Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times reviews David Frum and Richard Perle's An End to Evil:
The title of this new book by David Frum and Richard Perle, "An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror," says it all. It captures the authors' absolutist, Manichaean language and worldview; their cocky know-it-all tone; their swaggering insinuation that they know "how to win the war on terror" and that readers, the Bush administration and the rest of the world had better listen to them....
Making its points with all the subtlety of a pit bull on steroids, "An End to Evil" is smug, shrill and deliberately provocative...
The authors make some persuasive points about the disturbing role the Saudis have played in fomenting radical Islamist doctrine, the persecution of women in some Muslim countries and the intelligence failures leading up to 9/11. But these points tend to be drowned out by their triumphalist boasts ("the United States has become the greatest of all great powers in world history"), their macho posturing and their willful, flame-throwing language....
...Throughout "An End to Evil" they purvey a worldview of us-versus-them, all-or-nothing, either-or, and this outlook results in a refusal to countenance the possibility that people who do not share the authors' views about the war in Iraq or their faith in a pre-emptive, unilateralist foreign policy might have legitimate reasons for doing so....
No, the parts I didn't quote aren't any nicer.
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
In The New York Times, David Brooks gathers together some poll results to prove that "Bush has crashed through the 45/45 partisan divide" and that "there are many more people who support him than oppose him." Here are some numbers he somehow managed to overlook:
CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll. Jan. 9-11, 2004:
"Which comes closest to your view about the election for president in November? You plan to vote for Bush regardless of whom the Democrats nominate for president. You are waiting to see who the Democrats nominate for president before you make up your mind about who to vote for. OR, You plan to vote against Bush regardless of whom the Democrats nominate for president." Options rotated
Vote For Bush: 39%
Waiting: 28%
Vote Against Bush: 33%
**************
Newsweek Poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates. Jan. 8-9, 2004:
"In general, would you like to see George W. Bush reelected to another term as president, or not?"
Yes: 48%
No: 46%
Don't Know: 6%
**************
Associated Press poll conducted by Ipsos-Public Affairs. Jan. 5-7, 2004:
"If the election were held today, would you definitely vote to reelect George W. Bush as president, consider voting for someone else, or definitely vote for someone else as president?"
Definitely Bush: 41%
Consider Someone Else: 24%
Vote for Someone Else: 33%
Not Sure: 2%
**************
Pew Research Center for the People & the Press survey conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates. Dec. 19, 2003-Jan. 4, 2004:
"Looking ahead to the general election in November, would you like to see George W. Bush reelected president in 2004 or would you prefer that a Democratic candidate win the election?" If "Other" or "Someone else": "If you had to choose, would you like to see George W. Bush reelected or would you prefer that a Democratic candidate win the election?"
Bush: 44%
Democrat: 42%
Other/Unsure: 14%
**************
CNN/Time Poll conducted by Harris Interactive. Dec. 30, 2003-Jan. 1, 2004:
"If George W. Bush runs for reelection, how likely are you to vote for him: very likely, somewhat likely, somewhat unlikely, or very unlikely?"
.
Very Likely: 33%
Somewhat Likely: 18%
Somewhat Unlikely: 8%
Very Unlikely: 38%
Not Sure: 3%
"Suppose the 2004 election for president were being held today and you had to choose between [see below], the Democrat, and George W. Bush, the Republican. For whom would you vote: [see below]?"
George W. Bush: 51%
Howard Dean: 46%
Not Sure: 3%
"Crashed through" my ass.
(All poll results from Polling Report.)
CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll. Jan. 9-11, 2004:
"Which comes closest to your view about the election for president in November? You plan to vote for Bush regardless of whom the Democrats nominate for president. You are waiting to see who the Democrats nominate for president before you make up your mind about who to vote for. OR, You plan to vote against Bush regardless of whom the Democrats nominate for president." Options rotated
Vote For Bush: 39%
Waiting: 28%
Vote Against Bush: 33%
**************
Newsweek Poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates. Jan. 8-9, 2004:
"In general, would you like to see George W. Bush reelected to another term as president, or not?"
Yes: 48%
No: 46%
Don't Know: 6%
**************
Associated Press poll conducted by Ipsos-Public Affairs. Jan. 5-7, 2004:
"If the election were held today, would you definitely vote to reelect George W. Bush as president, consider voting for someone else, or definitely vote for someone else as president?"
Definitely Bush: 41%
Consider Someone Else: 24%
Vote for Someone Else: 33%
Not Sure: 2%
**************
Pew Research Center for the People & the Press survey conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates. Dec. 19, 2003-Jan. 4, 2004:
"Looking ahead to the general election in November, would you like to see George W. Bush reelected president in 2004 or would you prefer that a Democratic candidate win the election?" If "Other" or "Someone else": "If you had to choose, would you like to see George W. Bush reelected or would you prefer that a Democratic candidate win the election?"
Bush: 44%
Democrat: 42%
Other/Unsure: 14%
**************
CNN/Time Poll conducted by Harris Interactive. Dec. 30, 2003-Jan. 1, 2004:
"If George W. Bush runs for reelection, how likely are you to vote for him: very likely, somewhat likely, somewhat unlikely, or very unlikely?"
.
Very Likely: 33%
Somewhat Likely: 18%
Somewhat Unlikely: 8%
Very Unlikely: 38%
Not Sure: 3%
"Suppose the 2004 election for president were being held today and you had to choose between [see below], the Democrat, and George W. Bush, the Republican. For whom would you vote: [see below]?"
George W. Bush: 51%
Howard Dean: 46%
Not Sure: 3%
"Crashed through" my ass.
(All poll results from Polling Report.)
Newsweek reports that the Bush administration is willing to extend the 9/11 commission's deadline -- if the commission will agree to make its report in December, after the election.
Gee, guys -- what are you afraid will come out in the report?
(Thanks to Cursor for the link.)
Gee, guys -- what are you afraid will come out in the report?
(Thanks to Cursor for the link.)
I'm largely in agreement with what Richard Goldstein says in the current Nation about Howard Dean's swagger:
... ever since Ronald Reagan rode roughshod over that wimp in the Mr. Rogers cardigan, the Republicans have played the gender card very effectively against the Democrats. From Bill Clinton's "rhymes with witch" wife to Gore's obsession with earth colors, the party of give-'em-hell Harry has taken blow after blow to the primal parts. It's been a long time since the Democrats had a presidential candidate who could jut out his chest and shoot from the hip with Dean's credibility. Maybe it's natural, maybe it's an act, but as even some Republicans are willing to admit, it seems to be working....
After decades of associating Democrats with failed masculinity, the Republicans are faced with an opponent who knows how to put on a butch display.
I know a lot of people sneer at this kind of analysis, but consider some numbers from yesterday's edition of the decidedly non-postmodern USA Today:
...Highly educated men and women increasingly view the political world in dramatically different ways: Men are mostly Republicans, women are predominantly Democrats. A modest gender gap among Americans who don't have college educations balloons for those with a college degree or more....
...An analysis of more than 40,000 interviews for the USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll from January through November this year shows the trend. Among those with a high school diploma or less, men were inclined by a single percentage point, 45% to 44%, to vote Democratic. Women leaned toward the Democrats by 11 percentage points, 50% to 39%. That's a partisan gap between the sexes of 10 percentage points.
For those who had taken some college courses but not graduated, that gender gap grew to 15 percentage points. Among those with a college degree, it rose to 20. And for voters who had taken postgraduate courses, it reached 28 percentage points — almost triple the gender difference among the least-educated voters.
Goldstein argues that white men have gone conservative because racial minorities, feminists, and gays pose "threats to the masculine mystique"; the people quoted in USA Today think it's about money:
...John Hibbing, a political scientist at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, co-authored a study that concluded the votes of men and women were driven by the state of the economy. But they assessed the economy by different standards: "We found men tended to vote in terms of their personal economic situation, and women were more likely to vote on the nation's economic situation."
Whether that's because of biology or socialization or something else is the subject of academic study and ideological debate. Whatever the reason, women are more likely to agree with Democrats about the need for a safety net of government social programs. Even upscale women are more likely to imagine that they might one day need it.
"It's left-brain/right-brain," says Nancy Hurlbert, 56, a civil engineer in Deerfield Beach, Fla., who usually votes Democratic. "Women are just more inclined to be socially aware, and perhaps even from their own personal experience or their mother's experience understand the need for social programs. They know that the government can't be run like a business."...
Either way, it does look as if men feel they're being deprived of something.
What the Republicans have done so successfully over the past quarter century is make it all seem one amorphous entity: feel-your-pain-tax-and-spend-welfare-freeloader-homosexual-agenda-castrating-bitch. Meanwhile, of course, when your job gets sent overseas, it's by a rich white guy in a suit. If men feel deprived and are angry, maybe Howard Dean can -- for a change -- get them (us) angry at the right people.
... ever since Ronald Reagan rode roughshod over that wimp in the Mr. Rogers cardigan, the Republicans have played the gender card very effectively against the Democrats. From Bill Clinton's "rhymes with witch" wife to Gore's obsession with earth colors, the party of give-'em-hell Harry has taken blow after blow to the primal parts. It's been a long time since the Democrats had a presidential candidate who could jut out his chest and shoot from the hip with Dean's credibility. Maybe it's natural, maybe it's an act, but as even some Republicans are willing to admit, it seems to be working....
After decades of associating Democrats with failed masculinity, the Republicans are faced with an opponent who knows how to put on a butch display.
I know a lot of people sneer at this kind of analysis, but consider some numbers from yesterday's edition of the decidedly non-postmodern USA Today:
...Highly educated men and women increasingly view the political world in dramatically different ways: Men are mostly Republicans, women are predominantly Democrats. A modest gender gap among Americans who don't have college educations balloons for those with a college degree or more....
...An analysis of more than 40,000 interviews for the USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll from January through November this year shows the trend. Among those with a high school diploma or less, men were inclined by a single percentage point, 45% to 44%, to vote Democratic. Women leaned toward the Democrats by 11 percentage points, 50% to 39%. That's a partisan gap between the sexes of 10 percentage points.
For those who had taken some college courses but not graduated, that gender gap grew to 15 percentage points. Among those with a college degree, it rose to 20. And for voters who had taken postgraduate courses, it reached 28 percentage points — almost triple the gender difference among the least-educated voters.
Goldstein argues that white men have gone conservative because racial minorities, feminists, and gays pose "threats to the masculine mystique"; the people quoted in USA Today think it's about money:
...John Hibbing, a political scientist at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, co-authored a study that concluded the votes of men and women were driven by the state of the economy. But they assessed the economy by different standards: "We found men tended to vote in terms of their personal economic situation, and women were more likely to vote on the nation's economic situation."
Whether that's because of biology or socialization or something else is the subject of academic study and ideological debate. Whatever the reason, women are more likely to agree with Democrats about the need for a safety net of government social programs. Even upscale women are more likely to imagine that they might one day need it.
"It's left-brain/right-brain," says Nancy Hurlbert, 56, a civil engineer in Deerfield Beach, Fla., who usually votes Democratic. "Women are just more inclined to be socially aware, and perhaps even from their own personal experience or their mother's experience understand the need for social programs. They know that the government can't be run like a business."...
Either way, it does look as if men feel they're being deprived of something.
What the Republicans have done so successfully over the past quarter century is make it all seem one amorphous entity: feel-your-pain-tax-and-spend-welfare-freeloader-homosexual-agenda-castrating-bitch. Meanwhile, of course, when your job gets sent overseas, it's by a rich white guy in a suit. If men feel deprived and are angry, maybe Howard Dean can -- for a change -- get them (us) angry at the right people.
MESSAGE FROM ONE OF THE GROWN-UPS
If you watched Paul O'Neill, George W. Bush's first treasury secretary, in his self-serving interview on 60 Minutes Sunday night, during which he spewed venom at his former White House colleagues, you know that all that was missing was his clown outfit.
--lead paragraph of a National Review Online column on Paul O'Neill by Stephen Moore
(Stephen Moore, of course, is the president of the Club for Growth, the organization that denounced Howard Dean's "tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading ... Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show" in a recent attack ad.)
If you watched Paul O'Neill, George W. Bush's first treasury secretary, in his self-serving interview on 60 Minutes Sunday night, during which he spewed venom at his former White House colleagues, you know that all that was missing was his clown outfit.
--lead paragraph of a National Review Online column on Paul O'Neill by Stephen Moore
(Stephen Moore, of course, is the president of the Club for Growth, the organization that denounced Howard Dean's "tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading ... Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show" in a recent attack ad.)
US military 'brutalised' journalists
The international news agency Reuters has made a formal complaint to the Pentagon following the "wrongful" arrest and apparent "brutalisation" of three of its staff this month by US troops in Iraq....
Although Reuters has not commented publicly, it is understood that the journalists were "brutalised and intimidated" by US soldiers, who put bags over their heads, told them they would be sent to Guantanamo Bay, and whispered: "Let's have sex." ...
The US troops, from the 82nd Airborne Division, based in Falluja, also made the blindfolded journalists stand for hours with their arms raised and their palms pressed against the cell wall....
On January 2 Reuters' Baghdad-based cameraman Salem Ureibi, Falluja stringer Ahmed Mohammed Hussein al-Badrani and driver Sattar Jabar al-Badrani turned up at the crash site where a US Kiowa Warrior helicopter had just been shot down, killing one soldier.
The journalists were all wearing bulletproof jackets clearly marked "press". They drove off after US soldiers who were securing the scene opened fire on their Mercedes, but were arrested shortly afterwards....
Last night the nephew of veteran Reuters driver and latterly cameraman Mr Ureibi said that US troops had forced his uncle to strip naked and had ordered him to put his shoe in his mouth.
"He protested that he was a journalist but they stuck a shoe in his mouth anyway. They also hurt his leg. One of the soldiers told him: 'If you don't shut up we'll fuck you.'"
He added: "His treatment was very shameful. He's very sad. He has also had hospital treatment because of his leg." ...
--The Guardian
The international news agency Reuters has made a formal complaint to the Pentagon following the "wrongful" arrest and apparent "brutalisation" of three of its staff this month by US troops in Iraq....
Although Reuters has not commented publicly, it is understood that the journalists were "brutalised and intimidated" by US soldiers, who put bags over their heads, told them they would be sent to Guantanamo Bay, and whispered: "Let's have sex." ...
The US troops, from the 82nd Airborne Division, based in Falluja, also made the blindfolded journalists stand for hours with their arms raised and their palms pressed against the cell wall....
On January 2 Reuters' Baghdad-based cameraman Salem Ureibi, Falluja stringer Ahmed Mohammed Hussein al-Badrani and driver Sattar Jabar al-Badrani turned up at the crash site where a US Kiowa Warrior helicopter had just been shot down, killing one soldier.
The journalists were all wearing bulletproof jackets clearly marked "press". They drove off after US soldiers who were securing the scene opened fire on their Mercedes, but were arrested shortly afterwards....
Last night the nephew of veteran Reuters driver and latterly cameraman Mr Ureibi said that US troops had forced his uncle to strip naked and had ordered him to put his shoe in his mouth.
"He protested that he was a journalist but they stuck a shoe in his mouth anyway. They also hurt his leg. One of the soldiers told him: 'If you don't shut up we'll fuck you.'"
He added: "His treatment was very shameful. He's very sad. He has also had hospital treatment because of his leg." ...
--The Guardian
Monday, January 12, 2004
Just another day at the office:
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 12 — American soldiers on Monday night killed an Iraqi man and a boy and wounded four others in a car that was driving behind their convoy after a roadside bomb went off nearby, said witnesses, a police official and relatives of the family in the car.....
By the end of the day, in violence around the country involving the American military, an American soldier and at least 9 Iraqis had been killed, and 10 Iraqis and 2 American soldiers wounded....
Earlier in the day a roadside bomb in Baghdad killed a soldier in the First Armored Division and wounded two others, military officials said.
Another roadside bomb exploded near an Army convoy in Ramadi, a town west of Baghdad, but the military said no American casualties had been reported, The Associated Press reported. The report quoted residents as saying Americans had opened fire after the attack, killing two Iraqis.
The military also said soldiers killed 7 of about 40 members of a gang of smugglers that was siphoning oil from a pipeline south of Samarra, a guerrilla stronghold 60 miles north of Baghdad.
About 9 p.m. on Monday, suspected guerrillas fired rockets in Sadr City, a sprawling Shiite Muslim slum of 2.2 million people in northeastern Baghdad, Captain Beck said. Later, suspected insurgents fired two mortar rounds at the Baghdad Hotel on the east bank of the Tigris but failed to hit anything, a hotel guard said....
Also on Monday, riots continued in southern Iraq, as about 400 protesters marched on a government building in the city of Kut to demand jobs, The Associated Press reported. Someone in the crowd threw a grenade at Ukrainian soldiers and Iraqi policemen guarding the building, wounding five people, an official said. Ukrainian soldiers then fired into the air to disperse the crowd, he said, and wounded one protester.
--New York Times
Oh yeah -- we're definitely winning.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 12 — American soldiers on Monday night killed an Iraqi man and a boy and wounded four others in a car that was driving behind their convoy after a roadside bomb went off nearby, said witnesses, a police official and relatives of the family in the car.....
By the end of the day, in violence around the country involving the American military, an American soldier and at least 9 Iraqis had been killed, and 10 Iraqis and 2 American soldiers wounded....
Earlier in the day a roadside bomb in Baghdad killed a soldier in the First Armored Division and wounded two others, military officials said.
Another roadside bomb exploded near an Army convoy in Ramadi, a town west of Baghdad, but the military said no American casualties had been reported, The Associated Press reported. The report quoted residents as saying Americans had opened fire after the attack, killing two Iraqis.
The military also said soldiers killed 7 of about 40 members of a gang of smugglers that was siphoning oil from a pipeline south of Samarra, a guerrilla stronghold 60 miles north of Baghdad.
About 9 p.m. on Monday, suspected guerrillas fired rockets in Sadr City, a sprawling Shiite Muslim slum of 2.2 million people in northeastern Baghdad, Captain Beck said. Later, suspected insurgents fired two mortar rounds at the Baghdad Hotel on the east bank of the Tigris but failed to hit anything, a hotel guard said....
Also on Monday, riots continued in southern Iraq, as about 400 protesters marched on a government building in the city of Kut to demand jobs, The Associated Press reported. Someone in the crowd threw a grenade at Ukrainian soldiers and Iraqi policemen guarding the building, wounding five people, an official said. Ukrainian soldiers then fired into the air to disperse the crowd, he said, and wounded one protester.
--New York Times
Oh yeah -- we're definitely winning.
How we enforce our gun laws:
...It took the Washington-based lobbyist group Americans for Gun Safety six years and three lawsuits to get the names of the gun stores that sell a disproportionate number of the guns traced to crimes.
The group's study found that just 120 dealers in 22 states sold nearly 55,000 guns linked to crime in five years....
Of the 120 so-called high-crime gun stores, only 24 have been inspected in the last 3 ½ years, according to the Americans for Gun Safety report. Nationwide, only 27 gun dealers were prosecuted last year....
--ABC News
...It took the Washington-based lobbyist group Americans for Gun Safety six years and three lawsuits to get the names of the gun stores that sell a disproportionate number of the guns traced to crimes.
The group's study found that just 120 dealers in 22 states sold nearly 55,000 guns linked to crime in five years....
Of the 120 so-called high-crime gun stores, only 24 have been inspected in the last 3 ½ years, according to the Americans for Gun Safety report. Nationwide, only 27 gun dealers were prosecuted last year....
--ABC News
America's future, under the Bush immigration plan:
Under the plan, businesses would have to show that no Americans want the jobs available before they bring in temporary workers from abroad....
One fear, for example, is that a business that now pays American construction laborers $11 an hour will say that it henceforth needs laborers at $6 an hour, knowing that hardly any Americans would take arduous jobs paying so little.
As a result, some labor unions say they want a wage floor incorporated into the immigration reforms.
"If you don't have these protections, you're going to have a race to the bottom," said Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a liberal group that seeks to ease immigration rules. "You'll have $12-an-hour hotel workers undermined by the $7-an-hour temporary workers from overseas."...
--New York Times
Hey, it's all the fun of outsourcing -- and you don't even have to send the jobs out of the country!
Under the plan, businesses would have to show that no Americans want the jobs available before they bring in temporary workers from abroad....
One fear, for example, is that a business that now pays American construction laborers $11 an hour will say that it henceforth needs laborers at $6 an hour, knowing that hardly any Americans would take arduous jobs paying so little.
As a result, some labor unions say they want a wage floor incorporated into the immigration reforms.
"If you don't have these protections, you're going to have a race to the bottom," said Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a liberal group that seeks to ease immigration rules. "You'll have $12-an-hour hotel workers undermined by the $7-an-hour temporary workers from overseas."...
--New York Times
Hey, it's all the fun of outsourcing -- and you don't even have to send the jobs out of the country!
MS. MYLROIE ISSUES A CLARIFICATION
Via Free Republic, we have this apparently accurate assertion from the usually loopy "terrorism expert" Laurie Mylroie:
In his appearance this evening on "60 Minutes," Ron Suskind, author of The Price of Loyalty, based to a large extent on information from former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill, made an astonishing, very serious misstatement.
Suskind claimed he has documents showing that preparations for the Iraq war were well underway before 9-11. He cited--and even showed--what he said was a Pentagon document, entitled, "Foreign Suitors for Iraq Oilfield contracts." He claimed the document was about planning for post-war Iraqi oil (CBS's promotional story also contains that claim): http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/09/60minutes/ printable592330.shtml
But that is not a Pentagon document. It's from the Vice-President's Office. It was part of the Energy Project that was the focus of Dick Cheney's attention before the 9/11 strikes.
...It was part of a study of global oil supplies. Judicial Watch obtained it in a law suit and posted it, along with related documents, on its website at: http://www.judicialwatch.org/071703.c_.shtml
And this is supposed to strike us as less sleazy -- as less of a sign that the administration was planning an Iraq war long before 9/11 -- for what reason exactly?
Via Free Republic, we have this apparently accurate assertion from the usually loopy "terrorism expert" Laurie Mylroie:
In his appearance this evening on "60 Minutes," Ron Suskind, author of The Price of Loyalty, based to a large extent on information from former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill, made an astonishing, very serious misstatement.
Suskind claimed he has documents showing that preparations for the Iraq war were well underway before 9-11. He cited--and even showed--what he said was a Pentagon document, entitled, "Foreign Suitors for Iraq Oilfield contracts." He claimed the document was about planning for post-war Iraqi oil (CBS's promotional story also contains that claim): http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/09/60minutes/ printable592330.shtml
But that is not a Pentagon document. It's from the Vice-President's Office. It was part of the Energy Project that was the focus of Dick Cheney's attention before the 9/11 strikes.
...It was part of a study of global oil supplies. Judicial Watch obtained it in a law suit and posted it, along with related documents, on its website at: http://www.judicialwatch.org/071703.c_.shtml
And this is supposed to strike us as less sleazy -- as less of a sign that the administration was planning an Iraq war long before 9/11 -- for what reason exactly?
I think the ex-Treasury Secretary is about to encounter the politics of personal destruction -- up close and personal.
--Billmon
I'll say:
US Treasury seeks probe into papers taken by O'Neill
The U.S. Treasury has asked the U.S. inspector general's office to investigate how a possibly classified document appeared on Sunday in a televised interview of ex-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, a department spokesman said on Monday....
--Reuters
Paul? The keyword is omerta.
--Billmon
I'll say:
US Treasury seeks probe into papers taken by O'Neill
The U.S. Treasury has asked the U.S. inspector general's office to investigate how a possibly classified document appeared on Sunday in a televised interview of ex-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, a department spokesman said on Monday....
--Reuters
Paul? The keyword is omerta.
John Edwards wins the Miss Congeniality award from two editorial boards:
Like all the Democratic candidates, Edwards is strongly critical of Bush, but with him it tends to be a little less personal.... He tends to conduct positive, optimistic campaigns.
--Des Moines Register
SOME PRESIDENTIAL candidates seem to grow shriller or more haggard as the grueling campaign grinds on. North Carolina Sen. John Edwards is the opposite -- a candidate who remains as appealing as ever and who seems to have grown more thoughtful and confident....
...Mr. Edwards has a natural ability to connect with voters and a trial lawyer's facility for translating complicated concepts into plain English without sounding condescending. He's run a relentlessly positive campaign; while his rivals have gone after front-runner Howard Dean, Mr. Edwards's strategy has been to stay above the fray....
--The Washington Post
Well, that's the way our press likes Democrats -- nice, decent, genial, inoffensive, harmless, nonthreatening. A Democrat should help the press with its homework -- right before the press goes on a date with the (GOP) captain of the football team:
As last week proved again, this president has embraced not only "the vision thing" but the idea of a very big presidency: big ideas, big costs, big gambles. More than many presidents, historians say, Mr. Bush seems to understand how to use the powers of the office and to see the political benefits in risk. He may leave the details to others, but when backed into a corner, he doubles his bets....
"The vision thing" is the point, whether it is big tax cuts, big wars, big plans for democracy in the Middle East. Presidents, historians say, need national unifying principles....
--New York Times
Too bad that snarling meanie Howard Dean has to threaten the natural order of things. Why does he have to be angry all the time? Why can't he be nice? Doesn't he realize he's a Democrat?
Like all the Democratic candidates, Edwards is strongly critical of Bush, but with him it tends to be a little less personal.... He tends to conduct positive, optimistic campaigns.
--Des Moines Register
SOME PRESIDENTIAL candidates seem to grow shriller or more haggard as the grueling campaign grinds on. North Carolina Sen. John Edwards is the opposite -- a candidate who remains as appealing as ever and who seems to have grown more thoughtful and confident....
...Mr. Edwards has a natural ability to connect with voters and a trial lawyer's facility for translating complicated concepts into plain English without sounding condescending. He's run a relentlessly positive campaign; while his rivals have gone after front-runner Howard Dean, Mr. Edwards's strategy has been to stay above the fray....
--The Washington Post
Well, that's the way our press likes Democrats -- nice, decent, genial, inoffensive, harmless, nonthreatening. A Democrat should help the press with its homework -- right before the press goes on a date with the (GOP) captain of the football team:
As last week proved again, this president has embraced not only "the vision thing" but the idea of a very big presidency: big ideas, big costs, big gambles. More than many presidents, historians say, Mr. Bush seems to understand how to use the powers of the office and to see the political benefits in risk. He may leave the details to others, but when backed into a corner, he doubles his bets....
"The vision thing" is the point, whether it is big tax cuts, big wars, big plans for democracy in the Middle East. Presidents, historians say, need national unifying principles....
--New York Times
Too bad that snarling meanie Howard Dean has to threaten the natural order of things. Why does he have to be angry all the time? Why can't he be nice? Doesn't he realize he's a Democrat?
The Bushies abuse the English language again:
Saddam Hussein has been designated an EPW, not a POW, the Pentagon clarified yesterday.
The enemy prisoner of war designation, cited by Pentagon spokeswoman Megan Grafton, may be used by the feds to get around the prisoner of war protections the U.S. agreed to when it signed the 1948 Geneva Convention, a legal expert said.
"I've never heard the term EPW used," said Michael Noone, a retired Air Force JAG officer who teaches law at Catholic University. "It's certainly not in the Geneva Conventions." ...
--New York Daily News
(Link via BuzzFlash.)
Saddam Hussein has been designated an EPW, not a POW, the Pentagon clarified yesterday.
The enemy prisoner of war designation, cited by Pentagon spokeswoman Megan Grafton, may be used by the feds to get around the prisoner of war protections the U.S. agreed to when it signed the 1948 Geneva Convention, a legal expert said.
"I've never heard the term EPW used," said Michael Noone, a retired Air Force JAG officer who teaches law at Catholic University. "It's certainly not in the Geneva Conventions." ...
--New York Daily News
(Link via BuzzFlash.)
If you can't rebut the testimony, just say the witness is a hapless old loser. Thus John Fund on Paul O'Neill in The Wall Street Journal:
I once had dinner with Paul O'Neill, the former Treasury secretary who is now making headlines with a scathing portrayal of his days in the Bush administration prior to his firing in December 2002. Bush critics will hail Mr. O'Neill as a truth-teller, White House aides are already calling him a back-stabber. In fact, Mr. O'Neill is a relic. The man I broke bread with was clearly a product of the Nixon and Ford administrations, in which he had served, and simply hadn't adapted to the post-Reagan Republican Party.
Poor pathetic Paul -- nobody told him that right-centrism is just so thirty years ago.
Bush, the conservative, hired the moderate O'Neill, then clashed with him. Bafflingly, Fund thinks this is O'Neill's fault:
Mr. O'Neill was a fish out of water in the Bush administration. Time magazine reports that he considered himself, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Christine Todd Whitman and Secretary of State Colin Powell to be "three beleaguered souls . . . who shared a more nonideological approach [but] were used for window dressing." Mr. O'Neill tells Mr. Suskind, the author of a new book that tells Mr. O'Neill's side of his tour at Treasury, that the three moderates "may have been there, in large part, as cover" for the administration's conservative agenda.
But it wouldn't have taken much for Mr. O'Neill to figure out that on issues his new boss would more resemble Ronald Reagan than Nixon, Ford or the first George Bush. All he had to do was pay attention to Mr. Bush's record in Texas and his 2000 campaign.
Er, excuse me: Why was it O'Neill's job to figure out that Bush was incompatible with him? After all, didn't we all -- Paul O'Neill presumably included -- spend 2000 learning that George W. Bush was a "compassionate conservative," a pragmatist, a guy who works well with those of different ideological stripes? The press said it, over and over and over again, so surely O'Neill wasn't crazy if he believed it.
I know conservatives believe in "personal responsibility" for everyone but their own heroes, but sorry: It was Bush's job (or the job of consigliere Cheney) to figure out that O'Neill wasn't conservative enough for Bush. Fund notes that
At the first meeting of the president's cabinet, Mr. O'Neill passed out copies of a speech he gave in 1998 in which he said that there were two issues that transcend all others: "One is nuclear holocaust. . . . The second is environmental: specifically, the issue of global climate change and the potential of global warming."
A speech on global warming and nukes? With regard to whether O'Neill would ever go wobbly on hard-right principles, shouldn't this have been a bit of a tipoff?
I once had dinner with Paul O'Neill, the former Treasury secretary who is now making headlines with a scathing portrayal of his days in the Bush administration prior to his firing in December 2002. Bush critics will hail Mr. O'Neill as a truth-teller, White House aides are already calling him a back-stabber. In fact, Mr. O'Neill is a relic. The man I broke bread with was clearly a product of the Nixon and Ford administrations, in which he had served, and simply hadn't adapted to the post-Reagan Republican Party.
Poor pathetic Paul -- nobody told him that right-centrism is just so thirty years ago.
Bush, the conservative, hired the moderate O'Neill, then clashed with him. Bafflingly, Fund thinks this is O'Neill's fault:
Mr. O'Neill was a fish out of water in the Bush administration. Time magazine reports that he considered himself, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Christine Todd Whitman and Secretary of State Colin Powell to be "three beleaguered souls . . . who shared a more nonideological approach [but] were used for window dressing." Mr. O'Neill tells Mr. Suskind, the author of a new book that tells Mr. O'Neill's side of his tour at Treasury, that the three moderates "may have been there, in large part, as cover" for the administration's conservative agenda.
But it wouldn't have taken much for Mr. O'Neill to figure out that on issues his new boss would more resemble Ronald Reagan than Nixon, Ford or the first George Bush. All he had to do was pay attention to Mr. Bush's record in Texas and his 2000 campaign.
Er, excuse me: Why was it O'Neill's job to figure out that Bush was incompatible with him? After all, didn't we all -- Paul O'Neill presumably included -- spend 2000 learning that George W. Bush was a "compassionate conservative," a pragmatist, a guy who works well with those of different ideological stripes? The press said it, over and over and over again, so surely O'Neill wasn't crazy if he believed it.
I know conservatives believe in "personal responsibility" for everyone but their own heroes, but sorry: It was Bush's job (or the job of consigliere Cheney) to figure out that O'Neill wasn't conservative enough for Bush. Fund notes that
At the first meeting of the president's cabinet, Mr. O'Neill passed out copies of a speech he gave in 1998 in which he said that there were two issues that transcend all others: "One is nuclear holocaust. . . . The second is environmental: specifically, the issue of global climate change and the potential of global warming."
A speech on global warming and nukes? With regard to whether O'Neill would ever go wobbly on hard-right principles, shouldn't this have been a bit of a tipoff?
Well, I guess page A12 of The Washington Post is better than nothing for this:
Study Published by Army Criticizes War on Terror's Scope
A scathing new report published by the Army War College broadly criticizes the Bush administration's handling of the war on terrorism, accusing it of taking a detour into an "unnecessary" war in Iraq and pursuing an "unrealistic" quest against terrorism that may lead to U.S. wars with states that pose no serious threat.
The report, by Jeffrey Record, a visiting professor at the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, warns that as a result of those mistakes, the Army is "near the breaking point."
It recommends, among other things, scaling back the scope of the "global war on terrorism" and instead focusing on the narrower threat posed by the al Qaeda terrorist network.
"[T]he global war on terrorism as currently defined and waged is dangerously indiscriminate and ambitious, and accordingly ... its parameters should be readjusted," Record writes. Currently, he adds, the anti-terrorism campaign "is strategically unfocused, promises more than it can deliver, and threatens to dissipate U.S. military resources in an endless and hopeless search for absolute security."
...Record's core criticism is that the administration is biting off more than it can chew. He likens the scale of U.S. ambitions in the war on terrorism to Adolf Hitler's overreach in World War II. "A cardinal rule of strategy is to keep your enemies to a manageable number," he writes. "The Germans were defeated in two world wars . . . because their strategic ends outran their available means."
He also scoffs at the administration's policy, laid out by Bush in a November speech, of seeking to transform and democratize the Middle East. "The potential policy payoff of a democratic and prosperous Middle East, if there is one, almost certainly lies in the very distant future," he writes. "The basis on which this democratic domino theory rests has never been explicated." ...
Gee -- everyone who actually examines the situation in depth turns into a Bush-hating, America-hating, freedom-hating peacenik. Funny how that works. Even this guy, who used to be an aide to the hawkish Senator Sam Nunn and who "in 1999, while on the staff of the Air War College, ... published work critical of the Clinton administration," according to the Post article.
I haven't read the whole report, but you can get to it here.
Study Published by Army Criticizes War on Terror's Scope
A scathing new report published by the Army War College broadly criticizes the Bush administration's handling of the war on terrorism, accusing it of taking a detour into an "unnecessary" war in Iraq and pursuing an "unrealistic" quest against terrorism that may lead to U.S. wars with states that pose no serious threat.
The report, by Jeffrey Record, a visiting professor at the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, warns that as a result of those mistakes, the Army is "near the breaking point."
It recommends, among other things, scaling back the scope of the "global war on terrorism" and instead focusing on the narrower threat posed by the al Qaeda terrorist network.
"[T]he global war on terrorism as currently defined and waged is dangerously indiscriminate and ambitious, and accordingly ... its parameters should be readjusted," Record writes. Currently, he adds, the anti-terrorism campaign "is strategically unfocused, promises more than it can deliver, and threatens to dissipate U.S. military resources in an endless and hopeless search for absolute security."
...Record's core criticism is that the administration is biting off more than it can chew. He likens the scale of U.S. ambitions in the war on terrorism to Adolf Hitler's overreach in World War II. "A cardinal rule of strategy is to keep your enemies to a manageable number," he writes. "The Germans were defeated in two world wars . . . because their strategic ends outran their available means."
He also scoffs at the administration's policy, laid out by Bush in a November speech, of seeking to transform and democratize the Middle East. "The potential policy payoff of a democratic and prosperous Middle East, if there is one, almost certainly lies in the very distant future," he writes. "The basis on which this democratic domino theory rests has never been explicated." ...
Gee -- everyone who actually examines the situation in depth turns into a Bush-hating, America-hating, freedom-hating peacenik. Funny how that works. Even this guy, who used to be an aide to the hawkish Senator Sam Nunn and who "in 1999, while on the staff of the Air War College, ... published work critical of the Clinton administration," according to the Post article.
I haven't read the whole report, but you can get to it here.
So I guess even our counterinsurgency forces are Bush-hating, America-hating, sandal-wearing peaceniks. This is from Peter Maass's fine New York Times Magazine cover story on Major John Nagl, a counterinsurgency theorist who's putting his knowledge into practice in Iraq -- and finding it a struggle:
A few hours after the car bomb detonated, the American military announced that Saddam Hussein had been captured. The news did not elicit shouts of joy at Nagl's base. The reaction among Nagl's men was summed up by a soldier who didn't hesitate when I asked whether he thought Hussein's capture would make his job easier. ''Nah, there are too many bad people here,'' he replied. ''They don't need Saddam Hussein to tell them to do bad things.''
What?! That soldier didn't think he was safer with Saddam captured? Why does he hate freedom?
A few hours after the car bomb detonated, the American military announced that Saddam Hussein had been captured. The news did not elicit shouts of joy at Nagl's base. The reaction among Nagl's men was summed up by a soldier who didn't hesitate when I asked whether he thought Hussein's capture would make his job easier. ''Nah, there are too many bad people here,'' he replied. ''They don't need Saddam Hussein to tell them to do bad things.''
What?! That soldier didn't think he was safer with Saddam captured? Why does he hate freedom?
Sunday, January 11, 2004
There were three articles in the Sunday New York Times that looked at the road ahead for prominent candidates. The article about Tom Daschle says he "is facing what could be the toughest campaign of his career" and raises "the question of how Mr. Daschle will juggle the conflicting jobs of Senate candidate and Senate leader." The lead article about the Democratic presidential candidates suggests that things aren't going according to plan for the party -- "The Iowa caucus contest is ending in an electoral environment quite different from what Democrats expected when planning for this moment a year ago....By some measures, the economy is showing signs of life, and it is certainly less of an issue than Democrats had hoped it might be now.... And with Saddam Hussein captured, the subject of the war ... appears to command less attention." (The article is written by Adam Nagourney, who always manages to point out that that the Democrats' glass is half empty, at best.)
But in the article about George W. Bush's 2004 campaign, everything's coming up roses. There's no struggle to reconcile governing and campaigning. There's no change in the country or the world that could throw a spanner in the campaign's works. Bush is tanned, rested, and ready (an adviser, unnamed, "for fear of angering the White House" -- oh, please -- gushes, "Karl [Rove] is brilliant, but in terms of political strategy, there's no question that the president is intimately engaged. When he comes into a state, he will know exactly what his numbers are, whether people think the country is moving in the right direction, what his approval rating is"), and the Bush team is a well-oiled machine:
At campaign headquarters, just as at the White House, days begin early. Aides are in at 6 a.m. or earlier to begin assembling packets of the day's relevant stories from the newspapers and television into White House-like news summaries for the campaign's senior staff.
By 7:30 a.m., there is what the staff calls a "rapid response" conference call between the campaign staff and Ed Gillespie, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, to review the important political events coming that day, like major speeches by the Democrats, polls and presidential events. The goal is to be ready with consistent talking points.
Between 8 and 8:30 a.m., the campaign has a senior staff meeting to go over the battle plan for the day. Those attending include Mr. Mehlman, Mr. Dowd and Mr. Holt, as well as Jack Oliver, the deputy finance chairman; Mark McKinnon, who is in charge of political advertising; and Nicolle Devenish, the communications director.
...There are also 33 staff members in 14 newly opened offices in major states, plus 5,500 county and precinct leaders who have been trained in 52 sessions around the country. They have learned, Mr. Mehlman said, basic grass-roots political skills: how to register voters, hold Bush-Cheney barbecues, call in to talk radio shows and send letters to the editor extolling the virtues of their candidate....
This, alas, is pretty much how the news coverage goes every day in the A section of the Times: The Democrats are hapless also-rans, and Bush is the political equivalent of the '27 Yankees.
But in the article about George W. Bush's 2004 campaign, everything's coming up roses. There's no struggle to reconcile governing and campaigning. There's no change in the country or the world that could throw a spanner in the campaign's works. Bush is tanned, rested, and ready (an adviser, unnamed, "for fear of angering the White House" -- oh, please -- gushes, "Karl [Rove] is brilliant, but in terms of political strategy, there's no question that the president is intimately engaged. When he comes into a state, he will know exactly what his numbers are, whether people think the country is moving in the right direction, what his approval rating is"), and the Bush team is a well-oiled machine:
At campaign headquarters, just as at the White House, days begin early. Aides are in at 6 a.m. or earlier to begin assembling packets of the day's relevant stories from the newspapers and television into White House-like news summaries for the campaign's senior staff.
By 7:30 a.m., there is what the staff calls a "rapid response" conference call between the campaign staff and Ed Gillespie, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, to review the important political events coming that day, like major speeches by the Democrats, polls and presidential events. The goal is to be ready with consistent talking points.
Between 8 and 8:30 a.m., the campaign has a senior staff meeting to go over the battle plan for the day. Those attending include Mr. Mehlman, Mr. Dowd and Mr. Holt, as well as Jack Oliver, the deputy finance chairman; Mark McKinnon, who is in charge of political advertising; and Nicolle Devenish, the communications director.
...There are also 33 staff members in 14 newly opened offices in major states, plus 5,500 county and precinct leaders who have been trained in 52 sessions around the country. They have learned, Mr. Mehlman said, basic grass-roots political skills: how to register voters, hold Bush-Cheney barbecues, call in to talk radio shows and send letters to the editor extolling the virtues of their candidate....
This, alas, is pretty much how the news coverage goes every day in the A section of the Times: The Democrats are hapless also-rans, and Bush is the political equivalent of the '27 Yankees.
The Bush boom, according to Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley, as quoted by Gretchen Mortenson in The New York Times:
But the unpleasant reality remains that private-sector payrolls are now 7.5 million workers below the level that would be typical 25 months into an economic recovery, [Roach] said....
"In the last five months, 280,000 jobs have been created, a number that we get easily in a month during a normal recovery,'' he said. Most of the new jobs are in temporary staffing, health and government, he added.
"The days of an old-fashioned hiring-led recovery are over," Mr. Roach said. "And we have to face that, in terms of understanding the potential for our economy to keep growing as many in our financial markets are now blindly assuming will be the case."
Mr. Roach said the second half of 2004 might bring an economic relapse. Hmm.
And Roach isn't the only economic skeptic:
Also casting doubt on the recovery is Robert H. Parks, economist and professor of finance at Pace University. He said he thought that interest rates would rise significantly by the end of the year, pushed up not by Alan Greenspan, who never saw an asset bubble he didn't like, but by the bond market vigilantes. "Deficits financed by way of freshly printed money to fund tax cuts, pork-barrel spending and huge outlays for military spending are going to generate headline news on sharply rising interest rates, long before 2004 is over," Mr. Parks said.
We'll see.
But the unpleasant reality remains that private-sector payrolls are now 7.5 million workers below the level that would be typical 25 months into an economic recovery, [Roach] said....
"In the last five months, 280,000 jobs have been created, a number that we get easily in a month during a normal recovery,'' he said. Most of the new jobs are in temporary staffing, health and government, he added.
"The days of an old-fashioned hiring-led recovery are over," Mr. Roach said. "And we have to face that, in terms of understanding the potential for our economy to keep growing as many in our financial markets are now blindly assuming will be the case."
Mr. Roach said the second half of 2004 might bring an economic relapse. Hmm.
And Roach isn't the only economic skeptic:
Also casting doubt on the recovery is Robert H. Parks, economist and professor of finance at Pace University. He said he thought that interest rates would rise significantly by the end of the year, pushed up not by Alan Greenspan, who never saw an asset bubble he didn't like, but by the bond market vigilantes. "Deficits financed by way of freshly printed money to fund tax cuts, pork-barrel spending and huge outlays for military spending are going to generate headline news on sharply rising interest rates, long before 2004 is over," Mr. Parks said.
We'll see.
Saturday, January 10, 2004
I'd love to think that this is going to make a big difference, but, alas, I'm pessimistic. I'll explain why below....
Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill charges in a new book that President Bush entered office in January 2001 intent on invading Iraq and was in search of a way to go about it....
The former treasury secretary and other White House insiders gave Suskind documents that in the first three months of 2001 revealed the Bush administration was examining military options for removing Saddam Hussein, CBS said.
"There are memos," Suskind told CBS. "One of them marked 'secret' says 'Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq."'
Another Pentagon document entitled "Foreign suitors for Iraqi Oil Field Contracts" talks about contractors from 40 countries and which ones have interest in Iraq, Suskind said....
--Reuters
The problem is that credulous Americans will effortlessly fit even this into their Saddam = Osama worldview. How? Thus: Freedom-hating Muslims -- whom we can't possibly differentiate -- hated us and wanted to do us harm, and our brave flight-suit-wearing hero, George W. Bush, knew this, even as far back as the first months of 2001. So when another freedom-hating Muslim, Osama, attacked us on 9/11, Bush's wise policy of regime change for Osama's ally Saddam was vindicated.
Sorry for the gloom. I really hope I'm wrong about this.
It's amazing: This is, literally, a conspiracy theory -- the belief that Saddam and Osama were co-conspirators -- yet those who doubt it are the heretics, the iconoclasts, in American politics. I hope O'Neill's interview and Suskind's book change this, but I'm not holding my breath.
Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill charges in a new book that President Bush entered office in January 2001 intent on invading Iraq and was in search of a way to go about it....
The former treasury secretary and other White House insiders gave Suskind documents that in the first three months of 2001 revealed the Bush administration was examining military options for removing Saddam Hussein, CBS said.
"There are memos," Suskind told CBS. "One of them marked 'secret' says 'Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq."'
Another Pentagon document entitled "Foreign suitors for Iraqi Oil Field Contracts" talks about contractors from 40 countries and which ones have interest in Iraq, Suskind said....
--Reuters
The problem is that credulous Americans will effortlessly fit even this into their Saddam = Osama worldview. How? Thus: Freedom-hating Muslims -- whom we can't possibly differentiate -- hated us and wanted to do us harm, and our brave flight-suit-wearing hero, George W. Bush, knew this, even as far back as the first months of 2001. So when another freedom-hating Muslim, Osama, attacked us on 9/11, Bush's wise policy of regime change for Osama's ally Saddam was vindicated.
Sorry for the gloom. I really hope I'm wrong about this.
It's amazing: This is, literally, a conspiracy theory -- the belief that Saddam and Osama were co-conspirators -- yet those who doubt it are the heretics, the iconoclasts, in American politics. I hope O'Neill's interview and Suskind's book change this, but I'm not holding my breath.
Friday, January 09, 2004
It turns out there were plenty of new jobs created in December ...
... in Canada:
The Canadian economy finished 2003 on a strong note, generating new jobs at more than twice the expected pace in December, Statistics Canada said Friday.
...In the final month of the year, the Canadian job market — which had stalled for much of the early part of 2003 — added a surprising 53,100 jobs. That marked the fourth consecutive month of employment growth in this country and far exceeded even the most optimistic forecasts.
...Most of December's new jobs were full-time. In total, 45,500 full-time positions were created, while an additional 7,600 part-time jobs were added to the payrolls....
--Toronto Globe and Mail
The population of the U.S. is about nine times that of Canada, but we didn't add 477,900 jobs in our economy in December -- as you probably know, we added 1,000.
... in Canada:
The Canadian economy finished 2003 on a strong note, generating new jobs at more than twice the expected pace in December, Statistics Canada said Friday.
...In the final month of the year, the Canadian job market — which had stalled for much of the early part of 2003 — added a surprising 53,100 jobs. That marked the fourth consecutive month of employment growth in this country and far exceeded even the most optimistic forecasts.
...Most of December's new jobs were full-time. In total, 45,500 full-time positions were created, while an additional 7,600 part-time jobs were added to the payrolls....
--Toronto Globe and Mail
The population of the U.S. is about nine times that of Canada, but we didn't add 477,900 jobs in our economy in December -- as you probably know, we added 1,000.
Just found this CBS press release at TVBarn.com:
Paul O'Neill disses Bush on "60"
January 9, 2004
PRESIDENT BUSH CONDUCTED CABINET MEETINGS "LIKE A BLIND MAN IN A ROOMFUL OF DEAF PEOPLE" SAYS FORMER TREASURY SECRETARY PAUL O'NEILL IN AN EXCLUSIVE "60 MINUTES" INTERVIEW
-- SUNDAY ON CBS
President Bush was so disengaged in cabinet meetings that he "was like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people," says former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill in his first interview about his time as a White House insider. O'Neill speaks to Lesley Stahl for a report to be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, Jan. 11 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.
O'Neill, fired by the White House for his disagreement on tax cuts, is the main source for an upcoming book, The Price of Loyalty, authored by Ron Suskind. In it, Suskind builds an insider's picture of the White House drawn on interviews with O'Neill, dozens of other Bush administration insiders and 19,000 documents provided by O'Neill.
A lack of dialogue, according to O'Neill, was the norm in cabinet meetings he attended. The president "was like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people," O'Neill is quoted saying in the book. It was similar in one-on-one meetings, says O'Neill. Of his first such meeting with the president, O'Neill says "I went in with a long list of things to talk about and, I thought, to engage [him] on...I was surprised it turned out me talking and the president just listening...It was mostly a monologue," he tells Stahl.
In the interview with Stahl, O'Neill also reveals new information about key economic and foreign policy discussions within the Bush administration that took place during his two years there, including decisions on what to do about Saddam Hussein and how far to go with tax cuts.
Suskind, of course, wrote the notorious Esquire story about the White House inner circle in which the Bushies were dubbed "the Mayberry Machiavellis."
Paul O'Neill disses Bush on "60"
January 9, 2004
PRESIDENT BUSH CONDUCTED CABINET MEETINGS "LIKE A BLIND MAN IN A ROOMFUL OF DEAF PEOPLE" SAYS FORMER TREASURY SECRETARY PAUL O'NEILL IN AN EXCLUSIVE "60 MINUTES" INTERVIEW
-- SUNDAY ON CBS
President Bush was so disengaged in cabinet meetings that he "was like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people," says former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill in his first interview about his time as a White House insider. O'Neill speaks to Lesley Stahl for a report to be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, Jan. 11 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.
O'Neill, fired by the White House for his disagreement on tax cuts, is the main source for an upcoming book, The Price of Loyalty, authored by Ron Suskind. In it, Suskind builds an insider's picture of the White House drawn on interviews with O'Neill, dozens of other Bush administration insiders and 19,000 documents provided by O'Neill.
A lack of dialogue, according to O'Neill, was the norm in cabinet meetings he attended. The president "was like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people," O'Neill is quoted saying in the book. It was similar in one-on-one meetings, says O'Neill. Of his first such meeting with the president, O'Neill says "I went in with a long list of things to talk about and, I thought, to engage [him] on...I was surprised it turned out me talking and the president just listening...It was mostly a monologue," he tells Stahl.
In the interview with Stahl, O'Neill also reveals new information about key economic and foreign policy discussions within the Bush administration that took place during his two years there, including decisions on what to do about Saddam Hussein and how far to go with tax cuts.
Suskind, of course, wrote the notorious Esquire story about the White House inner circle in which the Bushies were dubbed "the Mayberry Machiavellis."
The Bush boom -- Republican economics as usual:
Payrolls Barely Rise, Worse Than Expected
American employers barely took on any new workers in December, a disappointing government report on Friday showed, indicating the economic recovery has yet to translate into sustained jobs growth....
--Reuters
At the Luxury End, Holiday Sales Were Hopping
The nation's high-rolling shoppers, full of pent-up desire to spend, propelled luxury stores like Neiman Marcus, Tiffany and Saks Fifth Avenue to hearty increases last month, but over all, many merchants were disappointed by the holiday season. Store sales for last month, measured against the same stores open in December 2002, rose 3.7 percent, according to the Bloomberg composite same-store sales index. Last year, called one of the worst in decades by analysts, holiday sales rose 2.2 percent....
The Bloomberg index for department stores rose only 1.62 percent, weighed down by the more traditional department store chains - Federated and the May Company - which barely eked out a positive comparison with last year. Saks, on the other hand, rose more than 9 percent and Tiffany rose 16 percent. "Luxury is back,'' Jaqui Lividini of Saks said.
Yesterday, Karen Katz, chief executive of Neiman Marcus, said that handbags - especially those by Chanel, Prada and Gucci - had been "absolutely miraculous." Next in line of importance was jewelry, especially watches in the $1,000 category by Michele and Phillip Stein, a new brand made by Teslar.
Speaking about the Philip Stein watch, which sells from $700 to $2,000, Ms. Katz said Neiman "started getting the buzz, and then when Madonna gave one to Oprah, it's been amazing." ...
--New York Times
Payrolls Barely Rise, Worse Than Expected
American employers barely took on any new workers in December, a disappointing government report on Friday showed, indicating the economic recovery has yet to translate into sustained jobs growth....
--Reuters
At the Luxury End, Holiday Sales Were Hopping
The nation's high-rolling shoppers, full of pent-up desire to spend, propelled luxury stores like Neiman Marcus, Tiffany and Saks Fifth Avenue to hearty increases last month, but over all, many merchants were disappointed by the holiday season. Store sales for last month, measured against the same stores open in December 2002, rose 3.7 percent, according to the Bloomberg composite same-store sales index. Last year, called one of the worst in decades by analysts, holiday sales rose 2.2 percent....
The Bloomberg index for department stores rose only 1.62 percent, weighed down by the more traditional department store chains - Federated and the May Company - which barely eked out a positive comparison with last year. Saks, on the other hand, rose more than 9 percent and Tiffany rose 16 percent. "Luxury is back,'' Jaqui Lividini of Saks said.
Yesterday, Karen Katz, chief executive of Neiman Marcus, said that handbags - especially those by Chanel, Prada and Gucci - had been "absolutely miraculous." Next in line of importance was jewelry, especially watches in the $1,000 category by Michele and Phillip Stein, a new brand made by Teslar.
Speaking about the Philip Stein watch, which sells from $700 to $2,000, Ms. Katz said Neiman "started getting the buzz, and then when Madonna gave one to Oprah, it's been amazing." ...
--New York Times
Absurd, dumb, self-contradictory sentence heard this morning on NPR, in a news-summary story about the detention of suspects in Tikrit by U.S. forces:
"It was one of the biggest raids since the end of combat."
Over on the right, it's a hanging offense to say "suicide bomber" (rather than "homicide bomber") if you're on Fox News, or "inheritance tax" (rather than "death tax") if you're a GOP member of Congress. Yet here's an NPR reporter blithely describing the fall of Baghdad as "the end of combat." It's clear now that even "the end of major combat" isn't accurate. Shouldn't NPR -- shouldn't every news organization that tries to get the facts straight -- avoid all uses of "end" and "combat" in the same sentence with reference to Iraq?
"It was one of the biggest raids since the end of combat."
Over on the right, it's a hanging offense to say "suicide bomber" (rather than "homicide bomber") if you're on Fox News, or "inheritance tax" (rather than "death tax") if you're a GOP member of Congress. Yet here's an NPR reporter blithely describing the fall of Baghdad as "the end of combat." It's clear now that even "the end of major combat" isn't accurate. Shouldn't NPR -- shouldn't every news organization that tries to get the facts straight -- avoid all uses of "end" and "combat" in the same sentence with reference to Iraq?
Bush Plans Missions to the Moon, Mars
*******
A newspaper burns in the sand and the headlines say "Man, this story's mad!"
Extra, extra, read all the bad news on the war for peace that everybody'll lose
The rise and fall of the last great empire, the sound of the whole caught on fire
The ruthless struggle, the desperate gamble, the game that left the whole world in shambles
The cheat, the lies, the alibis and the foolish atempt to conquer the skies
Lost in space, but what is it worth? The president just forgot about earth.
--Grandmaster Melle Mel and the Furious Five, "Beat Street Breakdown" (1984)
*******
A newspaper burns in the sand and the headlines say "Man, this story's mad!"
Extra, extra, read all the bad news on the war for peace that everybody'll lose
The rise and fall of the last great empire, the sound of the whole caught on fire
The ruthless struggle, the desperate gamble, the game that left the whole world in shambles
The cheat, the lies, the alibis and the foolish atempt to conquer the skies
Lost in space, but what is it worth? The president just forgot about earth.
--Grandmaster Melle Mel and the Furious Five, "Beat Street Breakdown" (1984)
Thursday, January 08, 2004
Here's a story I nearly missed, about how one of the Bushes spent Christmas Eve:
LAWTEY, Fla. -- Gov. Jeb Bush dedicated what he called the nation's first faith-based prison Wednesday, telling its nearly 800 inmates that religion can help keep them from landing in jail again.
In addition to regular prayer sessions, the Lawtey Correctional Institution will offer religious studies, choir practice, religious counseling and other spiritual activities seven days a week. Participation is voluntary and inmates are free to transfer out.
Bush lauded the inmates from 26 faiths for committing themselves ''to a higher authority.''
''This is not just fluffy policy, this is serious policy,'' he told the crowd. ''For the people who are skeptical about this initiative, I am proud that Florida is the home to the first faith-based prison in the United States.''...
--AP story, December 27, 2003
Carl Hiaasen has his doubts about all this:
Let us pray.
Yea, though we hustle through the valley of death, we offer thanks for the bounty of faith to be found here at the Lawtey Correctional Facility....
Lord, we cannot blame you for being rather skeptical of our newfound faith, for so many brothers and sisters in the prison system have claimed to embrace you before.
It's true that, in the past, some of us did not turn to you until late in the plea-bargaining process, and only then in a laughably transparent attempt to convince prosecutors that we'd found spiritual redemption.
Others of us waited until our final request for a new trial was rejected by the appellate courts, and we were hence abandoned by our lawyers.
Still others of us welcomed you only in the days approaching our first parole hearing, during which we memorized numerous verses of the Scriptures and extolled your virtues to all within earshot.
Sadly, after our request for an early release was denied, we somehow mislaid our faith and returned to the blaspheming, gambling, fighting and occasional drug use that is endemic to the penal life.
However, we now humbly beseech you to set aside your doubts and suspicions about our sudden piety. This time, it's different. This time we're going to stick with the program!...
(Thanks to the good folks at Americans United for Separation of Church and State for the tip.)
LAWTEY, Fla. -- Gov. Jeb Bush dedicated what he called the nation's first faith-based prison Wednesday, telling its nearly 800 inmates that religion can help keep them from landing in jail again.
In addition to regular prayer sessions, the Lawtey Correctional Institution will offer religious studies, choir practice, religious counseling and other spiritual activities seven days a week. Participation is voluntary and inmates are free to transfer out.
Bush lauded the inmates from 26 faiths for committing themselves ''to a higher authority.''
''This is not just fluffy policy, this is serious policy,'' he told the crowd. ''For the people who are skeptical about this initiative, I am proud that Florida is the home to the first faith-based prison in the United States.''...
--AP story, December 27, 2003
Carl Hiaasen has his doubts about all this:
Let us pray.
Yea, though we hustle through the valley of death, we offer thanks for the bounty of faith to be found here at the Lawtey Correctional Facility....
Lord, we cannot blame you for being rather skeptical of our newfound faith, for so many brothers and sisters in the prison system have claimed to embrace you before.
It's true that, in the past, some of us did not turn to you until late in the plea-bargaining process, and only then in a laughably transparent attempt to convince prosecutors that we'd found spiritual redemption.
Others of us waited until our final request for a new trial was rejected by the appellate courts, and we were hence abandoned by our lawyers.
Still others of us welcomed you only in the days approaching our first parole hearing, during which we memorized numerous verses of the Scriptures and extolled your virtues to all within earshot.
Sadly, after our request for an early release was denied, we somehow mislaid our faith and returned to the blaspheming, gambling, fighting and occasional drug use that is endemic to the penal life.
However, we now humbly beseech you to set aside your doubts and suspicions about our sudden piety. This time, it's different. This time we're going to stick with the program!...
(Thanks to the good folks at Americans United for Separation of Church and State for the tip.)
MaxSpeak has moved -- it's now here. The link at right has been adjusted.
And I should have noted this at the time: Thinking It Through is no more -- the last post was in November. I miss it.
And I should have noted this at the time: Thinking It Through is no more -- the last post was in November. I miss it.
This is disturbing:
Miami federal court has 'secret docket' to keep some cases hidden from public
A secret docketing system hiding some sensitive Miami federal court cases from public view has been exposed and is being challenged in two higher courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.
"We don't have secret justice in this country," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. The Washington-based journalists watchdog group is asking the appellate courts to open up two Miami federal cases it says were litigated in secret....
One of the cases involved a waiter who allegedly served the wrong customers. For this he spent six months in detention and was made an official unperson:
Mohamed Kamel Bellahouel, 34, of Deerfield Beach, was arrested for a violating his student visa a month after the terror attacks. Although he sought his release in the District Court and appealed to the 11th Circuit, no public record of his case existed until his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court....
...the case to detain Bellahouel was laid out in an FBI agent's affidavit. The FBI reportedly said Bellahouel served two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, at a Middle Eastern restaurant in Delray Beach. He also reportedly was seen at a nearby movie theater with a third hijacker, Ahmed Alnami....
Bellahouel was held at Krome detention center in southwest Miami-Dade County, testified before a federal grand jury in Virginia, and was released in March 2002 on a $10,000 immigration bond.
Bellahouel's appeal to open his files was denied by the 11th Circuit, which issued its decision -- under seal -- on March 31. Attorneys involved in the case are under a gag order and can't comment....
Disgusting.
Miami federal court has 'secret docket' to keep some cases hidden from public
A secret docketing system hiding some sensitive Miami federal court cases from public view has been exposed and is being challenged in two higher courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.
"We don't have secret justice in this country," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. The Washington-based journalists watchdog group is asking the appellate courts to open up two Miami federal cases it says were litigated in secret....
One of the cases involved a waiter who allegedly served the wrong customers. For this he spent six months in detention and was made an official unperson:
Mohamed Kamel Bellahouel, 34, of Deerfield Beach, was arrested for a violating his student visa a month after the terror attacks. Although he sought his release in the District Court and appealed to the 11th Circuit, no public record of his case existed until his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court....
...the case to detain Bellahouel was laid out in an FBI agent's affidavit. The FBI reportedly said Bellahouel served two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, at a Middle Eastern restaurant in Delray Beach. He also reportedly was seen at a nearby movie theater with a third hijacker, Ahmed Alnami....
Bellahouel was held at Krome detention center in southwest Miami-Dade County, testified before a federal grand jury in Virginia, and was released in March 2002 on a $10,000 immigration bond.
Bellahouel's appeal to open his files was denied by the 11th Circuit, which issued its decision -- under seal -- on March 31. Attorneys involved in the case are under a gag order and can't comment....
Disgusting.
U.S.-backed Iraqi TV: not winning hearts and minds:
BAGHDAD -- In gasoline lines stretching up to half a mile and coffeehouses darkened by power outages, the questions flow steadily:
When will there be enough electricity for hot water to shave?
Who's to blame for a fuel shortage in a country with some of the world's richest oil reserves?
Will it ever be safe enough to send our children to school?
Yet when the current president of Iraq's Governing Council, Adnan Pachachi, went on national television last weekend to face reporters, those were not the questions posed by the staff at the station, al-Iraqiya. They asked about the trip by an Iraqi delegation to the United Nations and plans to train some police outside the country.
Nine months after U.S. forces closed Iraq's state-run television stations and subsequently launched the new channel with promises of a democratic dawn for the country's news media, the Pentagon-sponsored station has not won the trust of many Iraqis. By seeking to cast the U.S. occupation in the most favorable light, al-Iraqiya may actually be losing the war for viewers' hearts and minds.
"Al-Iraqiya is failing," said Jaafar Saddiq, assistant dean at Baghdad's College of Media. "It's technically backward. Its message is not convincing. It can't compete with other stations."...
And yet the speech is so free on al-Iraqiya!
For months, al-Iraqiya declined to broadcast reports about attacks by Iraqi insurgents on U.S.-led forces, Dhari said. He noted that the station in recent weeks had begun to cover such violence. But the reports are often less detailed and more sporadic than those in the Western news media and on the Arabic satellite television channels.
The station has also refrained from airing some dispatches because of concerns they could incite anti-American feelings, current and former employees said....
Al-Iraqiya's management has banned newscasters from using the word "occupation" to describe the presence of U.S.-led forces in the country, though the term is common in the Western media and acknowledged by U.S. officials to accurately describe the current situation. Station employees said the term casts U.S. forces in a negative light.
And the programming is so exciting!
...the station provides an open forum for U.S. and Iraqi officials. In a program that aired several times last week, two spokesmen from the U.S. provisional administration and the Governing Council were shown over coffee at a local restaurant, talking for a half-hour about U.S. plans to transfer political control this year.
Hey, if that doesn't work for them, maybe they just hate freedom.
BAGHDAD -- In gasoline lines stretching up to half a mile and coffeehouses darkened by power outages, the questions flow steadily:
When will there be enough electricity for hot water to shave?
Who's to blame for a fuel shortage in a country with some of the world's richest oil reserves?
Will it ever be safe enough to send our children to school?
Yet when the current president of Iraq's Governing Council, Adnan Pachachi, went on national television last weekend to face reporters, those were not the questions posed by the staff at the station, al-Iraqiya. They asked about the trip by an Iraqi delegation to the United Nations and plans to train some police outside the country.
Nine months after U.S. forces closed Iraq's state-run television stations and subsequently launched the new channel with promises of a democratic dawn for the country's news media, the Pentagon-sponsored station has not won the trust of many Iraqis. By seeking to cast the U.S. occupation in the most favorable light, al-Iraqiya may actually be losing the war for viewers' hearts and minds.
"Al-Iraqiya is failing," said Jaafar Saddiq, assistant dean at Baghdad's College of Media. "It's technically backward. Its message is not convincing. It can't compete with other stations."...
And yet the speech is so free on al-Iraqiya!
For months, al-Iraqiya declined to broadcast reports about attacks by Iraqi insurgents on U.S.-led forces, Dhari said. He noted that the station in recent weeks had begun to cover such violence. But the reports are often less detailed and more sporadic than those in the Western news media and on the Arabic satellite television channels.
The station has also refrained from airing some dispatches because of concerns they could incite anti-American feelings, current and former employees said....
Al-Iraqiya's management has banned newscasters from using the word "occupation" to describe the presence of U.S.-led forces in the country, though the term is common in the Western media and acknowledged by U.S. officials to accurately describe the current situation. Station employees said the term casts U.S. forces in a negative light.
And the programming is so exciting!
...the station provides an open forum for U.S. and Iraqi officials. In a program that aired several times last week, two spokesmen from the U.S. provisional administration and the Governing Council were shown over coffee at a local restaurant, talking for a half-hour about U.S. plans to transfer political control this year.
Hey, if that doesn't work for them, maybe they just hate freedom.
There are a hundred things in Peggy Noonan's Wall Street Journal hit-piece on Howard Dean that are wrong, idiotic, or otherwise objectionable, but let me just point this out:
He is not a happy warrior but an angry one. In the past I have thought of him as an angry little teapot, but that is perhaps too merry an image. His eyes are cold marbles, in repose his face falls into lines of mere calculation, and he holds himself with a kind of no-neck pugnacity that is fine in a wrestling coach or a tax lawyer but not in a president. We like our presidents sunny, easygoing and optimistic. They have access to the nuclear launch code, and we don't want them losing their tempers easily. Mr. Dean's supporters no doubt see him as optimistic, but optimists aren't angry.
I suppose, as a good, patriotic American, I should believe Peggy rather than my own lying eyes, but to me Howard Dean seems happy and angry, angry and optimistic. You too? Isn't that amazing -- that a personality could have multiple aspects?
I hope the conservatives really work this line of argument -- that Dean is gloomy and angry and dour. Because he smiles a lot. He's brimful of cheer and optimism and confidence -- all of it, to be sure, tempered with anger (as opposed to, say, Joe Lieberman, who, according to the conventional wisdom, is a classic Humphreyesque Happy Warrior, but who in fact has become more and more petulant and self-pitying).
The righties are so sure of their ability to turn their spin on any subject into conventional wisdom that they my well fall into this trap, as they fell into the trap of describing the loud-laughing, occasionally cornball Hillary Clinton as a cold cyborg, particularly during her Senate campaign. (Voters who actually met or saw her dismissed this spin as nonsense and gave her a big win.) So let the righties say Dean's a gloom merchant. It'll be self-evident that they're wrong.
He is not a happy warrior but an angry one. In the past I have thought of him as an angry little teapot, but that is perhaps too merry an image. His eyes are cold marbles, in repose his face falls into lines of mere calculation, and he holds himself with a kind of no-neck pugnacity that is fine in a wrestling coach or a tax lawyer but not in a president. We like our presidents sunny, easygoing and optimistic. They have access to the nuclear launch code, and we don't want them losing their tempers easily. Mr. Dean's supporters no doubt see him as optimistic, but optimists aren't angry.
I suppose, as a good, patriotic American, I should believe Peggy rather than my own lying eyes, but to me Howard Dean seems happy and angry, angry and optimistic. You too? Isn't that amazing -- that a personality could have multiple aspects?
I hope the conservatives really work this line of argument -- that Dean is gloomy and angry and dour. Because he smiles a lot. He's brimful of cheer and optimism and confidence -- all of it, to be sure, tempered with anger (as opposed to, say, Joe Lieberman, who, according to the conventional wisdom, is a classic Humphreyesque Happy Warrior, but who in fact has become more and more petulant and self-pitying).
The righties are so sure of their ability to turn their spin on any subject into conventional wisdom that they my well fall into this trap, as they fell into the trap of describing the loud-laughing, occasionally cornball Hillary Clinton as a cold cyborg, particularly during her Senate campaign. (Voters who actually met or saw her dismissed this spin as nonsense and gave her a big win.) So let the righties say Dean's a gloom merchant. It'll be self-evident that they're wrong.
Is the Bush immigration plan going to follow the path of the Bush prescription-drug plan? You know -- it's acclaimed as a political masterstroke, a devastating refutation of the charge that Bush is a stony-hearted right-wing extremist, it's deemed so undeniably compassionate that it's sure to be remembered with moist-eyed admiration by soccer moms and other sentimental swing voters come November ... and then the people who are actually affected by it begin to examine it in light of their own self-interest and, well, it turns out to be a lot less than meets the eye, a complex, cumbersome overhaul that doesn't really make very many people's lives better. I can't tell yet, but it does seem as if there's a good bit of skepticism about the new plan among immigrants already.
A few days ago we had Ralph Peters in the New York Post ranting about Howard Dean's "Internet Gestapo" and comparing Dean to "Hitler's Brownshirts." Now Austin Bay, in a syndicated column, suggests, clearly only half in jest, that Dean is suffering from clinical dementia:
The sufferer whirls like a dervish, stumbles frequently, blinks before bright lights, occasionally whines through gritting teeth.
Mad cow disease? No — Mad How disease, the political bacillus spread by Park Avenue's Typhoid Mary of ulcerous anger, "Mad How"ard Dean.
Mad How is a variant infection of SARS — Scream and Rage Syndrome — a brain-eating, kuru-like plague afflicting the hard left of the Democratic Party, the hot-wigged activist and conspiracy theorist faction that forces even the sanest of Joe Liebermans and Dick Gephardts to madly kowtow.
Kuru? It's a malady cannibals catch, "a progressive, fatal degeneration of brain tissue, marked first by unsteadiness of stance ... loss of coordination ... exaggerated startle response ..." (See www.siu.edu/˜anthro/welch/Anth305/kuru.pdf.)
But, of course, the real political hate speech is calling people "neoconservatives." Rigfht, David Brooks?
The sufferer whirls like a dervish, stumbles frequently, blinks before bright lights, occasionally whines through gritting teeth.
Mad cow disease? No — Mad How disease, the political bacillus spread by Park Avenue's Typhoid Mary of ulcerous anger, "Mad How"ard Dean.
Mad How is a variant infection of SARS — Scream and Rage Syndrome — a brain-eating, kuru-like plague afflicting the hard left of the Democratic Party, the hot-wigged activist and conspiracy theorist faction that forces even the sanest of Joe Liebermans and Dick Gephardts to madly kowtow.
Kuru? It's a malady cannibals catch, "a progressive, fatal degeneration of brain tissue, marked first by unsteadiness of stance ... loss of coordination ... exaggerated startle response ..." (See www.siu.edu/˜anthro/welch/Anth305/kuru.pdf.)
But, of course, the real political hate speech is calling people "neoconservatives." Rigfht, David Brooks?
Wednesday, January 07, 2004
Last week the FBI warned right-thinking Americans to be on the lookout for evildoers thumbing through almanacs. John Rosenthal, editor of The New York Times Almanac, snarks back in The New York Observer:
...It’s about time the feds realized how much subversive information is contained in almanacs....
For example, the calendars section features a chart of major Muslim holy days, so militant Islamists will know when to take a day off from suicide bombings. The section on the U.S. Postal Service lists domestic and international postage rates, so terrorists will know exactly how many stamps to put on an envelope full of anthrax. The media section lists the top-rated television shows, so terrorists will know exactly when most Americans will be too distracted to notice their neighbors planning a jihad. Ditto for the table of lunar and solar eclipses in 2004.
The physics section lists the year the first atomic bomb was invented, as well as a brief explanation of Einstein’s theory of relativity. Armed with that information, a terrorist would need only a rocket and thousands of pounds of uranium to create his own nuclear device....
Hey, I'm a geek -- I laughed. Go read the whole thing if you're inclined.
(Link via Publishers Lunch.)
...It’s about time the feds realized how much subversive information is contained in almanacs....
For example, the calendars section features a chart of major Muslim holy days, so militant Islamists will know when to take a day off from suicide bombings. The section on the U.S. Postal Service lists domestic and international postage rates, so terrorists will know exactly how many stamps to put on an envelope full of anthrax. The media section lists the top-rated television shows, so terrorists will know exactly when most Americans will be too distracted to notice their neighbors planning a jihad. Ditto for the table of lunar and solar eclipses in 2004.
The physics section lists the year the first atomic bomb was invented, as well as a brief explanation of Einstein’s theory of relativity. Armed with that information, a terrorist would need only a rocket and thousands of pounds of uranium to create his own nuclear device....
Hey, I'm a geek -- I laughed. Go read the whole thing if you're inclined.
(Link via Publishers Lunch.)
I just got the new New York Times bestseller list via e-mail. It supersedes the one that's currently posted at the Times site, which will appear in next Sunday's paper.
The currently posted list, distressingly, has Bill O'Reilly's Who's Looking Out for You? as the #1 nonfiction hardcover; it's been at that position for a couple of weeks. But on the new list I just received, O'Reilly drops to #4 -- and Al Franken and Michael Moore go to #1 and #2.
Explanation? The currently posted list is for the week ending December 27. It includes a lot of pre-Christmas sales. People buying books for other people assume those other people want to read O'Reilly.
The new list is a fully post-Christmas list -- and it appears that when people are buying for themselves, they're buying Franken and Moore.
The currently posted list, distressingly, has Bill O'Reilly's Who's Looking Out for You? as the #1 nonfiction hardcover; it's been at that position for a couple of weeks. But on the new list I just received, O'Reilly drops to #4 -- and Al Franken and Michael Moore go to #1 and #2.
Explanation? The currently posted list is for the week ending December 27. It includes a lot of pre-Christmas sales. People buying books for other people assume those other people want to read O'Reilly.
The new list is a fully post-Christmas list -- and it appears that when people are buying for themselves, they're buying Franken and Moore.
Energy firms paying tab for GOP trip
A dozen or more congressional Republicans will gather at a resort in balmy Phoenix this week to hear the legislative wish lists of Western coal, power and mining companies - and raise money from them.
The four-day conference begins today with a $1,500-per-person round of golf and private dinner, dubbed "Mulligans and Margaritas." The money raised from industry officials will be divided among the re-election campaigns of the lawmakers, most of whom serve on committees that oversee the mining and energy industries....
The event was organized by the Western Business Roundtable, which lobbies for reduced government regulation and other pro-business policies. Its members include utilities, mining companies, railroads and energy companies.
On its Web site, the group claims credit for a long list of lobbying successes. Among them: getting the Environmental Protection Agency to loosen rules governing toxic mercury emissions from power plants....
--USA Today via Yahoo News
A dozen or more congressional Republicans will gather at a resort in balmy Phoenix this week to hear the legislative wish lists of Western coal, power and mining companies - and raise money from them.
The four-day conference begins today with a $1,500-per-person round of golf and private dinner, dubbed "Mulligans and Margaritas." The money raised from industry officials will be divided among the re-election campaigns of the lawmakers, most of whom serve on committees that oversee the mining and energy industries....
The event was organized by the Western Business Roundtable, which lobbies for reduced government regulation and other pro-business policies. Its members include utilities, mining companies, railroads and energy companies.
On its Web site, the group claims credit for a long list of lobbying successes. Among them: getting the Environmental Protection Agency to loosen rules governing toxic mercury emissions from power plants....
--USA Today via Yahoo News
"Why This Tech Bubble Is About to Blow"
I just stumbled on this article, from the journal Business 2.0. It says the big gains in high-tech stocks we've been experiencing recently have no basis in reality -- and while investors' collective hallucination isn't as bad as it was in the late '90s, it's bad enough to cost a lot of people a lot of money someday soon:
Crazy valuations are back. The Nasdaq 100, the Dow Jones of tech companies, now trades at 97 times expected 2003 earnings. That's three times as rich as the more diversified S&P 500. Yahoo (YHOO), quadrupled from its 52-week low, trades at 112 times the profit it's expected to make this year. Amazon (AMZN), likewise, now sells at 93 times its anticipated earnings. Such valuations are beyond optimistic; they're hallucinatory.
And a lot of people are day-trading again, and buying on credit. Not good.
Yes, the article's a couple of months old. But the trends it describes don't seem to be changing -- the NASDAQ has continued to go up, and a number of the must-to-avoid high-tech stocks mentioned in the article are even higher than they were when the piece was published. (Ask Jeeves, which had gone up 1,779% in the twelve months prior to publication of the article, has gone up even more, from 18.79 a share to 22.10 as I write this. For the love of God, why? Does anyone use Ask Jeeves for searches?)
Just something to think about.
(By the way, if you can't get the link at the top of this post to work, you can find the story on the right side of this page -- where you can read a brand-new CNN story about a guy who liquidates high-tech companies and thinks business will be pretty damn good this year.)
I just stumbled on this article, from the journal Business 2.0. It says the big gains in high-tech stocks we've been experiencing recently have no basis in reality -- and while investors' collective hallucination isn't as bad as it was in the late '90s, it's bad enough to cost a lot of people a lot of money someday soon:
Crazy valuations are back. The Nasdaq 100, the Dow Jones of tech companies, now trades at 97 times expected 2003 earnings. That's three times as rich as the more diversified S&P 500. Yahoo (YHOO), quadrupled from its 52-week low, trades at 112 times the profit it's expected to make this year. Amazon (AMZN), likewise, now sells at 93 times its anticipated earnings. Such valuations are beyond optimistic; they're hallucinatory.
And a lot of people are day-trading again, and buying on credit. Not good.
Yes, the article's a couple of months old. But the trends it describes don't seem to be changing -- the NASDAQ has continued to go up, and a number of the must-to-avoid high-tech stocks mentioned in the article are even higher than they were when the piece was published. (Ask Jeeves, which had gone up 1,779% in the twelve months prior to publication of the article, has gone up even more, from 18.79 a share to 22.10 as I write this. For the love of God, why? Does anyone use Ask Jeeves for searches?)
Just something to think about.
(By the way, if you can't get the link at the top of this post to work, you can find the story on the right side of this page -- where you can read a brand-new CNN story about a guy who liquidates high-tech companies and thinks business will be pretty damn good this year.)
"The country was cornered," he said. "We were boycotted. We were embargoed. The truth is, we disintegrated."
Those are the words of Sabah Abdul Noor, from a long, important article in today's Washington Post. He's describing his work and the work of fellow scientists on Iraq's nuclear program in the period after the first Gulf War. The truth is now obvious: The war and subsequent international pressure boxed them in, thwarting their attempts to move forward on weapons development -- and what he says about the nuke program clearly seems to apply to every part of Iraq's program to acquire and develop unconventional weapons. Nothing was working -- chemical, biological, or nuclear -- for unconventional-weapons scientists in Iraq after Gulf War I. Here's the Post's summary:
...investigators have found no support for the two main fears expressed in London and Washington before the war: that Iraq had a hidden arsenal of old weapons and built advanced programs for new ones. In public statements and unauthorized interviews, investigators said they have discovered no work on former germ-warfare agents such as anthrax bacteria, and no work on a new designer pathogen -- combining pox virus and snake venom -- that led U.S. scientists on a highly classified hunt for several months. The investigators assess that Iraq did not, as charged in London and Washington, resume production of its most lethal nerve agent, VX, or learn to make it last longer in storage. And they have found the former nuclear weapons program, described as a "grave and gathering danger" by President Bush and a "mortal threat" by Vice President Cheney, in much the same shattered state left by U.N. inspectors in the 1990s.
A review of available evidence, including some not known to coalition investigators and some they have not made public, portrays a nonconventional arms establishment that was far less capable than U.S. analysts judged before the war. Leading figures in Iraqi science and industry, supported by observations on the ground, described factories and institutes that were thoroughly beaten down by 12 years of conflict, arms embargo and strangling economic sanctions. The remnants of Iraq's biological, chemical and missile infrastructures were riven by internal strife, bled by schemes for personal gain and handicapped by deceit up and down lines of command. The broad picture emerging from the investigation to date suggests that, whatever its desire, Iraq did not possess the wherewithal to build a forbidden armory on anything like the scale it had before the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
Try to clear time to read this one.
Those are the words of Sabah Abdul Noor, from a long, important article in today's Washington Post. He's describing his work and the work of fellow scientists on Iraq's nuclear program in the period after the first Gulf War. The truth is now obvious: The war and subsequent international pressure boxed them in, thwarting their attempts to move forward on weapons development -- and what he says about the nuke program clearly seems to apply to every part of Iraq's program to acquire and develop unconventional weapons. Nothing was working -- chemical, biological, or nuclear -- for unconventional-weapons scientists in Iraq after Gulf War I. Here's the Post's summary:
...investigators have found no support for the two main fears expressed in London and Washington before the war: that Iraq had a hidden arsenal of old weapons and built advanced programs for new ones. In public statements and unauthorized interviews, investigators said they have discovered no work on former germ-warfare agents such as anthrax bacteria, and no work on a new designer pathogen -- combining pox virus and snake venom -- that led U.S. scientists on a highly classified hunt for several months. The investigators assess that Iraq did not, as charged in London and Washington, resume production of its most lethal nerve agent, VX, or learn to make it last longer in storage. And they have found the former nuclear weapons program, described as a "grave and gathering danger" by President Bush and a "mortal threat" by Vice President Cheney, in much the same shattered state left by U.N. inspectors in the 1990s.
A review of available evidence, including some not known to coalition investigators and some they have not made public, portrays a nonconventional arms establishment that was far less capable than U.S. analysts judged before the war. Leading figures in Iraqi science and industry, supported by observations on the ground, described factories and institutes that were thoroughly beaten down by 12 years of conflict, arms embargo and strangling economic sanctions. The remnants of Iraq's biological, chemical and missile infrastructures were riven by internal strife, bled by schemes for personal gain and handicapped by deceit up and down lines of command. The broad picture emerging from the investigation to date suggests that, whatever its desire, Iraq did not possess the wherewithal to build a forbidden armory on anything like the scale it had before the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
Try to clear time to read this one.
The Bushies, playing politics with medals for the troops:
Many troops who have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan are expressing disappointment within military circles that the Bush administration has decided against awarding separate campaign medals for service in each country in favor of a single decoration covering service in the global war on terrorism....
But Pentagon officials say the issue is closed. President Bush's authorization of the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, they say, is appropriate, given the nature of the worldwide battle against terrorists and in terms of precedent in previous conflicts.
Bush also authorized creation of the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal to recognize those who provided support in the conflict from outside the theater of operations and those who participated in operations to protect the homeland, called Operation Noble Eagle.
Bush authorized the awards March 12, a week before the war began in Iraq, on the recommendation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The awards, a Defense Department spokesman said, provide "flexible and tangible recognition for those serving in the current war against terrorism, a war that spans the globe and includes many diverse campaigns." ...
--from yesterday's Washington Post
As an ABC News story on the controversy (text not available online) notes, "there were separate medals for the Korea and Vietnam wars, even though in both the U.S. was trying to stop communism." And here's a comment in the Post from John Antal, a retired Army colonel who was a tank commander and now edits a military history magazine:
"Imagine how silly it would have appeared in World War II," he said, "if we did not issue European Theater of Operations and Pacific Theater of Operations ribbons but instead issued a generic 'war against fascism medal.' "
Of course, none of these is an exact analogy, because there's no connection whatsoever between the two wars conducted by the current president, except in his own administration's propaganda.
Saddam = Osama. Iraq = Afghanistan. 2 + 2 = 5. And if this conflicts with a long-standing U.S. military tradition, well, that's just too bad.
Many troops who have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan are expressing disappointment within military circles that the Bush administration has decided against awarding separate campaign medals for service in each country in favor of a single decoration covering service in the global war on terrorism....
But Pentagon officials say the issue is closed. President Bush's authorization of the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, they say, is appropriate, given the nature of the worldwide battle against terrorists and in terms of precedent in previous conflicts.
Bush also authorized creation of the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal to recognize those who provided support in the conflict from outside the theater of operations and those who participated in operations to protect the homeland, called Operation Noble Eagle.
Bush authorized the awards March 12, a week before the war began in Iraq, on the recommendation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The awards, a Defense Department spokesman said, provide "flexible and tangible recognition for those serving in the current war against terrorism, a war that spans the globe and includes many diverse campaigns." ...
--from yesterday's Washington Post
As an ABC News story on the controversy (text not available online) notes, "there were separate medals for the Korea and Vietnam wars, even though in both the U.S. was trying to stop communism." And here's a comment in the Post from John Antal, a retired Army colonel who was a tank commander and now edits a military history magazine:
"Imagine how silly it would have appeared in World War II," he said, "if we did not issue European Theater of Operations and Pacific Theater of Operations ribbons but instead issued a generic 'war against fascism medal.' "
Of course, none of these is an exact analogy, because there's no connection whatsoever between the two wars conducted by the current president, except in his own administration's propaganda.
Saddam = Osama. Iraq = Afghanistan. 2 + 2 = 5. And if this conflicts with a long-standing U.S. military tradition, well, that's just too bad.
Tuesday, January 06, 2004
I guess this is just how things are done nowadays, but I still find it bizarre:
The Marines Who Liberated Baghdad Need Our Help. Now.
The 1st Marine Division is going back to Iraq. They need medical equipment, school supplies, frisbees and soccer balls for Iraqis.
The Marines want to help children like these and improve relations with Iraqis in the 'Sunni Triangle.' Their first thirty days are the most important. Your donation will have an immediate impact.
$540 provides medical equipment and supplies for a doctor.
$325 provides a supply kit for a classroom and its students.
$100 buys 110 flying discs ("Frisbees").
Any amount helps!
Click here to Donate via PayPal....
Over at Free Republic, people seem to regard this charity as legit. And I have no reason to doubt that it is.
But, er, isn't this what that $87 billion ought to be paying for?
The Marines Who Liberated Baghdad Need Our Help. Now.
The 1st Marine Division is going back to Iraq. They need medical equipment, school supplies, frisbees and soccer balls for Iraqis.
The Marines want to help children like these and improve relations with Iraqis in the 'Sunni Triangle.' Their first thirty days are the most important. Your donation will have an immediate impact.
$540 provides medical equipment and supplies for a doctor.
$325 provides a supply kit for a classroom and its students.
$100 buys 110 flying discs ("Frisbees").
Any amount helps!
Click here to Donate via PayPal....
Over at Free Republic, people seem to regard this charity as legit. And I have no reason to doubt that it is.
But, er, isn't this what that $87 billion ought to be paying for?
The absence of Republican primary challengers is allowing President Bush to campaign for centrist swing voters with a freedom that he lacked in 2000, when he ran to the right of rival Sen. John McCain.
"We haven't been forced to make a choice between activating our base and appealing to mainstream voters," said Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt.
--Washington Times
Nice of him to admit that Bush's base and mainstream voters are two entirely separate groups of people.
"We haven't been forced to make a choice between activating our base and appealing to mainstream voters," said Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt.
--Washington Times
Nice of him to admit that Bush's base and mainstream voters are two entirely separate groups of people.
It seems to me that thre's a striking lack of curiosity in the media about Americans who have Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), even after the recent discovery of mad cow disease in this country, and even though Maxine Postal, a legislator in Suffolk County, Long Island -- not far from New York City, the media capital of the world -- left office because she had CJD just before the diseased cow was discovered, and subsequently died on New Year's Day.
I realize, of course, that what's called "classic CJD" isn't exactly what you have if mad-cow disease crosses species and gets to you -- what you have then, according to experts, is variant CJD (vCJD). This AP story and this Seattle Times story explain the differences. Here's AP:
The classic version typically strikes people in their 60s and 70s; one-half the patients die by age 68, he said. The variant kind is a young person's disease, with one-half its victims dying by age 28.
Symptoms also tend to play out differently in the two kinds of disease. In variant CJD, the early symptoms tend to be mostly psychiatric problems, like depression, withdrawal and anxiety and patients often complain of pain or numbness or a pins-and-needles sensation. In classic CJD, early symptoms are usually neurologic, like trouble standing or walking properly, involuntary jerking and speech abnormalities, along with an erosion of mental abilities.
Eventually, patients become unable to move or speak and they typically enter a coma before death.
One other difference is classic CJD kills much faster. The variant form takes about 14 months from the first symptoms to kill one-half its victims. The classic form takes just six months and kills about 90 per cent within a year.
Remember that last sentence: The classic form takes just six months and kills about 90 per cent within a year. Now read this, from a story in the Amityville Record on Christmas Day, just as Maxine Postal was leaving office (and a week before she died):
Postal, who was reelected in November, has been battling a undiagnosed illness for almost two years, and had undergone tests to rule out everything from Parkinson’s Disease, which had afflicted her parents, to Lou Gehrig’s disease. Two weeks ago, her doctors determined she had Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare fatal brain disorder which causes a rapid, progressive dementia and associated neuromuscular disturbances. (emphasis mine)
So Postal reportedly lived for two years with a disease that kills half of its victims in six months and 90% in a year. Curious?
But surely it's unlikely that we have undetected cases of beef-borne (v)CJD in the U.S., right? After all, as The Seattle Times notes,
The United States has a surveillance system designed to pinpoint suspicious cases of CJD so that alarms would be raised if the variant form were to enter the country. Only one variant case has been found in the United States: a woman who lives in Florida but grew up in England during the peak of mad-cow disease there.
Well, yes. But ...
But the system isn't foolproof. Half the states — including Washington — do not require doctors to report cases of CJD. In fact, in Washington, only about one-third of the 102 patients who died from CJD in the past 25 years were autopsied.
That's a big concern, said Shu Chen, a protein expert at the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center in Cleveland, because an autopsy is the only way to definitively diagnose CJD or to distinguish between the classic and the variant form. "Without an autopsy, you don't know for sure; it could be a strange-looking case of early-onset Alzheimer's. Or an Alzheimer's case could really be CJD," he said.
Washington [State] is working on ramping up its surveillance, said Jo Hofmann, a state epidemiologist for communicable diseases. The state Department of Health will soon send a letter to neurologists, neuropathologists, medical examiners and local health departments requesting that doctors report any suspected cases of CJD to the state and encourage families to have the bodies autopsied. The prion-surveillance center, funded by the CDC, will pay for the autopsies.
So there you are: The reporting system is full of holes, holes that are only now being (partially) plugged -- and, apparently, not as the result of a national policy that requires (or even offers) a government-funded autopsy in the case of any death that might be CJD or vCJD.
(Incidentally, if you want to know about that Florida woman whose vCJD was caused by British beef, CNN has her story here. It's heartbreaking.)
I'm not a doctor, but it seems to me that we don't know nearly enough about these diseases -- a conclusion I come to when I read in the AP story that
The cause of classic CJD is unknown 85 per cent of the time. The remaining cases are either caused by inheriting a genetic mutation or acquired through medical procedures that used contaminated equipment or tissues.
And is this (also from the AP story) worrisome?
U.S. officials said American beef is safe despite the latest mad cow diagnosis, noting the rogue proteins called prions that cause both mad cow disease and variant CJD aren't found in cow muscle tissue, the source of roasts, steaks and other beef cuts. (Prions are found in the brain, spinal cord and small intestine and on Tuesday the U.S. government announced new rules for keeping these parts out of the food supply).
But last year, California scientists reported mice exposed to prions did accumulate them in muscle. They called for a major effort to look for prions in muscle of infected livestock.
Dr. Ermias Belay of the CDC and Dr. Richard Johnson of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine say it isn't worrisome:
Belay cautioned the lab result doesn't necessarily apply to cattle. What's more, he said, other researchers have found muscle tissue from infected cows couldn't spread disease when put into other animals.
"That's pretty reassuring," Johnson said.
Still, I think we need to take this a hell of a lot more seriously than we're taking it now.
I realize, of course, that what's called "classic CJD" isn't exactly what you have if mad-cow disease crosses species and gets to you -- what you have then, according to experts, is variant CJD (vCJD). This AP story and this Seattle Times story explain the differences. Here's AP:
The classic version typically strikes people in their 60s and 70s; one-half the patients die by age 68, he said. The variant kind is a young person's disease, with one-half its victims dying by age 28.
Symptoms also tend to play out differently in the two kinds of disease. In variant CJD, the early symptoms tend to be mostly psychiatric problems, like depression, withdrawal and anxiety and patients often complain of pain or numbness or a pins-and-needles sensation. In classic CJD, early symptoms are usually neurologic, like trouble standing or walking properly, involuntary jerking and speech abnormalities, along with an erosion of mental abilities.
Eventually, patients become unable to move or speak and they typically enter a coma before death.
One other difference is classic CJD kills much faster. The variant form takes about 14 months from the first symptoms to kill one-half its victims. The classic form takes just six months and kills about 90 per cent within a year.
Remember that last sentence: The classic form takes just six months and kills about 90 per cent within a year. Now read this, from a story in the Amityville Record on Christmas Day, just as Maxine Postal was leaving office (and a week before she died):
Postal, who was reelected in November, has been battling a undiagnosed illness for almost two years, and had undergone tests to rule out everything from Parkinson’s Disease, which had afflicted her parents, to Lou Gehrig’s disease. Two weeks ago, her doctors determined she had Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare fatal brain disorder which causes a rapid, progressive dementia and associated neuromuscular disturbances. (emphasis mine)
So Postal reportedly lived for two years with a disease that kills half of its victims in six months and 90% in a year. Curious?
But surely it's unlikely that we have undetected cases of beef-borne (v)CJD in the U.S., right? After all, as The Seattle Times notes,
The United States has a surveillance system designed to pinpoint suspicious cases of CJD so that alarms would be raised if the variant form were to enter the country. Only one variant case has been found in the United States: a woman who lives in Florida but grew up in England during the peak of mad-cow disease there.
Well, yes. But ...
But the system isn't foolproof. Half the states — including Washington — do not require doctors to report cases of CJD. In fact, in Washington, only about one-third of the 102 patients who died from CJD in the past 25 years were autopsied.
That's a big concern, said Shu Chen, a protein expert at the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center in Cleveland, because an autopsy is the only way to definitively diagnose CJD or to distinguish between the classic and the variant form. "Without an autopsy, you don't know for sure; it could be a strange-looking case of early-onset Alzheimer's. Or an Alzheimer's case could really be CJD," he said.
Washington [State] is working on ramping up its surveillance, said Jo Hofmann, a state epidemiologist for communicable diseases. The state Department of Health will soon send a letter to neurologists, neuropathologists, medical examiners and local health departments requesting that doctors report any suspected cases of CJD to the state and encourage families to have the bodies autopsied. The prion-surveillance center, funded by the CDC, will pay for the autopsies.
So there you are: The reporting system is full of holes, holes that are only now being (partially) plugged -- and, apparently, not as the result of a national policy that requires (or even offers) a government-funded autopsy in the case of any death that might be CJD or vCJD.
(Incidentally, if you want to know about that Florida woman whose vCJD was caused by British beef, CNN has her story here. It's heartbreaking.)
I'm not a doctor, but it seems to me that we don't know nearly enough about these diseases -- a conclusion I come to when I read in the AP story that
The cause of classic CJD is unknown 85 per cent of the time. The remaining cases are either caused by inheriting a genetic mutation or acquired through medical procedures that used contaminated equipment or tissues.
And is this (also from the AP story) worrisome?
U.S. officials said American beef is safe despite the latest mad cow diagnosis, noting the rogue proteins called prions that cause both mad cow disease and variant CJD aren't found in cow muscle tissue, the source of roasts, steaks and other beef cuts. (Prions are found in the brain, spinal cord and small intestine and on Tuesday the U.S. government announced new rules for keeping these parts out of the food supply).
But last year, California scientists reported mice exposed to prions did accumulate them in muscle. They called for a major effort to look for prions in muscle of infected livestock.
Dr. Ermias Belay of the CDC and Dr. Richard Johnson of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine say it isn't worrisome:
Belay cautioned the lab result doesn't necessarily apply to cattle. What's more, he said, other researchers have found muscle tissue from infected cows couldn't spread disease when put into other animals.
"That's pretty reassuring," Johnson said.
Still, I think we need to take this a hell of a lot more seriously than we're taking it now.
Those Bush-equals-Hitler ads never got past the first round of a contest on the MoveOn Web site -- a contest they lost. If you want hate that actually makes it onto the airwaves, you have to turn to the right wing:
A conservative advocacy group will begin running a TV ad in Iowa against Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean....
The Club for Growth Political Action Committee said the 30-second spot against the former Vermont governor will begin running in Des Moines today — two weeks before the Iowa Democratic caucuses.
In the ad, a farmer says he thinks that "Howard Dean should take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading ..." before the farmer's wife then finishes the sentence: "... Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont, where it belongs." ...
--Washington Times
Lovely.
(UPDATE: Atrios is absolutely right -- people get away with saying things like this because there's a double standard for regional bigotry. But that's no surprise: there's a national myth, relatively new but tacitly endorsed by a lot of supposedly smart people, that says if you live in a state that borders an ocean and that state wasn't part of the Confederacy, you're not really an American. Any time you hear some solemn talking head question whether a Democrat who isn't from the South can be president, that's not just a tiresome airing-out of conventional wisdom -- it's a reinforcement of the myth that people from certain states aren't full citizens. To this lifelong Northeasterner, those are fighting words, pal.)
A conservative advocacy group will begin running a TV ad in Iowa against Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean....
The Club for Growth Political Action Committee said the 30-second spot against the former Vermont governor will begin running in Des Moines today — two weeks before the Iowa Democratic caucuses.
In the ad, a farmer says he thinks that "Howard Dean should take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading ..." before the farmer's wife then finishes the sentence: "... Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont, where it belongs." ...
--Washington Times
Lovely.
(UPDATE: Atrios is absolutely right -- people get away with saying things like this because there's a double standard for regional bigotry. But that's no surprise: there's a national myth, relatively new but tacitly endorsed by a lot of supposedly smart people, that says if you live in a state that borders an ocean and that state wasn't part of the Confederacy, you're not really an American. Any time you hear some solemn talking head question whether a Democrat who isn't from the South can be president, that's not just a tiresome airing-out of conventional wisdom -- it's a reinforcement of the myth that people from certain states aren't full citizens. To this lifelong Northeasterner, those are fighting words, pal.)
They're still refining those crowd-control procedures in Iraq....
Iraq Police Fire on Protesting Ex-Soldiers
BASRA, Iraq (AP) - Iraqi police opened fire Tuesday on hundreds of stone-throwing former Iraqi soldiers demanding monthly stipends promised by the U.S.-led coalition, and reporters saw at least four protesters shot in the southern town of Basra.
Protesters marched on the Central Bank and then tried to force their way in to get money, pelting the building with stones and then turning on police who first tried to stop them by wielding batons. Police then opened fire.
British forces arrived on the scene and calmed the situation, using loudspeakers to say in Arabic "You will get what you deserve, but not in this way." They did not fire, even after one was hit in the leg by a stone.
At the hospital, officials said one ex-soldier had been killed, and relatives said they had come to collect the body of 40-year-old Abbas Kadhim, a non-commissioned officer. Hospital officials said they were treating three wounded men....
The soldiers said they had not been paid a monthly stipend equivalent to $50 since September....
--AP
Iraq Police Fire on Protesting Ex-Soldiers
BASRA, Iraq (AP) - Iraqi police opened fire Tuesday on hundreds of stone-throwing former Iraqi soldiers demanding monthly stipends promised by the U.S.-led coalition, and reporters saw at least four protesters shot in the southern town of Basra.
Protesters marched on the Central Bank and then tried to force their way in to get money, pelting the building with stones and then turning on police who first tried to stop them by wielding batons. Police then opened fire.
British forces arrived on the scene and calmed the situation, using loudspeakers to say in Arabic "You will get what you deserve, but not in this way." They did not fire, even after one was hit in the leg by a stone.
At the hospital, officials said one ex-soldier had been killed, and relatives said they had come to collect the body of 40-year-old Abbas Kadhim, a non-commissioned officer. Hospital officials said they were treating three wounded men....
The soldiers said they had not been paid a monthly stipend equivalent to $50 since September....
--AP
Monday, January 05, 2004
Well, it's a quagmire for the Brits, too, but at least they're relatively honest about it, as Reuters reports:
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said on Monday British troops were likely to stay in Iraq for years, possibly until 2007, to try to stabilize a country in the face of an insurgency against occupying forces....
Speaking on BBC radio a day after Prime Minister Tony Blair paid a surprise visit to British soldiers in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, Straw said it was "a fact" that substantial numbers of troops would remain in Iraq for a long time to come.
"I can't give you an exact timescale ... but it's not going to be months, for sure," Straw said. Asked whether it would be years, he replied: "Yes, but I can't say whether it's going to be 2006 or 2007." ...
The Reuters story also makes clear that Thomas Friedman was right a week ago: the Poles really are trying to out-poodle the British. (No, he didn't put it exactly that way.) The Poles are hinting that NATO has gotten the Bush religion -- even though NATO is saying nothing of the sort:
Washington wants more countries to send troops to Iraq and is pressing for a greater role for NATO. Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski said NATO could decide the issue in June.
"Talks are under way...A good moment to make certain decisions on the issue will be NATO's summit in Turkey in late June," he said at a farewell ceremony for troops heading to Iraq to relieve a 2,500-strong Polish contingent.
But new NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said Afghanistan, not Iraq, was his first priority.
"Iraq of course will also be on the agenda at a certain stage but let's take the events step by step." Scheffer said as he arrived at NATO headquarters to take up his post.
Yeah, pipe down, Poland -- you're new here. You may want to help get Bush reelected, but what makes you think the rest of the alliance feels the same way?
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said on Monday British troops were likely to stay in Iraq for years, possibly until 2007, to try to stabilize a country in the face of an insurgency against occupying forces....
Speaking on BBC radio a day after Prime Minister Tony Blair paid a surprise visit to British soldiers in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, Straw said it was "a fact" that substantial numbers of troops would remain in Iraq for a long time to come.
"I can't give you an exact timescale ... but it's not going to be months, for sure," Straw said. Asked whether it would be years, he replied: "Yes, but I can't say whether it's going to be 2006 or 2007." ...
The Reuters story also makes clear that Thomas Friedman was right a week ago: the Poles really are trying to out-poodle the British. (No, he didn't put it exactly that way.) The Poles are hinting that NATO has gotten the Bush religion -- even though NATO is saying nothing of the sort:
Washington wants more countries to send troops to Iraq and is pressing for a greater role for NATO. Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski said NATO could decide the issue in June.
"Talks are under way...A good moment to make certain decisions on the issue will be NATO's summit in Turkey in late June," he said at a farewell ceremony for troops heading to Iraq to relieve a 2,500-strong Polish contingent.
But new NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said Afghanistan, not Iraq, was his first priority.
"Iraq of course will also be on the agenda at a certain stage but let's take the events step by step." Scheffer said as he arrived at NATO headquarters to take up his post.
Yeah, pipe down, Poland -- you're new here. You may want to help get Bush reelected, but what makes you think the rest of the alliance feels the same way?
As I noted earlier today, the senior editor of The World Almanac told an AP interviewer last week that he didn't see how evildoers could use his almanac as a weapon of terror, despite FBI warnings about the dangers of almanac readers. Well, apparently somebody at World Almanac took a snooze and woke up next to a horse's head, because shortly after the AP story appeared, World Almanac issued a clarifying press release:
The World Almanac and Book Of Facts fully supports and endorses all efforts of the FBI, and all government agencies, in thwarting illegal activities including terrorism. With over 80 million copies sold in its illustrious history, which spans more than 130 years, The World Almanac is proud of its place in the publishing arena. It is the sincere hope of everyone associated with The World Almanac and Book Of Facts that our product is used only for the purposes that it is intended -- research, learning, education and fun.
I love living in a free country, don't you?
(Thanks to Publishers Lunch for the link.)
The World Almanac and Book Of Facts fully supports and endorses all efforts of the FBI, and all government agencies, in thwarting illegal activities including terrorism. With over 80 million copies sold in its illustrious history, which spans more than 130 years, The World Almanac is proud of its place in the publishing arena. It is the sincere hope of everyone associated with The World Almanac and Book Of Facts that our product is used only for the purposes that it is intended -- research, learning, education and fun.
I love living in a free country, don't you?
(Thanks to Publishers Lunch for the link.)
I guess it's no longer accurate to say that we have an all-volunteer army....
Desperate to stretch its limited ranks, the U.S. Army is expected this week to prohibit still more soldiers now in Iraq and soon to be deployed there from leaving military service.
Army officials declined to say which or how many soldiers would be affected when it expands its "stop-loss" program, which already prevents soldiers in certain heavily used specialties from leaving the military or being reassigned to other units.
But the last such edict, issued Nov. 13, covered all of the more than 110,000 active-duty soldiers whose units are scheduled to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan between now and May.
The announcement of a further expansion of the program, which Army officials confirmed is imminent, comes amid evidence that the Army is straining to meet its growing commitments around the world....
--L.A. Times, reprinted in Newsday
Sign up as a volunteer, wind up as a draftee when you think your hitch is up. Nice.
Desperate to stretch its limited ranks, the U.S. Army is expected this week to prohibit still more soldiers now in Iraq and soon to be deployed there from leaving military service.
Army officials declined to say which or how many soldiers would be affected when it expands its "stop-loss" program, which already prevents soldiers in certain heavily used specialties from leaving the military or being reassigned to other units.
But the last such edict, issued Nov. 13, covered all of the more than 110,000 active-duty soldiers whose units are scheduled to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan between now and May.
The announcement of a further expansion of the program, which Army officials confirmed is imminent, comes amid evidence that the Army is straining to meet its growing commitments around the world....
--L.A. Times, reprinted in Newsday
Sign up as a volunteer, wind up as a draftee when you think your hitch is up. Nice.
This story is a week old, but I missed it last week and I'm glad I caught up with it now, because it's utterly preposterous:
The FBI is warning police nationwide to be alert for people carrying almanacs, cautioning that the popular reference books covering everything from abbreviations to weather trends could be used for terrorist planning.
In a bulletin sent Christmas Eve to about 18,000 police organizations, the FBI said terrorists may use almanacs "to assist with target selection and pre-operational planning."
It urged officers to watch during searches, traffic stops and other investigations for anyone carrying almanacs, especially if the books are annotated in suspicious ways.
"The practice of researching potential targets is consistent with known methods of al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations that seek to maximize the likelihood of operational success through careful planning," the FBI wrote....
I'm looking at the five almanacs on my shelf and just shaking my head.
The stupidity of this is in the following paragraph:
The FBI said information typically found in almanacs that could be useful for terrorists includes profiles of cities and states and information about waterways, bridges, dams, reservoirs, tunnels, buildings and landmarks. It said this information is often accompanied by photographs and maps.
Have any of these guys ever opened an almanac?
Let's start with that last sentence: Almanacs contain lots of words and numbers -- but almanacs generally contain only a few photos, usually of the previous year's news events, and I don't have a single almanac with a detailed locality map that would be useful to a terrorist. The Feebs obviously don't know the difference between an almanac and a Frommer's/Fodor's-style travel guide -- which, in a way, is good, because if they ever decide to arrest everyone on the streets of, say, Manhattan who's carrying a Let's Go! or a Rough Guide, they're going to need Yankee Stadium as a holding pen. And as for "information about waterways, bridges, dams, reservoirs, tunnels, buildings and landmarks," here's a response from someone who actually knows what he's talking about:
"I don't think anyone would consider us a harmful entity," said Kevin Seabrooke, senior editor of The World Almanac. He said the reference book includes about a dozen pages out of its 1,000 pages total listing the world's tallest buildings and bridges but includes no diagrams or architectural schematics. "It's stuff that's widely available on the Internet," he said.
Exactly.
(Thanks to Publishers Lunch and BuzzFlash for this.)
The FBI is warning police nationwide to be alert for people carrying almanacs, cautioning that the popular reference books covering everything from abbreviations to weather trends could be used for terrorist planning.
In a bulletin sent Christmas Eve to about 18,000 police organizations, the FBI said terrorists may use almanacs "to assist with target selection and pre-operational planning."
It urged officers to watch during searches, traffic stops and other investigations for anyone carrying almanacs, especially if the books are annotated in suspicious ways.
"The practice of researching potential targets is consistent with known methods of al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations that seek to maximize the likelihood of operational success through careful planning," the FBI wrote....
I'm looking at the five almanacs on my shelf and just shaking my head.
The stupidity of this is in the following paragraph:
The FBI said information typically found in almanacs that could be useful for terrorists includes profiles of cities and states and information about waterways, bridges, dams, reservoirs, tunnels, buildings and landmarks. It said this information is often accompanied by photographs and maps.
Have any of these guys ever opened an almanac?
Let's start with that last sentence: Almanacs contain lots of words and numbers -- but almanacs generally contain only a few photos, usually of the previous year's news events, and I don't have a single almanac with a detailed locality map that would be useful to a terrorist. The Feebs obviously don't know the difference between an almanac and a Frommer's/Fodor's-style travel guide -- which, in a way, is good, because if they ever decide to arrest everyone on the streets of, say, Manhattan who's carrying a Let's Go! or a Rough Guide, they're going to need Yankee Stadium as a holding pen. And as for "information about waterways, bridges, dams, reservoirs, tunnels, buildings and landmarks," here's a response from someone who actually knows what he's talking about:
"I don't think anyone would consider us a harmful entity," said Kevin Seabrooke, senior editor of The World Almanac. He said the reference book includes about a dozen pages out of its 1,000 pages total listing the world's tallest buildings and bridges but includes no diagrams or architectural schematics. "It's stuff that's widely available on the Internet," he said.
Exactly.
(Thanks to Publishers Lunch and BuzzFlash for this.)
Sunday, January 04, 2004
Calvin Woodward of AP, reporting on the Democrats' debate earlier today, cites this as cause for "head scratching":
Dean repeated his frequent claim that middle-income Americans have not seen their taxes go down under Bush: "There was no middle-class tax cut," he declared.
In fact, their taxes did go down. But Dean went on to explain what he really meant -- that most people are worse off because college tuition, health care premiums, property taxes and other state and local taxes or fees have gone up by more than Americans have saved under the Bush tax cuts.
John Broder of The New York Times, please explain this to Mr. Woodward:
After three consecutive years of dismal fiscal news at the state level, officials are beginning to detect signs that the worst may be over. But state budgets will continue to be stressed by slow job growth and rapidly rising health care costs, and battles in state capitals over taxing and spending will continue to rage, analysts say....
States have responded by greatly cutting spending and raising fees on all kinds of services, from fishing licenses to divorce filings. Sales taxes rose in 17 states, while 10 states, including New York, increased income taxes, although most made the increases temporary. Many states resorted to one-time remedies to raise revenue, including accelerating tax collections in Michigan....
Alaska raised fees on rental cars. Arkansas imposed a 3 percent excise tax on beer and doubled, to $150, the fee for reinstatement of drivers' licenses revoked for drunken driving. Georgia tripled the cigarette tax to 27 cents a pack. North Carolina increased the fee the state charges for analyzing pap smears. Ohio raised the elevator inspection fee. Texas is erecting tollbooths on state highways, raising college tuitions and imposing a $1,000 surcharge on drunken driving convictions.
Massachusetts raised the fee for a marriage license to $50 from $4. New Jersey raised the divorce filing fee to $250 from $200....
Now do you get it, Mr. W?
(Needlenose and Atrios have a different bone to pick with Woodward.)
Dean repeated his frequent claim that middle-income Americans have not seen their taxes go down under Bush: "There was no middle-class tax cut," he declared.
In fact, their taxes did go down. But Dean went on to explain what he really meant -- that most people are worse off because college tuition, health care premiums, property taxes and other state and local taxes or fees have gone up by more than Americans have saved under the Bush tax cuts.
John Broder of The New York Times, please explain this to Mr. Woodward:
After three consecutive years of dismal fiscal news at the state level, officials are beginning to detect signs that the worst may be over. But state budgets will continue to be stressed by slow job growth and rapidly rising health care costs, and battles in state capitals over taxing and spending will continue to rage, analysts say....
States have responded by greatly cutting spending and raising fees on all kinds of services, from fishing licenses to divorce filings. Sales taxes rose in 17 states, while 10 states, including New York, increased income taxes, although most made the increases temporary. Many states resorted to one-time remedies to raise revenue, including accelerating tax collections in Michigan....
Alaska raised fees on rental cars. Arkansas imposed a 3 percent excise tax on beer and doubled, to $150, the fee for reinstatement of drivers' licenses revoked for drunken driving. Georgia tripled the cigarette tax to 27 cents a pack. North Carolina increased the fee the state charges for analyzing pap smears. Ohio raised the elevator inspection fee. Texas is erecting tollbooths on state highways, raising college tuitions and imposing a $1,000 surcharge on drunken driving convictions.
Massachusetts raised the fee for a marriage license to $50 from $4. New Jersey raised the divorce filing fee to $250 from $200....
Now do you get it, Mr. W?
(Needlenose and Atrios have a different bone to pick with Woodward.)
Also in The New York Times today, you can read about the rapidly evaporating Guantanamo espionage cases. You probably knew that the Muslim chaplain James (Yousef) Yee was no longer being charged with espionage, but I didn't know until I read this story that the case against Ahmad al- Halabi, a translator, was also breaking down:
The military also recently dropped the most serious charges against Airman al-Halabi, including aiding the enemy, which carried a possible death sentence. Of the original 30 charges, he still faces 17, including some of attempted espionage. But his lawyer, Donald G. Rehkopf, said the "guts of the case" were gone — the charges of aiding the enemy and of using computers to transmit information abroad.
Why is this happening? The Times offers a theory:
Reservists serving as counterintelligence officers at the camp were apprehensive that they might miss some sign of infiltration of the base but were relatively inexperienced in how to handle such matters.
No offense to the reservists, but here's the CEO mentality at work in the military again, with disastrous results. In the civilian world, CEOs will do anything to avoid hiring full-time workers with full benefits -- they'd much rather hire temps and part-timers, preferring low-cost labor to experience. In Guantanamo, ex-CEO Rumsfeld's military is using weekend warriors -- well intentioned but with inadequate experience -- to determine who should be arrested and perhaps charged with the capital crime of treason. Outrageous.
The military also recently dropped the most serious charges against Airman al-Halabi, including aiding the enemy, which carried a possible death sentence. Of the original 30 charges, he still faces 17, including some of attempted espionage. But his lawyer, Donald G. Rehkopf, said the "guts of the case" were gone — the charges of aiding the enemy and of using computers to transmit information abroad.
Why is this happening? The Times offers a theory:
Reservists serving as counterintelligence officers at the camp were apprehensive that they might miss some sign of infiltration of the base but were relatively inexperienced in how to handle such matters.
No offense to the reservists, but here's the CEO mentality at work in the military again, with disastrous results. In the civilian world, CEOs will do anything to avoid hiring full-time workers with full benefits -- they'd much rather hire temps and part-timers, preferring low-cost labor to experience. In Guantanamo, ex-CEO Rumsfeld's military is using weekend warriors -- well intentioned but with inadequate experience -- to determine who should be arrested and perhaps charged with the capital crime of treason. Outrageous.
In the business section of today's New York Times, Edmund L. Andrews reports from Rockford, Illinois, where people actually used to make things for a living. There's a lot less manufacturing in Rockford now. What's happening instead? This:
One of the few thriving metalworking industries here is the business of scrap metal - mainly because of voracious demand from Chinese steel mills. Some of the metal is discarded industrial machinery from factories that have closed.
"China has a need for a tremendous amount of raw material," said Bill Day, chief financial officer at Joseph Behr & Sons, a large trader in scrap metal here.
Ouch.
One of the few thriving metalworking industries here is the business of scrap metal - mainly because of voracious demand from Chinese steel mills. Some of the metal is discarded industrial machinery from factories that have closed.
"China has a need for a tremendous amount of raw material," said Bill Day, chief financial officer at Joseph Behr & Sons, a large trader in scrap metal here.
Ouch.
Saturday, January 03, 2004
Oops.
A Holocaust Studies institute is asking radio talk-show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger to retract her on-air comments yesterday comparing some U.S. day-care centers to child-rearing practices in Nazi Germany.
The pop psychologist, whose syndicated show is broadcast on more than 200 stations, read a letter from a listener who criticized the lack of attention given to children in some American "child development centers" and other day-care facilities.
Schlessinger said, "It sounds like something out of Nazi Germany."
That drew a complaint from the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, which asked for a retraction.
"Whatever their flaws, child development centers are not comparable to Nazi Germany, a brutal fascist dictatorship that slaughtered six million Jews," said Wyman Institute director Rafael Medoff said...
--New York Post
A Holocaust Studies institute is asking radio talk-show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger to retract her on-air comments yesterday comparing some U.S. day-care centers to child-rearing practices in Nazi Germany.
The pop psychologist, whose syndicated show is broadcast on more than 200 stations, read a letter from a listener who criticized the lack of attention given to children in some American "child development centers" and other day-care facilities.
Schlessinger said, "It sounds like something out of Nazi Germany."
That drew a complaint from the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, which asked for a retraction.
"Whatever their flaws, child development centers are not comparable to Nazi Germany, a brutal fascist dictatorship that slaughtered six million Jews," said Wyman Institute director Rafael Medoff said...
--New York Post
How is the "America's (ex-)mayor" spending Americans' money?
The Federal Election Commission is asking former Mayor Rudy Giuliani to explain how he's spent some campaign cash left over from his aborted Senate run, saying it appears to have been used for "personal" purposes.
Under federal law, former candidates can use remaining campaign funds only for very limited purposes and are barred from using it for personal expenses.
Among other things, ex-candidates are allowed to donate leftover funds without limit to national party committees, charities, or to other candidates so long as the donations are within campaign-finance-law limits.
The FEC letter says in part that Giuliani's spending report for his political committee - which has more than $2 million in it - "discloses disbursement(s) that appear(s) to constitute personal use of funds by the candidate." ...
--New York Post
Well, you know how these third marriages can be....
The Federal Election Commission is asking former Mayor Rudy Giuliani to explain how he's spent some campaign cash left over from his aborted Senate run, saying it appears to have been used for "personal" purposes.
Under federal law, former candidates can use remaining campaign funds only for very limited purposes and are barred from using it for personal expenses.
Among other things, ex-candidates are allowed to donate leftover funds without limit to national party committees, charities, or to other candidates so long as the donations are within campaign-finance-law limits.
The FEC letter says in part that Giuliani's spending report for his political committee - which has more than $2 million in it - "discloses disbursement(s) that appear(s) to constitute personal use of funds by the candidate." ...
--New York Post
Well, you know how these third marriages can be....
I nearly missed this story, which ran in last Sunday's Washington Post: "The Relatively Charmed Life Of Neil Bush." Many of you know a lot of this stuff, but it's nicely fleshed out here: sleazy multi-million-dollar deals in several countries over several decades, sex with anonymous prostitutes, educational snake oil peddled to schools in underprivileged neighborhoods -- in short, everything you need to know about the man.
Or almost everything. CNN (via AP) now reports this:
President Bush's brother Neil made at least $798,218 on three stock trades in a small U.S. high-tech company where he had been a consultant, according to his tax returns, including $171,370 buying and selling the company's shares in a single day.
Neil Bush's big paydays in the stock of Kopin Corp. of Taunton, Massachusetts, included the July 19, 1999, purchase and quick sale of stock as the company announced good news about a new Asian client that sent its stock value soaring.
Bush said he did not have any inside information from Kopin, and simply acted on a recommendation from his financial adviser.
"Any increase in the price of the stock on that day was purely coincidental, meaning that I did not have any improper information," Bush said in e-mails to The Associated Press. "My timing on this transaction was very fortunate."
Oh, I'm sure it was.
Or almost everything. CNN (via AP) now reports this:
President Bush's brother Neil made at least $798,218 on three stock trades in a small U.S. high-tech company where he had been a consultant, according to his tax returns, including $171,370 buying and selling the company's shares in a single day.
Neil Bush's big paydays in the stock of Kopin Corp. of Taunton, Massachusetts, included the July 19, 1999, purchase and quick sale of stock as the company announced good news about a new Asian client that sent its stock value soaring.
Bush said he did not have any inside information from Kopin, and simply acted on a recommendation from his financial adviser.
"Any increase in the price of the stock on that day was purely coincidental, meaning that I did not have any improper information," Bush said in e-mails to The Associated Press. "My timing on this transaction was very fortunate."
Oh, I'm sure it was.
Friday, January 02, 2004
Freedom of the press in Iraq? Not exactly, says Laura Rozen in The Nation:
...Chip Somodevilla, a Knight Ridder photographer, was accompanying two Iraqi fishermen on their small boat in the Tigris River in Baghdad on December 9, when shots from a high-velocity rifle exploded in the water under the port bow of their twelve-foot craft.
"We looked in the direction from which it was fired--a mansion formerly belonging to Saddam Hussein's nephew--and noticed several men waving their arms in the air and shouting," Somodevilla e-mailed to his editors after the incident. He and the fishermen drove their boat toward the group of men. One of them turned out to be an American in civilian clothing who was carrying a high-velocity rifle outfitted with a silencer and scope.
"He asked who I was and what I was doing," the photographer said. The American, who appeared to be some sort of Special Operations paramilitary or intelligence official, "asked me to produce identification and then attempted to destroy my press credentials. He forcefully quizzed me about my assignment and then turned to an Iraqi standing nearby" to verify aspects of the photographer's story.
"After being shot at, I felt very threatened and swore to the man that I was an American and that I was on his side," Somodevilla said. "Yeah, John Walker [Lindh, the so-called American Taliban] made a lot of promises too," the American interrogator snapped back. "What have you done for your country?" He let Somodevilla go with the warning, "We're watching you."
"Our journalists in Iraq have been shoved to the ground, pushed out of the way, told to leave the scene of explosions; we've had camera disks and videotapes confiscated, reporters detained," says Sandy Johnson, Washington bureau chief for the Associated Press....
And here's a story Reuters is reporting today:
American soldiers on Friday detained three Iraqis working for Reuters as they covered the aftermath of a U.S. helicopter crash near the volatile town of Falluja.
A Reuters driver who was working with the three said they had earlier been fired on by U.S. troops as they filmed a checkpoint close to the site where a Kiowa observation helicopter was shot down by guerrillas.
One pilot was killed and another injured in the crash.
"We were fired on and we drove away at high speed," driver Alaa Noury said. He said Reuters cameraman Salem Uraiby had been filming the checkpoint using a camera on a tripod, and had been wearing a flak jacket clearly marked with the word "press".
Noury said a second car driven by another Iraqi journalist had been fired upon in the same incident....
But it's our enemies who "hate freedom," right?
...Chip Somodevilla, a Knight Ridder photographer, was accompanying two Iraqi fishermen on their small boat in the Tigris River in Baghdad on December 9, when shots from a high-velocity rifle exploded in the water under the port bow of their twelve-foot craft.
"We looked in the direction from which it was fired--a mansion formerly belonging to Saddam Hussein's nephew--and noticed several men waving their arms in the air and shouting," Somodevilla e-mailed to his editors after the incident. He and the fishermen drove their boat toward the group of men. One of them turned out to be an American in civilian clothing who was carrying a high-velocity rifle outfitted with a silencer and scope.
"He asked who I was and what I was doing," the photographer said. The American, who appeared to be some sort of Special Operations paramilitary or intelligence official, "asked me to produce identification and then attempted to destroy my press credentials. He forcefully quizzed me about my assignment and then turned to an Iraqi standing nearby" to verify aspects of the photographer's story.
"After being shot at, I felt very threatened and swore to the man that I was an American and that I was on his side," Somodevilla said. "Yeah, John Walker [Lindh, the so-called American Taliban] made a lot of promises too," the American interrogator snapped back. "What have you done for your country?" He let Somodevilla go with the warning, "We're watching you."
"Our journalists in Iraq have been shoved to the ground, pushed out of the way, told to leave the scene of explosions; we've had camera disks and videotapes confiscated, reporters detained," says Sandy Johnson, Washington bureau chief for the Associated Press....
And here's a story Reuters is reporting today:
American soldiers on Friday detained three Iraqis working for Reuters as they covered the aftermath of a U.S. helicopter crash near the volatile town of Falluja.
A Reuters driver who was working with the three said they had earlier been fired on by U.S. troops as they filmed a checkpoint close to the site where a Kiowa observation helicopter was shot down by guerrillas.
One pilot was killed and another injured in the crash.
"We were fired on and we drove away at high speed," driver Alaa Noury said. He said Reuters cameraman Salem Uraiby had been filming the checkpoint using a camera on a tripod, and had been wearing a flak jacket clearly marked with the word "press".
Noury said a second car driven by another Iraqi journalist had been fired upon in the same incident....
But it's our enemies who "hate freedom," right?
Sorry to keep harping on this, but here's yet another poll (this one from Time/CNN) that shows the "unelectable" Howard Dean running as well against Bush as the other top Democrats -- or, to be precise, somewhat better:
Bush over Dean 51% to 46%
Bush over Lieberman 52% to 46%
Bush over Kerry 54% to 43%
Bush over Gephardt 53% to 44%
Bush over Clark 53% to 43%
Bush over Edwards 53% to 43%
(Sources: Drudge Report and Polling Report.)
Bush over Dean 51% to 46%
Bush over Lieberman 52% to 46%
Bush over Kerry 54% to 43%
Bush over Gephardt 53% to 44%
Bush over Clark 53% to 43%
Bush over Edwards 53% to 43%
(Sources: Drudge Report and Polling Report.)
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