way back, because far from being able to take in anything new, it turns out many of our fellow citizens, especially Bush supporters, are stuck like bugs in amber in some early misperceptions that have never been cleared up.

It seems the majority of Bush supporters, according to recent polls, still believe Saddam Hussein had ties to al Qaeda and even to 9/11, and that the United States found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Many of you are asking how that could possibly be, since everybody knows ...

But everybody doesn't know. There it is. And if you are wondering why everybody doesn't know, you can either blame it on the media, always a shrewd move, or take notice that the administration is STILL spreading this same misinformation.

Both Donald Rumsfeld and Bush have publicly acknowledged there is no evidence of any links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. However, as Dick Cheney campaigns, a standard part of his stump speech is the accusation that Saddam Hussein "had a relationship" with al Qaeda or "has long-established ties to al Qaeda." He makes this claim up to the present day. The 9/11 Commission, however, found that there was "no collaborative relationship" between the two.

Cheney, of course, also has never given up his touching faith that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, recently referring to a "nuclear" program that had in fact been abandoned shortly after the first Gulf War. Bush and Cheney misled the country into war using these two false premises, and it turns out an enormous number of our fellow citizens still believe both of them to be true. It's not because they're stupid, but because an administration they trust is still telling them both phony propositions are true.

Normally, when you get a situation like that – where people are simply not acknowledging reality – it is considered a cult, a form of groupthink based on irrational beliefs propagated by what is normally a charismatic leader. So those Kerry volunteers earnestly engaging Bush supporters on the latest outrage are way off base. They need to go all the way back to the Two Great Lies that got us into this: Many American soldiers marching into Iraq believed it was "payback for 9/11."

A third slightly blinding fact (to me) is that more people now think Kerry behaved shamefully in regards to Vietnam than did W. Bush. Incredible what brazen lying will do, isn't it?

A friend of Bush's dad got him into the "champagne unit" of the Texas Air National Guard, a unit packed with the sons of the privileged trying to stay out of Vietnam, and he failed to complete his service there. Kerry is a genuine, bona fide war hero. The men who served on his boat are supporting him for president, but those who didn't serve with him, who weren't there, who don't know what happened, have been given more credence. Wolves will get you!

In further unhappy evidence of how ill-informed the American people are (blame the media), the Program on International Policy Attitudes found Bush supporters consistently ill-informed about Bush's stands on the issues (Kerry-ans, by contrast, are overwhelmingly right about his positions). Eighty-seven percent of Bush supporters think he favors putting labor and environmental standards into international trade agreements. Eighty percent of Bush supporters believe Bush wants to participate in the treaty banning landmines. Seventy-six percent of Bush supporters believe Bush wants to participate in the treaty banning nuclear weapons testing. Sixty-two percent believe Bush would participate in the International Criminal Court. Sixty-one percent believe Bush wants to participate in the Kyoto Treaty on global warming. Fifty-three percent does not believe Bush is building a missile defense system, a.k.a. "Star Wars."

The only two Bush stands the majority of his supporters got right were on increasing defense spending and who should write the new Iraqi constitution.

Kerry supporters, by contrast, know their man on seven out of eight issues, with only 43 percent understanding he wants to keep defense spending the same but change how the money is spent, and 57 percent believing he wants to up it.

So what's going on here? I do not think Kerry people are smarter than Bush people, so why are they better-informed? Maybe a small percentage of ideological right wingers don't believe anything the Establishment media say, but I don't think this is a matter of not believing what they hear, but of not hearing what's factual.

The great triumph of the political right in this country has been the creation of a network of alternative media. There are people who listen to Rush Limbaugh for more hours every day than the Branch Davidians listened to David Koresh. Watch Fox News, read The Washington Times – hey, that's what the Bush administration does, according to its own words.

But it's not just the right wing media purveying lies – they are quoting the administration. These misimpressions come directly from the Bush administration, still, over and over. - http://www.alternet.org/elect...

The Most Under-Reported Stories of the Week ... Corporate-Owned Media Cover-up for Bush

10.31.04 (9:43 am) [edit]

[b][u]UNDER THE RADAR[/u][/b]

[b]LEGAL – IRS GOES AFTER NAACP:[/b] President Bush may be avoiding the NAACP, but the Internal Revenue Service isn't. The Washington Post reports the IRS "has threatened to revoke the NAACP's tax-exempt status because the civil rights group's chairman, Julian Bond, 'condemned the administration policies of George W. Bush' during a speech this summer." In that speech, Bond criticized the president's "divisive" policies on education, civil rights and the Iraq war, and chided him for becoming "the first sitting president since Warren G. Harding not to address the NAACP." Frances Hill, an authority on non-profit groups at the University of Miami Law School, called it "amazing" that the IRS would audit a group based on a public speech. "Usually you would look for some activity other than disagreeing with policies," she said.

[b]SCIENCE – STEM CELL:[/b] President Bush has said he hopes the stem cell lines he has approved will help "discover cures," but two new studies indicate the available lines may be largely ineffectual. According to one report, all the embryonic stem cells available to federally funded scientists under Bush's three-year-old research policy "share a previously unrecognized trait that fosters rejection by the immune systems, diminishing their potential as medical treatments. A second study has concluded that at least a quarter of the Bush-approved cell colonies are so difficult to keep alive they have little potential even as research tools." Stem cell research proponents "said yesterday that the findings strengthen the case for letting federally funded researchers work on newer stem cell colonies," an option the president has rejected.

[b]CAMPAIGN – BUSH CAMPAIGN CROPS AD, INVENTS TROOPS:[/b] Vice President Cheney says John Kerry will "say and do anything to get elected," but it is the Bush campaign which has come under fire for doctoring a photograph used in a television commercial to make it look like there were more soldiers in a crowd cheering for the president. Aides now admit that "A group of soldiers in the crowd was electronically copied to fill in the space where the president and the podium had been." As usual, senior campaign officials declined responsibility for the move, blaming it on an anonymous "video editor."

[b]ECONOMY – UNEMPLOYMENT CLAIMS JUMP UP:[/b] According to Labor Department data, "The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose last week by 20,000, the largest jump in a month. The bigger-than-expected increase pushed total new claims to 350,000 last week and provided fresh evidence that the labor market is still under pressure even though the economic recovery is about to celebrate its third anniversary." There are "821,000 fewer people on payrolls than when Bush took office in January 2001."

[b]HOMELAND SECURITY – A TOY STORY:[/b] Wondering what the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been up to these days? Well, Pufferbelly Toys owner Stephanie Cox could catch you up: six weeks ago, she was visited by two DHS agents at her small store just north of Portland. "The lead agent asked Cox whether she carried a toy called the Magic Cube, which he said was an illegal copy of the Rubik's Cube, one of the most popular toys of all time. He told her to remove the Magic Cube from her shelves, and he watched to make sure she complied." As DHS says, "obviously trademark infringement does have significant economic implications." Nevertheless, six weeks later Cox told The Oregonian "she is still bewildered by the experience. 'Aren't there any terrorists out there?' she said."

[b]HEALTH CARE – AMERICANS PAY MORE FOR DRUGS:[/b] According to a report issued Thursday, "Americans on average paid 81 percent more for patented brand-name drugs last year than buyers in Canada and six western European countries. That gap represents a significant increase from 2000, when the cost differential between the United States and the seven other countries was 60 percent." The cost difference results mostly from America's policy of allowing pharmaceutical companies to freely set their prices. "Other countries impose cost controls, such as negotiated price levels and profit limits." The president's Medicare reform law, "which provides a drug benefit starting in 2006, specifically prohibits negotiating drug prices" and drug importation from cheaper markets. Some states are nevertheless pushing forward with importation.

[b]FASHION – BATTLE OF THE BULGE:[/b] NASA scientists, apparently with some free time on their hands after funding was cut for the administration's ambitious Mars exploration program, have taken aim at the president's bulge. According to Salon, senior NASA scientist Dr. Robert M. Nelson has spent the past week at his home analyzing images of the mysterious bulge in the president's back during the debates. Bush has joked he must have had a poorly tailored suit. Not so, Nelson says. "I am willing to stake my scientific reputation to the statement that Bush was wearing something under his jacket during the debate," he said. Nelson stressed he's "not certain" what it is, but "that it could be some type of electronic device – it's consistent with the appearance of an electronic device worn in that manner."

[b]FOR LINKS, CLICK ON[/b] http://www.americanprogressac...

The Most Under-Reported Stories of the Week ... Corporate-Owned Media Cover-up for Bush

10.31.04 (9:35 am) [edit]

... The Bush Regime’s Fascist FY2005 Budget for the Environment: Putting Our Future at Risk

10.31.04 (7:26 am) [edit]

The Bush administration FY2005 budget released on Monday, Feb. 2, cuts spending on environmental projects by $1.9 billion compared with FY2004 spending, according to an analysis by several environmental groups.

President Bush’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2005 once again launches an assault on environmental protection in this country under the guise of fiscal constraints. The reality is that environmental activities are often singled out for disproportional reductions relative to other domestic programs, putting the nation’s air, land and water at risk. At best, the budget mirrors the President’s neglect of the environment demonstrated in his State of the Union Address, revealing a disturbing lack of solutions for our ongoing environmental challenges.

Although changes in funding vary greatly from one environmental program to another, certain broad trends have emerged from the Bush budget. First, the administration has persistently sought to hide the true effect of its budget cuts through a sideshow of shell games, sleights-of-hand, and other deceptive gimmicks. Second, the administration has repeatedly undermined the use of science in decision making, placing it in the service of politics. Finally, and most distressingly, it has greatly enlarged the environmental deficit that we are leaving to our children.

[b]Here’s a quick look inside the numbers[/b]:

· Total spending on environmental programs is slated for a $1.9 billion reduction (-5.9 percent) compared to FY 2004, falling from $32.2 billion to $30.3 billion. However, the cuts do not stop there; the environment takes another whack in the President’s long-term budget plan, dropping to only $29.6 billion in FY 2006, with significant additional cuts falling on land conservation efforts.

· The real funding impact is even greater when comparing the budget proposal to the amount of money needed in FY 2005 to keep government activities at the same level as in FY 2004 (taking inflation and other changing expenses into account). Then the shortfall rises to $3.2 billion, a drop of a full 10 percent below current levels. Over the long-run inflation places huge tax on available resources -- by FY 2009 the gap between current levels and those proposed by the administration widens to $7.0 billion, a loss of nearly a fifth of today’s purchasing power.

· Funding for the Environmental Protection Agency would fall by over $600 million dollars with the biggest impacts falling on water quality and science and technology programs. Land conservation would fall far short of current needs, with the greatest deficiencies occurring in land acquisition, wildlife protection, and parks funding. Certain critical clean energy programs would also be slashed, such as federal R&D into energy efficiency and solar energy, while unjustified subsidies to polluters continue.

The following summary illustrates some of the most significant environmental cuts proposed in the Bush budget by agency.

([b]Please Note:[/b] This document is a compilation of views from several different environmental organizations. However, not all of the organizations work on all of the issues contained in this document. Therefore, the organizations that contributed to this document do not necessarily have views on all of the programs discussed in it.)

[b]Environmental Protection Agency Under Attack[/b]
The Environmental Protection Agency is a principal victim of the Bush Administration’s budget cutting hatchet. The budget’s overall funding request for FY 2005 ($7.76 billion) is down 7.2 percent from FY 2004 enacted levels ($8.37 billion) for the Agency, a cut in size second only to the Department of Agriculture. Although there would be slight increases for operating programs, diesel school buses, and Superfund cleanup, these positive changes are swamped by whopping cuts of $822 million in programs to protect water quality and of $93 million from EPA’s scientific research.

[b]Water, Water, Everywhere (Except in the Bush Budget!)[/b]
The President’s budget has its largest cut in water quality infrastructure funding for reducing sources of pollution. This category includes a broad range of activities, including sewage plants, water purification facilities, and targeted pollution-prevention investments. The total investments drop from $2.6 billion to $1.8 billion, an $822 million dollar cut that represents more than 30 percent of the total for water infrastructure investments. When compared with the $450 BILLION in needs identified by EPA in the Clean Water and Drinking Water Infrastructure Gap Analysis of 2002, these cuts are difficult to justify.

The largest single reduction is in the Clean Water Act State Revolving Fund (CWASRF), which loans money to states to pay for sewage treatment plants. President Bush's budget for CWASRF would decline by $492 million, from $1.34 billion in FY 2004 to only $850 million in FY 2005. The Safe Drinking Water Act State Revolving Fund, which supports construction of drinking water purification facilities, receives a slight increase, from $845 million to $850 million -- still far below annual needs.

The President’s budget takes no responsibility for the growing national needs of communities to protect and restore their watersheds. On top of the cut to the CWASRF the budget also reduces the funding available to states and municipalities for improving stormwater systems and reducing pollution in the rivers and streams. The budget cuts nearly $30 million from the non-point source pollution control program (Sec 319 funding), which deals with pollution running off of farms, feedlots, parking areas, and other diffuse sources. This administration is ignoring its own research and denying federal responsibility for the hundreds of billions of dollars that are needed to update aging infrastructure in order to keep our streams and rivers clean and disease-free.

Although the Administration’s budget proposes increases for specific watersheds, such as the increases of $35 million for the Great Lakes and $10 million for the Chesapeake Bay, these increases are dwarfed by the huge cuts in overall water quality funding levels for these places.

[b]Research Takes a Hit [/b]
Although the Bush Administration frequently talks about basing policy on “sound science,” it is requesting significant cuts to EPA’s Science and Technology accounts. The cuts, totaling $93 million, represent close to a 12 percent cut from FY 2004. According to the Administration, the cuts will include reductions in air, water, and toxics research. Specific programs targets include research into the effects of chemicals known as endocrine disruptors, (down almost $5 million) “pesticides and toxics,” (down $7.7 million from the 2004 budget) and “human health and ecosystems,” (down $13 million from the 2004 budget).

[b]Superfund: Polluters Make the Mess, Taxpayers Pay for Cleanup[/b]
The Superfund program was based on the principle that polluting companies should be held accountable for the messes they make. President Bush’s budget, while proposing a slight increase of $124 million above the FY 2004 budget for Superfund cleanup, effectively abandons the “polluter pays” principle by failing to call for reinstatement of the Superfund fees to pay for the program.

While Superfund would grow under the President's budget from $1.257 billion in FY 2004 to $1.38 billion in FY 2005, the taxpayer would pick up the entire tab through general revenues, since Superfund's trust fund was bankrupt as of the beginning of FY 2004, according to the General Accounting Office. Since Superfund's dedicated funding source (the trust fund) is no longer viable, the program draws money away from all other EPA programs for funding. The net result is that taxpayers are forced to foot the bill for the three out of ten Superfund cleanups where there is no responsible party, and EPA has no choice but to slow down toxic cleanups at other sites.

[b]Natural Resources: Out of Touch with American Conservation Values[/b]
In good times and bad, America has always invested in the places and wildlife that make our country special. This budget, however, steps sharply away from that longstanding conservation tradition. Token increases in a few, politically-charged locations cannot hide its fundamental shortfalls in conservation of America's natural resources.

[b]Healthy Forests? Where?[/b]
The President’s Budget requests $475 million for the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, almost 40 percent short of the congressionally-authorize d level. Given the Administration’s arguments that the program is critical to protecting homes and communities from wildfires, such a dramatic shortfall is surprising. At the same time, the budget increases timber industry subsidies, cuts State and Private Forestry by 23 percent ($42 million), and neglects other vitally important conservation and restoration programs for our national forests, including: Recreation, Heritage, and Wilderness; Wildlife and Fisheries Habitat Management; and Law Enforcement Operations.

[b]Gutting the Land and Water Conservation Fund: There They Go Again[/b]
Land conservation funding suffers from familiar budget smoke and mirrors. Once again, the Administration claims to fully fund the Land and Water Conservation (LWCF) at $900 million, while actually providing only one-third of the money promised. LWCF has for decades been our nation's premiere tool to create and preserve parks, forests, wildlife refuges and open space, and to ensure Americans can enjoy them. It is so popular that, during the 2000 campaign, President Bush promised to fully fund LWCF. But his 2005 budget provides only $314 million for LWCF's real programs -- $220 million for federal land acquisition, and $96 million for stateside assistance grants. Just as the Administration did last year, it then tries to disguise the shortfall by arbitrarily declaring more than a dozen other, ongoing programs to be part of the LWCF. National treasures from the Everglades to our neighborhood parks will suffer from the resulting net loss in funds for expanding and consolidating parks, refuges and forests.

[b]National Parks: Numbers Don't Add Up[/b]
The Administration has only provided 7 percent of the new $4.9 billion the President pledged, in 2000, to eliminate the maintenance backlog in the National Parks. Since taking office, the Bush Administration has only increased funding to address the maintenance backlog by approximately $350 million. They continue to insist that they are on track to meet the pledge, but those claims simply do not add up. As a result of the continued shortfalls, the public is losing access to American treasures like the Statue of Liberty, which has been closed for over 2 years.

[b]Fish and Wildlife Service: Shell Games Shortchanging the Future[/b]
The Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), with its important mission of preserving the unique wildlife and plant species found in America, receives a few small increases; but these cannot hide the budget’s overall neglect of our valuable and vulnerable national resources. Two of the most important operating programs in the FWS -- Endangered Species and National Wildlife Refuges -- are seeing real or effective cuts. For example, the Administration is proposing a $9.8 million reduction from the current $68 million endangered species recovery budget, taking it below its $60 million level of three years ago – when President Bush took office. Some critically important wildlife-related grant programs – such as State Wildlife Grants and the Cooperative Endangered Species Fund – do receive needed increases -- but that does not make up for shortchanging the agency’s operating accounts.

[b]Abandoned Mine Reclamation Fund: Industry Giveaways[/b]
Congress created the Abandoned Mine Reclamation Fund in 1977, requiring coal companies to pay a fee into a trust fund aimed at cleaning up abandoned mine sites. Since then the program has suffered from chronic underfunding, even though more than 7,000 mines abandoned before 1977 haven’t been cleaned up. The administration has touted an increase in funding for the program, but a closer look shows that the additional $53 million that the budget promises would pay off “certified” states such as Wyoming that have already completed reclamation of their mines. And while the budget correctly proposes to reauthorize the AML fund, the administration’s legislative proposal includes outrageous giveaways to the coal industry. It would reduce the fee paid by coal companies by 20 percent, shortchanging the fund by nearly $800 million over the next 14 years. And it would allow coal companies to use AML funds to purchase reclamation bonds, subsidizing the industry’s cost of doing business.

[b]It Didn’t Have to be This Way: Abandoning the Conservation Trust Fund[/b]
This legacy of funding shortfalls and shell games didn't have to happen. In 2000, a bipartisan Congress enacted a roughly $2 billion-per-year conservation funding mechanism called the Conservation Trust Fund, designed to ensure that, in good times and in bad, the country always had enough money to meet our most important conservation, recreation, wildlife and preservation needs. But this budget abandons the Conservation Trust Fund, with the result that, across the nation, our parks, forests, wild lands and wildlife will suffer.

[b]Other Natural Resource Needs: Agricultural Conservation Funding[/b]
The budget fails to live up to the promises of the 2002 Farm Bill by reducing funding for key agricultural conservation programs, including the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program and the landmark Conservation Security Program. The budget also would cut in half the $23 million in mandatory funds that the Farm Bill provided for the Renewable Energy System and Energy Efficiency Improvements program, which provides grants, loans, and loan guarantees to farmers, ranchers, and rural small businesses.

[b]Arctic Drilling Again: Don't They Ever Listen?[/b]
By assuming speculative revenues from oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the budget shows itself to be out of touch with political and economic reality. In a cynical political move carried over from last year, the Administration’s proposal claims to earmark some of the revenues from Arctic drilling for research into alternative, renewable sources of energy. Such cynical schemes ignore the fact that every recent poll has shown the American people don’t want drilling in the Arctic Refuge, and turn a blind eye to the political reality that the US Senate has rejected Arctic drilling twice since 2001. Assuming in the federal budget revenues at such highly optimistic prices, from an activity that is illegal under current law, seems to be the height of fiscal irresponsibility.

[b]Remember the Blue Planet – Ocean and Coastal Funding[/b]
The United States controls the largest expanse of ocean of any nation in the world. Our oceans span 4.5 million square miles, an area 23 percent larger than the land area of the nation. And yet, two days after the federal budget was released, we know more about future spending for Mars exploration than we do for ocean protection on Earth, the “blue planet.” The Administration has still not released its official budget request for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Here is some of what we do know:

[b]National Ocean Service: Less Service[/b]
The National Ocean Service (NOS) is the primary federal agency working to protect and manage America's coastal waters and habitats. President Bush's budget request for FY 2005 proposes a debilitating cut of $215 million (35 percent) from 2004 enacted levels. Critical NOS programs and activities include research into harmful algal blooms, oil spill damage assessments, coastal zone management grants, national marine sanctuaries, and estuary research and conservation. A 35 percent reduction in these activities will jeopardize all Americans who use our beaches and coastal waters for swimming, boating, fishing and other recreation.

[b]National Marine Fisheries Service: Need More Eyes on the Ocean[/b]
Recent scientific reports conclude that too many of our nation’s fisheries are on the brink of collapse. Sixty-five percent of our fish populations that are already depleted continue to be overfished. Unsustainable fishing practices that cause wasteful bycatch and habitat destruction continue to harm oceans. Funding to improve data collection, protect and restore fish habitats, minimize bycatch, end overfishing, protect at-risk sea life, and enforce regulations is desperately needed to bring oceans and coastal communities back to health. However, the Bush budget request calls for a $22 million decrease (3 percent) for the agency’s fisheries and protected species activities in FY 2005.

[b]Pacific Salmon: Return to the Wild[/b]
Pacific Northwest salmon are a vital part of that region’s struggling economy and an important part of our nation’s history and commitment to the native peoples of this land. While the Administration touts modest increases in salmon funding, the truth is that salmon runs in the Pacific Northwest continue to decline. The Bush Administration budget requests a four percent decrease in spending for the once world-renowned salmon of the Columbia and Snake River basin – an amount that is at least a 40 percent shortfall from what federal agencies charged with the protection and restoration of these species indicate is necessary to implement the current salmon plan.

President Bush's budget proposes $100 million for assistance to states, tribes, and local governments to protect salmon runs through the Pacific Salmon Recovery Fund. This is a $10 million increase above fiscal year 2004 enacted levels. However, in FY 2002, Pacific states received $110 million from the recovery fund.

[b]Coastal Conservation Trust Fund: Out of Sight, Out of Mind[/b]
Bush's budget proposal completely ignores the mandate to fully fund the coastal portion of the Conservation Trust Fund, which was established in October 2000 under the Land Conservation, Preservation, and Infrastructure Improvement Fund (P.L. 106-291). While the CSC should receive $560 million in dedicated funding in FY 2004, the president's request seems to ignore the dedicated levels and the existence of this fund.

[b]Cleaning Out Clean Energy Funds[/b]
America deserves a clean, safe and affordable energy future, but the FY2005 budget promotes an unbalanced plan tilted toward polluting, dangerous sources of energy. It would cut core renewable energy programs, as well as programs that reduce commercial and residential energy use. At the same time that it shortchanges these worthwhile programs, the budget proposes either increasing or maintaining current levels of spending on nuclear power and coal research and development programs.

[b]Renewable Energy: More for the Distant Future, Less for Today[/b]
The administration has proposed a minor increase to the overall renewable energy budget. However, this deceptive increase funds unproven new initiatives while cutting or flatlining proven, core renewable energy programs. The budget provides an additional $13 million (16 percent) for the president’s hydrogen initiative, whose benefits will take decades to materialize and which will generate hydrogen from coal and nuclear energy. At the same time, the budget shortchanges proven clean energy programs that provide us a clear path toward energy independence today. Most notably, it cuts solar energy programs by more than $3 million (4 percent) and biomass by $14 million (16 percent).

[b]Energy Efficiency[/b]
Despite an increase for low-income weatherization, the budget would cut overall energy efficiency and conservation by more than $2 million. The core energy efficiency line items for building and industrial technologies would be cut by $1.5 million (3 percent) and $35 million (38 percent), respectively. These programs help reduce energy usage, saving money for homeowners, consumers and industry.

[b]Whopping Increases for “Clean Coal”[/b]
The budget includes $447 million for the president’s Coal Research Initiative, a $69 million increase over 2004 levels. This includes a $109 million, or 60 percent, increase for the Clean Coal Power Initiative. This subsidy for the coal industry has already received more than $2 billion in taxpayer handouts, and the General Accounting Office has released seven reports documenting waste and mismanagement of the program.

[b]Nuclear Energy: New Reactors [/b]
Overall, the budget increases funding for nuclear power by $4.7 million (1.2 percent). At first glance, its cuts to nuclear research and development line items appear to be a positive step. Upon closer look, however, the budget simply redirects funds from these programs, which supported existing nuclear power plants, into initiatives aimed at helping build a new generation of commercial nuclear reactors.

For example, the budget provides $30.5 million, a nearly $3 million increase above 2004, to the “Generation IV” initiative, which subsidizes the nuclear industry’s efforts to build the next generation of nuclear reactors. It also includes $166 million for the Idaho National Laboratory, an increase of $35 million over 2004 levels. The Department of Energy is expanding the INL, which will serve as the main lab researching the design of new nuclear power initiatives. Finally, the budget includes $46.2 million for the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative. This program would increase the threat of nuclear proliferation by reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, which separates out dangerous plutonium.

[b]DOE’s Environmental Management Budget: from Exhorting to Extorting[/b]
Within a funding request of $7.4 billion for DOE's Environmental Management program, the administration is proposing to withhold $350 million from cleanup of high-level radioactive waste (HLW) in Washington, Idaho, South Carolina and New York due to “… pending litigation that has called into question the legal authority of the Department to determine which waste streams generated by reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel should be disposed of in a geologic repository.” This so-called uncertainty stems from the fact that DOE broke the law when it tried to reclassify millions of gallons of the most radioactive waste in the world as “incidental” so it could abandon it next to important water supplies. The Natural Resources Defense Council and others sued DOE over this issue and prevailed in federal court.

By openly threatening hundreds of millions of dollars necessary to clean up high-level radioactive waste, the administration hopes that it can pressure Congress to reverse the court decision as a condition of receiving funding. Congress and the impacted states should ignore this brazen attempt to extort concessions and direct DOE to clean up its radioactive wastes. This penny-wise and pound foolish proposal could eventually cost communities and taxpayers huge sums of money in monitoring, containment, and restoration expenses unless the waste is cleaned up right the first time.

[b]DOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)[/b]
The budget request continues the administration’s penchant for placing nuclear rearmament ahead of nuclear nonproliferation and arms reduction. Funding for nuclear Weapons Activities increases by $332 million above 2004 (5.1 percent) to $6.85 billion, and to a projected $7.8 billion in FY 2009 (20 percent over five years). In current dollars, this far exceeds the average Cold War spending level. Including the current budget, annual spending on nuclear warheads and bombs has increased by $1.9 billion (38 percent) over the final Clinton administration budget. Overall, the Bush administration plans to spend $37 billion developing and maintaining the nuclear weapons stockpile over the next five years, and another $4.1 billion on nuclear reactor development for the US Navy.

The budget also presses ahead with controversial programs for nuclear weapons Advanced Concepts, developmental testing of a Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator warhead, and detailed design-engineering of a proposed $2-4 billion Modern Pit Facility (MPF) to manufacture new plutonium components for nuclear weapons. In contrast, support for NNSA’s other primary mission, “Control of Weapons of Mass Destruction” in Russia and other countries, gets a paltry one percent increase to $1.4 billion. But even here there is less than meets the eye: more than 40 percent of the $1.4 billion “nonproliferation” request is for disposing of DOE’s own surplus weapon materials, including $368 million toward the construction of a multi-billion dollar plutonium mixed-oxide fuel plant that is not technically required to dispose of surplus weapons materials, and which itself represents an environmental and proliferation hazard and target for terrorist assault.

[b]Groups Involved: Defenders of Wildlife, The Wilderness Society, Oceana, The Sierra Club, National Parks Conservation Association, Natural Resources Defense Council, Friends of the Earth[/b] - http://www.bushgreenwatch.org...

... The Bush Regime’s Fascist FY2005 Budget for the Environment: Putting Our Future at Risk

10.31.04 (7:25 am) [edit]

... The Bush Regime’s Fascist FY2005 Budget for the Environment: Putting Our Future at Risk

10.31.04 (7:22 am) [edit]

GOD'S MESSENGER

10.31.04 (7:14 am) [edit]

THE REV. D. Bradley Murray, a Jesuit of considerable erudition and insight, once disappointed my wife at a Loyola High School football game when he informed her that no matter how hard she prayed on it, God did not care which team won.

Father Murray would have made the same observation about the bitterly contested presidential election to be decided Tuesday. But he would have been ridiculed by the standing president, who believes he is God's messenger, and possibly by his Democratic opponent, who has been trying to catch up by touting his own religiosity.

George W. Bush's single-minded messianism is by far the more disturbing because the evidence of its consequences is so painfully manifest.

On Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists motivated and directed by a religious fanatic from another mindset attacked targets in the United States and killed thousands. With or without Osama bin Laden's and his al-Qaida organization's religious convictions, this was an act of war. The president had the responsibility to go after bin Laden and al-Qaida with all of the resources at his disposal. God had nothing to do with this. If He had, 9/11 would not have happened.

[b]Read article [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

WILL OSAMA HELP W.???

10.31.04 (7:13 am) [edit]

WASHINGTON — Some people thought the October surprise would be the president producing Osama.

Instead, it was Osama producing yet another video taunting the president and lecturing America.

After bin Laden's pre-election commentary from his anchor desk at a secure, undisclosed location, many TV chatterers and Republicans postulated that the evildoer's campaign intrusion would help the president.

O.B.L., they said, might re-elect W.

They follow the Bush strategists' reasoning that since President Bush rates higher than John Kerry on fighting terror, anytime Americans get rattled about Iraq and Al Qaeda, it's a plus for the president. And Republicans can keep claiming that Al Qaeda wants the "weak" Democrat elected, even as some intelligence experts suggest the terrorists prefer that the belligerent Mr. Bush stay in power because he has been a boon to jihadist recruiting, with his disastrous occupation of Iraq and his true believer, us-versus-them, my-Christian-God's-direct ing-my-foreign-policy vibe.

The Bushies' campaign pitch follows their usual backward logic: Because we have failed to make you safe, you should re-elect us to make you safer. Because we haven't caught Osama in three years, you need us to catch Osama in the next four years. Because we didn't bother to secure explosives in Iraq, you can count on us to make sure those explosives aren't used against you.

You'd think that seeing Osama looking fit as a fiddle and ready for hate would spark anger at the Bush administration's cynical diversion of the war on Al Qaeda to the war on Saddam. It's absurd that we're mired in Iraq - an invasion the demented vice president praised on Friday for its "brilliance" - while the 9/11 mastermind nonchalantly pops up anytime he wants. For some, it seemed cartoonish, with Osama as Road Runner beeping by Wile E. Bush as Dick Cheney and Rummy run the Acme/Halliburton explosives company - now under F.B.I. investigation for its no-bid contracts on anvils, axle grease (guaranteed slippery) and dehydrated boulders (just add water) .

Osama slouched onto TV bragging about pulling off the 9/11 attacks just after the president strutted onto TV in New Hampshire with 9/11 families, bragging that Al Qaeda leaders know "we are on their trail."

Maybe bin Laden hasn't gotten the word. Maybe W. should get off the trail and get on Osama's tail.

W. was clinging to his inane mantra that if we fight the terrorists over there, we don't have to fight them here, even as bin Laden was back on TV threatening to come here. The president still avoided using Osama's name on Friday, part of the concerted effort to downgrade him and merge him with Iraqi insurgents.

The White House reaction to the disclosures about the vanished explosives in Iraq was typical. Though it's clear the treasures and terrors of Iraq - from viruses to ammunition to artifacts - were being looted and loaded into donkey carts and pickups because we had insufficient troops to secure the country, Bush officials devoted the vast resources of the government to trying to undermine the facts to protect the president.

The Pentagon mobilized to debunk the bunker story with a tortured press conference and a satellite photo of trucks that proved about as much as Colin Powell's prewar drawings of two trailers that were supposed to be mobile biological weapons labs.

Republicans insinuated that it was a plot by foreign internationalists to help the foreigner-loving, internationalist Kerry, a U.N. leak from the camp of Mohamed ElBaradei to hurt the administration that had scorned the U.N. as a weak sister.

In their ruthless determination to put Mr. Bush's political future ahead of our future safety, the White House and House Republicans last week thwarted the enactment of recommendations of the 9/11 commission they never wanted in the first place.

While pretending to be serious about getting a bill on reorganizing intelligence agencies before the election, the White House never forced Congressional Republicans to come to an agreement. So the advice from the panel that spent 19 months studying how the government could shore up intelligence so there wouldn't be another 9/11 may be squandered, even though Dick Cheney's favorite warning to scare voters away from Mr. Kerry is that we might someday face terrorists "in the middle of one of our cities with deadlier weapons than have ever before been used against us," including a nuclear bomb.

Wow. I feel safer. Don't you?

[b]By Maureen Dowd[/b], http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1...

WILL OSAMA HELP W.???

10.31.04 (7:11 am) [edit]

WILL OSAMA HELP W.???

10.31.04 (7:11 am) [edit]

WILL OSAMA HELP W.???

10.31.04 (7:11 am) [edit]

... Does Anyone Outside the US Want W. as Leader of the Free World?

10.31.04 (7:07 am) [edit]

[b]George W Bush promised he would be a president of 'unity', writes James Cusick, but instead his war against terror has turned most of the world against him and left his own country bitterly divided[/b]

The "international community" is a popular phrase in both the White House and Downing Street. It lends gravitas to global concern. Tony Blair uses it when he needs rescuing on foreign policy. George W Bush says it when he needs Tony Blair. But in four years of Bush in the White House the view of the actual "international community" has mattered little. The United States - and by association the United Kingdom - is isolated and mistrusted and the real "communite internationale" is praying for regime change on Tuesday.

In January 2001, as Bush was sworn into office, the promises he made were very different. He described his foreign policy aims as "humble" and claimed he was a "uniter, not a divider". Margaret Thatcher said much the same thing when she quoted St Francis outside Number 10 after her first election triumph. Neither was successful at living up to their stated aims.

Although Bush arrived in the White House as damaged goods - put in place by the casting vote of the US Supreme Court after the legal dogfight with Al Gore - his lack of legitimacy didn't seem to bother him. Gore had received more votes, but due to the US electoral college system Bush became the president.

[b]Read article [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

... Does Anyone Outside the US Want W. as Leader of the Free World?

10.31.04 (7:06 am) [edit]

... Does Anyone Outside the US Want W. as Leader of the Free World?

10.31.04 (7:06 am) [edit]

... 'Halliburton'-'Cheney Wants Corporate Regulation ... OF CITIZENS!!!

10.31.04 (7:00 am) [edit]

"We think lawsuit abuse is a serious problem in this country," proclaimed Dick Cheney while debating John Edwards in early October. That "runaway lawsuits" theme is repeated at almost every Bush/Cheney campaign stop.

Knowing the record of his own company, I can't help wondering whether Cheney is like an alcoholic seeking help, for during his five-year reign as CEO, Halliburton and its subsidiaries filed more than 150 separate court actions (documented by Halliburton Watch http://halliburtonwatch.org/ ). Those lawsuits pursued injunctions, evictions, and attempted to collect alleged debts from other corporations and individuals, sometimes for as little as $1,500.

But Halliburton is just part of a larger pattern. A recent study http://citizen.org/pressroom/... by Public Citizen indicates that U.S. businesses file four times as many lawsuits as individual citizens - and there are 281 million Americans and only 7 million U.S. corporations.

[b]Read article [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

... 'Halliburton'-'Cheney Wants Corporate Regulation ... OF CITIZENS!!!

10.31.04 (6:59 am) [edit]

... 'Halliburton'-'Cheney Wants Corporate Regulation ... OF CITIZENS!!!

10.31.04 (6:59 am) [edit]

... Bush is Selling his Sordid Version of '1984' ...

10.31.04 (6:53 am) [edit]

Will the Tuesday election duly mark the efficacy of the Big Lie? Has George Orwell missed his dooms-date for reality by these past 20 years? The voters will get the last word.

If George W. Bush is indeed elected for real this time around, it would signal the triumph of White House falsehoods continuously told. The prime lie, for those who yet believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, took a country to war under false pretenses that Saddam Hussein posed a nuclear threat to the continental U.S. A corollary, that 41 percent still believe, held that the Iraqi dictator supported the al-Qaida consortium that brought down the World Trade Center towers.

So weak was the evidence on the eve of the U.S. invasion that even this space doubted Bush would strike. "The war against Iraq cannot be," I wrote against the advice of our Washington bureau chief, who knew better. "Such criminal activity is ill-advised and should be illegal in a civilized world. Nor should America target for extermination those heads of state who displease the ruling circle of this republic . . . under the skeletal pretense spelled out so far, this war just cannot be." It was, of course, and still is.

[b]Read article [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

... Bush is Selling his Sordid Version of '1984' ...

10.31.04 (6:52 am) [edit]

... Bush is Selling his Sordid Version of '1984' ...

10.31.04 (6:52 am) [edit]

... Bush's Squalid Track-Record: Lies, Lies and More Lies

10.31.04 (6:48 am) [edit]

[b]Taking Bush at His Word[/b]

I often criticize statements by President Bush, so today let me praise some of his real wisdom:

• [i]Oct. 11, 2000: "If we're an arrogant nation, [foreigners] will resent us. If we're a humble nation but strong, they'll welcome us. ... We've got to be humble[/i]."

It's a good thing Mr. Bush tried to be humble, or the U.S. would have an approval rating even lower than 5 percent in Jordan, and Osama bin Laden's approval rating in Pakistan would be higher than 65 percent.

• [i]Feb. 27, 2001: "I hope you will join me to pay down $2 trillion in debt during the next 10 years. ... We should approach our nation's budget as any prudent family would[/i]."

But Mr. Bush, with the help of a weak economy, has transformed the Clinton budget surpluses into huge deficits. Since Mr. Bush took office, the federal debt has increased by $2.1 trillion, or 40 percent.

• [i]Sept. 25, 2000: "It is clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from overseas[/i]."

Hmm. And many of our exports go abroad. Meanwhile, despite the lackluster economy, oil imports are 1.3 million barrels per day higher than in Mr. Clinton's last year in office.

• [i]June 11, 2001: "My administration is committed to a leadership role on the issue of climate change[/i]."

Great! Because America's carbon dioxide emissions, associated with global warming, have risen 1.7 percent since then.

• [i]June 26, 2003: "Notorious human rights abusers, including, among others, Burma, Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Zimbabwe, have long sought to shield their abuses from the eyes of the world by staging elaborate deceptions and denying access to international human rights monitors[/i]."

It takes a big man to admit mistakes, like his administration's practice of hiding certain Arab prisoners from Red Cross and other inspectors.

• [i]Nov. 5, 2003: "In the debate about the rights of the unborn, we are asked to broaden the circle of our moral concern. ... We're asked by our convictions and tradition and compassion to build a culture of life, and make this a more just and welcoming society[/i]."

Abortions declined in the U.S. in the Clinton years; the abortion rate dropped by 22 percent in the 1990's. But while data are incomplete, abortions appear to have increased sharply since Mr. Bush took office. Glen H. Stassen, a Christian pro-life theologian, estimates that 52,000 more abortions occurred in 2002 than would have been expected based on the previous trend. Professor Stassen attributes the rise in abortions in part to the troubled economy and concerns among pregnant women that they cannot afford to have babies.

• [i]May 25, 2004: "One of the challenges we face is to make sure the health care system responds to the needs of the citizens[/i]."

But five million more Americans don't have health insurance, compared with when Mr. Bush took office.

• [i]Sept. 9, 2003: "We must focus early to make sure every child can read and write and add and subtract[/i]."

But Mr. Bush's budget guidelines translate into inflation-adjusted reductions in 2006 alone of more than $900 million for Head Start and childhood education.

• [i]May 24, 2003: "We will not tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea[/i]."

On Mr. Bush's watch, North Korea is generally believed to have gone from two nuclear weapons to about eight.

• [i]2001: "Not on my watch[/i]."

Scrawled note by Mr. Bush on a report to him about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda that had occurred under President Clinton.

That's reassuring to the 100,000 or more people in Darfur who have died in a spasm of murder and rape that Mr. Bush acknowledges as genocide.

• [i]Sept. 30, 2004: "The biggest threat facing this country is weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terrorist network[/i]."

But the single most important step to reducing the risk that a nuclear weapon will destroy New York is to secure loose nukes abroad, and Mr. Bush has been lackadaisical about that. Only 135 out of 600 metric tons of Russian nuclear materials have been given comprehensive upgrades, and Mr. Bush initially proposed cutting funds for that program.

• [i]Sept. 2, 1999: "Effective reform requires accountability. ... It is a sad story. High hopes, low achievement. Grand plans, unmet goals. My administration will do things differently[/i]."

Oh?

[b]By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF[/b], http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1...

... Reign of Terror: The Low Points of the Mad King George's Four Years

10.31.04 (6:45 am) [edit]

Whether or not George W. Bush is elected on November 2 (or selected in a post-election legal scuffle), the defining sin of his administration will remain unchanged: He launched a war of choice on the basis of an inaccurate and misleading threat assessment. It is now beyond question that the United States faced no pressing danger from Iraq on March 19, 2003, nothing that necessitated what is supposed to be an action of last resort. A narrow win for Bush -- or even a landslide victory -- will not alter this. Bush has spent much of the campaign ducking responsibility for making a bad call; he has hailed the war with ever-shifting justifications.

And he has been fortunate that the election did not seem to become a straight-out referendum on the war. Over half of the public, according to polls, did conclude the war was a mistake. Yet a majority of likely voters told pollsters they considered Bush better able than John Kerry to handle the mess in Iraq and the so-called war on terrorism. Guiding the nation to war in obvious error ought to ensure a president's defeat. But (political) life is not that simple post-9/11. And no matter the final choice of the undecided swing-state voters, it will still be necessary to remember (that is, not forget) that Bush committed the biggest presidential blunder of modern times.

[b]Read article [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

... Reign of Terror: The Low Points of the Mad King George's Four Years

10.31.04 (6:45 am) [edit]

* Impeach George Bush

10.30.04 (3:48 am) [edit]

[b]I do not write the headlines for my columns. Someone else does. But if I were to write the headline for this one it would be, "Impeach George Bush." [/b]

Of course, I realize there's no chance Congress would impeach the president at this point or under almost any circumstance. It somehow reserves its outrage for lying about sex under oath and not, as now seems clear, the making of war under false pretenses. Say what you will about Bill Clinton, no one died in the White House pantry.

The same cannot be said in the larger sense about George Bush. Well over 1,000 Americans and countless more Iraqis have died because the president insisted on going to war. I know I should grieve the Iraqi dead as much as I do American ones, but I simply don't. It is the Americans — those names I read almost every day, the hometowns, the lives I conjure up for them, the hideous moments of death — who would compose every one of my articles of impeachment. I would read every name from the well of the House.

I do not hold George Bush accountable for believing Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. I have talked with senior administration officials who opposed the war and they, too, thought Saddam had chemical and biological weapons — but not nuclear ones. By the time Bush had firmly decided to go to war, all in Washington knew Saddam's nuclear weapons program consisted of a wish. Even Vice President Cheney had to know that, but the truth does not matter to him. In a long career as a Cold Warrior, he morphed into the enemy: the end justifies the means.

In his forthcoming book on the crusades, "Fighting for Christendom," Christopher Tyerman of Oxford University argues that, "There existed no strategic or material interest for the knights of the west" to invade the Muslim east and try to wrest Jerusalem from Islam. "Consequently, the Christian wars of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the Near East provide startling testimony to the power of ideas."

I cite this book — as indeed I am reading it — for a reason. You will remember that early on Bush referred to the war against terrorism as a "crusade." The word, though, was too freighted with Christian-Muslim conflict and Bush quickly backed down. But, really, he was speaking the truth. Just as the original crusades were a form of mass madness, so was this one when it was extended to Iraq. It came, as did the original one, out of the bonnet of a leader: Bush this time, Pope Urban II in 1095 — and it swept everything before it. Congress lent its approval and so, significantly, did the media (myself included). The failure of leadership was across the board. The events of 9/11 were as emotionally wrenching to us as had been the Muslim capture of Jerusalem to medieval Christians.

My peripatetic colleague Dana Milbank recently reported on a poll showing that 72 percent of Bush's supporters believe that Iraq did in fact possess WMD and that 75 percent believed that Saddam gave al-Qaida "substantial support." These beliefs are false, in contradiction of the facts, and even Bush, when pressed, has admitted that. But these beliefs did not arise out of nowhere. They are a direct consequence of the administration's repeated lies — lies of commission, such as Cheney's statements, and lies of omission, the appalling failure to correct wrongly held views.

Not since the Spanish-American War has the United States gone off to war so casually, so half-cocked and so ineptly. The sinking of the Maine, the casus belli for that dustup, has been replaced by WMD, and the Hearst and Pulitzer presses are now talk radio and Fox News Channel. Everything has changed. Nothing has changed. Still, though, we mourn the dead, look away from the wounded and maimed, and wonder what it was all about. We embarked, truly and regrettably, on a crusade.

Still, from Bush comes not a bleep of regret, not to mention apology. It is all "steady as she goes" — although we have lost our bearings and we no longer know our destination. (Don't tell me it's a democratic Middle East.) If the man were commanding a ship, he would be relieved of command. If he were the CEO of some big company, the board would offer him a golden parachute — and force him to jump. But in government, it's the people who make those decisions. We get our chance on Tuesday.

Impeach Bush. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

* Imagine Gore Running for Re-election with Bush's Record

10.30.04 (3:47 am) [edit]

[b]Imagine there was no electoral college and Al Gore became president after winning the popular vote in 2000. Now, imagine President Gore running for re-election with George W. Bush's record.[/b]

How would you vote?

What if al-Qaeda easily hijacked planes on Sept. 11, 2001 after Gore received an Aug. 6 Presidential Daily Brief, titled "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US" -- reporting "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks."

What if Gore ignored lessons from the successful coordinated effort to stop the millennium plot to bomb Los Angeles airport? In the words of the 9/11 Commission Report, the director of Central Intelligence, "the Counterterrorist Center, and the Counterterrorism Security Group did their utmost to sound a loud alarm, its basis being intelligence indicating that al-Qaeda planned something big. But the millennium phenomenon was not repeated."

What if the Gore administration diverted forces from Afghanistan and the war on al-Qaeda to attack Iraq, which was not involved in 9/11, and knowingly used false and disputed evidence to claim Iraq had weapons of mass destruction?

What if Gore said of Iraq on July 2, 2003, "There are some who feel like that, you know, the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is bring them on. We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation." Since then about 900 U.S. service members have been killed and more than 7,000 wounded in action.

What if Gore was president as soaring drug profits became the biggest source of reconstruction funds in Afghanistan, the world's leading supplier of heroin?

What if a senior CIA officer wrote "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War On Terror," claiming irresponsible Gore policies, including the "avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked" war on Iraq, have made the U.S. less secure?

What if Gore led when the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University reported, "Iraq has become a major distraction from the global war on terrorism" and the Iraq war "has created momentum for many terrorist elements, but chiefly al-Qaeda and its affiliates"?

What if more than 90 percent of cargo unloaded at U.S. ports went uninspected during Gore's presidency, even as ABC News demonstrated vulnerability by shipping in depleted uranium undetected two years in a row?

What if North Korea had no nuclear weapons at the beginning of Gore's term, but had them today?

What if Gore dropped out of the international process to cut greenhouse gas emissions despite rapidly melting Arctic ice, increased droughts and other evidence of global warming, and a Pentagon report discussing abrupt climate change as a plausible scenario with drastic implications for human survival and national security?

What if Gore got an F for his environmental record from the League of Conservation Voters, who said his "administration's approach to the environment demonstrates a clear bias toward the interests of the oil industry, the utility industry and their corporate contributors at the expense of the health and safety of the public"?

What if Gore was the first president since Herbert Hoover in the Great Depression to see a net loss of jobs?

What if the typical household lost $1,535 between 2000 and 2003, adjusting for inflation, and the poverty rate went up every year under President Gore?

What if the federal budget went from a $236 billion surplus in fiscal 2000 before President Gore to a $413 billion deficit in 2004?

What if Gore passed the buck to your children and grandchildren, running up the national debt to give huge tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires?

What if 5.2 million Americans lost health insurance between 2000 and 2003 under Gore? That's more than the combined populations of New Hampshire, New Mexico and West Virginia.

What if Gore blocked the import of cheaper drugs from Canada and gave windfall profits to drug companies and HMOs in the guise of reforming Medicare?

What if Gore told a group of large contributors in September that he was going to "come out strong" after his reelection with "privatizing of Social Security"?

Would you vote to re-elect President Gore with George Bush's record?

[b]Holly Sklar is coauthor of "Raise the Floor: Wages and Policies That Work for All Of Us" (www.raisethefloor.org). She can be reached at hsklar@aol.com[/b] - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

* BUSH'S "WORD" Is As Good As Used Toilet Paper!!!

10.30.04 (3:41 am) [edit]

* BUSH'S "WORD" Is As Good As Used Toilet Paper!!!

10.30.04 (3:40 am) [edit]

* BUSH'S "WORD" Is As Good As Used Toilet Paper!!!

10.30.04 (3:38 am) [edit]

* BUSH'S "WORD" Is As Good As Used Toilet Paper!!!

10.30.04 (3:38 am) [edit]

* BUSH'S "WORD" Is As Good As Used Toilet Paper!!!

10.30.04 (3:35 am) [edit]

* The Bush Presidency is Evil Beyond Belief-- And Judgement is Nigh!!!

10.29.04 (7:04 am) [edit]

[b]Ugly, Tasteless, Terrifying and Wild... Count Me In!

He's been America's most unorthodox political commentator for more than 30 years. But for Dr Hunter S Thompson the Bush presidency is evil beyond belief - and judgment is nigh

by Hunter S. Thompson [/b]

The genetically vicious nature of presidential campaigns in America is too obvious to argue with, but some people call it fun, and I am one of them. Election day - especially when it's a presidential election - is always a wild and terrifying time for politics junkies, and I am one of those, too. We look forward to major election days like sex addicts look forward to orgies. We are slaves to them.

Which is not a bad thing, all in all, for the winners. They are not the ones who bitch and whine about slavery when the votes are finally counted and the losers are forced to get down on their knees. No. The slaves who emerge victorious from these drastic public decisions go crazy with joy and plunge each other into deep tubs of chilled Cristal champagne with naked strangers who want to be close to a winner.

That is how it works in the victory business. You see it every time. The weak suck up to the strong, for fear of losing their jobs and money and all the fickle power they wielded only 24 hours ago. It is like suddenly losing your wife and your home in a vagrant poker game, then having to go on the road with whoremongers and beg for your dinner in public. Nobody wants to hire a loser. Right? They stink of doom and defeat.

"What is that horrible smell in the office, Tex? It's making me sick."

"That is the smell of a loser, senator. He came in to apply for a job, but we tossed him out immediately. Sgt Sloat took him down to the parking lot and taught him a lesson he will never forget."

"Good work, Tex. And how are you coming with my new enemies list? I want them all locked up. They are scum."

"We will punish them brutally. They are terrorist sympathizers, and most of them voted against you. I hate those bastards."

"Thank you, Sloat. You are a faithful servant. Come over here and kneel down. I want to reward you."

That is the nature of high-risk politics. Veni, vidi, vici, especially among Republicans. It's like the ancient Bedouin saying: "As the camel falls to its knees, more knives are drawn."

Presidential politics is a vicious business, even for rich white men, and anybody who gets into it should be prepared to grapple with the meanest of the mean. The White House has never been seized by timid warriors. There are no rules, and the roadside is littered with wreckage. That is why they call it the passing lane. Just ask any candidate who ever ran against George Bush - Al Gore, Ann Richards, John McCain - all of them ambushed and vanquished by lies and dirty tricks. And all of them still whining about it.

That is why George W Bush is President of the United States, and Al Gore is not. Bush simply wanted it more, and he was willing to demolish anything that got in his way, including the US Supreme Court. It is not by accident that the Bush White House (read: Dick Cheney & Halliburton Inc) controls all three branches of our federal government today. They are powerful thugs who would far rather die than lose the election in November.

The Republican establishment is haunted by painful memories of what happened to Old Man Bush in 1992. He peaked too early, and he had no response to "It's the economy, stupid." Which has always been the case. Every GOP administration since 1952 has let the Military-Industrial Complex loot the Treasury and plunge the nation into debt on the excuse of a wartime economic emergency. Richard Nixon comes quickly to mind, along with Ronald Reagan and his ridiculous "trickle-down" theory of US economic policy. If the rich get richer, the theory goes, before long their pots will overflow and somehow "trickle down" to the poor, who would rather eat scraps off the Bush family plates than eat nothing at all. Republicans have never approved of democracy, and they never will. It goes back to pre-industrial America, when only white male property owners could vote.

Things haven't changed much where George W Bush comes from. Houston is a cruel, crazy town on a filthy river in East Texas with no zoning laws and a culture of sex, money and violence. It's a shabby, sprawling metropolis ruled by brazen women, crooked cops and super-rich pansexual cowboys who live by the code of the West - which can mean just about anything you need it to mean, in a pinch.

Houston is also the unnatural home of two out of the last three presidents of the United States of America, for good or ill. The other one was a handsome, sex-crazed boy from next-door Arkansas, which has no laws against any deviant practice not specifically forbidden in the New Testament, including anal incest and public cunnilingus with farm animals.

Back in 1948, during his first race for the US Senate, Lyndon Johnson was running about 10 points behind, with only nine days to go. He was desperate. And it was just before noon on a Monday, they say, when he called his equally depressed campaign manager and told him to call a press conference for just before lunch on a slow news day and accuse his high-riding opponent, a pig farmer, of having routine carnal knowledge of his sows, despite the pleas of his wife and children.

His campaign manager was shocked. "We can't say that, Lyndon," he supposedly said. "You know that it isn't true."

"Of course it's not!" Johnson barked. "But let's make the bastard deny it!"

Johnson - a Democrat, like Bill Clinton - won that election by fewer than 100 votes, and after that he was home free. He went on to rule Texas and the US Senate for 20 years and to be the most powerful vice president in the history of the United States. Until now.

Armageddon came early for George Bush this year, and he was not ready for it. His long-awaited showdowns with John Kerry turned into a series of embarrassments that broke his nerve and demoralized his closest campaign advisers. They knew he would never recover, no matter how many votes they could steal for him in Florida, where the presidential debates were closely watched and widely celebrated by millions of Kerry supporters who suddenly had reason to feel like winners.

Kerry came into October as a five-point underdog with almost no chance of winning three out of three rigged confrontations with a treacherous little freak like George Bush. But the debates are over now, and the victor was John Kerry every time. He steamrollered Bush and left him for roadkill.

Did you see Bush on TV, trying to debate? Jesus, he talked like a donkey with no brains at all. The tide turned early, in Coral Gables, when Bush went belly up less than halfway through his first bout with Kerry, who hammered poor George into jelly. It was pitiful... I almost felt sorry for him, until I heard someone call him "Mister President", and then I felt ashamed.

Karl Rove, the President's political wizard, felt even worse. There is angst in the heart of Texas today, and panic in the bowels of the White House. Rove has a nasty little problem, and its name is George Bush. The president failed miserably from the instant he got onstage with John Kerry. He looked weak and dumb. Kerry beat him like a gong in Coral Gables, then again in St Louis and Tempe. That is Rove's problem. His candidate is a weak-minded frat boy who cracks under pressure in front of 60 million voters.

Bush signed his own death warrant in the opening round, when he finally had to speak without his teleprompter. It was a Cinderella story brought up to date in Florida that night - except this time, the false prince turned back into a frog.

Immediately after the first debate ended, I called Muhammad Ali at his home in Michigan, but whoever answered said the champ was laughing so hard that he couldn't come to the phone. "The debate really cracked him up," he chuckled. "The champ loves a good ass-whuppin'. He says Bush looked so scared to fight, he finally just quit and laid down."

This year's first presidential debate was such a disaster for George Bush that his handlers had to be crazy to let him get in the ring with John Kerry again. Yet Karl Rove let it happen, and we can only wonder why. But there is no doubt that the president has lost his nerve, and his career in the White House is finished. No mas.

Indeed. The numbers are weird today, and so is this dangerous election. The time has come to rumble, to inject a bit of fun into politics. That's exactly what the debates did. John Kerry looked like a winner, and it energized his troops. Voting for Kerry is starting to look like serious fun for everyone except poor George, who now looks like a loser. That is fatal in a presidential election.

I look at elections with the cool and dispassionate gaze of a professional gambler, especially when I'm betting real money on the outcome. Contrary to most conventional wisdom, I see Kerry with five points as a recommended risk. Kerry will win this election, if it happens, by a bigger margin than Bush finally gouged out of Florida in 2000. That was about 46 per cent, plus five points for owning the US Supreme Court - which seemed to equal 51 per cent. Nobody really believed that, but George W Bush moved into the White House anyway.

It was the most brutal seizure of power since Hitler burned the Reichstag in 1933 and declared himself the new boss of Germany. Karl Rove is no stranger to Nazi strategy, if only because it worked for a while, and it was sure fun for Hitler. But not for long. He ran out of oil, the whole world hated him, and he liked to gobble pure crystal biphetamine and stay awake for eight days in a row with his maps and bombers and his dope-addled general staff.

They all loved the whiff. It is the perfect drug for war, as long as you are winning, and Hitler thought he was king of the hill forever. He had created a new master race, and every one of them worshipped him. They were fanatics. That was 66 years ago, and things are not much different today. We still love war.

George Bush certainly does. In four short years he has turned our country from a prosperous nation at peace into a desperately indebted nation at war. But so what? He is the President of the United States, and you're not. Love it or leave it.

BULLETIN: KERRY WINS GONZO ENDORSEMENT; DR THOMPSON JOINS DEMOCRAT IN CALLING BUSH "THE SYPHILIS PRESIDENT".

"Four more years of George Bush will be like four more years of syphilis," the famed author said yesterday at a hastily called press conference near his home in Woody Creek, Colorado.

"Only a fool or a sucker would vote for a dangerous loser like Bush. He hates everything we stand for, and he knows we will vote against him in November." Thompson, well known for the eerie accuracy of his political instincts, went on to denounce Ralph Nader as "a worthless Judas goat with no moral compass."

"I endorsed John Kerry a long time ago," he said, "and I will do everything in my power, short of roaming the streets with a meat hammer, to help him be the next president of the United States."

Which is true. I said all those things, and I will say them again. Of course I will vote for John Kerry. I have known him for 30 years as a good man with a brave heart - which is more than even the President's friends will tell you about George W Bush, who is also an old acquaintance from the white-knuckle days of yesteryear. He is hated all over the world, including large parts of Texas, and he is taking us all down with him. Bush is a natural-born loser with a filthy-rich daddy who pimped his son out to rich oil-mongers. He hates music, football and sex, and he is no fun at all.

I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000, but I won't make that mistake again. The joke is over for Nader. He was funny once, but now he belongs to the dead. Nader is a fool, as is anybody who votes for him in November - with the obvious exception of professional Republicans who have paid big money to turn him into a world-famous Judas goat. Nader is so desperate that he's paying homeless people to gather signatures to get him on the ballot. In Pennsylvania, the petitions he submitted contained tens of thousands of phony signatures, including Fred Flintstone, Mickey Mouse and John Kerry. A judge dumped Ralph from the ballot there, calling it "the most deceitful and fraudulent exercise ever perpetrated upon this court".

But they will keep his name on the ballot in the long-suffering Hurricane State, which is ruled by the President's younger brother, Jeb, who also wants to be the next president of the United States. In 2000, when they sent Jim Baker to Florida, I knew it was all over. In that election, 97,488 people voted for Nader in Florida, and Gore lost the state by 537 votes. You don't have to be from Texas to understand the moral of that story. It's like being out-coached in the Super Bowl. Only losers play fair, and all winners have blood on their hands.

Back in June, when John Kerry was beginning to feel like a winner, we had a quick rendezvous on a rain-soaked runway in Aspen, Colorado, where he was scheduled to meet a harem of wealthy campaign contributors. I told him that Bush's vicious goons in the White House are perfectly capable of assassinating Nader and blaming it on him. His staff laughed, but the Secret Service men didn't. Kerry suggested I might make a good running mate, and we reminisced about trying to end the Vietnam War in 1972.

That was the year I first met him, at a riot on that elegant little street in front of the White House. He was yelling into a bullhorn and I was trying to throw a dead rat over a black-spike fence and on to the President's lawn. We were angry and righteous in those days, and there were millions of us. We kicked two chief executives out because they were stupid warmongers. We conquered Lyndon Johnson and we stomped on Richard Nixon - which wise people said was impossible, but so what? It was fun. We were warriors then, and our tribe was strong like a river. That river is still running. All we have to do is get out and vote, while it's still legal, and we will wash those crooked warmongers out of the White House. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

* The Bush Presidency is Evil Beyond Belief-- And Judgement is Nigh!!!

10.29.04 (7:04 am) [edit]

* The Bush Presidency is Evil Beyond Belief-- And Judgement is Nigh!!!

10.29.04 (7:04 am) [edit]

* Bush Plays at "Looking" Tough; But Really Is a Depraved Coward & Dangerously Stupid Man!!!

10.29.04 (6:53 am) [edit]

As the final week of the campaign season expires, George W. Bush has boiled his one-theme campaign message down to a few phrases: He is “strong” and will “stay the course,” but Senator John Kerry has a “record of weakness” and will “cut and run” in the face of terrorism. In these same days, a remarkable series by Tim Golden in the New York Times has given us one more look into what Bush’s policy has meant in practice. Golden’s subject is the creation of the military commissions to try the prisoners being held in Guantánamo. A small, tightly knit cabal of right-wing lawyers led by Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld conspired in secret (even the President’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and Secretary of State Colin Powell were kept in the dark) to rewrite the laws of the United States (the Constitution) and the world (mainly the Geneva Conventions) to license a free hand in interrogating the Guantánamo prisoners.

After the President had made the innovation public, Cheney stated, “We think it guarantees that we’ll have the kind of treatment of these individuals that we believe they deserve.” What they deserved, as it has turned out, was to be tortured: stripped naked, beaten, kept sleepless, threatened with dogs. Those practices—all but the beatings secretly licensed by Rumsfeld—were aimed at acquiring information needed to prosecute the “war on terror.”

But no proceedings were brought. An unexpected problem arose. The prisoners neither possessed the desired information nor had committed the offenses for which the system of drumhead justice had been instituted. One commander of Guantánamo, Maj. Gen. Michael Dunlavey, even went to Afghanistan to complain that he was being provided with the wrong prisoners. “General, please shut up and go home,” he was told, according to an officer familiar with the mission.

Resolve had been shown, the Constitution had been circumnavigated, international law had been set aside, the prisoners had been abused, the course had been stayed, but the results were nil. So far, not a single inmate of Guantánamo has been brought before a commission, much less convicted.

Golden’s story in fact fits into a pattern. Here at home, Attorney General Ashcroft has overseen the detention of some 5,000 people on suspicion of terrorism. But not one has been successfully convicted of terrorism—the only conviction obtained having been thrown out by a federal judge in Detroit.

At Abu Ghraib, the story was the same. The torture there included the scenes of degradation and depravity made known in the infamous photographs taken by the torturers, but so far no one has suggested that information of value was thereby obtained. According to military estimates, up to 80 percent of the inmates were innocent even of involvement with the resistance movement.

The case of Yaser Hamdi, one of the few American citizens labeled an “enemy combatant” and locked away incommunicado in a Navy brig and stripped of all rights, produced the same result. As soon as the Supreme Court ordered that he had to be given judicial recourse, the Administration released him and packed him off to Saudi Arabia. No charges were brought, and none, of course, proven. Pushed to show its cards, the Administration folded. Hamdi is merely barred by agreement with Saudi Arabia from leaving that country for five years. This is what “staying the course” has come down to in his case. (In Saudi Arabia, he is as invisible as he was in the American brig.)

The point is not—heaven forbid!—that if actual terrorists had been present among the Guantánamo population, or the Ashcroft 5,000, or the prisoners of Abu Ghraib, or the “enemy combatants,” then torture would be justified. It is that the endeavor cited by the President as the raison d’être of his Administration, and therefore of his claim to a second term—protecting the United States against terrorists—is hollow in its own terms. Even Bush’s abuses are frauds—not the abuses themselves, of course, which are all too revoltingly real, but the ends in whose name they are carried out.

The generalization seems to apply not just to the judicial abuses but to the entire “war on terror.” We now know—in another recent discovery by the Times—that the Bush Administration permitted 380 tons of high explosives to be looted from a bunker in Iraq. Last year, we learned that Iraq’s nuclear repositories had been likewise left unguarded and likewise looted. But it’s too late in the day to be surprised by any of these discoveries. For what was the Iraq war itself but a gigantic diversion from the threat of Al Qaeda—a pursuit of the double mirage of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi collaboration with Al Qaeda? In Iraq as in Guantánamo, the Administration took extreme measures to meet nonexistent threats. Even the war in Afghanistan, though now approved on all sides, missed its designated target. It’s true that overthrowing the Taliban government there was a serious blow to its partner, Osama bin Laden. Yet it is a fact not to be forgotten that the Taliban was not the prime objective of the military campaign; bin Laden was, and bin Laden got away.

Across the board, from Guantánamo to Baghdad, it turns out that this Administration has done things (lock up and torment thousands, overthrow states) not because doing them advanced the cause but because it could do them.

But then why do them? A clue is offered in a comment by Timothy Flanigan, former deputy White House counsel, who commented that the establishment of the useless military commissions “communicated the message that we were at war, that this was not going to be business as usual.” As I write, the President is communicating that message with a vengeance. He hopes thereby to win a second term. But he lies. For “communicating,” not accomplishing, seems to have been the aim all along.

We arrive at a radical but inescapable conclusion. The Administration has wanted above all not to be strong but to look strong. The actuality of strength has been sacrificed to the appearance. Sometimes, these procedures have been called “incompetent,” but this misses the point. For as appearances, the actions have been brilliant. They may win George W. Bush a second term. Unless, reader, by the time you read this, you have voted him out of office. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

* Bush Plays at "Looking" Tough; But Really Is a Depraved Coward & Dangerously Stupid Man!!!

10.29.04 (6:53 am) [edit]

* Bush Plays at "Looking" Tough; But Really Is a Depraved Coward & Dangerously Stupid Man!!!

10.29.04 (6:53 am) [edit]

* Bush Puts Our Children's Health At Risk: National Dietary Guidelines Changed to Favor Industry

10.29.04 (6:44 am) [edit]

The federal Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, appointed
last year by the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Health and
Human Services, has rewritten national dietary guidelines for
the American public in a manner that is "so vague as to be
meaningless," a group of national nutrition experts is charging.
[1]

According to OMB Watch http://www.ombwatch.org/ , a nonprofit government watchdog
organization, one reason for the watering down of federal
recommendations for the consumption of carbohydrates, sugars and
fats appears to be that the committee is stacked with members
who have strong ties to the food, drug and dietary supplement
industries. [2]

The committee includes members with ties to the American Council
on Science and Health (an industry-supported group that
repeatedly downplays food-related concerns, including those
about trans fats); the International Food Information Council;
Campbell Soup Company; Procter & Gamble; American Egg Board; the
Peanut Institute; the American Cocoa Research Institute; the
Sugar Association: the Kellogg Company; Warner-Lambert; National
Dairy Council; National Dairy Board; Kraft; and the Wisconsin
Milk Marketing Board. [3]

However, the actual data in the committee report supporting the
new, albeit vague, recommendations is solid, said Margo Wootan,
of the Center for Science in the Public Interest http://www.cspinet.org/ . "Now they just
need to put it into language people can follow when they go to
the grocery store or to a restaurant," she told BushGreenwatch http://www.bushgreenwatch.org... .

At issue are such vaguely worded guidelines as, "Choose fats
wisely for good health," and "Choose carbohydrates wisely for
good health." These would replace previous statements that gave
more specific advice, such as "Choose a diet that is low in
saturated fat and cholesterol and moderate in total fat," and
"Choose beverages and foods to moderate your intake of sugars."

The letter, signed by 25 nutrition experts from universities
across the country, points out that most Americans "are not
nutritionists" and need clearer direction on what constitutes a
healthy diet. The nutritionists propose language that clearly
lays out what people should and should not eat, such as "eat
less cheese, beef, pork, whole and 2% milk, egg yolks, pastries
and other foods that are high in saturated fat, trans fat or
cholesterol."

"People do not eat nutrients, they eat food," the letter states.
"Providing advice about which foods to eat more of or less of is
easier to understand and more effective than focusing on
nutrients."

The letter also suggests that a guideline be included telling
people to "drink fewer soft drinks and limit cake, cookies,
frozen desserts, and other foods rich in refined sugars." [4]

OMB Watch reports that Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-IL) has been
concerned about industry influence over federal dietary
guidelines. Fitzgerald introduced a bill last year that would
have given the responsibility of issuing guidelines to the
Institute of Medicine. "Putting the USDA in charge of dietary
advice is in some respects like putting the fox in charge of the
henhouse," he told [i]Congress Daily[/i]. [5]

###

[b]SOURCES[/b]: http://www.bushgreenwatch.org...

[1] Letter to Kathryn McMurry, HHS Office of Disease Prevention
and Health Promotion, from 25 nutrition experts, Sep. 21, 2004.
[2] "Industry Influence Weakens USDA Dietary Guidelines," OMB
Watch, The OMB Watcher, Vol. 5, Oct. 4, 2004.
[3] OMBwatch, op. cit.
[4] Letter, op. cit.
[5] OMBwatch, op. cit.

* Bush Puts Our Children's Health At Risk: National Dietary Guidelines Changed to Favor Industry

10.29.04 (6:43 am) [edit]

* Bush Puts Our Children's Health At Risk: National Dietary Guidelines Changed to Favor Industry

10.29.04 (6:43 am) [edit]

..... Republicans Pressed To Halt Voter-Suppression Efforts

10.29.04 (6:40 am) [edit]

WASHINGTON – With political analysts agreeing that voter turnout, especially of minority and youth voters, will likely determine the outcome of next Tuesday’s presidential election, civil and human rights groups are pressing the Republican National Committee (RNC) to call off plans aimed at discouraging people from casting ballots.

At a press conference held in front of RNC headquarters here Thursday, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), the country’s largest civil and human-rights coalition, demanded that RNC chairman Ed Gillespie ensure that the party does nothing to suppress the vote or try to intimidate voters, particularly in minority communities.

“In state after state, Republican officials and operatives are working to deny American citizens the right to vote,” charged LCCR executive director Wade Henderson. “We’re today to ask the RNC Chairman to put a stop to these activities.”

With the election just four days away and the polls showing a statistical tie between Republican President George W. Bush and his Democratic challenger, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, many veteran observers believe that outcome will depend on voter turnout.

Some 105 million voters cast ballots in 2000 in which the Democrat, then-Vice President Al Gore, actually defeated Bush in the popular vote only to lose the electoral count as a result of a controversial decision on the vote count in Florida by a 5-4 majority by the U.S. Supreme Court.

While the Republican secretary of state at the time, Rep. Katherine Harris, certified a Bush victory in Florida by a mere 500-some votes, tens of thousands of eligible voters, mainly African Americans, were either disenfranchised or unable to have their votes counted as a result of malfunctioning voting machines. African Americans were found to have voted for Gore by a greater than eight-to-one margin.

Analysts expect that the turnout next Tuesday turnout will exceed 2000’s by a significant margin. According to Charlie Cook, often referred to as “the pollster’s pollster,” if turnout is less than 115 million, Bush is likely to prevail; more than could well result in a Kerry victory.

According to recent surveys, eight of ten African Americans support Kerry; among Latinos, the margin is estimated as somewhat greater than six in ten. Among voters aged between 18 and 29, Kerry also does well with about 60 percent support. On the other hand, the same groups are those that historically have participated the least in major elections.

Republicans have long tried to suppress minority turnout for precisely because of their presumed allegiance to Democrats; indeed, Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who was nominated to the Court by Richard Nixon in 1971, participated in challenges of minority voters 40 years ago when he was a Republican activist in Arizona. But the party is believed to have mobilized tens of thousands of attorneys and poll-watchers for that purpose this year, particularly in so-called battleground states, such as Florida, Wisconsin, and Ohio.

Last week, LCCR sent letters to both Gillespie and his Democratic counterpart, Terry McAuliffe, expressing concern about published reports regarding plans to mount aggressive challenges to voters Tuesday. The letter cited an article published in ‘U.S. News & World Report’ in which Michigan State Rep. and Bush campaign official John Papageorge was quoted as saying that Republicans could lose the state “if we do not suppress the Detroit vote.” Detroit has one of the highest concentrations of African Americans of any U.S. big city.

While the Democratic National Committee (DNC) replied in writing and met with LCCR officials, Gillespie and the RNC failed to respond, Henderson said at Thursday’s press conference. The Republicans have said that their sole interest is to prevent “vote fraud.”

Over the weekend, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that the Ohio Republican party has already challenged the validity of over 35,000 new voter registrations in the state, while Wisconsin Republicans announced plans to initiative what it called “background checks” on newly registered voters. In addition, reports have surfaced of Republican plans to mount aggressive challenges against the credentials of voters in “urban areas” where minority voters are predominant.

The British Broadcasting Company has also disclosed a memo to top Republican officials in Florida identifying voters in predominantly black precincts for possible challenge.

Such efforts, according to Hilary Shelton, director of the Washington Bureau for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a member of the LCCR coalition, amount to intimidation. “They are designed to induce fear on the part of newly registered voters, particularly in minority communities,” she said, adding that the RNC should “work with us to empower minority communities, not deny them their fundamental rights.”

“Sometimes, there is a think line between enforcement of election law and voter intimidation,” said Cecilia Munoz, vice president of the National Council of La Raza, a grassroots Latino group. “Selective access to the polls, arbitrary voter purges, and speculative complaints …will diminish or weaken the very process we are trying to energize.”

Adding to these concerns are the facts that the secretaries of state, usually the chief election official at the state level, in four battleground states – Michigan, Missouri, Florida, and Ohio – have taken top campaign posts for Bush and have been accused of manipulating state election laws to restrict voter access on behalf of Republicans.

In Michigan, Secretary of State Terry Lynn Land, who is co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign there has been criticized by a federal judge for restricting access to “provisional ballots” by voters unsure of their precinct and failing to take action against voter intimidation efforts in heavily Democratic areas.

In Missouri, Secretary of State Matt Blunt, who is also running for governor and serves as Bush campaign chair, has also restricted access to provisional ballots, authorized an insecure voting system, and used federal funds to promote himself in public-service ads.

Glenda Hood, Florida’s secretary of state, was accused of leading the effort to apply a controversial purge list to disenfranchise black voters and former felons. More recently, she also moved to restrict access to provisional ballots and intervened in a court case to ensure that independent Ralph Nader appeared on the ballot.

Finally, Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio’s secretary state and another co-chair of the Bush campaign in that state, has, among other moves, insisted that registration applications that are not posted on the correct weight paper are to be cancelled, also restricted access to provisional ballots, and issued confusing directives regarding the right of ex-felons to vote.

“In light of the widespread disenfranchisement of minority voters in 2000, it is more important than ever that this November’s election proceed smoothly and equitably,” said Henderson.

Those concerns were also echoed Thursday when an independent group of international election observers sponsored by California-based Global Exchange complained that election officials in two Ohio and three Florida counties have refused requests by the delegation to observe at polling cites and tabulation centers. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

..... Republicans Pressed To Halt Voter-Suppression Efforts

10.29.04 (6:40 am) [edit]

Two Years Before 9/11, Traitor & Liar Bush Was Already Planning To Attack Iraq!!!

10.28.04 (8:01 am) [edit]

[b]Two Years Before 9/11, Candidate Bush was Already Talking Privately About Attacking Iraq, According to His Former Ghost Writer [/b]

Two years before the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was already talking privately about the political benefits of attacking Iraq, according to his former ghost writer, who held many conversations with then-Texas Governor Bush in preparation for a planned autobiography.

"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind. He said to me: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He said, 'If I have a chance to invade·.if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency." Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father's shadow. The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the September 11 attacks. "Suddenly, he's at 91 percent in the polls, and he'd barely crawled out of the bunker."

That President Bush and his advisers had Iraq on their minds long before weapons inspectors had finished their work - and long before alleged Iraqi ties with terrorists became a central rationale for war - has been raised elsewhere, including in a book based on recollections of former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. However, Herskowitz was in a unique position to hear Bush's unguarded and unfiltered views on Iraq, war and other matters - well before he became president.

In 1999, Herskowitz struck a deal with the campaign of George W. Bush about a ghost-written autobiography, which was ultimately titled A Charge to Keep : My Journey to the White House, and he and Bush signed a contract in which the two would split the proceeds. The publisher was William Morrow. Herskowitz was given unimpeded access to Bush, and the two met approximately 20 times so Bush could share his thoughts. Herskowitz began working on the book in May, 1999, and says that within two months he had completed and submitted some 10 chapters, with a remaining 4-6 chapters still on his computer. Herskowitz was replaced as Bush's ghostwriter after Bush's handlers concluded that the candidate's views and life experiences were not being cast in a sufficiently positive light.

According to Herskowitz, who has authored more than 30 books, many of them jointly written autobiographies of famous Americans in politics, sports and media (including that of Reagan adviser Michael Deaver), Bush and his advisers were sold on the idea that it was difficult for a president to accomplish an electoral agenda without the record-high approval numbers that accompany successful if modest wars.

The revelations on Bush's attitude toward Iraq emerged recently during two taped interviews of Herskowitz, which included a discussion of a variety of matters, including his continued closeness with the Bush family, indicated by his subsequent selection to pen an authorized biography of Bush's grandfather, written and published last year with the assistance and blessing of the Bush family.

Herskowitz also revealed the following:

--- In 2003, Bush's father indicated to him that he disagreed with his son's invasion of Iraq.

--- Bush admitted that he failed to fulfill his Vietnam-era domestic National Guard service obligation, but claimed that he had been "excused."

--- Bush revealed that after he left his Texas National Guard unit in 1972 under murky circumstances, he never piloted a plane again. That casts doubt on the carefully-choreographed moment of Bush emerging in pilot's garb from a jet on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003 to celebrate "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq. The image, instantly telegraphed around the globe, and subsequent hazy White House statements about his capacity in the cockpit, created the impression that a heroic Bush had played a role in landing the craft.

--- Bush described his own business ventures as "floundering" before campaign officials insisted on recasting them in a positive light.

[b]Read the entire article on: http://www.commondreams.org/h... [/b]

Two Years Before 9/11, Traitor & Liar Bush Was Already Planning To Attack Iraq!!!

10.28.04 (8:01 am) [edit]

CLUELESS PEOPLE: Studies Show Bush Supporters are Misled on Bush Policies & The News

10.28.04 (7:56 am) [edit]

[b]Clueless People Love Bush

Studies show Bush supporters are misled on Bush policies and the news

by Molly Ivins [/b]

[b]Editors note[/b]: Last month, workingforchange ran a piece by comedian Will Durst http://www.workingforchange.c... entitled Stupid people love Bush. Unlike that piece -- which was satirical -- this piece is factual.

Oh, you sweet, innocent, carefree citizens in non-swing states. You have no idea how much fun and slime you are missing.

In the swingers, wolves stalk us mercilessly (as the pro-wolf lobby points out indignantly, no one has ever been killed by wolves on U.S. soil, but try arguing that in the face of the relentless new TV ad campaign). Breaking news everywhere -- 380 tons of high explosives in Iraq left unattended, stock market down to year's low, leading economic indicators down, more tragedy in Iraq, the Swift Boat Liars are back, more Halliburton scandal, George Tenet says the war in Iraq is "wrong" -- it feels like you're dodging meteorites here in the Final Days.

Actually, the best evidence suggests we need to slow way down and go way back, because far from being able to take in anything new, it turns out many of our fellow citizens, especially Bush supporters, are stuck like bugs in amber in some early misperceptions that have never been cleared up.

It seems the majority of Bush supporters, according to recent polls, still believe Saddam Hussein had ties to Al Qaeda and even to 9-11, and that the United States found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Many of you are asking how that could possibly be, since everybody knows...

But everybody doesn't know. There it is. And if you are wondering why everybody doesn't know, you can either blame it on the media, always a shrewd move, or take notice that the administration is STILL spreading this same misinformation.

Both Donald Rumsfeld and Bush have publicly acknowledged there is no evidence of any links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. However, as Dick Cheney campaigns, a standard part of his stump speech is the accusation that Saddam Hussein "had a relationship" with Al Qaeda or "has long-established ties to Al Qaeda." He makes this claim up to the present day. The 9-11 Commission, however, found that there was "no collaborative relationship" between the two.

Cheney, of course, also has never given up his touching faith that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, recently referring to a "nuclear" program that had in fact been abandoned shortly after the first Gulf War. Bush and Cheney misled the country into war using these two false premises, and it turns out an enormous number of our fellow citizens still believe both of them to be true. It's not because they're stupid, but because an administration they trust is still telling them both phony propositions are true.

Normally, when you get a situation like that -- where people are simply not acknowledging reality -- it is considered a cult, a form of groupthink based on irrational beliefs propagated by what is normally a charismatic leader. So those Kerry volunteers earnestly engaging Bush supporters on the latest outrage are way off base. They need to go all the way back to the Two Great Lies that got us into this: Many American soldiers marching into Iraq believed it was "payback for 9-11."

A third slightly blinding fact (to me) is that more people now think Kerry behaved shamefully in regards to Vietnam than did W. Bush. Incredible what brazen lying will do, isn't it?

A friend of Bush's dad got him into the "champagne unit" of the Texas Air National Guard, a unit packed with the sons of the privileged trying to stay out of Vietnam, and he failed to complete his service there. Kerry is a genuine, bona fide war hero. The men who served on his boat are supporting him for president, but those who didn't serve with him, who weren't there, who don't know what happened, have been given more credence. Wolves will get you!

In further unhappy evidence of how ill-informed the American people are (blame the media), the Program on International Policy Attitudes found Bush supporters consistently ill-informed about Bush's stands on the issues (Kerry-ans, by contrast, are overwhelmingly right about his positions). Eighty-seven percent of Bush supporters think he favors putting labor and environmental standards into international trade agreements. Eighty percent of Bush supporters believe Bush wants to participate in the treaty banning landmines. Seventy-six percent of Bush supporters believe Bush wants to participate in the treaty banning nuclear weapons testing. Sixty-two percent believe Bush would participate in the International Criminal Court. Sixty-one percent believe Bush wants to participate in the Kyoto Treaty on global warming. Fifty-three percent does not believe Bush is building a missile defense system, a.k.a. "Star Wars."

The only two Bush stands the majority of his supporters got right were on increasing defense spending and who should write the new Iraqi constitution.

Kerry supporters, by contrast, know their man on seven out of eight issues, with only 43 percent understanding he wants to keep defense spending the same but change how the money is spent, and 57 percent believing he wants to up it.

So what's going on here? I do not think Kerry people are smarter than Bush people, so why are they better-informed? Maybe a small percentage of ideological right-wingers don't believe anything the Establishment media say, but I don't think this is a matter of not believing what they hear, but of not hearing what's factual.

The great triumph of the political right in this country has been the creation of a network of alternative media. There are people who listen to Rush Limbaugh for more hours every day than the Branch Davidians listened to David Koresh. Watch Fox News, read The Washington Times -- hey, that's what the Bush administration does, according to its own words.

But it's not just the right-wing media purveying lies -- they are quoting the administration. These misimpressions come directly from the Bush administration, still, over and over. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

A Nation Deceived: The Scope of Bush's Deception of Americans is Unprecedented!!!

10.28.04 (7:54 am) [edit]

Why will so many Americans buy images of national leaders that are so at odds with so much evidence?
This troubling question is crucial because the American democracy was founded on the notion that the truth will emerge in the deliberations of a free people.

Fear is surely a factor, especially so since our country came under attack three years ago. When we're afraid, we lose our tolerance for ambiguity. Black-and-white thinking is in: You're either for us or against us. When in the grip of fear, we crave certainty, because uncertainty magnifies the feeling of vulnerability. So a leader who shows no doubt, who doesn't even entertain second thoughts, is comforting for the fearful. The more afraid we are, the more we shift into a part of the brain where rational analysis does not govern.

It is when people do not think critically that they are most manipulable, and fear is but one force that has eroded America's capacity for critical thought. Over recent generations, the most mighty of our "educational institutions" - advertising - systematically has worked to teach us to mistake the appealing image for the reality, the sizzle for the steak. Those taught to buy cigarettes to make themselves glamorous can be persuaded to buy incompetent leadership to make them safe.

Many Americans more recently have been still further trained away from habits of critical thinking by the powerful subculture of intellectually irresponsible right-wing media.

For more than a decade, radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh has taken millions of Americans on a daily excursion that panders to their prejudices, never challenging them to reconsider their ideas, always encouraging them to blame all their problems on identifiable others.

The voice leading them on these excursions radiates the aura of certainty, despite the vast ignorance underneath, and shows no scruples about distorting facts to reach a desired conclusion. These daily forays into comforting falsehoods have forged in the minds of millions of Americans a path down which fine-sounding messages unmoored from reality could more readily travel.

But there are still older paths in the American psyche that have been available for adept political manipulators.

One of the most powerful ways of bypassing critical rationality in America has long been the posture of religious piety and moralism. "These leaders must have integrity, they're so religious," I heard on a radio call-in show. People who have been betrayed by the false piety of the Jimmy Swaggarts and Jim Bakkers of the world will still assume that one who speaks often enough of his great faith can be trusted.

There is another venerable template in American political culture: the pattern of rhetoric by which governing elites inflame peripheral issues to distract their followers from seeing the truth of their exploitation.

In the South, race long served as the inflammatory distraction to enable the few to dominate the many. In our times, the pseudo-alliance to preserve white purity has been largely replaced by a pseudo-alliance to maintain moral purity. What's not noticed is that while the leaders just keep these hot-button moral issues (such as abortion and gay rights) festering, unresolved, they make sure that the agenda of the rich and powerful (the regressive tax cuts, the dismantling of environmental regulation, etc.) actually gets accomplished.

While the con itself is not new, the scope of today's successful deception of the American people is unprecedented.

The powerful used to just take what they wanted by the sword. The rise of democracy required the powerful to trade in the sword for the con job: Just manipulate the people into choosing against their true interests. It is only when the people can see through the lies that they can reclaim the power that is their birthright as citizens of this American democracy.

[b]Andrew Bard Schmookler is the author of "The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution". [/b] - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

BEFORE ANY VOTES CAST: Florida's Computers Already Counted Thousands of Votes for George W. Bush!!!

10.28.04 (7:50 am) [edit]

Before one vote was cast in early voting this week in Florida, the new touch-screen computer voting machines of Florida started out with a several-thousand vote lead for George W. Bush. That is, the mechanics of the new digital democracy boxes "spoil" votes at a predictably high rate in African-American precincts, effectively voiding enough votes cast for John Kerry to in a tight race, keep the White House safe from the will of the voters.

[b]Read entire story on: http://www.commondreams.org/h... ...[/b]

BEFORE ANY VOTES CAST: Florida's Computers Already Counted Thousands of Votes for George W. Bush!!!

10.28.04 (7:48 am) [edit]

DYNAMITE! Documents Show Bush and Blair Secretly Planned War MONTHS before Invasion

10.27.04 (7:51 am) [edit]

Independent: "Secret plans for the war in Iraq were passed to British Army chiefs by US defence planners five months before the invasion was launched, a court martial heard yesterday. The revelation strengthened suspicions that Tony Blair gave his agreement to President George Bush to go to war while the diplomatic efforts to force Saddam Hussein to comply with UN resolutions were continuing. Alan Simpson, the leader of Labour Against the War, said the documents were "dynamite", if genuine, and showed that Clare Short was right to assert in her book, serialised in The Independent, that Mr Blair had "knowingly misled" Parliament. The plans were revealed during the court martial of L/Cpl Ian Blaymire, 23, from Leeds, who is charged with the manslaughter of a comrade while serving in Iraq. Sgt John Nightingale, 32, a reservist from Guiseley, West Yorkshire, died after being shot in the chest on 23 September last year."

[b]More[/b] http://news.independent.co.uk...

COURAGE UNDER FIRE

10.27.04 (7:51 am) [edit]

If America is attacked again, do we want a leader who charges into enemy fire - or reads "The Pet Goat"? Watch the Flash - and decide.

[b]More[/b] http://countdownelection.com/...

The Real Dick Cheney (To the tune of Eminem's 'The Real Slim Shady')

10.27.04 (7:50 am) [edit]

"See y'all are suckers
I send your kids to fight and die in war so I can get rich while you stay poor
Yeah I skipped 'nam, keep my ass alive
I got deferments countin' one two three four five
And you know all I'm taken from Halliburton's got you hurtin'
Cause its comin' out of your pocket and into my wad
I don't give a damn if you got a job or a
home or a family or a son or a daughter
I certainly don't care if you got clean water
And my voting machines - they're made to order!"

[b]More[/b] http://therealdickcheney.com/...

For Nuclear Safety, the Choice is Clear: Vote for John Kerry!!!

10.27.04 (7:46 am) [edit]

John Kerry and George W. Bush agree on one thing, and on that one thing voters should make their choice. At the conclusion of their Sept. 30 debate, each candidate identified the most urgent challenge before America as the task of keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists. The two men agree on the end; they disagree completely on how to achieve it.

During that first debate, Kerry vigorously criticized the Bush record on the proliferation of nuclear weapons and materials necessary to their creation. Bush's replies suggested that, though he sees the danger of a 9/11 attack gone nuclear, he didn't seem to understand that policies of his own administration were making that nightmare prospect more likely, not less. Indeed, regarding the nuclear threat, the Bush administration has become an inadvertent partner to America's sworn enemies.

[b]Kerry would reverse this movement, and he said how. Kerry singled out three crucial Bush mistakes:[/b]

. Unsecured nuclear material in the former Soviet Union remains the gravest terrorist danger. For all Bush's talk about 9/11, he has done less to meet this danger in the two years after the World Trade Center attacks than was done in a comparable period before. In the debate, Bush bragged of a "35 percent increase" in funding to secure loose nukes, but the number is hollow. At present rates the problem will be addressed in 13 years. Kerry promised to do it in four.

. Bush is failing to stop nonnuclear nations from going nuclear. North Korea makes the point. In the debate, the president rejected bilateral negotiations in favor of six-party talks that had, in effect, already collapsed. Iran, too, has found in Bush only reasons to pursue nukes. Iran's rejection of inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency was reinforced this month when Brazil blocked agency oversight, with little protest from Washington. In fact, Brazil embodies Bush's failure -- a nation that repudiated its nuclear weapons program in 1990 once again at the mercy of its own nuclear hawks. Bush policies encourage foes and friends alike to pursue nukes -- or to seek leverage by threatening to.

. Bush keeps the nuclear future alive by devoting hundreds of millions of dollars -- and precious political capital -- to develop a new generation of nukes, so-called earth-penetrating nuclear weapons. As Kerry put it, "You talk about mixed messages. We're telling people, `You can't have nuclear weapons,' but we're pursuing a new nuclear weapon that we might even contemplate using." Referring to himself, Kerry then said, "Not this president. I'm going to shut that program down."

One of the great achievements of the Cold War was the creation of an antiproliferation international order, embodied in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, first agreed to in 1968, and renewed in 1995. It is a triumph of diplomacy and political hope that, almost 60 years after the Trinity atomic bomb test, there are so few nuclear powers. But the main reason non-nuclear states agreed to foreswear the development of these weapons was the commitment made by the nuclear states, embodied in Clause VI of the treaty, to move toward the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons.

The Bush administration's devotion to a new round of nuclear development breaks that commitment, and inevitably weakens the antiproliferation order. That is the dread implication in Brazil's unexpected defiance of the International Atomic Energy Agency. A new age of proliferation is just beginning, and George W. Bush is its father.

Kerry is on record in this campaign as wanting to move in exactly the opposite direction. Across two decades in the US Senate, especially as a main supporter of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, Kerry has shown that he understands the urgency of turning the worst legacy of the Cold War back on itself.

In his challenges to President Bush's unilateralism, Kerry has demonstrated his commitment to working with other nations as the only way to make the world safe from nuclear terrorism -- a commitment Bush mocks as a "global test." Across the range of issues, from nuclear diplomacy to threat reduction to the trap of earth-penetrating nuclear weapons, Kerry has shown his mastery of the political and military complexities, just as, in response, Bush has put on display his cynical ignorance. In other matters, the president's ineptness and two-facedness are disheartening, but here they represent a mortal danger.

On this one issue alone -- keeping nuclear weapons away from terrorists -- the election should turn. John Kerry for president.

[b]James Carroll's most recent book is "Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War." [/b] - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

For Nuclear Safety, the Choice is Clear: Vote for John Kerry!!!

10.27.04 (7:43 am) [edit]

For Nuclear Safety, the Choice is Clear: Vote for John Kerry!!!

10.27.04 (7:42 am) [edit]

For Nuclear Safety, the Choice is Clear: Vote for John Kerry!!!

10.27.04 (7:41 am) [edit]

The Man Behind the Oval Office Curtain

10.27.04 (7:38 am) [edit]

[b]It's Cheney's Administration, and It's a Shame.[/b]

Can this nation survive four more years of Dick Cheney running the show? Probably, but it is a risk that few thoughtful Americans, conservatives included, should want to take.

Whatever one thinks of George W. Bush--do you see a smile or a smirk?--it is now patently obvious that the most powerful vice president in U.S. history is in charge of the White House. Cheney's ultra-secretive, anti-democratic and crony-capitalist instincts have defined this administration.

Perhaps we should have expected all this from a man who, as head of the Bush vice presidential search team, selected himself. It was a forewarning of the Machiavellian arrogance that has made him the leading individual in an administration that has consistently believed that self-serving ends — such as helping Enron at the expense of California's energy needs or boosting Halliburton's profits at the expense of American troops — justify lying, secrecy and preemptive war.

In the hours after the 9/11 massacres, some Americans may have been reassured to have the older Cheney around at a time when the "real" president was confusedly sitting in a classroom listening to a story about a pet goat. However, in hindsight, this was clearly misguided faith in a man who presents himself as a stern father figure but is just an irresponsible ideologue whose disrespect and disregard for the U.S. Constitution are manifest in all his actions.

It was the vice president who served as the power behind a tiny group of fringe right-wing lawyers that secretly created a system of unaccountable White House-controlled military tribunals. Despite indelibly staining America's reputation as a leader in democratic principles and endangering the lives of American prisoners of war in current and future conflicts, these proceedings have proved totally useless in the war on terror, with zero terror convictions to date.

Never mind: After the tribunals decree was signed by Bush, Cheney was off leading a new misguided crusade, deploying a slew of manipulated and misrepresented intelligence factoids, clever innuendoes and outright lies to fool Congress and the public into supporting the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

As the Washington Post's Bob Woodward reports in "Plan of Action," his insider account of the Bush White House, Secretary of State Colin Powell "detected a kind of fever in Cheney…. Cheney was beyond hellbent for action against Saddam. It was as if nothing else existed."

And through the reports of the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee and 9/11 commission, and an exhaustive compilation released last week by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) of the Senate Armed Services Committee, it is now possible to read in excruciating detail about Cheney's role in convincing a majority of Americans that — strong evidence to the contrary — Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, was moving toward the production of nuclear bombs and was an ally of Al Qaeda.

As recently as June and contrary to the 9/11 commission's final report, to give but one of many examples, Cheney was still insisting that lead hijacker Mohamed Atta had a meeting in Prague with a high-ranking Iraqi intelligence agent before the 9/11 attacks. This is an unconscionable and obviously knowing use of the Big Lie technique, given that the CIA and FBI repudiated that baseless yet titillating claim in 2002.

Lately, as the war has become an unmitigated disaster for the United States and Iraq, Cheney and the president have been on the defensive against charges by numerous terrorism experts — and presidential candidate John F. Kerry — that the invasion of Iraq was a dangerous distraction from the fight against Al Qaeda and its affiliates.

Undaunted, Cheney tells us the Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi, who has been blamed for many anti-American attacks in Iraq, originally entered Iraq with Hussein's permission; thus Cheney tries to post facto justify the invasion as a legitimate pillar of the war on terror. But it's just another lie, with the CIA stating the opposite: The fundamentalist Zarqawi first sneaked into Hussein's secular and nationalist dictatorship using a false identity.

That Cheney clearly has a huge personal interest in the war makes all of this that much more sickening.

The latest report in a never-ending stream of conflict-of- interest revelations about this administration appears in the current issue of Time magazine. It detailed how the Pentagon favored Halliburton — which Cheney headed from 1995 until 2000 — with long-term, no-bid contracts. No problem. In Cheney's world, messianic ambition and personal greed can happily co-exist.

Next Tuesday, voters should retire this malevolent force. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Perceptions Of The USA From The Other Side Of The Ocean

10.27.04 (7:37 am) [edit]

Leaving the United States and visiting other countries gives one a very different sense of how the country is perceived than one would ever gather from the established media here at home. It puts things into perspective and forces anyone with an open mind to think about some very big questions.
During a recent visit to South Africa, this observation was reaffirmed. What struck me more than anything else was the fear of the potential future actions of the U.S. government. While virtually everyone I encountered had concluded a long time ago that President Bush is simply out of control and represents a danger to the future survival of this planet, this did not mean that they saw in John Kerry the coming of the savior. Rather, and time again, people would simply say that they did not know whether the planet could survive another four years of Bush.

The comments actually went far deeper than one might at first gather. The concern about the U.S. went beyond the personality and actions of any one individual, or for that matter, any one administration. What they spoke to was a growing distrust of the objectives, and indeed, the word of the U.S.A. Specifically, did the U.S. government and the people of U.S. more generally, understand that something needed to change in the way that this country relates to the rest of the planet?

In South Africa I was regularly asked about U.S. foreign policy matters that most of us here either conveniently ignore or are unaware of entirely. I was asked about what ever happened to President Bush's alleged commitment to contribute substantial assistance to the fight against HIV/AIDS? I was certainly asked again and again about the Iraq war. I was asked about what will happen to post-coup Haiti, which seems to be in a state of perpetual and low-intensity civil war, usually with some degree of U.S. involvement.

What struck me in this visit, however, was a question that was posed to me by a South African college student. She wanted to know what it would take for the people of the United States to realize how the U.S. is viewed overseas. She asked, in a very serious tone, at what point will people in the U.S.A. refuse to accept the rationales offered to us by various administration for interfering in the internal affairs of other countries?

In all honesty, I had a very qualified answer. I pointed out that the emergence of an anti-war movement prior to the U.S. aggression against Iraq was a very good sign, but that it was absolutely the case that too many people in the U.S.A. have surrounded themselves with a bubble through which they often refuse to receive information about the outside world. Perhaps, I suggested, the truth about the implications of U.S. foreign policy is too painful for us to accept. Perhaps we fear that should we face reality that it will be the equivalent of looking into the face of the Gorgon, turning us into stone.

The South African student considered my words, and prior to walking off to her class commented that at some point we, the people of the U.S.A. will be judged based upon the leaders we choose. At some point, she offered, there is something called accountability. Fear of the USA by the rest of the world does not make for a very stable, let alone peaceful situation. At some point the resentment will boil over.

As the student headed off, I was left standing there wondering something strange: Are the people of the USA perceived as being those who believe that if we do not hear a tree falling in a distant forest, then that must mean that the tree has not fallen?

[b]Bill Fletcher Jr. is president of TransAfrica Forum, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit educational and organizing center formed to raise awareness in the United States about issues facing the nations and peoples of Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. He also is co-chair of the anti-war coalition, United for Peace and Justice (www.unitedforpeace.org). He can be reached at bfletcher@transafricaforu m.org.[/b] - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Bush/Cheney Inc. Ignores Health Officials Warnings on Western Oil, Gas Drilling ...

10.27.04 (7:30 am) [edit]

A group of 18 prominent public health experts from leading
academies and institutions warned Federal regulators this week
that accelerated oil and gas drilling in the Rocky Mountain West
is becoming a threat to human health.

In an October 22 letter addressed to U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency chief Mike Leavitt and Secretary of Interior
Gale Norton, the group of doctors, scientists and public health
advocates said the oil and gas industry should be required to
"fully comply" with laws that protect human health. [1]

"In western states, the public is learning the hard way that the
oil and gas industry needs to follow laws intended to protect
drinking water and water quality," said Dr. Theo Colborn, who
resides in Paonia, Colorado. Dr. Colborn was co-author of "Our
Stolen Future," the book that sparked the issue of endocrine
disrupting chemicals.

During the past four years, oil and gas drilling have surged
dramatically in the Rocky Mountain states, spurred by high
prices and government policies that soften regulation and reduce
enforcement of public health laws.

The public health experts' letter specifically identified the
oil and gas industry's efforts to weaken the Safe Drinking Water
Act and Clean Water Act. They warned that the government's
failure to regulate air pollution from oil and gas development
is a "highly dangerous" practice that allows "unknown quantities
of harmful emissions" to be released into the air.

Their letter pointed to several recent events in Rocky Mountain
states that they say bolster their concern that oil and gas
industry activities need to be more tightly regulated.

This spring, an accident at a methane gas well near Silt,
Colorado, resulted in the temporary contamination of a tributary
of the Colorado River with the carcinogen benzene. The operator
in the case, EnCana Corp., was fined by state officials for the
spill, but the site continues to contaminate water supplies with
methane gas. EnCana and Halliburton Corp. developed the wells in
the area.

Similarly, in the San Juan basin of Colorado and New Mexico,
where the Department of Interior recently approved thousands of
new methane wells, air pollution is reaching levels usually seen
in dense, urban areas. "Health officials are concerned because
ozone concentrations are increasing to levels just shy of the
EPA health standard, which is highly unusual for such a rural
area," the experts wrote.

"The oil and gas industry can continue to prosper while
complying with the same fundamental human health laws that apply
to other businesses," said Celeste Monforton, a senior research
associate at the Department of Environmental and Occupational
Health at the George Washington University School of Public
Health and Health Services in Washington, DC. - http://www.bushgreenwatch.com...

###

[b]SOURCES:[/b]

[1] Letter to EPA and DOI, http://ga3.org/ct/x71eOJs13QV... Oct. 22, 2004.

Bush/Cheney Inc. Ignores Health Officials Warnings on Western Oil, Gas Drilling ...

10.27.04 (7:30 am) [edit]

Bush/Cheney Inc. Ignores Health Officials Warnings on Western Oil, Gas Drilling ...

10.27.04 (7:30 am) [edit]