Honorable Commission, Toothless Report
By RICHARD A. CLARKE
NYT, 24 July 2004
EXCERPT: Americans owe the 9/11 commission a deep debt for its extensive exposition of the facts surrounding the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. Yet, because the commission had a goal of creating a unanimous report from a bipartisan group, it softened the edges and left it to the public to draw many conclusions. Among the obvious truths that were documented but unarticulated were the facts that the Bush administration did little on terrorism before 9/11, and that by invading Iraq the administration has left us less safe as a nation. (Fortunately, opinion polls show that the majority of Americans have already come to these conclusions on their own.) What the commissioners did clearly state was that Iraq had no collaborative relationship with Al Qaeda and no hand in 9/11. They also disclosed that Iran provided support to Al Qaeda, including to some 9/11 hijackers. These two facts may cause many people to conclude that the Bush administration focused on the wrong country. They would be right to think that.
So what now?

The 9/11 Whitewash
Blaming No One
By MIKE WHITNEY
CounterPunch, 23 July 2004
EXCERPT: Both commissioners of the 9-11 team appeared on The News Hour on Thursday, passing “o so softly” over the details, instead, opting to stick to their “talking points”. Those talking points could have been predicted before they went “on air”. Both Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton emphasized that “When everyone is to blame…no one is to blame” (Again, I am not making this up) Democratic hack, Hamilton went so far as to admit that, “We decided early on that we weren’t going to play the blame game.”
Say what?
The Administration convenes a panel to investigate the greatest act of mass murder in the country’s history and Hamilton doesn’t want to find out who is responsible? This is pure gold. Kean’s admissions weren’t much better. He took the approach that we were simply “caught napping” and so “we should focus on the future, not the past.” Astonishing….an investigation that “focuses on the future”. This is a script worthy of Orwell. At least now we know that the expressed intention of the commission leaders was to “never lay a glove” on Bush or his cronies.
They succeeded admirably.

The 9/11 Report: Bad News for Bush
David Corn
The Nation, 23 July 2004
EXCERPT: ...it is true that the report does point to screw-ups and negligent policymaking committed during both the Bush II and Clinton administrations. But George W. Bush is the incumbent president who has to face the voters in November. Although Republicans in recent days have been highlighting the mistakes of the Clinton years, it is not inappropriate for voters to focus on what report tells us about Bush and his administration. As a public service, here is a look at several of those critical portions...

What's the Presidential Tipping Point?
NYT, 25 July 2004
EXCERPT: "At some point, politicians can step over an amorphous line that separates good or questionable judgment from inexcusably arrogant, outrageous or incompetent behavior," said Professor Jeffery A. Smith, an historian at the University of Wisconsin and the author of "American Presidential Elections: Trust and the Rational Voter." "That shatters trust. Democracy is built on perceptions of trustworthiness. We bond with politicians who tell us they like us and are like us, but their images and stories can be built up and torn down by what they actually do. If they disappoint, they may be discarded if the alternatives don't look worse."
Confidence and trust are fragile things in any relationship, no less between a president and voters. Voters still rate Mr. Bush fairly well on the big question of fighting terrorism. But support for the war in Iraq has been sliding, particularly since the killings of American security guards who were burned and hung from a bridge for the world to see. When Mr. Bush launched the war last year, three-quarters of the country approved. This month, in the most recent New York Times/CBS News poll, nearly 6 of 10 potential voters disapproved. A president's overall standing generally holds up longer than support on any specific issue or attribute. Support for the Vietnam War declined for several years before Lyndon B. Johnson's overall support began eroding. The 1968 election was already under way before Johnson realized the depth of his problems and withdrew from the race for re-election. For Mr. Bush, the country is about evenly divided on approval of his presidency, according to the latest poll. But there are some ominous signs that Mr. Bush is beginning to suffer from a Johnson-style "credibility gap" after sending the country to war to root out weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda, and being unable to prove either one. When asked by The New York Times and CBS News in June whether Mr. Bush was being completely honest about the war in Iraq, 20 percent of voters said he was mostly lying and 59 percent said he was hiding something. Only 18 percent thought he was telling the entire truth.

9/11 Commission redefines the war on terror - They're more accurate than Bush but still off the mark
War of Ideology
By DAVID BROOKS
NYT, 24 July 2004
EXCERPT: After spending 360 pages describing a widespread intelligence failure, the commissioners step back in their report and redefine the nature of our predicament. We're not in the middle of a war on terror, they note. We're not facing an axis of evil. Instead, we are in the midst of an ideological conflict. We are facing, the report notes, a loose confederation of people who believe in a perverted stream of Islam that stretches from Ibn Taimaya to Sayyid Qutb. Terrorism is just the means they use to win converts to their cause. It seems like a small distinction - emphasizing ideology instead of terror - but it makes all the difference, because if you don't define your problem correctly, you can't contemplate a strategy for victory.

Protecting the corporate "person"
Bush Moves to Block Medical Suits
By ROBERT PEAR
NYT, 24 July 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush administration has been going to court to block lawsuits by consumers who say they have been injured by prescription drugs and medical devices. The administration contends that consumers cannot recover damages for such injuries if the products have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. In court papers, the Justice Department acknowledges that this position reflects a "change in governmental policy," and it has persuaded some judges to accept its arguments, most recently scoring a victory in the federal appeals court in Philadelphia. Allowing consumers to sue manufacturers would "undermine public health" and interfere with federal regulation of drugs and devices, by encouraging "lay judges and juries to second-guess" experts at the F.D.A., the government said in siding with the maker of a heart pump sued by the widow of a Pennsylvania man. Moreover, it said, if such lawsuits succeed, some good products may be removed from the market, depriving patients of beneficial treatments. In 2002, at a legal symposium, the Bush administration outlined plans for "F.D.A. involvement in product liability lawsuits," and it has been methodically pursuing that strategy. The administration's participation in the cases is consistent with President Bush's position on "tort reform."

23 July 2004

9/11 Panel Releases Unanimous Report, Finding Government Failed on Many Levels
By DAVID STOUT
NYT, 22 July 2004
EXCERPT: The terrorists of Sept. 11, 2001, succeeded because the government of the United States — shackled by a mentality and a national-security bureaucracy more appropriate for a bygone cold war era — failed at many levels, the commission investigating the attacks said today as it warned that other, even deadlier attacks are likely. The commission chairman, Thomas H. Kean, said the worst failure of all was "a failure of imagination," in the sense that the signs had existed for years that an attack was coming. As the report itself put it, "The 9/11 attacks were a shock, but they should not have come as a surprise. Mr. Kean said an attack "of even greater magnitude" than the one in which terrorists used hijacked airliners to destroy the World Trade Center, blast a hole in the Pentagon and kill about 3,000 people is "possible — even probable." "We do not have the luxury of time," Mr. Kean said at a news briefing accompanying release of the book-length report, the product of many months of inquiries in which the panel sifted 2.5 million pages of documents and interviewed more than 1,200 witnesses. He said, as did the commission report, that changes of function and attitude are needed in Congress as well as the executive branch. ...Osama bin Laden has capitalized on seething discontent among people "disoriented by cyclonic change as they confront modernity and globalization," the report says, and used it to build "a dynamic and lethal organization" which, while damaged since Sept. 11, 2001, is still deadly. "We believe we are safer today," the report says. "But we are not safe." Mr. Kean said it was clear there had been many "unexploited opportunities" to thwart or at least interrupt the Sept. 11 plot. The report cites several missed chances and overlooked clues, including the now familiar episode of Zacarias Moussaoui, who aroused suspicion at a Minnesota flight school weeks before the attacks. And on Wednesday, millions of Americans saw a videotape of hijackers who were briefly pulled aside at a security checkpoint at Dulles Airport outside Washington before being allowed to board the jet that they flew into the Pentagon. Sadly, Mr. Kean said, nothing was done that "disturbed or even delayed the progress of the Al Qaeda plot." ...Osama bin Laden has capitalized on seething discontent among people "disoriented by cyclonic change as they confront modernity and globalization," the report says, and used it to build "a dynamic and lethal organization" which, while damaged since Sept. 11, 2001, is still deadly. "We believe we are safer today," the report says. "But we are not safe." Mr. Kean said it was clear there had been many "unexploited opportunities" to thwart or at least interrupt the Sept. 11 plot. The report cites several missed chances and overlooked clues, including the now familiar episode of Zacarias Moussaoui, who aroused suspicion at a Minnesota flight school weeks before the attacks. And on Wednesday, millions of Americans saw a videotape of hijackers who were briefly pulled aside at a security checkpoint at Dulles Airport outside Washington before being allowed to board the jet that they flew into the Pentagon. Sadly, Mr. Kean said, nothing was done that "disturbed or even delayed the progress of the Al Qaeda plot."
Summary from NYT (web page)
Summary from the NYT (pdf file)
Full report from the 9/11 website.
SEE ALSO:
Show Me the Money
By Fred Kaplan
Slate, 22 July 2004
EXCERPT: The biggest puzzle about the 9/11 commission's report is why Thomas Kean, the panel's chairman, said at the start of his press conference this morning that the U.S. government's failure to stop the attack on the World Trade Center was, "above all, a failure of imagination." It was a strange comment because the actual report—a superb, if somewhat dry, piece of work—says nothing of the sort. The failure was not one of imagination but rather of incentives. It turns out that many individuals, panels, and agencies had predicted an attack uncannily similar to what happened on Sept. 11, 2001. The problem was that nobody in a position of power felt compelled to do anything about it.
-As early as 1995, Abdul Hakim Murad told Philippine authorities that he and Ramzi Yousef, who was arrested for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, had planned to fly an airplane into CIA headquarters. This wasn't dismissed as a crazy idea. The year before, a group of Algerians actually had hijacked a plane in France with the intention of crashing it into the Eiffel Tower.
-In September 1998, a U.S. consulate in East Asia was warned about an impending al-Qaida plot to fly an explosives-laden airplane into an American city.
-Around the same time, Richard Clarke, the White House counterterrorism chief, conducted an exercise in which terrorists commandeered a Learjet, loaded it with bombs, and flew it into a target in Washington, D.C. Clarke asked Pentagon officials what they could do to stop such a threat. They answered they could scramble jet fighters, but they would need authority from the president to shoot the plane down. The exercise went no further.
-On Dec. 4, 1998, the President's Daily Brief by the CIA warned that "bin Laden and his allies are preparing for an attack in the US, including an aircraft hijacking" to compel the freeing of those responsible and imprisoned for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
-The North American Aerospace Defense command also conducted an exercise to counter a terrorist attack involving smashing an airplane into a building (though the scenario assumed the plane would be coming from overseas).
-Quite independently, in August 1999, the Federal Aviation Administration's intelligence branch warned of a possible "suicide hijacking operation" by Osama Bin Laden.
-On May 1, 2001, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a circular to airliners, informing them of intelligence reports about a possible terrorist hijacking.
-On June 22, 2001, the CIA notified its station chiefs about an al-Qaida plot to attack American cities with planes.
All of these scenario-spins (plus several others, similarly spelled out in various blue-ribbon commissions) preceded the infamous President's Daily Brief of Aug. 6, 2001, which warned George W. Bush, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US."
SEE ALSO:
Report Cites Lapses Across Government And 2 Presidencies
By DAVID JOHNSTON and DOUGLAS JEHL
NYT, 22 July 2004
EXCERPT: The Clinton and Bush administrations failed to grasp the gravity of the threat from Al Qaeda before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and left counterterrorism efforts to a disparate collection of uncoordinated, underfinanced and dysfunctional government agencies, the commission on the attacks said in its final report published on Thursday. "Across the government, there were failures of imagination, policy, capabilities and management," the panel said in its report, which was harshly critical of how the intelligence, law enforcement and military branches performed before the attacks. In a series of findings that were searing in tone, sweeping in judgment and backed by voluminous reporting, the report said senior officials were repeatedly warned about Osama bin Laden's intentions, but failed to respond with an aggressive sense of national purpose. "Terrorism was not the overriding national security concern for the U.S. government under either the Clinton or the pre 9/11 Bush administration," the report said.

Bush Administration Ignored Warnings About Bin Laden and al Qaeda, Focus Was Always On Iraq
Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 22 July 2004
EXCERPT: Bush came out today and said that if he had known what was coming, he would have expended every effort to stop it, and that so would have Clinton. This statement is, despite its facade of fair-mindedness, so many weasel words. Of course Bush would have tried to stop 9/11 if he had known it was coming.
The question is, "Should he have known it was coming?"
The answer is, "Yes!"
We now know that Bush and his administration came into office obsessed with Iraq. Cheney was looking at maps of Iraq oil fields and muttering about opportunities for US companies there, already in January or February of 2001. Wolfowitz contradicted counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke when the latter spoke of the al-Qaeda threat, insisting that the preeminent threat of terrorism against the US came from Iraq, and indicating he accepted Laurie Mylroie's crackpot conspiracy theory that Saddam was behind the 1993 World Trade Towers bombing. If you believe crackpot theories instead of focusing on the reality--that was an al-Qaeda operation mainly carried out by al-Gamaa al-Islamiyyah, an Egyptian terrorist component allied with Bin Laden-- then you will concentrate on the wrong threat. Even after the attacks on September 11, Bush was obsessing about Iraq. Wolfowitz lied to him and said that there was a 10 to 50% chance that Iraq was behind them. (On what evidence? The hijackers were obviously al-Qaeda, and no operational links between al-Qaeda and Iraq had ever been found). Rumsfeld initially rejected an attack on al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, saying there were "no good targets" in Afghanistan. (What about 40 al-Qaeda bases that had trained the 9/11 hijackers and other terrorists gunning for the United States??) The Pentagon did not even have a plan for dealing with Afghanistan or al-Qaeda that it could pull off the shelf, according to Bob Woodward. Bush did not have his eye on the ball. Neither did Cheney, Rumsfeld, or Wolfowitz. They were playing Captain Ahab to Saddam's great white whale.

Bush War Funding Is Said to Be $12 Billion Short
A new estimate by Congress' investigative arm is triple that of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
AP in LA Times, 22 July 2004
EXCERPT: The Pentagon faces a $12.3-billion shortfall through September for the costs of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and its worldwide effort against terrorism, congressional auditors estimated Wednesday. The amount is triple what Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, projected in April that he would need to make it through September. Lawmakers of both parties had said at the time that his projection seemed too low. The report was written by the Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm, formerly called the General Accounting Office. Its release came a day before Congress was expected to approve a $417.5-billion defense bill for 2005 that includes $25 billion more for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. That $25 billion will be available as soon as President Bush signs the measure, but it is unclear whether the administration will use any of that money until the fall. Democrats used the report to criticize Bush for underestimating the burden the wars — especially in Iraq — have put on taxpayers. "He has grossly mismanaged the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq," said Mark Kitchens, deputy press secretary to the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.).
SEE ALSO: War Funds Dwindling, GAO Warns (Washington Post)

White House Helps Block Extension of Middle Class Tax Cuts
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
NYT,  21 July 2004
EXCERPT: The White House helped to block a Republican-brokered deal on Wednesday to extend several middle-class tax cuts, fearful of a bill that could draw Democratic votes and dilute a Republican campaign theme, Republican negotiators said. The impasse was the latest sign of deep rifts among Republicans about budget issues. House and Senate Republicans had badly wanted to pass a popular tax-cutting bill before the Democratic convention next week. But in an improbable series of machinations, White House officials opposed the tentative deal worked out between House and Senate Republican leaders that would have extended the tax cuts for two years at a cost of about $80 billion. That left Republicans conceding that the tax-cutting effort is over, at least until Congress returns from its recess in September. The Republicans' inability to agree among themselves cost them the chance to highlight their link to tax cuts as the election season moves into high gear. At issue on Wednesday were three "middle-income tax cuts'' that were a central part of President Bush's tax packages of 2001 and 2003. The biggest was a $1,000 child tax credit, which will be reduced to $700 at the end of this year. The other two big measures set to expire are a reduction in the "marriage penalty," which pushes two-income families into higher tax brackets; and an expansion of the 10-percent tax bracket to cut taxes for more middle-income families. House Republicans and the Bush administration had sought to make those tax cuts permanent, but ran into Senate Republican moderates who wanted any more tax cuts offset by either spending cuts or tax increases elsewhere. On Tuesday night, after arduous negotiations, House and Senate Republicans thought they had reached a deal that would extend the tax cuts for just two years but not require that they be offset. White House officials, though, insisted that the tax cuts be extended for at least five years, without paying for them through either tax increases or spending cuts. House Republicans, who had originally sought a five-year extension as well, backed away from the deal on Wednesday once it was clear the White House was not budging.

22 July 2004

War Costs Exceed Budget, Watchdog Panel Says
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
NYT, 21 July 2004
EXCERPT: Military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are running $12.3 billion over budget this year, and Pentagon officials are trying to make up for the shortfall by transferring money from other accounts and delaying refurbishment of worn-out equipment in Iraq, the General Accountability Office said Wednesday. The office, a nonpartisan Congressional agency, estimated that the Army was running about $9.4 billion short of what had been budgeted. By putting off other kinds of spending until next year, the military is likely to run up higher costs in future, said the agency, which was formerly the General Accounting Office. Administration officials have acknowledged that costs in Iraq are running higher than the $65 billion that Congress approved for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the administration's urging, Congress is expected to pass an appropriations bill this week that contains $25 billion in funds for Iraq that can be used immediately. But the new report suggests that the military could use up nearly half of that money by Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year. Democrats seized on the report, attacking the administration for consistently underestimating war costs.

AUDIO LINK
An Economic Recovery in Question?
Robert Reich
Market Place, 21 July 2004
EXCERPT: Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's back on Capitol Hill today to testify more on the state of the economy. Falling energy prices and the Fed's recent interest rate hike may help to keep inflation in check, but is it enough to keep the country's economic recovery going? Marketplace commentator Robert Reich offers his economic outlook in this edition of The Public's Business.
Listen Now

Army to Call Up Recruits Earlier
By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER
NYT, 21 July 2004
EXCERPT: In what critics say is another sign of increasing stress on the military, the Army has been forced to bring more new recruits immediately into the ranks to meet recruiting goals for 2004, instead of allowing them to defer entry until the next accounting year, which starts in October. As a result, recruiters will enter the new year without the usual cushion of incoming soldiers, making it that much harder to make their quotas for 2005. Instead of knowing the names of nearly half the coming year's expected arrivals in October, as the Army did last year, or even the names of around one in three, as is the normal goal, this October the recruiting command will have identified only about one of five of the boot camp class of 2005 in advance. Army officials say they have been unable to defer as many enlistments as in the past because 4,500 more recruits were needed at midyear to help meet a temporary increase of 30,000 soldiers in the active duty force, which is to grow to 512,000 by 2006. The rises are largely driven by the Iraq and Afghanistan missions.

Can't tell the players without a program...
Neocons Revive Cold War Group
by Jim Lobe
Antiwar.com, 21 July 2004
EXCERPT: A bipartisan group of 41 mainly neoconservative foreign-policy hawks has launched the third Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) whose previous two incarnations mobilized public support for rolling back Soviet-led communism but whose new enemy will be "global terrorism." The new group, announced at a Capitol Hill press conference Tuesday, said its "single mission" will be to "advocate policies intended to win the war on global terrorism – terrorism carried out by radical Islamists opposed to freedom and democracy." "The committee intends to remain active until the present danger is no longer a threat, however long that takes," said CPD chairman R. James Woolsey, who served briefly as former President Bill Clinton's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director and has often referred to the battle against radical Islam as "World War IV." ...The two senators also claimed that the new CPD consists of "citizens of diverse political persuasions," although the vast majority of the 41 members are well-known neoconservatives who have strongly helped lead the drive to war in Iraq and have long supported broadening President George W. Bush's "war on terrorism" to include Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia, as well. ...Prominently represented are fellows from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), such as former United Nations Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, Joshua Muravchik, Laurie Mylroie, Danielle Pletka, Michael Rubin and Ben Wattenberg. Members from Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board (DPB) include Kenneth Adelman, Newt Gingrich, and Woolsey himself. Committee members from the Center for Security Policy (CSP), include CSP President Frank Gaffney, Charles Kupperman, William Van Cleave, and Dov Zakheim, who just stepped down as an undersecretary of defense under Rumsfeld. Board members or fellows of several other right-wing or mainly neoconservative think tanks have also joined the new CPD, including the Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institution, the Manhattan Institute, Freedom House, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, the former Committee to Liberate Iraq, the National Institute for Public Policy and Americans for Victory Over Terrorism. The majority of members are associated with policy statements by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) whose charter members in 1997 included Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and a number of other men and women who have pushed for hawkish positions on the Middle East and China, particularly from their perches at senior levels in the Bush administration.
SEE ALSO: The Present Danger
By Joe Lieberman and Jon Kyl
Washington Post, 20 July 2004
Joe Lieberman is a Democratic senator from Connecticut. Jon Kyl is a Republican senator from Arizona. They are honorary co-chairmen of the Committee on the Present Danger.

AP Sues to Obtain Access to Backup of Bush Military Records Pentagon Says Were Destroyed
Daily MisLead, 21 July 2004
EXCERPT: In February, President Bush told a national television audience that he would "absolutely" authorize the release of all records pertaining to his military service after questions had arisen about whether he fulfilled his duty. Days later, the White House claimed it released everything, with Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt telling Fox News the documents were "black and white proof that the president served in the National Guard. " But, as Associated Press now reports, the White House has only released "partial documentation" and has refused to comply with the news service's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the rest of the public record.  As AP notes, "records released so far do not put to rest questions over whether Bush fulfilled his National Guard service for a period during the Vietnam War." Just last week, the Pentagon claimed that key records still not made public about where Bush was were "inadvertently destroyed." While the White House did acknowledge the missing records in February, AP reports that the President still has not authorized the release of copies of destroyed records that are legally required to exist at the Texas state archives.6 That is why the news agency has had to file a FOIA request. In its legal brief demanding the President release the documents he promised to release, AP wrote, "A significant, ongoing controversy exists over the president's military service during the Vietnam War, specifically whether he performed his required service between May and October 1972
SEE ALSO: Bush's AWOL Mission [BWUSA]

AUDIO LINK
Bush Administration Muddies the Water on Hourly Wage Statistics
Diane Rehm Show, 21 July 2004
EXCERPT: June statistics indicate that hourly wages did not keep pace with inflation. We'll talk about the implications for family budgets and the overall economy.
William Beach, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation
Jared Bernstein, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute
James Paulsen, chief investment officer, Wells Capital Management
Listen Now

21 July 2004

Fortress Big Apple: Will the President Escape from New York
By Nick Turse
TomDispatch, 20 July 2004
EXCERPT: Once upon a time in a past not so long ago, New York City was viewed by many in the Republican Party as an enemy outpost in an alien land. Then came the 9/11 attacks and Manhattan became the Bush administration's ground zero in its war against terrorism. On January 31, 2003, with a supposed easy victory in the upcoming war with Iraq looming, it seemed the perfect place for the President to begin an inevitable march to a second term. But like the president's flight in Escape From New York, things have gone awry. New York once again looks like a threatening, alien land and the party of the President whose greatest claim to fame is that he's made Americans "safer" is about to treat the city as if it were Baghdad. The free-speech limiting, life-disrupting, artificial-reality-inducing security "bubbles" that empty the globe's central cities as George Bush and Dick Cheney travel through them, are already well known. From August 30 through September 2, when the Republican National Convention invades New York, the GOP wants to see the same ­ a Manhattan emptied of life and the entire event "bubble-ized." The estimated 48,000 people who will attend the Convention including 2,509 delegates and 2,344 alternate delegates, their hotels, their outings, their travels around the city, the massive media presence (sequestered away in the Farley Post Office Building, connected to MSG via an enclosed, climate-controlled pedestrian bridge to be built across Eighth Avenue); along with the RNC's convention headquarters at Madison Square Garden will all be locked inside that bubble -- and kept from the sight of the feared hundreds of thousands of citizens heading for the Garden to tell the President he's "not welcome." To contain protesters and "protect" GOP'ers and fellow travelers, New York City is engaging in some of the same sorts of permit games that typified the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Mayor Richard J. Daley's Chicago.

Former GOP Enviro Chief Upset with Bush, Plans to Vote for Kerry
Capitol Hill Blue, 20 July 2004
EXCERPT: The head of the Environmental Protection Agency for two Republican presidents criticized President Bush's record on Monday, calling it a "polluter protection" policy. Russell E. Train, who headed the EPA from September 1973 to January 1977 - part of the Nixon and Ford administrations - said Bush's record on the environment was so dismal that he would cast his vote for Democrat John Kerry. "It's almost as if the motto of the administration in power today in Washington is not environmental protection, but polluter protection," Train said. "I find this deeply disturbing." In 1988, Train was co-chairman of Conservationists for Bush, an organization that backed the candidacy of George W. Bush's father. Train spoke at an event organized by Environment2004, which opposes Bush's environmental record. He accused Bush of weakening the Clean Air Act and said the president's record falls short of those set by former Republican presidents, from Theodore Roosevelt, who advocated creating national parks and forests, to George H.W. Bush, who supported revised standards for clean air.

Report Reveals Bush Administration Has Blocked Court-Approved Payments to Black Farmers
BushGreenWatch, 20 July 2004
EXCERPT: Aggressive legal tactics by the Bush administration have deliberately undermined a landmark 1997 civil rights settlement with African-American farmers, turning the claims process into another chapter in a long history of discriminatory treatment by the US Department of Agriculture. A report released today by Environmental Working Group (EWG) and the National Black Farmers Association (NBFA) finds that almost nine out of 10 black farmers have been denied compensation for discrimination over USDA crop loans, even though U.S. District Court for the District Columbia -- in approving the settlement -- had described compensation payment as "automatic." Instead the USDA, under the leadership of President Bush's Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman, has withheld three-quarters of the $2.3 billion agreed to in the settlement.

A Bush Referendum
Mark Hertsgaard
The overwhelming tide of support Bush enjoyed after 9/11 has decidedly turned, and the third of the electorate that identifies itself as moderate is no longer rallying behind their man. Like Sen. Joseph McCarthy was 50 years ago, Bush is poised for the fall from power. From public distrust to the "official" dissent of former CIA agents and ambassadors, Mark Hertsgaard spells out why Bush can't expect four more years in November.
TomPaine.com, 20 July 2004
EXCERPT: At the height of his power, Joseph McCarthy appeared to be invincible. Beginning in 1950, the senator from Wisconsin made a name for himself by waving around documents supposedly listing hundreds of communists employed by the U.S. government. For the next four years, no one in official Washington dared stand up to McCarthy for fear of being called communist themselves. But in 1954, drunk with power, McCarthy went too far: he attacked the U.S. Army. The Washington establishment soon turned against him as an unsteady extremist, and within months the Senate had censured him, ending his career. Fifty years later, George W. Bush is about to suffer a similar fate. Bush too looked invincible after the 9/11 attacks and the war in Afghanistan. With help from his advisers, Bush too intimidated critics into silence by challenging their patriotism. And Bush too eventually over-reached, insisting on a war in Iraq that has now blown up in his face. Only 43 percent of the American public want president Bush re-elected, according to Time magazine's July 19 poll, while 53 percent want a new president. During the last 50 years, no U.S. president suffering such poor approval ratings four months before Election Day has recovered to win a second term.

Damage Control
Voters need to believe that John Kerry can put the country back on track.
by PHILIP GOUREVITCH
New Yorker, 26 July issue
EXCERPT: “Simply put,” Kerry declared, “the Bush Administration has pursued the most arrogant, inept, reckless, and ideological foreign policy in modern history” "In the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks, the world rallied to the common cause of fighting terrorism. But President Bush has squandered that historic moment. . . . He rushed into battle—and he went almost alone. . . . I believed a year ago and I believe now that we had to hold Saddam Hussein accountable and that we needed to lead in that effort. But this Administration did it in the worst possible way: without the United Nations, without our allies, without a plan to win the peace. So we are left asking: How is it possible to liberate a country, depose a ruthless dictator who at least in the past had weapons of mass destruction, and convert a preordained success into a diplomatic fiasco? How is it possible to do what the Bush Administration has done in Iraq: win a great military victory yet make America weaker?" Kerry called on the Administration to “swallow its pride” and do what it should have done in the first place: bring in the U.N. and the “international community” to help America succeed instead of inviting failure alone. Kerry’s position has not changed, and, seven months later, his critique of Bush is shared by a growing majority of voters. But passionate antipathy to Bush has not translated into a corresponding enthusiasm for Kerry. ...Subtract Iraq from the equation, and this would be a completely different election. Had Bush prosecuted the war differently—with the degree of international backing that Kerry advocated—or focussed his warrior energies after September 11th on making a success of rebuilding Afghanistan and pursuing Al Qaeda, who would now hold it against him? ...Despite the bloody and embittering disarray of Iraqi life after more than a year under the American dispensation, Bush describes the Iraq adventure as a great success for the cause of freedom—exactly as he said it would be before the war. The main change in attitude lies in the grammatical perspective, a shift in tense from future perfect to present continuous. If anything, Bush’s insistence on the righteousness of his script has intensified. He jokes about never reading newspapers, lets it be known that he communicates with the Almighty, and dismisses his critics as pessimists. He told the nation that if he had made any mistakes he was unaware of them, and he said, “I fully understand the consequences of what we’re doing. We’re changing the world.”

"The Communists had PRAVDA.  Republicans have FOX."
MoveOn.org print ad that ran in today's New York Times (pdf file)

Warner Helped the Rev. Moon - Conservatives Misled Again
Senator's Office Says He Arranged for Meeting Space in March
By Charles Babington
Washington Post, 21 July 2004
EXCERPT: Sen. John W. Warner's office acknowledged yesterday that the Virginia Republican arranged for religious activists to use a Senate office building last March for a ceremony in which the Rev. Sun Myung Moon declared himself the Messiah and said his teachings have helped Hitler and Stalin be "reborn as new persons." The senator did not attend the coronation-like ceremony or realize it would involve Moon, a controversial figure who spent 18 months in prison in the 1980s for tax fraud, said Warner spokesman John Ullyot. "Our office felt misled" after news accounts described a long ceremony in which Moon and his wife were crowned as leaders of international peace, he said.

20 July 2004

Krugman's Pitch: "The Arabian Candidate"
NYT, 20 July 2004
EXCERPT: The Arabian candidate wouldn't openly help terrorists. Instead, he would serve their cause while pretending to be their enemy. After an attack, he would strike back at the terrorist base, a necessary action to preserve his image of toughness, but botch the follow-up, allowing the terrorist leaders to escape. Once the public's attention shifted, he would systematically squander the military victory: committing too few soldiers, reneging on promises of economic aid. Soon, warlords would once again rule most of the country, the heroin trade would be booming, and terrorist allies would make a comeback. Meanwhile, he would lead America into a war against a country that posed no imminent threat. He would insinuate, without saying anything literally false, that it was somehow responsible for the terrorist attack. This unnecessary war would alienate our allies and tie down a large part of our military. At the same time, the Arabian candidate would neglect the pursuit of those who attacked us, and do nothing about regimes that really shelter anti-American terrorists and really are building nuclear weapons. Again, he would take care to squander a military victory. The Arabian candidate and his co-conspirators would block all planning for the war's aftermath; they would arrange for our army to allow looters to destroy much of the country's infrastructure. Then they would disband the defeated regime's army, turning hundreds of thousands of trained soldiers into disgruntled potential insurgents. After this it would be easy to sabotage the occupied country's reconstruction, simply by failing to spend aid funds or rein in cronyism and corruption. Power outages, overflowing sewage and unemployment would swell the ranks of our enemies. Who knows? The Arabian candidate might even be able to deprive America of the moral high ground, no mean trick when our enemies are mass murderers, by creating a climate in which U.S. guards torture, humiliate and starve prisoners, most of them innocent or guilty of only petty crimes.

Governors Tell of War's Impact on Local Needs
By SARAH KERSHAW
NYT, 20 July 2004
EXCERPT: With tens of thousands of their citizen soldiers now deployed in Iraq, many of the nation's governors complained on Sunday to senior Pentagon officials that they were facing severe manpower shortages in guarding prisoners, fighting wildfires, preparing for hurricanes and floods and policing the streets. Concern among the governors about the war's impact at home has been rising for months, but it came into sharp focus this weekend as they gathered for their four-day annual conference here and began comparing the problems they faced from the National Guard's largest callup since World War II. On Sunday, the governors held a closed-door meeting with two top Pentagon officials and voiced their concerns about the impact both on the troops' families and on the states' ability to deal with disasters and crime. Much of the concern has focused on wildfires, which have started to destroy vast sections of forests in several Western states. The governor of Oregon, Ted Kulongoski, a Democrat, said in an interview after meetings here Monday that the troop deployment had left his National Guard with half the usual number of firefighters because about 400 of them were overseas while a hot, dry summer was already producing significant fires in his state.

Terrorism and the Election: Trial Balloons and Spin
By Norman Solomon
AlterNet, 16 July 2004
EXCERPT: Tom Ridge, the federal official in charge of defending the United States against terrorism, was on message when he told a July 14 news conference: "We don't do politics at Homeland Security." Such high-level claims of patriotic purity have been routine since 9/11. But in this election year, they're more ludicrous than ever. Days earlier, alongside a photo of Ridge, a headline on USA Today's front page had declared: "Election Terror Threat Intensifies." There was unintended irony in the headline. While a real threat of terrorism exists in the United States, we should also acknowledge that an intensifying "election terror threat" is coming from the Bush administration. With scarcely 100 days to go until Election Day, the White House is desperate to wring every ounce of advantage from the American Flag, patriotism, apple pie – and the subject of "terrorism."

Kerry Building Legal Network for Vote Fights
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
NYT, 20 July 2004
EXCERPT: Mindful of the election problems in Florida four years ago, aides to Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, say his campaign is putting together a far more intricate set of legal safeguards than any presidential candidate before him to monitor the election. Aides to Mr. Kerry say the campaign is taking the unusual step of setting up a nationwide legal network under its own umbrella, rather than relying, as in the past, on lawyers associated with state Democratic parties. The aides said they were recruiting people based on their skills as litigators and election lawyers, rather than rewarding political connections or big donors.

Bush's Agenda on Slow Track
With Democrats united and the GOP divided, the White House faces a congressional logjam. Election-year politics are a key factor, experts say.
By Janet Hook
LA Times,  20 July 2004
EXCERPT: After three years of getting most of the major legislation he wanted through a cooperative Congress, President Bush is coming up almost empty-handed this year as he heads into the homestretch of his reelection campaign. Capitol Hill has turned into a sinkhole for the unfinished business on Bush's agenda, which includes bills to spur domestic energy production, crack down on lawsuits, extend his 2001 tax cuts and liberalize immigration rules. Bush and his GOP allies blame the Democrats for the stalemate, as the minority party has become more united and stubborn in its opposition to White House initiatives. But many issues, such as highway funding and additional tax cuts, have languished not just because of Democratic obstruction but also because of divisions among Republicans — between the House and Senate, moderates and conservatives, and Bush and congressional leaders. Last week's Senate debate on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage was symptomatic of the many forces conspiring to turn this year into a legislative bust for the White House. Despite Bush's strong push for the amendment — a crowd pleaser for his party's conservative wing — it met with resounding defeat in the face of solid Democratic opposition and a divided Republican Party. Even in the House, where Republicans are generally more disciplined in following Bush, his agenda is facing challenges. The House this month nearly passed a measure to scale back Bush's signature anti-terrorism law, the Patriot Act. Only an intensive, 11th-hour round of arm-twisting by GOP leaders spared Bush an embarrassing defeat.

Health Care in the U.S. Inferior and Costs More
By JEFF MADRICK
NYT, 8 July 2004
EXCERPT: Americans spend some 14 percent of gross domestic product on health care, while other advanced nations spend an average of 8 percent. In the United States, the proportion may rise to 18 percent by 2013. Yet in general, judging by life span and infant mortality, most developed nations are healthier than the United States. More detailed studies find similar results. For example, a study recently published by the Commonwealth Fund measured quality of care in specific areas of medicine in five nations. It showed that America was superior in only a few. For example, this country topped the list in survival rates for breast cancer but was at the bottom for kidney transplants. It was typically in the middle in most other areas measured. What may surprise readers, and certainly surprised this writer, is that Americans, by paying so much more, do not have many more services. In fact, according to recent research, they typically have fewer. Consider the number of doctors. In 2001, the United States had 2.7 doctors per 1,000 people, compared with a median of 3.1 in the countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. France, accused of having a doctor shortage in last summer's heat wave, had 3.3 per 1,000. Also, consider the number of hospital beds. The United States has only 2.9 hospital beds per 1,000 people, compared with the O.E.C.D. median of 3.9. Germany has 6.3. The United States is also behind in the actual days spent in a hospital and hospital admissions per capita. These are not necessarily bad in themselves, but the question is why we spend so much. The reason for the high level of American spending, argue the researchers - Uwe E. Reinhardt of Princeton and Peter S. Hussey and Gerard F. Anderson of Johns Hopkins - is that American doctors and hospitals charge much more. Americans also usually pay significantly more for drugs, they say, and administration expenses are exorbitant. The researchers argue that there is an imbalance in bargaining power between the providers of medical services, which are usually large hospitals and hospital chains, and the buyers, which are fragmented into thousands of insurance companies and health maintenance organizations. Thus, the providers can get away with unusually high prices. In some countries, insurers are sometimes allowed to bargain for better prices collectively. In others, the government itself does the bargaining. Such research provides a stronger argument than in the past for tougher bargaining by government for services and drugs, Mr. Reinhardt said, adding that Medicare and the Veterans Administration could lead the way.

The Man Behind The Curtain
John Prados
TomPaine.com, 19 July 2004
EXCERPT: What exactly can we deduce from the Senate Intelligence Committee Report about President Bush's role in pushing faulty Iraq intelligence? Because the Senate isn't taking up the question of how the intelligence was used, many are saying the report neither indicts or exonerates the president. Not exactly, says Prados, an analyst at the NSA. He points to several facts that show the intelligence used to sell the war was an afterthought for the White House.

Fox News' Use of 'Fair and Balanced' Challenged Legally
By Jake Coyle
AP in TBO.com, 19 July 2004
EXCERPT: Fox News' use of the slogan "Fair and Balanced" constitutes deceptive advertising, two political advocacy groups claimed today in a petition filed with the Federal Trade Commission. Liberal MoveOn.org and historically nonpartisan Common Cause assert that Fox News' reports are "deliberately and consistently distorted and twisted to promote the Republican Party of the U.S. and an extreme right-wing viewpoint." Alleging consumer fraud, the complaint calls for the FTC to order Fox News, consistently the highest-rated cable news network, to cease and desist from using the slogan. Irena Briganti, a Fox News spokesperson, told The Associated Press that "while this is clearly a transparent publicity stunt, we recognize all forms of free speech and wish them well." James Kaminski, a former FTC lawyer currently practicing advertising law with Arent Fox Attorneys, sees little chance for the petition, noting that the FTC does not wade in political waters. "Whether (Fox is) biased or not ... it's a freedom of speech issue," he said. But Chellie Pingree, president of Common Cause, said the legal actions were consistent with the First Amendment. "Fox has no obligation under the law to be fair and balanced, just not to market itself as fair and balanced," he said. After a press conference announcing the petition, members of MoveOn.org and Common Cause marched to the Fox News Headquarters to hand out DVDs of the recent documentary "Outfoxed," which alleges a pattern of right-wing biases in the network's reporting, citing statements by former Fox employees and internal memos.
The documentary is "Exhibit A" in the FTC petition.

Spin Zones, Flag Waving and Shouting to Catch a Fox
By A. O. SCOTT
NYT, 20 July 2004
EXCERPT: In the soggy early evening hours on Sunday about 60 people gathered in Zebulon, a modest bar on a not yet completely chic block in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, to watch "Outfoxed," Robert Greenwald's new documentary about the Fox News Channel. The event was one of many "house parties" — dozens in New York City and around 3,500 nationwide — organized by MoveOn.Org, which helped produce the film, along with the Center for American Progress. (The film, which does not have a theatrical distributor, is also being sold on line as a DVD.) Zebulon, a recently opened establishment aiming for a lived-in, neighborhood feel, serves a smattering of reds and whites by the glass, as well as snacks including Camembert on toasted slices of baguette. So you might say (or perhaps Fox News might say) that the crowd on Sunday — young, hip, and partisan — represented a bohemian, early-21st-century incarnation of a political archetype that flourished (at least in conservative imaginations) in the 1970's and 80's: the wine-and-cheese liberal. An unscientific glance around the room suggested that a plurality of those in attendance preferred beer to wine. The audience's frequent cheers and hisses suggested that they enjoyed the movie: which is to say that they were, as the filmmakers intended, outraged by it.

19 July 2004

Bush's safer world...
C.I.A. Sends Terror Experts to Tell Small Towns of Risk
By DAVID JOHNSTON and DOUGLAS JEHL
NYT, 18 July 2004
EXCERPT: The Central Intelligence Agency has begun a series of terrorism briefings for state and local law enforcement personnel, for the first time dispatching counterterrorism experts to cities and small towns to warn of the possibility of an attack by Al Qaeda this year, government officials said this week. The C.I.A. briefings, which are being coordinated by the F.B.I., are conducted by intelligence analysts from the agency's Directorate of Intelligence. They have visited small cities and towns across the country, the officials said, with more meetings planned. Many of the briefers are analysts from the C.I.A.'s Counterterrorism Center at the agency's headquarters at Langley, Va., which sifts through thousands of pieces of information to track terrorists worldwide. Sometimes they have been joined by the C.I.A.'s officers who work in several large cities in the United States, one intelligence official said. The center started the briefings in recent weeks to advise local authorities about the terror threat as part of an effort "to put some context and flavor into the current threat environment," which government officials have described as the most serious since the months before the Sept. 11 attacks, the intelligence official said. In part, the briefings are a direct response to rising fears of a Qaeda attack sometime this year and reflect the government's willingness to take previously untried steps to detect and possibly deter an attack. This week, the country's new acting intelligence chief, John E. McLaughlin, was the latest senior administration official to warn that the threat of terrorist attack on the United States is more significant than at any other time since Sept. 11.

Hourly Pay in U.S. Not Keeping Pace With Price Rises
By EDUARDO PORTER
NYT, 18 July 2004
EXCERPT: The amount of money workers receive in their paychecks is failing to keep up with inflation. Though wages should recover if businesses continue to hire, three years of job losses have left a large worker surplus.  "There's too much slack in the labor market to generate any pressure on wage growth,'' said Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research institution based in Washington. "We are going to need a much lower unemployment rate.'' He noted that at 5.6 percent, the national unemployment rate is still back at the same level as at the end of the recession in November 2001. Even though the economy has been adding hundreds of thousands of jobs almost every month this year, stagnant wages could put a dent in the prospects for economic growth, some economists say. If incomes continue to lag behind the increase in prices, it may hinder the ability of ordinary workers to spend money at a healthy clip, undermining one of the pillars of the expansion so far. Declining wages are likely to play a prominent role in the current presidential campaign. Growing employment has lifted President Bush's job approval ratings on the economy of late. According to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, in mid-July, 42 percent of those polled approved of the president's handling of the economy, up from 38 percent in mid-March.

Working Class Woes — Part 2
One of the reasons the working class is doing so poorly these days is that no one stands up for them anymore...
Thomas Frank, author of What's the Matter With Kansas?, LA Times via The Washington Monthly, 18 July 2004
EXCERPT:

[Moderate DLC] Democrats explicitly rule out what they deride as "class warfare" and take great pains to emphasize their friendliness to business interests....The Republicans, meanwhile, were industriously fabricating their own class-based language of the right, and while they made their populist appeal to blue-collar voters, Democrats were giving those same voters — their traditional base — the big brushoff, ousting their representatives from positions within the party and consigning their issues, with a laugh and a sneer, to the dustbin of history. A more ruinous strategy for Democrats would be difficult to invent. And the ruination just keeps on coming.

Frank's thesis is that Republicans have successfully wooed blue collar workers via social wedge issues, while at the same time Democrats have decided to move upscale. The result is that neither party cares much about the economic issues of the working class
SEE ALSO: Working Class Woes --Part 1 (NYT)

Designer Administration, Color-Coded World
TomPaine.com, 18 July 2004
EXCERPT: Having color-coded the world of danger with a somewhat puzzling set of primary colors, Homeland Security officials proceeded, from March 2002 on, to issue confusing, exceedingly vague terror alerts at regular intervals, evidently based on little or no actual information ("background chatter"). They did this in part, undoubtedly, to scare us all; in part to cover themselves in case something else horrific should indeed happen on their watch ("you see, we predicted it…"); and in part because of their own fears. They then struggled with the appropriate color level to scare or calm the public, knowing that any jump in colors involved dumping yet more financial burdens on desperate state and local officials.

Curveballs to Congress
The Senate Intelligence Committee has spoken on the intelligence that led us to war. If only we had known ...
By Murray Waas
The American Prospect, 16 July 2004
EXCERPT: The Senate report concludes that every rationale advanced by President George W. Bush -- before the American people; before the Congress that authorized him to go to war; and before the international community, most notably in the February 5, 2003, address by Secretary of State Colin Powell to the United Nations Security Council -- was based on either faulty or exaggerated intelligence, outright fraud, or deception. In some instances, if the report is correct, blame falls squarely on the CIA; its “group think,” as the Senate report describes it; its risk adverse insular culture; and its reluctance to challenge not only its own longstanding notions but also those of a president so intent on war. In other instances, it is open to interpretation as to who was more at fault: our intelligence agencies, President Bush, or a too credulous Congress and news media. Unfortunately a second phase of the investigation, which will examine the role of the Bush White House in pressuring the CIA and other agencies, the misuse of intelligence by the White House, and whether senior administration officials misled Congress, will not be completed until well after the November elections. In the meantime, it's clear that regarding at least one of the rationales for going to war cited by the president -- that Saddam Hussein was working hand-in-hand with al-Qaeda on terrorist plots to attack the United States -- both the CIA and FBI repeatedly warned the White House that, despite their best efforts, they were unable to find supporting evidence. Nevertheless, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney repeatedly continued to make these assertions. The Senate report leaves no doubt the canard of collaboration between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden was perpetuated only by the Bush White House. Asked Sunday on Meet the Press whether Congress would have authorized the president to go to war if they'd been told the truth, Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, replied, “I doubt if the votes would have been there.” Similarly, West Virginia Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, the committee’s vice chairman, told reporters last week, “We in Congress would not have authorized that war, in 75 votes, if we knew what we know now.” Even Secretary Powell has said he very well might not have supported war if he knew the intelligence was not accurate.

How Kerry Can Win
by Kevin Phillips
The Nation., 15 July 2004
EXCERPT: While attempts to harness "Anybody but Bush" psychologies and to attract voters without saying much that is controversial might win Kerry a narrow victory, this strategy would be unlikely to create a framework for successful four- or eight-year governance. Deconstructing the Republican coalition is a better long-term bet, and could be done. The result, however, might be to uncage serious progressive reform. ...Despite the Republican weakness evident in 1992 and Bush's second-place finish in 2000, Rove is notable for his preoccupation with the GOP "base," which he presumably thinks of in normal majoritarian terms. However, in the case of Bush's running for election or re-election, it is also useful--and the Democrats of 2004 would find it particularly worthwhile--to focus on the GOP's "unbase." This, in essence, is the 20-25 percent of the party electorate that has been won at various points by three national anti-Bush primary and general election candidates with Republican origins: Ross Perot (1992), John McCain (2000) and, in a lesser vein, Patrick Buchanan (1992). Most of the shared Perot-McCain issues--campaign and election reform, opposition to the religious right, distaste for Washington lobbyists, opposition to upper-bracket tax biases and runaway deficits, criticism of corporations and CEOs--are salient today and more compatible with the mainstream moderate reformist Democratic viewpoint than with the lobbyist-driven Bush Administration. Perot and Buchanan's economic nationalism (anti-outsourcing, anti-NAFTA) and criticism of Iraq policy under the two Bushes is also shared by many Democrats. Taking things somewhat further, these members of the "unbase" of the Republican presidential coalition ought to be the Democrats' key target because (1) they have some degree of skepticism about Bush and (2) they are the segment of the GOP coalition most logically open to recruitment for a progressive realignment, short-term or otherwise. That is the way small or large realignments work: by wooing the most empathetic part of the current coalition.

Swingers
Sex in marriage, compassionate conservatism, and shocking news about the battleground states.
By Terence Samuel
The American Prospect, 16 July 2004
EXCERPT: “We argue that heterosexual marriage must be deliberately fostered because it involves much more than copulation,” offered Senator Rick Santorum, the Pennsylvania Republican, who is one of the main sponsors of the amendment. He admitted that gay marriage was not really a threat to heterosexual relations -- but that was not the point. “People will continue to hook up,” Santorum acknowledged, but at a high cost to society. “Will heterosexuals continue to, you know, copulate? Sure. But will they build families?” It is worth noting that that little soliloquy makes Santorum the second high-ranking Republican in recent weeks, the vice president being the first, to choose the Senate floor as an arena for the discussion of sexual acts. In truth, the whole gay-marriage-amendment debate has taken on an air of desperation for the Republicans. Santorum, who chairs the Senate Republican Conference, admitted that he couldn’t count on winning a simple majority for the amendment, even with 51 GOP senators. And nothing may show the depth of the GOP’s concern more than the White House’s decision last week to use the president’s weekly radio address to wade headlong into the debate on gay marriage. “Overreaching judges could declare that all marriages recognized in Massachusetts or San Francisco be recognized as marriages everywhere else,” the president lamented. “ … The union of a man and woman is the most enduring human institution, and the law can teach respect or disrespect for that institution.” Bush urged passage and ratification of the amendment. It won’t happen, but his base will be happy -- and that makes political sense, because the president understands that for him to win, his base has to be very, very good to him.

Fox News: Unfair and Unbalanced
It's time the Fox News Channel stopped using its ridiculously inaccurate "Fair and Balanced" slogan. AlterNet has filed a legal challenge to that trademark and joined a campaign against Rupert Murdoch's partisan network.
By Don Hazen
AlterNet, 18 July 2004
EXCERPT: As Robert Greenwald's film "Outfoxed" generates controversy and acclaim, AlterNet joins MoveOn.org in a major campaign to challenge Fox as a partisan news channel – a 24/7 commercial for a political party, and an insult to America's media consumers. And we're going to need your help to carry the battle forward. Is the Fox News Channel about to lose its "Fair and Balanced" trademark? Nothing is more likely to make a serious journalist, or a concerned news consumer, gag than hearing the Fox News Channel smugly refer to itself, day after day, as being "fair and balanced." But what really rubs salt in the wound is this: Fox has actually registered those three words – "fair and balanced" – as its signature trademark. Does this mean that all journalists and news organizations in the world are legally forbidden to use those words – not only to describe themselves – but for virtually any purpose whatsoever?
SEE ALSO:
Outfoxing the Conservatives
By Nikki Finke, LA Weekly
AlterNet, 15 July 2004
The director of a new movie exposing Fox News talks about his journey from TV nice guy to rightwing nemesis.

Click here for articles in our archives.