Last time I looked, people who know better than I do were insisting that the housing boom would never lead to anything worse than a mild correction, a "soft landing" that would do minimal damage to the economy. The New York Times Magazine was running a long cover story assuring us that Toll Brothers, a large nationwide home builder, will be awash in money forever, while the head of Toll Brothers said that our children will be paying even larger percentages of their income to buy houses, and will be getting less house in the process.
Hmmm. A couple of weeks after that story ran, Toll Brothers announced that it expected decreased demand for houses in 2006, and its stock fell 11% in one day. And now, all of a sudden, Associated Press seems to have discovered a lot of people who think the end of the boom could be a bit nasty:
Much of the nation has had a lovely real estate boom for the past five years, but the house party is almost over and the cleanup won't be pretty.
That's the word from economists and investors who have watched housing prices march ever higher.
...If housing prices decline sharply, the effects could be broad. Lehman [Brothers] estimates one-third of the past year's U.S. economic growth was a consequence of the housing boom. Housing construction is equal to 5 percent of the national economy.
A downturn in housing could mean more than 1.3 million lost jobs, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. predicts, bumping up the national unemployment rate by 1 percent and the unemployment rate in house-mad California by 2 percent. Those numbers don't include likely job cuts in housing-dependent businesses, such as banking, furniture and building materials.
The Center for Economic and Policy Research predicts worse, saying a bubble burst would mean the loss of 5 million to 6.3 million jobs.
...A final nightmare scenario: A federal bailout of the mortgage market is likely if housing crashes, the center predicts. So, if corporate pension funds continue to falter and this dire prediction does come true, the Feds could conceivably be holding your mortgage and your pension.
Here's the most sensible-sounding take on this I've encountered:
...The supply and demand picture for housing looks out of whack. For six straight months, ending in September, builders started work on more than 2 million new homes. This has only happened three other times in the postwar period, according to Merrill Lynch: 1971 to 1973, 1977 to 1978 and early 1984.
Those periods were fundamentally different from today in at least one respect: More people were forming households. Household formation is the growth rate in the number of households and it's boosted by new immigration and twenty-somethings leaving their parents' homes. It is currently half what it was for most of those peak periods.
"At no time in the past three decades has the gap between household formation and housing starts been as wide as it has been over the past 12 to 24 months," [Merrill Lynch economist David] Rosenberg wrote. "We've become accustomed to hearing about how housing is in a new paradigm, that the fundamentals are sound, so on and so forth. But please, just don't tell me that the sector has managed to divorce itself from supply and demand realities."...
There just aren't enough people moving out of their parents' basements (or moving to America and earning middle-class incomes) to sustain this boom.
So heads up.
Monday, November 14, 2005
YES, LET'S CUT TAXES EVEN MORE
Even as oil profits have soared on higher energy prices, the tax rate paid by many of the nation's largest oil companies are falling, according to a published report.
The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that almost one large oil company in four saw its global tax rate decline over the last 12 months, according to the companies' third quarter earnings reports....
Among those paying a lower tax rate Royal Dutch Shell's tax rate fell to 37 percent from 41 percent, BP's declined to about 27 percent from more than 30 percent, and Burlington Resources dropped to about 33 percent from 37 percent....
--CNN/Money
Let's see:
Shell's third-quarter profits? Up 68%.
BP? Up 27%.
Burlington Resources? Up 90%.
(I'm amused by the naivete of the BP story, which informs us that BP had higher profits "despite taking a battering from hurricanes." Is that "Despite" some sort of joke?)
Even as oil profits have soared on higher energy prices, the tax rate paid by many of the nation's largest oil companies are falling, according to a published report.
The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that almost one large oil company in four saw its global tax rate decline over the last 12 months, according to the companies' third quarter earnings reports....
Among those paying a lower tax rate Royal Dutch Shell's tax rate fell to 37 percent from 41 percent, BP's declined to about 27 percent from more than 30 percent, and Burlington Resources dropped to about 33 percent from 37 percent....
--CNN/Money
Let's see:
Shell's third-quarter profits? Up 68%.
BP? Up 27%.
Burlington Resources? Up 90%.
(I'm amused by the naivete of the BP story, which informs us that BP had higher profits "despite taking a battering from hurricanes." Is that "Despite" some sort of joke?)
Sunday, November 13, 2005
...in the final analysis, no democratic government can tolerate armed parties with one foot in the realm of politics and one foot in the camp of terrorism.
--Condoleezza Rice chastising the Palestinian government in a speech in Jerusalem today
*****
Remember the guy who battled U.S. forces from inside Iraq's holy shrine of Imam Ali last summer? That renegade cleric whose radical anti-American rhetoric stirred violent uprisings around the country last April, who only stood down when an elder cleric pulled rank? Well, he's back.
Moqtada al-Sadr has landed on a slate of Shiite parties that will run together in the December 15 parliamentary elections. He and his followers were allocated a surprisingly large number of seats in the alliance with the two main religious Shiite parties, Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq--large enough to raise some eyebrows in the Bush administration. "We are definitely keeping a close watch on Sadr's reemergence," says one administration official. "His actions will test the theory of whether extremists, when they become part of a political process, necessarily moderate."...
--U.S. News & World Report article about Iraq, 11/14/05 issue
...Several old armed faction commanders, labelled warlords and accused of war crimes by rights groups, also won seats.
Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq, from the Shi'ite Muslim Hazara ethnic minority, won [the] most votes in Kabul province.
Mohaqiq's faction was involved in years of civil war in the 1990s....
Another winner was old faction commander Abdul Rabb Rasoul Sayyaf....
Sayyaf denies accusations of war crimes going back to the civil war years....
Three prominent former Taliban won seats in parliament -- ex-commander Haji Mullah Abdul Salaam Rocketi, ex-provincial governor Mawlavi Islamuddin Mohammadi and a senior former security official, Hanif Shah Al-Hussein....
--article published by Reuters today on the results of recent elections in Afghanistan
--Condoleezza Rice chastising the Palestinian government in a speech in Jerusalem today
*****
Remember the guy who battled U.S. forces from inside Iraq's holy shrine of Imam Ali last summer? That renegade cleric whose radical anti-American rhetoric stirred violent uprisings around the country last April, who only stood down when an elder cleric pulled rank? Well, he's back.
Moqtada al-Sadr has landed on a slate of Shiite parties that will run together in the December 15 parliamentary elections. He and his followers were allocated a surprisingly large number of seats in the alliance with the two main religious Shiite parties, Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq--large enough to raise some eyebrows in the Bush administration. "We are definitely keeping a close watch on Sadr's reemergence," says one administration official. "His actions will test the theory of whether extremists, when they become part of a political process, necessarily moderate."...
--U.S. News & World Report article about Iraq, 11/14/05 issue
...Several old armed faction commanders, labelled warlords and accused of war crimes by rights groups, also won seats.
Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq, from the Shi'ite Muslim Hazara ethnic minority, won [the] most votes in Kabul province.
Mohaqiq's faction was involved in years of civil war in the 1990s....
Another winner was old faction commander Abdul Rabb Rasoul Sayyaf....
Sayyaf denies accusations of war crimes going back to the civil war years....
Three prominent former Taliban won seats in parliament -- ex-commander Haji Mullah Abdul Salaam Rocketi, ex-provincial governor Mawlavi Islamuddin Mohammadi and a senior former security official, Hanif Shah Al-Hussein....
--article published by Reuters today on the results of recent elections in Afghanistan
I guess someone did rise to the boob bait after all, as Robert Novak is pleased to inform you:
Joseph R. Cerrell, a leading California Democrat and prominent Italian American, has called on Chairman Howard Dean to apologize to Federal Appellate Judge Samuel Alito for Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffers saying the Supreme Court nominee was weak in prosecuting the Mafia. Dean has not replied to Cerrell's Nov. 2 letter.
A DNC press release blasted Alito's record as a federal prosecutor in losing "a key conviction" that resulted in members of the Lucchese crime family being freed. "The staffers and the DNC must apologize to Judge Alito and to all Italian Americans" for "scurrilous tactics," Cerrell's letter said. He contended "this kind of behavior is beneath any standard of the Democratic Party that I have known."
Cerrell, a Los Angeles-based political consultant, is vice chairman of the National Italian American Foundation.
Cerrell seems like a loyal Democrat (and he's been working for the Dems since at least the JFK days), but he was a member of GOP governor Pete Wilson's Italian-American Task Force and he teaches at one of the Republican Party's favorite institutions of higher learning, Pepperdine University.
I'm guessing that Novak was alerted to this by his longtime source Karl Rove, who relishes and cultivates Judas behavior on the part of Democrats (remember, Rove brought you the 2004 GOP convention, with its raw-meat speeches by nominal Democrat Zell Miller and the formerly liberal actor Ron Silver). I wonder if Rove elicited (or even wrote) the denunciation himself.
(Link via Memeorandum.)
Joseph R. Cerrell, a leading California Democrat and prominent Italian American, has called on Chairman Howard Dean to apologize to Federal Appellate Judge Samuel Alito for Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffers saying the Supreme Court nominee was weak in prosecuting the Mafia. Dean has not replied to Cerrell's Nov. 2 letter.
A DNC press release blasted Alito's record as a federal prosecutor in losing "a key conviction" that resulted in members of the Lucchese crime family being freed. "The staffers and the DNC must apologize to Judge Alito and to all Italian Americans" for "scurrilous tactics," Cerrell's letter said. He contended "this kind of behavior is beneath any standard of the Democratic Party that I have known."
Cerrell, a Los Angeles-based political consultant, is vice chairman of the National Italian American Foundation.
Cerrell seems like a loyal Democrat (and he's been working for the Dems since at least the JFK days), but he was a member of GOP governor Pete Wilson's Italian-American Task Force and he teaches at one of the Republican Party's favorite institutions of higher learning, Pepperdine University.
I'm guessing that Novak was alerted to this by his longtime source Karl Rove, who relishes and cultivates Judas behavior on the part of Democrats (remember, Rove brought you the 2004 GOP convention, with its raw-meat speeches by nominal Democrat Zell Miller and the formerly liberal actor Ron Silver). I wonder if Rove elicited (or even wrote) the denunciation himself.
(Link via Memeorandum.)
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Yesterday at the Mahablog, Barbara O'Brien flagged this sentence from a pro-torture op-ed piece by David Gelernter in the Los Angeles Times:
Those who defend McCain's amendment and attack Cheney and Bush feel a nice warm glow, as if they're basking in virtue, as in a hot tub, sipping Cabernet.
Nice gratuitous slap in the face in those last two phrases, David.
You know what? Yes, I oppose torture in the name of the United States of America. And yes, I am a white-collar liberal.
And I am goddamn sick and tired of being told, directly or by implication, that my primary sin is effeteness, by conservatives whose economic and social status puts them in the rank of America's cosseted and privileged.
Yes, I know that David Gelernter was grievously wounded by one of the Unabomber's bombs. But I also know that he holds a professorship at Yale -- a university where the average professor's salary is $145,000 a year. I also know that he is an editor at the National Review and City Journal and an art critic at The Weekly Standard as well as an L.A. Times op-ed writer, and that he is the author of many books for both professionals and the general reading public. David Gelernter, in other words, is a very well remunerated member of the knowledge elite. His yearly income far exceeds that of my (comfortable two-paycheck) household.
David Gelertner, in other words, is not drinking Old Milwaukee from a can and worrying that he just maxed out a high-interest credit card buying off-label toilet paper in bulk at Sam's Club. It is not inconceivable that he, too, has sipped Cabernet -- perhaps in a hot tub. So I don't have to listen to his sneering insinuation that my disgust at the Bush administration's torture policies is synonymous with effeteness.
Those who defend McCain's amendment and attack Cheney and Bush feel a nice warm glow, as if they're basking in virtue, as in a hot tub, sipping Cabernet.
Nice gratuitous slap in the face in those last two phrases, David.
You know what? Yes, I oppose torture in the name of the United States of America. And yes, I am a white-collar liberal.
And I am goddamn sick and tired of being told, directly or by implication, that my primary sin is effeteness, by conservatives whose economic and social status puts them in the rank of America's cosseted and privileged.
Yes, I know that David Gelernter was grievously wounded by one of the Unabomber's bombs. But I also know that he holds a professorship at Yale -- a university where the average professor's salary is $145,000 a year. I also know that he is an editor at the National Review and City Journal and an art critic at The Weekly Standard as well as an L.A. Times op-ed writer, and that he is the author of many books for both professionals and the general reading public. David Gelernter, in other words, is a very well remunerated member of the knowledge elite. His yearly income far exceeds that of my (comfortable two-paycheck) household.
David Gelertner, in other words, is not drinking Old Milwaukee from a can and worrying that he just maxed out a high-interest credit card buying off-label toilet paper in bulk at Sam's Club. It is not inconceivable that he, too, has sipped Cabernet -- perhaps in a hot tub. So I don't have to listen to his sneering insinuation that my disgust at the Bush administration's torture policies is synonymous with effeteness.
Friday, November 11, 2005
If your approval rating is in the toilet, and your opponents' approval rating is also pretty much in the toilet, do you really do yourself any good by saying you didn't actually screw up because your opponents participated in the same screwup?
President George W. Bush disputed allegations by Democrats that the White House twisted or misused prewar intelligence to justify the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.
"It is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how the war began,'' Bush told military families at an Army depot near Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania today. "More than 100 Democrats in the House and Senate who had access to the same intelligence voted to remove Saddam Hussein from power.'' ...
This is the political equivalent of saying, "But Ma, Billy was doing it too!" (Needless to say, "Billy was doing it too!" is sometimes literally what Bush and his defenders say.) Here's Bush's message: In Iraq, we didn't do any worse than the Democrats would have done. Wow, that's a winning slogan for 2006 and 2008.
Comparing himself to a party widely believed to have no ideas and no backbone is not how Bush is going to get back above 40%. (And telling us for the 90,000th time that Iraq is "the central front in our war against the terrorists'' and that "as Iraqis stand up, Americans will stand down" ain't gonna do it either.)
President George W. Bush disputed allegations by Democrats that the White House twisted or misused prewar intelligence to justify the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.
"It is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how the war began,'' Bush told military families at an Army depot near Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania today. "More than 100 Democrats in the House and Senate who had access to the same intelligence voted to remove Saddam Hussein from power.'' ...
This is the political equivalent of saying, "But Ma, Billy was doing it too!" (Needless to say, "Billy was doing it too!" is sometimes literally what Bush and his defenders say.) Here's Bush's message: In Iraq, we didn't do any worse than the Democrats would have done. Wow, that's a winning slogan for 2006 and 2008.
Comparing himself to a party widely believed to have no ideas and no backbone is not how Bush is going to get back above 40%. (And telling us for the 90,000th time that Iraq is "the central front in our war against the terrorists'' and that "as Iraqis stand up, Americans will stand down" ain't gonna do it either.)
The government has been yanking Gary Bernsten's chain, so he's going let the public see the results of the chain-yanking. PublishersLunch reports:
In late October (after a second Federal Court filing earlier in the month), former CIA field commander Gary Bernsten and publisher Crown finalized clearances from the CIA's Publications Review Board to issue JAWBREAKER on December 27, two months after originally scheduled.
Crown executive editor Rick Horgan says, "We are going to publish the book with the redactions preserved," with blacked-out text throughout the book where CIA approval was not granted, to make transparent to readers "all of the violence done to the manuscript." (In the interest of readibility, places where multiple pages were redacted by the CIA will be indicated in notes from the author rather than a run of completely black pages.) ...
Bernsten has argued, and Horgan confirms, that "some of the redactions involved deleting material that was already part of the public record." So the author and publisher decided to publish the approvable manuscript rather than continue to submit to the CIA's "shrewd delaying process."...
So what's all the fuss about? Perhaps you recall this Newsweek story from August:
...in a forthcoming book, the CIA field commander for the agency's Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, Gary Berntsen, says he and other U.S. commanders did know that bin Laden was among the hundreds of fleeing Qaeda and Taliban members. Berntsen says he had definitive intelligence that bin Laden was holed up at Tora Bora - intelligence operatives had tracked him - and could have been caught. "He was there," Berntsen tells NEWSWEEK. Asked to comment on Berntsen's remarks, National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones passed on 2004 statements from former CENTCOM commander Gen. Tommy Franks. "We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001," Franks wrote in an Oct. 19 New York Times op-ed. "Bin Laden was never within our grasp." Berntsen says Franks is "a great American. But he was not on the ground out there. I was."
In his book - titled "Jawbreaker" - the decorated career CIA officer criticizes Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Department for not providing enough support to the CIA and the Pentagon's own Special Forces teams in the final hours of Tora Bora, says Berntsen's lawyer, Roy Krieger....
A July AP story described Berntsen as "a Republican and avid Bush supporter," and "the recipient of two of the CIA's three highest medals, one for preventing Islamic extremists from assassinating the Indian prime minister in 1996." Nevertheless, he's pissed, and his story's coming out.
Here's the Amazon page for Jawbreaker.
In late October (after a second Federal Court filing earlier in the month), former CIA field commander Gary Bernsten and publisher Crown finalized clearances from the CIA's Publications Review Board to issue JAWBREAKER on December 27, two months after originally scheduled.
Crown executive editor Rick Horgan says, "We are going to publish the book with the redactions preserved," with blacked-out text throughout the book where CIA approval was not granted, to make transparent to readers "all of the violence done to the manuscript." (In the interest of readibility, places where multiple pages were redacted by the CIA will be indicated in notes from the author rather than a run of completely black pages.) ...
Bernsten has argued, and Horgan confirms, that "some of the redactions involved deleting material that was already part of the public record." So the author and publisher decided to publish the approvable manuscript rather than continue to submit to the CIA's "shrewd delaying process."...
So what's all the fuss about? Perhaps you recall this Newsweek story from August:
...in a forthcoming book, the CIA field commander for the agency's Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, Gary Berntsen, says he and other U.S. commanders did know that bin Laden was among the hundreds of fleeing Qaeda and Taliban members. Berntsen says he had definitive intelligence that bin Laden was holed up at Tora Bora - intelligence operatives had tracked him - and could have been caught. "He was there," Berntsen tells NEWSWEEK. Asked to comment on Berntsen's remarks, National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones passed on 2004 statements from former CENTCOM commander Gen. Tommy Franks. "We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001," Franks wrote in an Oct. 19 New York Times op-ed. "Bin Laden was never within our grasp." Berntsen says Franks is "a great American. But he was not on the ground out there. I was."
In his book - titled "Jawbreaker" - the decorated career CIA officer criticizes Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Department for not providing enough support to the CIA and the Pentagon's own Special Forces teams in the final hours of Tora Bora, says Berntsen's lawyer, Roy Krieger....
A July AP story described Berntsen as "a Republican and avid Bush supporter," and "the recipient of two of the CIA's three highest medals, one for preventing Islamic extremists from assassinating the Indian prime minister in 1996." Nevertheless, he's pissed, and his story's coming out.
Here's the Amazon page for Jawbreaker.
I wasn't aware until now that Wal-Mart was also under attack from the right -- specifically, from the Christmas-is-under-assault wackos.
Reasonably, given America's diversity, Wal-Mart encourages employees to say "Happy holidays" rather than "Merry Christmas," which makes the wackos livid -- but, beyond that, Wal-Mart has apparently brought further trouble on itself by trying to do things on the cheap.
World Net Daily reports:
...The controversy was sparked when a woman recently complained to Wal-Mart that the store was replacing its "Merry Christmas" greeting with "Happy Holidays."
... the woman received an e-mail response from a customer-service representative named Kirby, reading exactly as follows:
Walmart is a world wide organization and must remain conscious of this. The majority of the world still has different practices other than "christmas" which is an ancient tradition that has its roots in Siberian shamanism. The colors associated with "christmas" red and white are actually a representation of of the aminita mascera mushroom. Santa is also borrowed from the Caucuses, mistletoe from the Celts, yule log from the Goths, the time from the Visigoth and the tree from the worship of Baal. It is a wide wide world.
[Wal-Mart spokesman Dan] Fogleman confirmed the original note was written by a Wal-Mart representative, and explained today:
"We at Wal-Mart believe this e-mail between a temporary associate and one of our valued customers was entirely inappropriate. Its contents in no way represent the policies, practices or views of our company. This associate, who was hired less than three weeks ago, is no longer employed by our company."
Come on, guys -- you get e-mails on hot-button issues like this and you let temps answer them? Temps with three weeks' experience? Temps who don't respond with boilerplate carefully crafted by a team of lawyers and PR people at company headquarters, but who just write whatever they like?
You really are cheap, aren't you?
(Though the text of the e-mail does give me renewed faith in the heartland.)
Stirring up all the trouble, by the way, is the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, led by William ("Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity") Donohue.
The World Net Daily story, using Donohue's research, makes this additional claim:
To demonstrate an instance of discrimination, Donohue points out, and WND confirmed, that when using the company's online search engine, if the word "Hanukkah" is entered, 200 items for sale are returned. The term "Kwanzaa" yields 77. But when "Christmas" is entered, the message returned says: "We've brought you to our 'Holiday' page based on your search."
I get the same results when I click on the links. But when I go to walmart.com and search for "Christmas," I don't get a redirect at all -- I get 7697 Christmas items.
What the hell did Donohue and Wal-Mart do to get that result? Are they (gasp!) spreading misinformation about hatred of Christmas in America?
Reasonably, given America's diversity, Wal-Mart encourages employees to say "Happy holidays" rather than "Merry Christmas," which makes the wackos livid -- but, beyond that, Wal-Mart has apparently brought further trouble on itself by trying to do things on the cheap.
World Net Daily reports:
...The controversy was sparked when a woman recently complained to Wal-Mart that the store was replacing its "Merry Christmas" greeting with "Happy Holidays."
... the woman received an e-mail response from a customer-service representative named Kirby, reading exactly as follows:
Walmart is a world wide organization and must remain conscious of this. The majority of the world still has different practices other than "christmas" which is an ancient tradition that has its roots in Siberian shamanism. The colors associated with "christmas" red and white are actually a representation of of the aminita mascera mushroom. Santa is also borrowed from the Caucuses, mistletoe from the Celts, yule log from the Goths, the time from the Visigoth and the tree from the worship of Baal. It is a wide wide world.
[Wal-Mart spokesman Dan] Fogleman confirmed the original note was written by a Wal-Mart representative, and explained today:
"We at Wal-Mart believe this e-mail between a temporary associate and one of our valued customers was entirely inappropriate. Its contents in no way represent the policies, practices or views of our company. This associate, who was hired less than three weeks ago, is no longer employed by our company."
Come on, guys -- you get e-mails on hot-button issues like this and you let temps answer them? Temps with three weeks' experience? Temps who don't respond with boilerplate carefully crafted by a team of lawyers and PR people at company headquarters, but who just write whatever they like?
You really are cheap, aren't you?
(Though the text of the e-mail does give me renewed faith in the heartland.)
Stirring up all the trouble, by the way, is the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, led by William ("Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity") Donohue.
The World Net Daily story, using Donohue's research, makes this additional claim:
To demonstrate an instance of discrimination, Donohue points out, and WND confirmed, that when using the company's online search engine, if the word "Hanukkah" is entered, 200 items for sale are returned. The term "Kwanzaa" yields 77. But when "Christmas" is entered, the message returned says: "We've brought you to our 'Holiday' page based on your search."
I get the same results when I click on the links. But when I go to walmart.com and search for "Christmas," I don't get a redirect at all -- I get 7697 Christmas items.
What the hell did Donohue and Wal-Mart do to get that result? Are they (gasp!) spreading misinformation about hatred of Christmas in America?
PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY: OBJECTIVELY PRO-RAPE
The godmother of anti-feminism writes:
...In 2004, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) introduced a bill of over a hundred pages to authorize a high-level Office of the Victim Advocate (OVA) in the Department of Defense; fortunately, it didn't pass. In 2005, congressional feminists sponsored a four-page version of the same bill, which likewise went nowhere.
But the feminists are resourceful. They have persuaded Rumsfeld's Community and Family Policy office to award a contract to Wellesley College Centers for Women to make recommendations about establishing an OVA in the Pentagon.
The recommendations are wholly predictable -- they would be based on Slaughter's failed legislation. They will call for setting up an OVA in Washington to provide feminists who major in Women's Studies with tax-funded jobs from which they can pursue worldwide feminist goals in the Armed Services and destroy the career of any man who stands in a woman's way....
Surely Wellesley will copy portions of the Slaughter bill that authorize feminist pork. The victim is to be provided a victim advocate, a victim counselor and victim support liaison, and lucrative contracts are to be awarded to the domestic-violence service industry to train the Defense Department on how to support self-proclaimed victims....
Yeah, this isn't a real problem is it?
Nearly 12 percent of the women who graduated from the United States Air Force Academy this year [2003] were the victims of rape or attempted rape in their four years at the academy in Colorado Springs, with the vast majority never reporting the incidents to the authorities, according to a survey by the inspector general of the Defense Department.
... Brig. Gen. Johnny Weida, the commandant of the academy, warned the institution's 4,000 cadets that he would not tolerate violations of its honor code, or cadets who looked the other way while the classmates acted in ways that undermined the academy.
"We are warriors," General Weida was reported to have told the cadets today. "If we don't reverse this trend, the very existence of this institution is threatened. Together, we will fix this."
...Of the entire enrollment, 19 percent said they had been the victims of sexual assault and more than 7 percent said that assault took the form of rape or attempted rape. Four out of five women never came forward to report that they had been assaulted, the survey shows....
More statistics here.
Yeah, you're right, Phyllis -- nothing to see here, move along.
The godmother of anti-feminism writes:
...In 2004, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) introduced a bill of over a hundred pages to authorize a high-level Office of the Victim Advocate (OVA) in the Department of Defense; fortunately, it didn't pass. In 2005, congressional feminists sponsored a four-page version of the same bill, which likewise went nowhere.
But the feminists are resourceful. They have persuaded Rumsfeld's Community and Family Policy office to award a contract to Wellesley College Centers for Women to make recommendations about establishing an OVA in the Pentagon.
The recommendations are wholly predictable -- they would be based on Slaughter's failed legislation. They will call for setting up an OVA in Washington to provide feminists who major in Women's Studies with tax-funded jobs from which they can pursue worldwide feminist goals in the Armed Services and destroy the career of any man who stands in a woman's way....
Surely Wellesley will copy portions of the Slaughter bill that authorize feminist pork. The victim is to be provided a victim advocate, a victim counselor and victim support liaison, and lucrative contracts are to be awarded to the domestic-violence service industry to train the Defense Department on how to support self-proclaimed victims....
Yeah, this isn't a real problem is it?
Nearly 12 percent of the women who graduated from the United States Air Force Academy this year [2003] were the victims of rape or attempted rape in their four years at the academy in Colorado Springs, with the vast majority never reporting the incidents to the authorities, according to a survey by the inspector general of the Defense Department.
... Brig. Gen. Johnny Weida, the commandant of the academy, warned the institution's 4,000 cadets that he would not tolerate violations of its honor code, or cadets who looked the other way while the classmates acted in ways that undermined the academy.
"We are warriors," General Weida was reported to have told the cadets today. "If we don't reverse this trend, the very existence of this institution is threatened. Together, we will fix this."
...Of the entire enrollment, 19 percent said they had been the victims of sexual assault and more than 7 percent said that assault took the form of rape or attempted rape. Four out of five women never came forward to report that they had been assaulted, the survey shows....
More statistics here.
Yeah, you're right, Phyllis -- nothing to see here, move along.
Thursday, November 10, 2005
MARRIAGE IS SACRED
[Michigan] Attorney General Mike Cox admitted Wednesday that he had an extra-marital affair several years ago. ...
"A number of years ago, I was unfaithful to my wife," the Republican Attorney General said with his wife Laura beside him. The couple, married for 11 years, had tears in their eyes. "We worked on our marriage day by day, week by week," Mike Cox said.
Cox said he told his wife of the affair on March 22, 2003....
--WXYZ, Detroit
That would be this Mike Cox:
Local governments and the state can't give benefits to employees' same-sex partners now that voters have approved a constitutional ban on gay marriage, the state's attorney general said Wednesday.
In the first legal interpretation of Proposal 2, Attorney General Mike Cox wrote in an opinion that Kalamazoo's policy of offering health and retirement benefits to same-sex partners violates the amendment, which passed in November.....
Proposal 2 said a union between one man and one woman "shall be the only agreement recognized as a marriage or similar union for any purpose."
Kalamazoo's policy gives domestic partnerships a "marriage-like" status, Cox said....
Meet a couple of people this might affect:
When Alexandra Stern took a job with the University of Michigan three years ago, a key factor in her decision was the school's domestic partnership policy, which provides health insurance to her partner, Terri Koreck.
Koreck, a cancer survivor, gave up a job and her benefits to move with Stern from California. She went back to school for a nursing degree -- knowing her medical, dental and vision costs would be covered under Stern's plan....
Recent developments in Michigan, however, have put at risk the benefits of Koreck and other gays whose partners work for cities, counties, universities and public schools.
The state attorney general issued a legal opinion last month saying government entities cannot offer same-sex benefits in future contracts because it would violate Michigan's constitutional gay marriage ban known as Proposal 2....
And note that Cox had the gall to issue his ruling despite the fact that, before the election, he wrote this about Proposal 2:
... the spokesman for the Triangle Foundation, Sean Kosofsky, called the proposed amendment "radical" and "militant" - event though it merely proposed to preserve the status quo.
Cox is now outed as a cheater? My heart bleeds. (No, not really.)
(Via DU.)
[Michigan] Attorney General Mike Cox admitted Wednesday that he had an extra-marital affair several years ago. ...
"A number of years ago, I was unfaithful to my wife," the Republican Attorney General said with his wife Laura beside him. The couple, married for 11 years, had tears in their eyes. "We worked on our marriage day by day, week by week," Mike Cox said.
Cox said he told his wife of the affair on March 22, 2003....
--WXYZ, Detroit
That would be this Mike Cox:
Local governments and the state can't give benefits to employees' same-sex partners now that voters have approved a constitutional ban on gay marriage, the state's attorney general said Wednesday.
In the first legal interpretation of Proposal 2, Attorney General Mike Cox wrote in an opinion that Kalamazoo's policy of offering health and retirement benefits to same-sex partners violates the amendment, which passed in November.....
Proposal 2 said a union between one man and one woman "shall be the only agreement recognized as a marriage or similar union for any purpose."
Kalamazoo's policy gives domestic partnerships a "marriage-like" status, Cox said....
Meet a couple of people this might affect:
When Alexandra Stern took a job with the University of Michigan three years ago, a key factor in her decision was the school's domestic partnership policy, which provides health insurance to her partner, Terri Koreck.
Koreck, a cancer survivor, gave up a job and her benefits to move with Stern from California. She went back to school for a nursing degree -- knowing her medical, dental and vision costs would be covered under Stern's plan....
Recent developments in Michigan, however, have put at risk the benefits of Koreck and other gays whose partners work for cities, counties, universities and public schools.
The state attorney general issued a legal opinion last month saying government entities cannot offer same-sex benefits in future contracts because it would violate Michigan's constitutional gay marriage ban known as Proposal 2....
And note that Cox had the gall to issue his ruling despite the fact that, before the election, he wrote this about Proposal 2:
... the spokesman for the Triangle Foundation, Sean Kosofsky, called the proposed amendment "radical" and "militant" - event though it merely proposed to preserve the status quo.
Cox is now outed as a cheater? My heart bleeds. (No, not really.)
(Via DU.)
In the comments to an earlier post, Tom at Daai Tou Laam Diary urged me to read this extended Washington Post interview with Judy Miller. Thanks, Tom. The article's fun.
Or at least it is at first:
She answers questions -- or refuses. She turns the tables, asking about her interviewer's life. She takes calls. She grabs the tape recorder. She waxes eloquent, even in anger. At times, tears well up. There's something frantic about her -- not vulnerable, mind you, for that's the last thing she is.
"Oh. I've got to take this." She's reaching for the phone again. "It's my lawyer."
You want to reach through the monitor and hand her a Ritalin.
But Miller is eloquent in her own defense, or at least voluble. And as the interview continues, it's clear we're looking at the groundwork for her possible rehabilitation in the not-too-distant future.
Her style is indeed "pushy," as she herself suggested. But would an aggressive, high-decibel male reporter be embroiled in all the controversy in which Miller finds herself? It is a question that some of her friends raise, for they believe that part of the invective swirling around Miller has to do with gender bias.
"A man is tough and hard-driving and a woman is a bitch," says Patricia Cohen, the Times theater editor (and former Washington Post staffer), who is a friend of Miller's.
Look, I don't know about the newsroom at the Times, but in my world, yes, a tough, hard-driving, toe-trampling woman might be called a bitch. But a tough, hard-driving, toe-trampling man would almost certainly be called an asshole. Separate? Yes, but reasonably close to equal.
Miller's emotional excesses are defended:
[Leslie] Gelb, then a national security writer at the Times, remembers Miller for her "frantic pursuit of stories," he says. "It was kind of endearingly frantic. She was just so driven to go get good stories, and she was working all the time."
(I have to admit that this aspect of the standard critique of Miller, while great fun, does touch on sexist stereotypes; we'd all probably do well to jettison it.)
She denies a damning anecdote from an ex-colleague, firmly if not very convincingly:
Adam Clymer, retired political correspondent for the Times, recalls an episode during the 1988 presidential campaign, when Miller was deputy Washington bureau chief.
Then the political editor based in New York, Clymer was awakened just after midnight one morning by a call from Miller, he says. She was demanding that a story about Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis be pulled from the paper.
The story was too soft, she complained -- and said Lee Atwater, the political strategist for Vice President George H.W. Bush, believed it was soft as well. Clymer said he was stunned to realize that Atwater apparently had either seen the story or been told about it before publication. He and Miller argued, he recalls, and he ultimately hung up on her, twice.
To Clymer, it was an indication of what he and others believe is Miller's main problem.
"She had gotten too close to her sources," he says.
But Miller denies the episode happened.
"I doubt I would have said that," she says sardonically, "because it wouldn't have been a winning argument."
By the end we've gotten this message: if her emotional cup sometimes runneth over and if she sometimes gets too close to a story, it may be OK, because as a result she's effective and dogged -- and precisely because of her M.O. she has unique insight into the profound dangers facing the West after 9/11:
...in her reporting, there was something else on which Miller relied as much, if not more: her personal belief in the danger that Saddam Hussein posed to the world.
It was personal, for she had been detained for a day by Hussein's security forces back in the 1980s, she says. And it was personal because, as she writes in her 1996 book on Islam, "God Has Ninety-Nine Names," an Iraqi source once told her "that I was on a very short list of writers who are considered the regime's 'eternal enemies.' "...
And so fighting him, fighting his terror, became a passion. Fighting chemical and biological threats became a passion. Fighting al Qaeda became a passion.
"I hope to God that I'm wrong. I hope to God that not another American ever dies in a terrorist attack. But I would take no comfort. I would be heartsick to have to say I told you so.
"But I will make no apologies for my continuous commitment, my desire to pursue stories about threats to our country," she says emphatically, almost frantically, her crusading eyes brimming with tears.
I'm counting the days until the Right starts mounting a defense of Miller that builds on these arguments. The Right has given her a wide berth up to now, believing, I guess, that everyone who writes for the hated New York Times is evil and that all journalists in the "MSM," not just Miller, belong in prison. Fighting for a shield law probably also persuades rightists that she's a liberal and thus an enemy of decent people everywhere. But she believed Saddam had WMDs and ties to al-Qaeda! And now she's been given the boot by the evil Times! I'll be shocked if that doesn't make her a right-wing hero soon.
Perhaps the faux-feminists of the Independent Women's Forum will declare themselves outraged because she's been accused of sleeping with Scooter Libby -- even though Bill Keller's words to Miller don't say anything about sex. In fact, this is a criticism a lot of us have made regarding the entirety of the mainstream political press -- that reporters get too close to powerful sources, that they'd rather maintain access than uncover the truth, that many of them giggle and blush when Bush gives them nicknames. We may sneeringly accuse this or that (usually male and straight) reporter of a "crush" on Bush or some other powerful figure, but we're not saying, for instance, that the many, many reporters who've portrayed Bush as "likable" since the winter of 1999-2000 have been having sex with the man.
But that'll be ignored, if I'm right about this, and Miller will be defended as a victim of liberals who pretend to be feminists but mount vicious attacks on any woman who challenges what they hold sacrosanct (just like the liberal phonies who abandoned Paula Jones when she threatened Clinton!). Miller's reporting can also be defended by the Right -- the right still insists Saddam had WMDs up to the end, and that the al-Qaeda ties were extensive. And obviously Miller can be portrayed as one more victim of Patrick Fitzgerald's "witch hunt."
Maybe this will never happen, but if it does, remember I told you so.
Or at least it is at first:
She answers questions -- or refuses. She turns the tables, asking about her interviewer's life. She takes calls. She grabs the tape recorder. She waxes eloquent, even in anger. At times, tears well up. There's something frantic about her -- not vulnerable, mind you, for that's the last thing she is.
"Oh. I've got to take this." She's reaching for the phone again. "It's my lawyer."
You want to reach through the monitor and hand her a Ritalin.
But Miller is eloquent in her own defense, or at least voluble. And as the interview continues, it's clear we're looking at the groundwork for her possible rehabilitation in the not-too-distant future.
Her style is indeed "pushy," as she herself suggested. But would an aggressive, high-decibel male reporter be embroiled in all the controversy in which Miller finds herself? It is a question that some of her friends raise, for they believe that part of the invective swirling around Miller has to do with gender bias.
"A man is tough and hard-driving and a woman is a bitch," says Patricia Cohen, the Times theater editor (and former Washington Post staffer), who is a friend of Miller's.
Look, I don't know about the newsroom at the Times, but in my world, yes, a tough, hard-driving, toe-trampling woman might be called a bitch. But a tough, hard-driving, toe-trampling man would almost certainly be called an asshole. Separate? Yes, but reasonably close to equal.
Miller's emotional excesses are defended:
[Leslie] Gelb, then a national security writer at the Times, remembers Miller for her "frantic pursuit of stories," he says. "It was kind of endearingly frantic. She was just so driven to go get good stories, and she was working all the time."
(I have to admit that this aspect of the standard critique of Miller, while great fun, does touch on sexist stereotypes; we'd all probably do well to jettison it.)
She denies a damning anecdote from an ex-colleague, firmly if not very convincingly:
Adam Clymer, retired political correspondent for the Times, recalls an episode during the 1988 presidential campaign, when Miller was deputy Washington bureau chief.
Then the political editor based in New York, Clymer was awakened just after midnight one morning by a call from Miller, he says. She was demanding that a story about Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis be pulled from the paper.
The story was too soft, she complained -- and said Lee Atwater, the political strategist for Vice President George H.W. Bush, believed it was soft as well. Clymer said he was stunned to realize that Atwater apparently had either seen the story or been told about it before publication. He and Miller argued, he recalls, and he ultimately hung up on her, twice.
To Clymer, it was an indication of what he and others believe is Miller's main problem.
"She had gotten too close to her sources," he says.
But Miller denies the episode happened.
"I doubt I would have said that," she says sardonically, "because it wouldn't have been a winning argument."
By the end we've gotten this message: if her emotional cup sometimes runneth over and if she sometimes gets too close to a story, it may be OK, because as a result she's effective and dogged -- and precisely because of her M.O. she has unique insight into the profound dangers facing the West after 9/11:
...in her reporting, there was something else on which Miller relied as much, if not more: her personal belief in the danger that Saddam Hussein posed to the world.
It was personal, for she had been detained for a day by Hussein's security forces back in the 1980s, she says. And it was personal because, as she writes in her 1996 book on Islam, "God Has Ninety-Nine Names," an Iraqi source once told her "that I was on a very short list of writers who are considered the regime's 'eternal enemies.' "...
And so fighting him, fighting his terror, became a passion. Fighting chemical and biological threats became a passion. Fighting al Qaeda became a passion.
"I hope to God that I'm wrong. I hope to God that not another American ever dies in a terrorist attack. But I would take no comfort. I would be heartsick to have to say I told you so.
"But I will make no apologies for my continuous commitment, my desire to pursue stories about threats to our country," she says emphatically, almost frantically, her crusading eyes brimming with tears.
I'm counting the days until the Right starts mounting a defense of Miller that builds on these arguments. The Right has given her a wide berth up to now, believing, I guess, that everyone who writes for the hated New York Times is evil and that all journalists in the "MSM," not just Miller, belong in prison. Fighting for a shield law probably also persuades rightists that she's a liberal and thus an enemy of decent people everywhere. But she believed Saddam had WMDs and ties to al-Qaeda! And now she's been given the boot by the evil Times! I'll be shocked if that doesn't make her a right-wing hero soon.
Perhaps the faux-feminists of the Independent Women's Forum will declare themselves outraged because she's been accused of sleeping with Scooter Libby -- even though Bill Keller's words to Miller don't say anything about sex. In fact, this is a criticism a lot of us have made regarding the entirety of the mainstream political press -- that reporters get too close to powerful sources, that they'd rather maintain access than uncover the truth, that many of them giggle and blush when Bush gives them nicknames. We may sneeringly accuse this or that (usually male and straight) reporter of a "crush" on Bush or some other powerful figure, but we're not saying, for instance, that the many, many reporters who've portrayed Bush as "likable" since the winter of 1999-2000 have been having sex with the man.
But that'll be ignored, if I'm right about this, and Miller will be defended as a victim of liberals who pretend to be feminists but mount vicious attacks on any woman who challenges what they hold sacrosanct (just like the liberal phonies who abandoned Paula Jones when she threatened Clinton!). Miller's reporting can also be defended by the Right -- the right still insists Saddam had WMDs up to the end, and that the al-Qaeda ties were extensive. And obviously Miller can be portrayed as one more victim of Patrick Fitzgerald's "witch hunt."
Maybe this will never happen, but if it does, remember I told you so.
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Judy Miller's farewell letter (posted at her new blog) says:
At a commencement speech I delivered at Barnard College in 2003, a year before that note was published, I asked whether the administration’s prewar W.M.D. intelligence was merely wrong, or was it exaggerated or even falsified.
Er, not exactly. Here's what she said:
I think there are other questions, too, that the Bush administration will now have to answer: Will the weapons hunters find the weapons of mass destruction programs that were cited repeatedly as the major justification for the invasion? Could inspectors have uncovered the dual use equipment that was hidden – sometimes in plain sight – throughout the country without a war? Were the concerns about anthrax clouds over our cities exaggerations? Were they justified by what we knew then, as opposed to what we know now? Was the intelligence that produced them politically distorted? Were those who wanted to go to war deceiving themselves about Saddam’s capabilities? Was the war really necessary, not just for Iraq, but to protect American national security?
Now she says that at Barnard she "asked whether the administration’s prewar W.M.D. intelligence was merely wrong, or was it exaggerated or even falsified." I read that as "Clearly the intelligence was wrong -- was that deliberate?" But the Barnard speech makes clear that in May 2003 she still wasn't sure the intelligence was wrong -- WMDs might still be found, material that had been located unquestionably was, in her opinion, dual-use, and anthrax fears might or might not have been well founded. Maybe I'm hairsplitting, but I say she's distorting what she said back then. Not that I'm surprised.
At a commencement speech I delivered at Barnard College in 2003, a year before that note was published, I asked whether the administration’s prewar W.M.D. intelligence was merely wrong, or was it exaggerated or even falsified.
Er, not exactly. Here's what she said:
I think there are other questions, too, that the Bush administration will now have to answer: Will the weapons hunters find the weapons of mass destruction programs that were cited repeatedly as the major justification for the invasion? Could inspectors have uncovered the dual use equipment that was hidden – sometimes in plain sight – throughout the country without a war? Were the concerns about anthrax clouds over our cities exaggerations? Were they justified by what we knew then, as opposed to what we know now? Was the intelligence that produced them politically distorted? Were those who wanted to go to war deceiving themselves about Saddam’s capabilities? Was the war really necessary, not just for Iraq, but to protect American national security?
Now she says that at Barnard she "asked whether the administration’s prewar W.M.D. intelligence was merely wrong, or was it exaggerated or even falsified." I read that as "Clearly the intelligence was wrong -- was that deliberate?" But the Barnard speech makes clear that in May 2003 she still wasn't sure the intelligence was wrong -- WMDs might still be found, material that had been located unquestionably was, in her opinion, dual-use, and anthrax fears might or might not have been well founded. Maybe I'm hairsplitting, but I say she's distorting what she said back then. Not that I'm surprised.
FAIR AND BALANCED
Pro-administration sources quoted in this New York Times story on Ahmed Chalabi's visit to Washington:
* An unidentified administration official.
* Adam Ereli, a State Department spokesman.
* Richard Perle, a Chalabi supporter and former head of the Bush administration's Defense Policy Board.
* Reuel Marc Gerecht, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Critics of the administration and/or Chalabi quoted in the same story:
Er, none.
Pro-administration sources quoted in this New York Times story on Ahmed Chalabi's visit to Washington:
* An unidentified administration official.
* Adam Ereli, a State Department spokesman.
* Richard Perle, a Chalabi supporter and former head of the Bush administration's Defense Policy Board.
* Reuel Marc Gerecht, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Critics of the administration and/or Chalabi quoted in the same story:
Er, none.
Well, thank God -- a few days ago, Arianna Huffington had me worried that Judy Miller was never going to leave The New York Times, but now she's gone. Wonder how soon it'll be before her paychecks are signed "Rupert Murdoch." And I wonder how soon she'll start trying to exact revenge against her former employer, a la Dick Morris -- and whose help she'll get when she does.
KURDISTAN® -- ONE OF THE WINGNUTTIA® FAMILY OF COMPANIES
So I didn't realize until I saw this Free Republic thread that the regional Kurdish government has thrown in its lot with American right-wing rabble-rousers.
The thread begins:
Look at the email I just received from Move America Forward... (and please watch the ads!)
Move America Forward? Here's a little background on that group: Its co-chairman is Howard Kaloogian, a former California assemblyman. Kaloogian fought to keep CBS's TV movie about the Reagans off the air and helped lead the recall campaign against Gray Davis. He used MAF to demand that movie theaters not show Fahrenheit 9/11. More recently, he's organized a right-wing talk-radio "Truth Tour" of Iraq (in conjunction with the Department of Defense), a counter-Cindy Sheehan bus tour, and various ad campaigns -- including one titled "U.N. Out of U.S."
Now, back to the Free Republic thread for the text of the MAF e-mail:
Starting Wednesday, a major national television ad campaign will begin that features Iraqi Kurds thanking the United States for liberating them from Saddam Hussein.
This is the message that has not been reported by the old-line media: the people of Iraq are happy that Saddam is gone and they want to say "Thank You" to America....
Please - go watch these ads. The first one, "Thank You America" is the ad you will be seeing beginning on the Fox News Channel (running nationwide). And make sure you show this to everyone you know. Each time I've seen this ad I've been nearly brought to tears, seeing these people survive the murderous regime of Saddam Hussein and showing such warm and sincere appreciation for the United States....
The e-mail directs you to a Web site -- TheOtherIraq.com. You can watch the ads and read the scripts there -- and also go to a link for the Kurdistan Development Corporation, "an initiative established jointly by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and international business to promote, facilitate and establish business and investment opportunities in the Kurdistan region in Iraq."
So why is the e-mail coming from Move America Forward?
Because this group of wingnuts, UN-bashers, and liberal-bashers is the Kurds' PR firm.
Bill Berkowitz explains:
The so-called "war on terrorism" has been good to Russo Marsh & Rogers (RM&R), the Sacramento, California-based conservative lobbying and public relations firm. These days, it has a lot on its plate, including the recently completed "Truth Tour," and a new contract with the Kurdistan Regional Government.
The "Truth Tour" -- a seven-day carefully calibrated trip to Iraq by a group of conservative talk-show hosts -- was intended to spread the "good" news about what is happening on the ground. The tour was organized by Move America Forward (MAF), an organization that, according to the Washington Post, owes much of its existence to the good offices of Russo Marsh & Rogers.
... Joe Wierzbicki, an account executive at Russo Marsh & Rogers, laughingly denied that there was ever any attempt to be secretive about the firm's association with Move America Forward: "There is nothing secret about our relationship with Move America Forward. From the very beginning, it has been Howard [Kaloogian] and Melanie [Morgan's] project and Sal Russo -- a close friend of theirs -- helped set it in motion."
Wierzbicki allowed that Russo Marsh & Rogers has done "all of the [group's] public relations stuff, press releases, and radio and television ads that have been aired to date." He added that Move America Forward "also uses Douglas Lorenz, the webmaster at RM&R as their webmaster." In addition, Wierzbicki pointed out, "RM&R doesn't charge Move America Forward any consulting fees and doesn't receive any retainer from the organization." ...
"Our job" with the Kurds, said Wierzbicki, "is to do a public relations campaign that will essentially thank the American people for supporting the war in Iraq. We will also encourage Americans to visit and invest in the Kurdish region." ...
How amusing -- one of the key groups in our little experiment in democratization is hanging out with this crowd.
So I didn't realize until I saw this Free Republic thread that the regional Kurdish government has thrown in its lot with American right-wing rabble-rousers.
The thread begins:
Look at the email I just received from Move America Forward... (and please watch the ads!)
Move America Forward? Here's a little background on that group: Its co-chairman is Howard Kaloogian, a former California assemblyman. Kaloogian fought to keep CBS's TV movie about the Reagans off the air and helped lead the recall campaign against Gray Davis. He used MAF to demand that movie theaters not show Fahrenheit 9/11. More recently, he's organized a right-wing talk-radio "Truth Tour" of Iraq (in conjunction with the Department of Defense), a counter-Cindy Sheehan bus tour, and various ad campaigns -- including one titled "U.N. Out of U.S."
Now, back to the Free Republic thread for the text of the MAF e-mail:
Starting Wednesday, a major national television ad campaign will begin that features Iraqi Kurds thanking the United States for liberating them from Saddam Hussein.
This is the message that has not been reported by the old-line media: the people of Iraq are happy that Saddam is gone and they want to say "Thank You" to America....
Please - go watch these ads. The first one, "Thank You America" is the ad you will be seeing beginning on the Fox News Channel (running nationwide). And make sure you show this to everyone you know. Each time I've seen this ad I've been nearly brought to tears, seeing these people survive the murderous regime of Saddam Hussein and showing such warm and sincere appreciation for the United States....
The e-mail directs you to a Web site -- TheOtherIraq.com. You can watch the ads and read the scripts there -- and also go to a link for the Kurdistan Development Corporation, "an initiative established jointly by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and international business to promote, facilitate and establish business and investment opportunities in the Kurdistan region in Iraq."
So why is the e-mail coming from Move America Forward?
Because this group of wingnuts, UN-bashers, and liberal-bashers is the Kurds' PR firm.
Bill Berkowitz explains:
The so-called "war on terrorism" has been good to Russo Marsh & Rogers (RM&R), the Sacramento, California-based conservative lobbying and public relations firm. These days, it has a lot on its plate, including the recently completed "Truth Tour," and a new contract with the Kurdistan Regional Government.
The "Truth Tour" -- a seven-day carefully calibrated trip to Iraq by a group of conservative talk-show hosts -- was intended to spread the "good" news about what is happening on the ground. The tour was organized by Move America Forward (MAF), an organization that, according to the Washington Post, owes much of its existence to the good offices of Russo Marsh & Rogers.
... Joe Wierzbicki, an account executive at Russo Marsh & Rogers, laughingly denied that there was ever any attempt to be secretive about the firm's association with Move America Forward: "There is nothing secret about our relationship with Move America Forward. From the very beginning, it has been Howard [Kaloogian] and Melanie [Morgan's] project and Sal Russo -- a close friend of theirs -- helped set it in motion."
Wierzbicki allowed that Russo Marsh & Rogers has done "all of the [group's] public relations stuff, press releases, and radio and television ads that have been aired to date." He added that Move America Forward "also uses Douglas Lorenz, the webmaster at RM&R as their webmaster." In addition, Wierzbicki pointed out, "RM&R doesn't charge Move America Forward any consulting fees and doesn't receive any retainer from the organization." ...
"Our job" with the Kurds, said Wierzbicki, "is to do a public relations campaign that will essentially thank the American people for supporting the war in Iraq. We will also encourage Americans to visit and invest in the Kurdish region." ...
How amusing -- one of the key groups in our little experiment in democratization is hanging out with this crowd.
Media Matters catalogs the ongoing campaign by (invariably non-Italian) right-wingers to portray Samuel Alito as a victim of an ethnic slur because some people call him "Scalito." I'm Italian-American and I say this is a crock (the two are ideologically similar, their names sound alike, and one was on the Supreme Court and one has long seemed headed there -- end of story), but the right-wing slanderers persist:
...After fellow Fox News Watch panelist and media writer Neil Gabler responded that [Newsday columnist James] Pinkerton's assertion about the "Scalito" nickname's ethnic bigotry was a "Republican talking point," Pinkerton said, "I think whoever said it first made an ethnic slur ... imagine fusing, say, [Justice Stephen] Breyer and [Justice Ruth Bader] Ginsburg's names together, or if there had been two black justices -- that people would be screaming anti-Semitism or racism. And I think legitimately. And I think they did that on the Italian thing, and I think it was wrong." ...
Yeah, imagine that. Imagine fusing the names of two other judges, or another judge and a nominee. Just imagine...
Harriet Souter?
--title of a 10/19/05 blog post at Right Wing News
Harriet Souter?
--post at the University of Miami Federalist Society blog, 10/3/05
Harriet "Souter" Miers
--title of a post at the Cosmopoloitan Reactionary blog, 10/3/05
A few weeks ago I wrote "Grab your coon-skin hat, powder and musket and ride to the sound of the guns." Many of us did and now Harriet Souter is back where she belongs and a real conservative like Janice Brown will sit on the SC for decades to come.
--post by jeb2008 at the LionCountry.com message board, 10/27/05
It's a heckuva time to take a break, what with the nomination of Harriet Souter....
--10/3/05 post at the right-wing blog PostWatch by Christopher Fotos of Pajamas Media
Think the two situations aren't comparable? Well, think again. Souter was appointed by President George Bush and Miers was nominated by President George Bush. Souter is an Episcopalian and unmarried, while Miers, prior to joining Valley View Christian Church, was, according to her friend Nathan Hecht, "half Catholic, half Episcopalian," and is unmarried. Souter's marital status has led to smirking speculation about his sexual orientation; same with Miers.
There you go. It's a slur. So when will these right-wing bigots apologize?
...After fellow Fox News Watch panelist and media writer Neil Gabler responded that [Newsday columnist James] Pinkerton's assertion about the "Scalito" nickname's ethnic bigotry was a "Republican talking point," Pinkerton said, "I think whoever said it first made an ethnic slur ... imagine fusing, say, [Justice Stephen] Breyer and [Justice Ruth Bader] Ginsburg's names together, or if there had been two black justices -- that people would be screaming anti-Semitism or racism. And I think legitimately. And I think they did that on the Italian thing, and I think it was wrong." ...
Yeah, imagine that. Imagine fusing the names of two other judges, or another judge and a nominee. Just imagine...
Harriet Souter?
--title of a 10/19/05 blog post at Right Wing News
Harriet Souter?
--post at the University of Miami Federalist Society blog, 10/3/05
Harriet "Souter" Miers
--title of a post at the Cosmopoloitan Reactionary blog, 10/3/05
A few weeks ago I wrote "Grab your coon-skin hat, powder and musket and ride to the sound of the guns." Many of us did and now Harriet Souter is back where she belongs and a real conservative like Janice Brown will sit on the SC for decades to come.
--post by jeb2008 at the LionCountry.com message board, 10/27/05
It's a heckuva time to take a break, what with the nomination of Harriet Souter....
--10/3/05 post at the right-wing blog PostWatch by Christopher Fotos of Pajamas Media
Think the two situations aren't comparable? Well, think again. Souter was appointed by President George Bush and Miers was nominated by President George Bush. Souter is an Episcopalian and unmarried, while Miers, prior to joining Valley View Christian Church, was, according to her friend Nathan Hecht, "half Catholic, half Episcopalian," and is unmarried. Souter's marital status has led to smirking speculation about his sexual orientation; same with Miers.
There you go. It's a slur. So when will these right-wing bigots apologize?
Yeah, a pretty good Election Day. I'm happy about Virginia and New Jersey. And I'm pleased if California voters think the GOP is the party that's out of touch with ordinary voters:
...Voters overwhelmingly defeated Proposition 76, the governor's centerpiece proposal to slow the growth of state spending. Proposition 77, which would have redrawn legislative and congressional districts, was knocked down by a similar margin.
Failing by slimmer spreads were Proposition 74, a plan to make teachers work longer to achieve tenure, and Proposition 73, which would have restricted political spending by public employee unions.
Poll after poll showed it was an election that Californians didn't want, with a total lineup of eight initiatives that didn't connect with every day issues such as gas prices, housing costs and the war in Iraq....
Tim Wong, 48, an independent from Belmont, called the election "a waste of the meager money we have."...
And, even though I didn't vote for him, I'm not particularly upset at the reelection of Mike Bloomberg in New York -- he's the first mayor in 32 years to win reelection here without resorting to liberal-bashing, union-busting, or the baiting of minorities; he hasn't divided the city with poisonous rhetoric, like the two most recent reelected mayors, Rudy Giuliani and Ed Koch (although he was endorsed by both of them).
But the Bloomberg win points out that, even up in the blue Northeast, there's far less Democratic pride than there is Republican pride in the heartland. Here's another troubling sign:
A voter survey in New Jersey found women favored Corzine by more than 20 points while men narrowly preferred Forrester. Two-thirds of Hispanics and nearly all blacks favored the U.S. senator, while whites and wealthier people split their votes between the candidates.
So Bush is below 40% approval, New Jersey is a blue state, and still men there, particularly white men, prefer the GOP. Now, a lot of this relates to factors specific to this race. Still, I'll believe we're looking at a real political shift in this country when Democrats can regularly get white men on board -- at least on the coasts.
...Voters overwhelmingly defeated Proposition 76, the governor's centerpiece proposal to slow the growth of state spending. Proposition 77, which would have redrawn legislative and congressional districts, was knocked down by a similar margin.
Failing by slimmer spreads were Proposition 74, a plan to make teachers work longer to achieve tenure, and Proposition 73, which would have restricted political spending by public employee unions.
Poll after poll showed it was an election that Californians didn't want, with a total lineup of eight initiatives that didn't connect with every day issues such as gas prices, housing costs and the war in Iraq....
Tim Wong, 48, an independent from Belmont, called the election "a waste of the meager money we have."...
And, even though I didn't vote for him, I'm not particularly upset at the reelection of Mike Bloomberg in New York -- he's the first mayor in 32 years to win reelection here without resorting to liberal-bashing, union-busting, or the baiting of minorities; he hasn't divided the city with poisonous rhetoric, like the two most recent reelected mayors, Rudy Giuliani and Ed Koch (although he was endorsed by both of them).
But the Bloomberg win points out that, even up in the blue Northeast, there's far less Democratic pride than there is Republican pride in the heartland. Here's another troubling sign:
A voter survey in New Jersey found women favored Corzine by more than 20 points while men narrowly preferred Forrester. Two-thirds of Hispanics and nearly all blacks favored the U.S. senator, while whites and wealthier people split their votes between the candidates.
So Bush is below 40% approval, New Jersey is a blue state, and still men there, particularly white men, prefer the GOP. Now, a lot of this relates to factors specific to this race. Still, I'll believe we're looking at a real political shift in this country when Democrats can regularly get white men on board -- at least on the coasts.
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
All hail Congressman George Miller of California for his House speech on Ahmed Chalabi:
...As the Senate concludes its investigation into the administration's use of false and misleading intelligence to make the case for war, no such inquiry would be complete without Mr. Chalabi's testimony under oath. While he is sashaying around the streets of Washington, D.C., the Senate Intelligence Committee and the House Intelligence Committee may want to issue a subpoena for his presence. He has offered to testify, but no intelligence agency of the United States has interviewed him, nor has the FBI, as we learned today.
He should be detained in this country until he gives that testimony. I know I speak for all Americans when I say that our idea of democracy is not propping up a bank swindler, kidnapper and extortionist whose lies and deceptions contributed to the 14,000 U.S. soldiers injured and over 2,000 killed in action and is an intractable quagmire with no end in sight. Americans deserve the truth about the Bush administration's manipulation of intelligence to justify this tragic war.
Calling the cops to arrest Mr. Chalabi, while he is here, so he can be interrogated, would be a good beginning to understand how extensive the manipulation, how false the evidence was, that caused the President to take us to war and which was championed by the Vice President and the President and the cabal to try to justify to the American citizens the reason for this war.
Mr. Speaker, call the cops. Mr. Chalabi should not be allowed to run free on the streets of this Nation's capital.
Amen.
(Link via Talking Points Memo.)
Chalabi's sordid history is here, courtesy of Think Progress. And check out the Chalabi links at right (scroll down) for more.
...As the Senate concludes its investigation into the administration's use of false and misleading intelligence to make the case for war, no such inquiry would be complete without Mr. Chalabi's testimony under oath. While he is sashaying around the streets of Washington, D.C., the Senate Intelligence Committee and the House Intelligence Committee may want to issue a subpoena for his presence. He has offered to testify, but no intelligence agency of the United States has interviewed him, nor has the FBI, as we learned today.
He should be detained in this country until he gives that testimony. I know I speak for all Americans when I say that our idea of democracy is not propping up a bank swindler, kidnapper and extortionist whose lies and deceptions contributed to the 14,000 U.S. soldiers injured and over 2,000 killed in action and is an intractable quagmire with no end in sight. Americans deserve the truth about the Bush administration's manipulation of intelligence to justify this tragic war.
Calling the cops to arrest Mr. Chalabi, while he is here, so he can be interrogated, would be a good beginning to understand how extensive the manipulation, how false the evidence was, that caused the President to take us to war and which was championed by the Vice President and the President and the cabal to try to justify to the American citizens the reason for this war.
Mr. Speaker, call the cops. Mr. Chalabi should not be allowed to run free on the streets of this Nation's capital.
Amen.
(Link via Talking Points Memo.)
Chalabi's sordid history is here, courtesy of Think Progress. And check out the Chalabi links at right (scroll down) for more.
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