Over the Edge and Outmatched

http://www.pugbus.net/Politics/03272005_fischer.htm
President Bush Blames Drop in Popularity on Bobby Fischer
By Phil MaggittiWASHINGTON – An unusually contrite President George W. Bush apologized to the American people during his weekly radio address yesterday for ignoring renegade chess champion Bobby Fischer and “the threat he poses to the future of chess in our country.” The president, whose job approval rating plunged to an all-time low of 45 percent in a poll released on Friday, said he deserved the low rating for disappointing “decent, god-fearing American chess players.”
“I accept responsibility for squandering some of my political capital on other people’s trivial agendas while an avowed enemy of American chess was making terroristic threats against the game and the people who play it in this country. I will not allow such conduct to go unchecked. Mr. Fischer will be made to answer for his remarks.”
Bush also announced that unless “the rogue state of Iceland” hands Fischer over to American authorities “sooner rather than later,” it risks being added to the axis of evil.
“The friend of our enemy is the enemy of our nation’s friends,” declared Bush. “The United States won’t be fooled again by Iceland’s willingness to shelter terrorists.”
Ironically, Bobby Fischer was once a chess superstar in the United States, capable of drawing hundreds of people to a match. He fell from grace when he played former Russian chess champion Boris Spassky in the former Yugoslavia in 1992. The match violated U.N. sanctions that prohibited board games in Yugoslavia at the time. Therefore, the U.S. State Department issued a warrant for Fischer’s arrest.
Fischer, who won the unsanctioned match and $3.35 million, has been a fugitive from justice and the IRS ever since, hiding in a series of underground chess cells around the world. Periodically he released statements in which he threatened to train a “worldwide army of chess masters who would rise up to destroy America’s flabby, self-indulgent chess players.”
Fischer’s odyssey ended last summer when he showed up in a Japanese airport disguised as Rip Van Winkle. He was jailed after he had attempted to use a revoked U.S. passport to travel to Afghanistan. Washington requested that Fischer be deported to America to stand trial. While Japan was mulling over that request, Iceland stepped in and granted Fischer “full citizenship with all the rights and privileges that entails, including a complete catalog of Bjork CDs.”
On his way from Japan to Iceland, Fischer, 62, declared, "This was not an arrest, it was a kidnapping masterminded by the corrupt chess establishments in Japan and the United States. Bush and Koizum (the prime minister of Japan) are war criminals. They should be hung. I am an unrepentant enemy of the hypocritical and corrupt United States chess establishment.”
Despite his paranoid ravings and unsavory appearance, Fischer is a national hero in Iceland, a island nation the size of Kentucky, because he defeated Boris Spassky there in a chess match in 1972. Replays of that match are shown weekly on Iceland’s most popular television station, The Chess Network, and children in Iceland’s schools know the details of the match as well as they know their own names.
“We are a nation of chess players,” declared Gudmundur Dorarinsson Skalason, president of the largest chess club in Iceland. “We may be small (Iceland’s population is 300,000), but the Goddess Freija makes us strong.”
Freija, who is possessed of supernatural powers and exceptionally large breasts, drives a black-and-red checkerboard chariot drawn by a fiery team of knights that move either two spaces forward or backward and one space to the side—or one space to the side and two spaces forward or backward.
The Democratic response to President Bush’s address was delivered by former vice presidential candidate John Edwards, who was captain of his state championship chess team in high school. Edwards questioned the president’s “sudden commitment” to chess and implied that Bush, “who seldom attended meetings of the chess club at Yale,” was unfit to lead American chess players in this time of crisis. Edwards also warned the American people about “the dangers of trying to establish United States chess supremacy at gunpoint.”


More to the point the president bush shows how far he is willing to take the "terrorist" rhetoric. The bush is way over the edge. Let's make an enemy of Iceland by calling it a part of the axis of evil for harboring Fischer who has called the president a war criminal. Nothing personal going on here. I am beginning to enjoy Fischer's exploits--his assertion of a conspiracy seems all the more credible now--and I think American chess players will agree that the war criminal is no match for the outspoken Icelander.
In a related story Putin has his own chess champion to deal with.


http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/03/15/russia/index_np.html
By Simon Tisdall
March 15, 2005
The decision by Gary Kasparov, the world's top chess player, to retire from the game and devote his talents to opposing Vladimir Putin will hardly induce the Kremlin's grandmaster to resign his position. But Kasparov's move reflects broader, increasingly vocal discontent over the president's perceived descent into authoritarianism. The Putin paradox is that the more he tries to exert control, the more uncontrollable a changing Russia may ultimately prove to be.
Kasparov's assertion that the country "is heading down the wrong path" echoed the words of a more formidable political figure, Mikhail Kasyanov, prime minister during Putin's first term and finance minister under Boris Yeltsin.

Dishonest Editorial

Here’s an example of propaganda disguised as an editorial in the Washington Post today (Dishonest Debate below). However, it is so ineptly written, and filled with contradictions within itself, that it’s hard to believe the editorial board even thought it might be believed. It ends up being a failed deceit. Just as those it seeks to champion are failures.

And thanks to Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo for calling our attention to it. [ Much of this is demonstrated in George Orwell’s Politics & the English Language, posted at the Guerrilla Campaign http://tmars.iwarp.com/guerrilla_campaign/politics_and_the_English_language.htm

Read this:
The trustees' report, according to Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), "confirms that the so-called Social Security crisis exists in only one place: the minds of Republicans." The senator's desire to score political points is understandable. His willingness to do so by implying that Social Security is healthy is not.

In Mr. Reid’s statement that the WaPo quotes above, he states that there is no crisis, NOT that SocSec was healthy. Didn’t even imply it.

Democrats defend this opportunism by saying the president is worse. President Bush, they complain, is talking up an alleged Social Security "crisis" in order to ram through an unrelated proposal to create personal accounts. But, in addressing Social Security, Mr. Bush is taking on an issue that the Clinton administration also regarded as important; he is not inventing a problem. He can be faulted for not specifying the benefit cuts or tax hikes he favors to restore solvency, but at least he acknowledges some will be needed.

The same twisting of their own sentences here create a far different picture of what they state are the facts: 1.) Clinton considered it important; 2.) the president bush is claiming a crisis. And he has already said that any tax hikes are “off the table”

But it's hard to take seriously the Democrats who say that Mr. Bush should switch focus from Social Security to the much bigger problem of Medicare: If they aren't willing to play a constructive role on the supposedly "minor" challenge of Social Security, why should anyone believe that they would behave constructively if the administration wanted to fix Medicare? [emphasis mine]

The Washington Post knows that bush does not want any increase in revenue to adjust SocSec funding. The paper also knows that the only “proposal” presented by bush are his “private accounts”, which he insists be carved out of revenue. The administration has already admitted that the “private accounts” will not do anything to address “solvency for Social Security”. So for the WaPo to say the the president bush is being in any way constructive towards SocSec, is false. In the paper’s own pages they have already printed those facts. So, to be blunt, the Post is doing some scamming and shilling. The Democrats, long ago, said to bush “take the private accounts off the table, and we’ll come to the table”. The president bush has refused.

Maybe the Post might wish to scold the bush into fixing something, anything, if they feel the need to do some scolding. The agenda of the administration and it’s minions is to destroy Social Security, and Medicare, not fix them, because they don’t care what happens to the “ordinary people”, as long as they can slip more money to their “base”. They’ve said so themselves. So, why should anyone believe the administration wanted to fix Social Security? This editorial doesn’t explain.

If the Washington Post editorial page wishes to shill for the administration, and its failures, that’s fine. It has the right. But c’mon, be honest about it. The conclusion I draw from this is that the Post doesn’t have enough courage to be honest in the face of America’s opposition. And neither does the bush administration. They do like to strut around like ballsy men, though, don’t they?

Just so.

---

Dishonest Debate
Friday, March 25, 2005; Page A18
washingtonpost.com
Editorial
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64553-2005Mar24.html

ONE CAN DEBATE the merits of creating personal accounts in Social Security but not the case for fixing the program's solvency problems. Over the next 75 years, as the Social Security trustees reported on Wednesday, the program has a projected deficit of $4 trillion; the longer the nation waits to address this problem, the nastier the tax hikes or benefit reductions that will result. But that's not the impression conveyed by some Democratic leaders. The trustees' report, according to Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), "confirms that the so-called Social Security crisis exists in only one place: the minds of Republicans." The senator's desire to score political points is understandable. His willingness to do so by implying that Social Security is healthy is not.

Democrats defend this opportunism by saying the president is worse. President Bush, they complain, is talking up an alleged Social Security "crisis" in order to ram through an unrelated proposal to create personal accounts. But, in addressing Social Security, Mr. Bush is taking on an issue that the Clinton administration also regarded as important; he is not inventing a problem. He can be faulted for not specifying the benefit cuts or tax hikes he favors to restore solvency, but at least he acknowledges some will be needed. In that context, personal accounts are not irrelevant; they involve risks, but they are potentially a way of cushioning the necessary benefit cuts in the traditional Social Security system.

Democrats are right that the Bush tax cuts have created a much bigger crisis: Their impact on the deficit over the next 75 years, as estimated by the Congressional Budget Office, is about three times greater than the Social Security shortfall projected by the trustees. It is also true that Medicare poses more of a problem than Social Security. Mr. Bush dodges that larger problem, pretending that he put Medicare on the road to reform when, in fact, he and Congress mostly added to its fiscal problems by creating a new entitlement for drug reimbursements. But it's hard to take seriously the Democrats who say that Mr. Bush should switch focus from Social Security to the much bigger problem of Medicare: If they aren't willing to play a constructive role on the supposedly "minor" challenge of Social Security, why should anyone believe that they would behave constructively if the administration wanted to fix Medicare?

The nation faces a severe economic threat from the aging of its population combined with escalating health costs. The sooner it begins to grapple with this problem, the less painful the solution will be. For Mr. Bush, that would mean acknowledging the need for more revenue. For the Democrats, it would require for a smidgeon of honesty about Social Security's state.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

back to top

Where Were Their Iraq War Vigils?

http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/05/03/con05108.html

A Buzzflash Reader Contribution
March 24, 2005
by Mary MacElveen

Having seen the flurry of vigils in the past couple of days to save the life of Terri Schiavo, it makes me want to ask these pro-life people "Where were your vigils as we systematically murdered thousands upon thousands of innocent Iraqi people? Why no open show of force as your government launched a preemptive strike based upon a series of lies? Will you start to hold vigils as the killings in Iraq keep happening?

Where were your vigils for the 1,500 servicemen and women who were killed in Iraq? They died for your right to hold these vigils out in the open for Terri. Didn’t they?

As some were arrested for trying to bring Terri Schiavo some water to drink -- why didn’t you get on an airplane and fly to Iraq before we launched our attack and act as human shields? Many who side with this administration openly mocked those that did.

Millions just like me held our own vigil on February 15, 2003, where we were labeled unpatriotic and called crack pots. But, what you fail to understands is this: we, too, were trying to save lives. Not just one life, but thousands of lives.

The news stations have been airing tapes of Terri Schiavo non-stop and I would like to ask them why not air images of the lives taken in Iraq? How many of our servicemen and women, including Iraqi citizens, are maimed and are now on similar life support systems due to our actions? Why not show pictures of them as well? Will any of you give a damn if they have their feeding tubes taken away? No, you will not, because you will not see or hear about them. They are abstracts to you. But, for those of us who are anti-war, they are just as real and precious as Terri is to you.

Some of you are angry at her husband Michael Schiavo and have demonized him for things he has allegedly said (according to Carla Iyer, who was Terri’s nurse for one year; and as far as I am concerned that is hearsay). If she reported these incidents to the police, why wasn’t he arrested? I find it hard to believe that one man can hold so much power over the staff at her hospice.

But, here is my point: here you have the leader of our country openly lying to all of you about why the United States needed to invade a sovereign nation, and yet the same intensity of anger is not launched at him. You in the pro-life movement are not choosing to demonize a liar, yet you think you have the right to do this to Michael Schiavo?

I heard today that Terri’s mom, Mary Schindler, said this: "Please, someone out there, stop this cruelty. Stop the insanity." It does break my heart to hear her plea like this, since I know somewhat of how she feels having had a son on life support. But, many of us who tried to stop this government from going on a killing spree in Iraq were also saying, "Please, someone out there, stop this cruelty. Stop the insanity." Yet, this alleged pro-life president failed to hear our pleas.

What I want to hear from these vigil-holding pro-life advocates is if, because of their belief in the "sanctity of human life," they will start to hold vigils about the killing going on in Iraq. This is why many like me see such hypocrisy coming from those individuals who claim to want to save Schiavo's life.

So, I ask again, "Where are the vigils for our service men and women, as well as the innocent Iraqi citizens who will keep on dying, as long as President George W. Bush has his say about Iraq?"

My prayers go out to those killed in Iraq, as do my prayers go out to Terri and her family. All have been used by this administration for their own selfish agendas. In my opinion, that is unconscionable.

---

Collateral damage. - TM

Political Advice

Where Are the Democrats?
By Richard Cohen
Thursday, March 24, 2005; Page A19
washingtonpost.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61694-2005Mar23.html


Rep. Tom DeLay is called "The Hammer." He is a man of fierce beliefs who has long confused politics with war -- religious war at that. At one time he would have been labeled an "extremist," the sort of politician whom reporters seek out for colorful, wacko quotes. But now he is in the GOP mainstream where, among other things, he has bludgeoned the Democratic Party into pathetic meekness. On the Terri Schiavo debate, the party went AWOL.

By late Sunday, when the debate had reached the House of Representatives, Barney Frank stood almost alone in opposing the bill. Cliches suffered. Here was an openly gay Democrat, the Massachusetts liberal of all Massachusetts liberals, defending the Founding Fathers, federalism and the American tradition of keeping the government's nose out of a family's business.

It was a bravura performance and one could only have wished that it had been matched by John Kerry or Hillary Clinton -- or any of the other Democrats who are being mentioned as presidential candidates. Most of them seemed to be cowering in some bunker, calling their consultants and pollsters, asking what they should do and how they should do it. Please, have a memo on the desk by morning.

You could call this a misreading of public sentiment, and it is that, for sure. When the instant pollsters reported on their instant polls, it turned out that by lopsided majorities the public was appalled at what Congress had done. By a margin of 63 percent to 28 percent, an ABC News poll said Americans supported the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. An even larger majority -- 70 percent -- opposed Congress getting into the act. And for some reason, 67 percent of those polled said Congress was more interested in scoring political points than in Terry Schiavo's fate. As they say in the red states, amen to that.

Given those numbers, it would be reasonable to conclude that Republicans -- the congressional leadership and, of course, the White House -- went barking up the wrong political tree. No doubt. What's more, it's not even clear that the GOP solidified its base. Conservative Christians were probably gratified, but many political conservatives were appalled. These are the people who cherish tradition and hold the Constitution dear. When Congress -- without a committee hearing or much real debate -- pushed the Schiavo matter from Florida court jurisdiction, where it had been decided, to a federal one, you could almost hear conservatives gasp. This, after all, is what they had been lambasting liberals about for years.

But for me the real loser was the Democratic Party. It showed that it's almost totally without leadership. If there is a national figure (other than Frank) who stood up and took on the GOP in this matter, his -- or her -- name does not come to mind. In the Senate, oddly enough, it was Virginia's John Warner who pointed out that he opposed the bill -- and he's a Republican, for goodness' sake. The Democrats were nowhere.

It's not hard to understand why. A vote against the bill would almost certainly be used by some future campaign as a vote in favor of putting Schiavo to death. In a quick TV spot, that sort of stuff can do real damage. At the same time, a fair number of Democrats who were appalled by the bill were reluctant to put their colleagues on the spot. It might have been okay for Ted Kennedy or John Kerry to oppose the bill -- they come from Massachusetts, after all -- but it could be a different story for some Democrat whose state is not quite so blue. Out of consideration for the imperiled, some tongues were clearly held. Still, it seemed that the party's highest principle was to have almost none at all.

Once again, it was a Republican -- Christopher Shays of Connecticut -- who got it right. "This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy," he said. Bingo! It is DeLay and the Christian right that set the agenda for the Republican Party and, therefore, for Congress. It is DeLay, whose religious zealotry prompted him to leap all sorts of constitutional barriers and go court-shopping, who, have no doubt about it, would reshape this country in his religious image.

Say what you will about DeLay, he is not afraid to state his beliefs and fight for them. Say what you will about the Democrats, they are. That's why DeLay's called "The Hammer." What would you call the Democrats? Never mind. When they're ready, they'll call you.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

---

A well written commentary. I don’t agree with his assessment of the situation.

By inserting themselves into the tragic situation of Terri Schiavo’s family, they committed the final indignity on Terri. In effect, they reduced her to a mere prop. Why would the Democratic party even want to participate in that degradation. While each person has a right to their individual opinions, and the right to express them, as a political party, I think the Democrats did the right thing. They are in the minority, and the republicans can pass anything they want. Especially on such short notice. The Democrats made the right choice.

Where I work, the vast majority of people were Bush supporters in 2000, and 2004, and it is a republican stronghold. The president bush’s inept, and failed Social Security proposal, such as it is, had pushed many of these to the fence, and this recent craven act by the republicans finished him off in their eyes. The conversation has been one of sympathy for the family, and anger towards bush, both george and jeb. In those conversations, the Democratic party has not even been mentioned. The republican party, apparently, didn’t need any help in their self-immolation.

With the turmoil caused by this, I have been able to introduce other discussions about the bush record, which in the past, was not possible with some of these people. The war in Iraq, the debt, the looting of the treasury, the economic shambles (the price of gas helps with that), poverty, and the cost of health care, to mention a few. A few even asked where they can find more information.

Now would be the time for the Democratic Party to act. The republican party, through their arrogance have opened a large wedge between the leadership, and the rank-and-file. By pointing out that this was a smokescreen to distract people from the failures of the president bush, the failures and arrogance of the republican party, the corruption of repesentative delay that wedge can be pried open more.

But the Democrats can’t sit on the sidelines forever. Sooner, rather than later, they need to start showing the stark contrast between themselves and the republicans. They can have the American people solidly behind them if they can demonstrate a clear choice for the voters. A contrasting choice. A real choice.

The conversations I’ve been having with some of these now lost republicans bring me to this conclusion. The true American values are the same as the values of the Democratic party. Let the American people know this, loudly, and proudly. The votes are there for the taking. And that’s the end of my political advice for the Democratic Party.

Well, I’m stunned.

Saturday was the second anniversary of the Iraq war. I wrote in an earlier post, that I didn’t expect the media, or the administration, to treat it with the attention it deserves. As it turns out, I couldn’t anticipate what happened. To begin with, the Michael Jackson trial got more air time than the Iraq war did over the weekend, at least where I live. I guess all that crap they pass us must be important news, while ignoring the fact that; 1.) people are still dying from our actions in Iraq, and 2.) our actions in Iraq are immoral, and illegal.

And then the Schiavo circus went into high gear. Bush rushes from his vacation to sign a bill that a craven Congress passed to pander to the christian Taliban. To give the democrats some credit, they pretty much steered clear of that piece of crap. And that’s all it was. The family of Terri Schiavo is going through something that I hope I never have to. And my heart goes out to all of them, just as it does to anyone having to make such a choice.

And the last thing they needed was people like Terry Randall, the media, the republicans, and the president bush elbowing their way in, to frown, posture, and pontificate, and then move on. Lost in all that carnival was Terri. After all this, to be reduced to no more than a prop, is the final indignity.

Watching all that happen made my skin crawl. I’m telling you, those people are perverts. Sick.

The president bush said we “must err on the side of life”, and that he wants to promote a “culture of life”. These were, of course, repeated endlessly by his apologists and allies, and the media couldn’t get enough of it.

Mr bush’s “culture of life” is a cult of death, destruction, humiliation, and degradation. Last night’s newsletter, George Bush's "culture of life", has three articles amply demonstrating just a glimpse of his twisted view of life, and shows how little he actually cares for the lives of other people. The same goes for those arrogant bastards who support him, and assist in moving the agenda forward.

But I’m going to go beyond those articles. The budget proposal he has submitted to Congress decimates the safety net for untold hundreds of thousands of people in his own country. It tells veterans, (including those he decided to send to Afghanistan and Iraq) that they are not likely to get the help that they’re going to need, many of them for the rest of their lives. And to show that everyone must sacrifice in these troubled times, he wants to force even more tax breaks on the rich. Those poor people. They must be worn down by now from all the sacrifices they have to make for this country. I read a good article last night, For Tax Refuseniks: A Modest Proposal at http://crisispapers.org/essays-p/refuseniks.htm. It reminds us of what our taxes pay for. With the tax cuts bush has initiated in the past 5 years now, it becomes more and more apparent that they are no longer paying for their share of the use of these services our tax money provides. And it is getting to be more and more the working classes who now support the major share.

Now the Enlightened One, being a compassionate man, does not limit his largesse to just this generation. He has graciously given future generations a crushing burden of debt. And to be sure that debts get paid, the republican Congress has passed a draconian bankruptcy law which, quite basically, crunches the poor and working class, and still allows usurious rates on credit cards, and loopholes for the rich. Business as usual.

There is no “culture of life” in this administration, or this Congress, or the Consolidated Corporate Media of America. Only death. No compassion, only cruelty. No laws, only edicts from the president bush, and the republican leadership.

I would like to point to some positive achievements for America that this group has accomplished in the past 4 years, but I can’t. There haven’t been any.

Awaken

http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2005/03/supersizing-profits-squeezing-news.html
Monday, March 14, 2005
Supersizing profits, squeezing the news
Amid dwindling circulation, receding advertising share and growing skepticism over credibility, newspapers took decisive action last year: They boosted profits twice as fast as they increased sales.That's one of the findings in "The State of the News Media in 2005," a new, unvarnished study of the nitty-gritty economics of the news biz from the Project for Excellence in Journalism.If you believe a healthy press is good for our democracy, then you won't find the report to be pleasant reading. But read it, anyway. Here is just some of what you'll learn:Newspapers last year "increased their profits at double the rate (8%) that their revenues grew (less than 4%)," a "distinct sign of profit-taking," the study found. The emphasis on supersizing the bottom line produced average industry margins of 22.9% in 2004, according to Lauren Rich Fine of Merrill Lynch, a securities analyst.The only way you can increase profits faster than sales is by cutting expenses, and the newsroom was a chief target. "At its annual meeting in April, the American Society of Newspaper Editors got the bad word that employment of full-time news professionals actually declined by 500 positions (about 1%) in 2003," said the study. "That more than wiped out modest gains of about 300 the year before. And that came after the deep cut of 2,000 jobs in 2001."In addition to reducing newsroom headcount, stated the report, publications also squeezed more advertising into their pages, thereby cutting back "on the percentage of space devoted to news."In light of the significant competitive threats to the long-term health of their business, why would newspaper companies emphasize profit growth instead of further investment in building new audiences through new media?Because a company's success in the stock market, as Bernie Ebbers or Ken Lay will tell you, is a significant factor -- maybe the signficiant factor -- in a senior executive's compensation package, as discussed previously here. Unless compensation plans are changed, publishing companies will continue to prize short-term profts over the long-term health of their enterprises.When it comes to raking in profits, newspapers can't hold a candle to local TV news. Margins of 45% to 50% are common in local outlets, where station revenues rose 10% in the first nine months of 2004, says the report. TV can get away with this behavior, because the semi-monopolistic local broadcast franchises are less vulnerable than print to new media.Although the morning network news shows increased sales by 5% to 10% last year, business for the evening news programs went sideways. Profit-driven staff cutting slammed the beleaguered CBS news division. "The CBS Evening News had notably fewer correspondents than NBC or ABC (about 15% fewer) doing substantially more work in 2004," says the report.Although sales gains ran between respectable and robust for the traditional mass media last year, the biggest proportional increases were in online media, where revenues grew some 30% in 2004 to approximately $10 billion.Even though online sales today are modest in comparison to traditional newspaper, magazine, broadcast and cable TV ad revenues, you would think the dramatic online sales gains would inspire legacy media companies to invest heavily in this fast-growing business. Well, you would be wrong."There is more evidence than ever that the mainstream media are investing only cautiously in building new audiences," says the report. "That is true even online, where audiences are growing. Our data suggest that news organizations have imposed more cutbacks in their Internet operations than in their old media.... Where the investment has come, is in technology for processing information, not people to gather it."At the moment, "traditional media brands still control most of where audiences go online for news, but that is already beginning to change," continues the report. "In 2004, Google News emerged as a major new player in online news, and the audience for bloggers grew by 58% in six months, to 32 million people."In addition to Google, the word here in Silicon Valley is that Yahoo is revving up a major local news initiative. And Craig Newmark, founder of Craig's List, increasingly has been discussing his admiration for citizen journalism. "I really think a tipping point in journalism is happening, and I think it's time to get involved," says Craig.Sum it all up, and here is what you have:At a time when the dominant media companies should be strengthening their enviable franchises, they instead are pillaging them for profits. At the very moment media companies should be investing aggressively in new media, they instead are short-changing the initiatives most likely to produce significant, long-term growth.That's the state of the news media in 2005, folks. And a sorry one it is.
posted by Newsosaur at 3:04 PM byAlan Mutter

Would you like to see what is not being reported? http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=471615

While the president bush has been busy creating simulated news feeds from the Education and Health departments and granting access to the press corps for male escorts who are sympathetic to his views, the traditional media is in decline. Why should reporters have it any easier than the rest of us? Downsize, automate and dumb down the workforce in a relentless effort to hold the cost of labor down. Jack Welch prescribed it and every two-bit manager in the country has accepted it as gospel by this time. Hell I don't even have enough time to read a paper any more, second and third job and all. So I will glean what I can from the net, check the sources and type out words of dismay in this blog in the hope that someone will be awakened somewhere and do the same. If, after all, our institutions fail us, it is we who must pick up the torch.

After Two Years

On March 19, 2003, the US invaded Iraq. After two years, the president bush has not been able to articulate a coherent, or moral, reason for his actions in that country. As each of his reasons were exposed to be false, his criminal administration has shifted from one to the other, and, with the help of the CCMA, seamlessly. Each has been presented as if it were the original articulated purpose from the start.

Weapons of mass destruction? False.
In speeches given in 2000, both condi rice and colin powell said that Saddam Hussein was contained, no longer a threat to its neighbors, and had no capabilities to manufacture weapons of mass destruction. Amazingly, according to the president bush, in 2 years, while under draconian sanctions, which were responsible the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi children, constant patrols of the northern and southern no-fly zones, and constant surveillance by US satellites, Hussein was able to build the infrastructure necessary to construct and maintain stockpiles of those weapons of mass destruction. Perhaps the president bush might want to bring Hussein over here to revive our moribund manufacturing sector. After all, they expected us to believe that he was some sort of miracle worker in that field.

Ties to al-Queda? False.
After reason number one was debunked, they trotted out this no-brainer. The religious fundamentalist bin Laden and the secular Hussein, neither liked or trusted each other. If either had the opportunity to dispose of the other, they would have. And in 2004, the president bush announced to a less than surprised world that this reason was never true.

Bringing democracy to Iraq? False.
Now the administration has trotted out this one to center stage. The purple-finger election would not even have happened if the president bush hadn’t been forced into a corner by Sistani, and had to schedule them. Then the president bush set things up with a 2/3’s majority needed to form a government. Given the conditions current in Iraq, this is going to be extremely difficult, to say the least. The resulting chaos serves his agenda well.

And still Mr Death continues his work unabated.

icasualties.org/oif/

And there are no reliable figures for Iraqi deaths, because the president bush administration doesn’t ‘do body counts’. The reason for this lack of concern for the ‘collateral damage’, is because to the president bush, they are just that, collateral damage. And besides, they’re not Americans after all. So they don’t count. The families and friends of all those dead think that they count. And we should be thinking the same.

I would have thought that after Vietnam, we, as a nation, would have learned some lessons about unnecessary war. Apparently we didn’t. But the administration of the president bush did. No pictures of our brave men and women returning in their lonely coffins, the ultimate ‘Army of One’. No pictures of our wounded returning home to a country that has turned its back on them. Witness the cuts in veterans’ care, and assistance to their families. I guess their opinion of them is that they are damaged goods, and are written off as inventory shrinkage.

Do you remember bush’s thoughts about dictatorship in 2000? “This would be a lot easier if this was a dictatorship. As long as I was the dictator.” And do we remember how the president bush whined during the 2004 debates about how much hard work being president was? Well, we know the president bush is intellectually lazy, and just lazy in general. After all, it’s not like he has ever had to actually do any work in his lifetime. So it is only natural that he would move to create the conditions where his job will be easier. And his cronies and acolytes are diligently working to make this happen for the little man.

With Iraq in chaos, the president bush continues to bring violent unstability to the Mideast with his talk of actions against Syria and Iran.

So, for this sad anniversary, I guess we’ll wave a few flags, make a few speeches praising our brave men and women in uniform, and then it’s on to the next item on the agenda. After all, in our bustling economy there’s no time to stop and reflect upon what we have done. Maybe the CCMA can squeeze a few lines between stories of fluff and celebrities to recognize the anniversary.

It’s too late to prevent the devestation in Iraq, but we can use this occasion to try to stop the president bush from continuing his bloody agenda. To do otherwise, would be to fail those who have sacrificed all.

I’ll close this post with a reminder from the first anniversary.

First Year Anniversary of the war in Iraq

The Washington Establishment Fails Logic 101

http://www.ariannaonline.com/columns/column.php?id=763

by Arianna Huffington
March 16, 2005
Arianna Online

I just got back from a trip to the Happiest Place on Earth. Didn't ride the Teacups, though. Because I wasn't in Disneyland but in Washington, D.C., where everyone is walking on air, swept away by the Beltway's latest consensus: President Bush was right on Iraq, and, as a result, Tomorrowland in the Middle East will feature an E-ticket ride on the Matterhorn of freedom and democracy.

The political and cultural establishment has gone positively Goofy over this notion. In the corridors of power, Republicans are high-fiving, and Democrats are nodding in agreement and patting themselves on the back for how graciously they've been able to accept the fact that they were wrong. The groupthink in the nation's capital would be the envy of Dear Leader Kim Jong Il.

…..

And can we really blame the Arab world for its skepticism about the Unites States' sudden commitment to freedom and democracy? After all, it wasn't that long ago that Dick Cheney was opposing the release of Nelson Mandela in South Africa; Donald Rumsfeld was cutting deals with Saddam Hussein; and the CIA was overthrowing Mohammed Mossadegh, the democratically elected leader of Iran, and installing the Shah. And President Bush continues to make nice with Mr. Putin, Gen. Musharraf and the House of Saud.

And I’ll add Haiti, 2004, to the list.
http://tmars.iwarp.com/guerrilla_campaign/newsletter/news050315_Haiti.html

---

The lack of logic, doesn't stop at Washington. It appears that supposedly a bit more than half of the people who voted in November, left their logic at home that day.

It is amazing that besides the contradictions of their positions, they also seem to be blinded to the fact that the media in the rest of the world are not quite as supine as the Consolidated Corporate Media of America (CCMA). And they also remember, along with the people of the rest of the world, again unlike, apparently, the American people.

Away from the fantasy land of Washington Arianna describes, many people do see that not one of the president bush initiatives have been designed to promote democracy, either overseas, or domestically. Quite the opposite. From his first tax cuts, through the pre-written Patriot Act, the invasion of Iraq, and even now, his recent appointments, and his obsession to privatize Social Security, his methods have been to divide the populace, each against the other, while lavishing the proceeds from his looting of the treasury on his cronies, and the aristocratic elite that he has called his base.

But poor little Georgie is delusional, he no longer walks in reality, and from what you write has brought the Washington elite into his delusion. Whether from ideology or greed, those who have succumbed have blinded themselves to reality also.

There is no amount of spin, wilful blindness, or silence about the consequences of some facts that is going to stop those consequences from occuring.

Our economy is in a shambles. The dollar continues its decline, and more and more of the world is beginning to look at it with skepticism. Our current costs are being financed by foreign investment, and loans to the government, adding to our already crushing debt. If any one of those governments and large investors decide to bite the bullet, and pull the plug on the US Treasury note, the dollar as money will cease to exist. With urban centers typically having only about three days supply of commodities like food, and no money to resupply themselves, most cities would erupt in riots unlike any seen in this country before. And in three months, the United States would cease to exist as a country and a dream.

We shamelessly, and obscenely, invaded a country that could not put up any more than a token defense against us, much less be a threat. Two years, and over 1500 American military deaths, over 150 other ‘coalition troops’, and over 100,000 Iraqi deaths, later, we’re still there. The CCMA touts the elections that the US was dragged kicking and screaming into allowing as the president bush’s ‘commitment to democracy’. As it turns out, what the Iraqis voted for, is not what they thought they were voting for. Sort of like our own 2004 elections. We set it up so that, unlike any other parliamentarian country in the world, a 60% majority is required to form a government. Is there any wonder that a government still hasn’t been formed? The continuing chaos and civil anarchy serves the bushistas agenda well, which has nothing to do with democracy, but rather, power and greed.

And, unless the US did have something to do with the assassination of the former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Lebanon, then none of those ‘democratic stirrings’ were the result of anything that the president bush has done. It is an extreme leap of illogic, and arrogance, to entertain the thought that after witnessing his brutal invasion of Iraq, the people of the Middle East were suddenly transformed by the vision and wisdom of the Enlightened One, the president bush. If it wasn’t so pathetically tragic, it would be funny. Where do these people park their brains?

Everyone of those people who have died as a result of our actions have families and friends who have been irrevocably changed by their deaths. Do we really think that they’ll forget as soon as the next episode of American Idol rolls out? Are we so lost that we will continue to trust people who are so delusional with governing our country, or form our opinions?

The degradation of our ecosystem is already paying dividends in changes to our climate. Mount Kilimanjaro has lost it’s snow cover for the first time in 10,000 years. Too bad you didn’t get a picture of you with it in the background. Too late now. The arctic ice is melting, as well as glaciers worldwide. And we may be quickly approaching a point of no return. The US is the biggest offender.
Our polluted air has resulted in a surge of childhood asthma. The United States was 40th in infant mortality rate, with the lowest, Sweden, being number one, and 47th in life expectancy, with Andorra, the highest, being number one ( http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3164.htm , I had to look it up. It’s between France and Spain ). [source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, International Data Base 2004] With all the money we spend on healthcare, I would have expected better results.

Did you know that the rest of the world can see all this? Apparently the Enlightened One and his acolytes don’t. They seem to have lost themselves in the cult of the president bush and soak up his delusions and remain blind to the consequences rushing up to meet them, while the rest of the world watches with trepidation, because they know they’ll be taking the ride with us.

And the most perverted thing of all: a very ugly war story--a bloody narrative we hear shockingly little about on our daily news with all its horrors and degradation and destruction and death, is being looked upon as being somehow right, and wise.

The political and cultural establishment has gone positively Goofy over this notion. In the corridors of power, Republicans are high-fiving, and Democrats are nodding in agreement and patting themselves on the back for how graciously they've been able to accept the fact that they were wrong. The groupthink in the nation's capital would be the envy of Dear Leader Kim Jong Il.

Ladies and gentlemen, these are very sick people.

Arrogance

Arrogance

White House to Agencies: Ignore GAO's Ruling On 'illegal' TV News Releases
by Ken Herman
Published on Tuesday, March 15, 2005 by Cox News Service
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0315-05.htm

WASHINGTON -- The White House, intent on continuing to crank out "video news releases" that look like television news stories, has told government agency heads to ignore a Government Accountability Office memo criticizing the practice as illegal propaganda.
….
Comptroller General David Walker of the GAO said Monday that his agency is "disappointed by the administration's actions" in telling agency heads to ignore the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress.

"This is not just a legal issue, it's also an ethical matter," Walker said. "The taxpayers have a right to know when the government is trying to influence them with their own money."
….The GAO, in a Feb. 17 memo to agency heads, said its review of video news releases distributed to television stations by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of National Drug Control Policy showed violations of federal law barring the use of government money for propaganda. The GAO said, "Television-viewing audiences did not know that stories they watched on television news programs about the government were, in fact, prepared by the government."

---

Well, Bush continues to gallop down the Lawless Lane. Actually, he’s afraid of horses, so he uses a stick-horse like my grandson has, but that’s besides the point. It should be obvious by now, at least to anyone who uses their mind, that the man has no ethics, or morals.

Not merely content with a supine media to spread his lies, he uses our tax dollars to create his propaganda. There never seems to be enough money to make sure our soldiers are adequately supplied in the combat zone, or to help the poor here, but there never seems to be a lack of money to sing the praises of our Dear Leader, the president bush.

Now, of course, our Consolidated Corporate Media (CCM) are just as complicit. Think about what a deal it is for them. They get to fill some time in the ‘news’ slots, and it doesn’t cost them a dime. It would only hurt their bottom line, and so shareholder value, to actually hire some good reporters, and turn them loose to, well, report. You know, the facts. Maybe even do some investigating. But it’s easier to just repeat the lies the administration presents them with.

And we know the administration lies. Just to mention a few; Bush said his tax cuts would stimulate the economy, and create jobs. They didn't. What they did do was to create a massive deficit. Bush says he's 'compassionate'. His policies and statements show that to be a lie. And one need only mention Iraq, and there are daily lies, both before the invasion and after.

Our economy is in a shambles. Our military is stretched almost to the breaking point. The rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer. And where does the American people have to turn to find out the truth about this things, the supine CCM ? Fantasy Feel Good Studios of the president bush? Well, you can paint over a termite-ridden house, but it is still going to fall apart one day.

I know that these self-proclaimed ‘elites’ don’t care what I think, but I’ve got some news for them. When the US goes down, they’ll be going down with it. There are no lifeboats.

And one more thing. Take a look at this picture. No lifeboats there, either.

Obstructing foul ideas

It's an Open-and-Shut Case

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-chait11mar11,1,3269014.column

Being willing to entertain the idea of ruining Social Security is no virtue.
By Jonathan Chait
March 11, 2005

In the Social Security debate, apparently the worst thing anybody can say about you is that you've made up your mind. A Washington Post editorial writer penned an Op-Ed article praising "the thoughtful voice of a Democrat not reflexively opposed to personal accounts." Joe Lieberman's spokesman piously insists the Connecticut senator is "still in a listening and learning stage and keeping an open mind." Well, good for him. But I've read several books and many articles advocating Social Security privatization, and it still strikes me as a horrible idea. Can I stop listening and learning now? Or must I remain thoughtfully agnostic while the same unconvincing arguments are repeated ad nauseam, in the hope that another repetition will finally sway me?

---

The full article is definitely worth a read. Also today’s posts at Talking Points Memo http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/ . The Republicans and their apologists are again with the ‘obstructionist’ labels. As pointed out at both links, the goal for the repugs is privitazation.
That’s a period at the end of the line. And they castigate the Democrats for not putting their own plan forward. Why, I ask.

Just raise the cap on earnings to $150,000, wait a few years, and see how that works. End of problem. And let's move on.

Number one. The last time I looked, both houses of Congress are controlled by the repugs. They can pass anything they want without Democratic help. They can set up their precious accounts, (by the way, on Friday, 3/11/05, the aggregate gain since 1/1/01 of the 4 major stock indexes was a whopping -3.9%, that’s minus) put it on the floor, and see what happens. By the way, speaking of plans, I haven’t seen one from the Republicans, and I sure haven’t seen one from the president bush, and he’s the one who brought this whole thing up. Conveniently after the election. So, why aren’t the pundits demanding them to lay their cards on the table.

Second. The Democrats would be foolish to fall into that trap. Even if they should be foolish enough to think they can negotiate with the Republicans on this issue, by the time it comes out of committee to reconcile the differing bills between the houses, it’s going to be the way the Republicans want it anyway. And they have the votes to pass the final bill. So, the Democrats will be standing there with their faces hanging out, unable to stop another rape of the American people. And they would have compromised their principles.

I’m sure that somebody must have noticed by now, that the vast majority of the American people don’t want any part of whatever plan the repugs, or the president bush have. And the more they learn, the less they want it. And, the vast majority of the American people are hoping that the Democrats stand firm on their principles on this issue. And, the vast majority of the American people are not demanding the Democrats “put a plan on the table”.

Something to keep in mind when the right-wing idiots start tossing out “obstructionism”, “dogmatic”, and “closed-minded” about. Remember, 2006 is just around the corner.

Demonstration Projects

Two recent articles demonstrate the complete lack of repect for life that the administration of the president bush, and his apologists display.

Gibson: Bomb a Democracy "With Clean Conscience"
Reported by judy at March 10, 2005 11:34 AM

http://www.newshounds.us/2005/03/10/gibson_bomb_a_democracy_with_clean_conscience.php

Fox News' John Gibson has gone even farther than other journalists in falling, hook, line, and sinker, for the Bush claim that the Iraq elections are related to some Lebanese demonstrating for the removal of Syrian troops from their country. Gibson went over the line on "The Big Story" Wednesday (March 9), however, when he said the U.S. could bomb Lebanon "with a clean conscience" if it votes democratically to retain Syrian troops.
…

---

US Gaining World's Respect From Wars, Rumsfeld Asserts

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 11, 2005; Page A04
washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25751-2005Mar10?

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld upheld the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan yesterday as powerful demonstrations of U.S. military prowess that will make other countries think twice about making "mischief" around the world.

…

"If you put yourself in the shoes of a country that might decide they'd like to make mischief, they have a very recent, vivid example of the fact that the United States has the ability to deal with this," he said.

---

So, let’s see. In the first article Fox News’ (chief apologist for the administration of the president bush) advocates bombing Lebanon, if the US doesn’t like the choices the Lebanese people may make in a democratic fashion. And, he says we could do it with a “clear conscience”, because, after all, we told them what we wanted. Doesn’t seem to bode well for Iraq, does it?

The president bush has asserted that the Syrians are an occupying force, and says that free elections are not possible while a country is being occupied. Iraq is being occupied by the US., and has been since March of 2003. So now, the president bush is saying that the recent Iraqi elections were a sham. Iraq is certainly being occupied by a foreign power. The little man can’t have it both ways. Of course, perhaps he hopes no one will notice.

In the second article, the blood-thirsty rumsfeld flatly calls the war in Afghanistan, and in Iraq, as mere demonstrations of the mighty US military. I thought we did that in the first Iraq war. So, he considers the tens of thousands of deaths, wounded, and maimed, just collateral damage from a demonstration project. Even our own military. Why didn’t they just print up some glossy brochures to pass out, maybe a powerpoint project. We didn’t have to kill all those people just to make a point.

In fact, the administration of the president bush, and their allies and apologists even consider the deaths on 9/11 as merely collateral damage, since they allowed them to ram through their agenda of fascism and war.

This all comes as quite a surprise to me. After all, the president bush’s speeches just drip with his unctuous claims for the ‘sanctity of life’, ‘freedom’, ‘compassion, and ‘Christian values’.

No where in the teachings of the man bush calls his favorite philosopher, is anything that would even suggest that Jesus would condone ANY of the actions of the president bush. Jesus would rant against bush, just as he did the Pharisees of his time. In fact, the Old Testament prophets would condemn the actions of the president bush as well. He stands condemned by his own words, and the beliefs he says he has embraced.

And, just a note for rumsfeld. I’d be careful about pointing to Iraq as a demonstration project. It would seem that the vaunted American military, no matter how valiant, has been stymied by the Iraqi resistance. The eyes of the world has seen this.

It is a shame that the president bush and his allies have thrown away so many lives to prove a point. What makes it even more sad, is that the point and policies they have been tossed aside for have been proven to be wrong, and a failure. Just as the president bush has been himself, a pointless failure.

False Diagnosis

From The New York Times OP-ED, Thursday, March 10, 2005; A27
False Diagnosis
Don't mess with Texas tort system
By Bernard Black, Charles Silver, David Hyman and William Sage
Austin, Tex.
Medical malpractice litigation reform is a high priority for President Bush, who contends that juries are running amok, multimillion-dollar settlements are on the rise and greedy trial lawyers are filing frivolous suits. The results, Mr. Bush and others argue, include skyrocketing insurance prices, abandoned medical practices, defensive medicine and a crisis of access to care. Their proposed solution: caps on jury awards to patients and on lawyers' contingent fees.

No one disputes that insurance premiums have risen significantly. The question is whether a crisis in states' tort system accounts for the increase. Consider Mr. Bush's home state of Texas, America's second most populous state and the third largest in terms of total health care spending. After studying a database maintained by the Texas Department of Insurance that contains all insured malpractice claims resolved between 1988 and 2002, we saw no evidence of a tort crisis. Adjusting for inflation and rising population, we arrived at the following findings:
Ø Large claims (with a payout of $25,000 in 1988 dollars) were roughly constant in frequency.
Ø The number of total paid claims with payments of more than $1 million remained steady at about 6 percent of all large claims.
Ø The number of total paid claims per 100 practicing physicians per year fell to fewer than five in 2002 from greater than sic in 1990-92.
Ø Mean and median payouts per large claim were roughly constant.
Ø Jury verdicts in favor of plaintiffs showed no trend over time.
Ø The total cost of large malpractice claims was both stable and a small fraction (less than 1 percent) of total health care expenditures in Texas.

In short, as far as medical malpractice cases are concerned, the Texas tort system has been remarkably stable. Texas' situation is not unique. One study of Florida's experience from 1990 to 2003 also found declines in paid claims per 100 practicing physicians as well as per 100,000 population. Over the same period in Missouri, the total number of malpractice claims fell by about 40 percent and the number of paid claims dropped almost by half.

Malpractice premiums have risen sharply in Texas and many other states. But, at least in Texas, the sharp spikes in insurance prices reflect forces operating outside the tort system.

The medical malpractice system has many problems, but a crisis in claims, payouts and jury verdicts is not among them. Thus the federal "solution" that Mr. Bush proposes is both overbroad and directed at the wrong problem.

Bernard Black and Charles Silver are law professors at the University of Texas at Austin. David Hyman is a professor of law and medicine at the University of Illinois. William Sage is a law professor at Columbia


Well, academia is chiming in. Perhaps some business professors will look at the actuary's statements for the insurance industry over the same period. I won't be holding my breath. It is not news that the president bush is in the pocket of the insurance industry. It is news that a group of academics is attacking his plan. Ordinarily, professors risk being cited as partisan and using their influence to slant the minds of our youth. Kudos belong to these four for entering the public dialogue and for spending the time studying the data. Their example should be followed.

Butt Prints in the Sand

http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/05/03/10_sand.html

March 10, 2005
By Sheila Samples

Because in life, there comes a time,
When one must fight, and one must climb,
When we must rise and take a stand,
Or leave our butt prints in the sand.
- author unknown

It's time.

Before this obscene, gaping hole gets any deeper, it's time we convinced the media to stop digging. As someone once said... and said... and said - time is not on our side. I couldn't agree more, because when you consider the media horror show of the last four years, it could get hairy out there unless we wake up, stand up, and do something about it.

It's time we told the media it's either them, or us. We need to pass them by, boycott their advertisers, protest them - shake them until their teeth rattle. It's time we realized there is no entity more to blame for the mess we're in nor for the needless loss of life than our shameless and treasonous media. The media is even more obscene than Bush and the glowering, power-mad warmongers who surround him in both his administration and in his Congress.

Face it. Bush gets away with murder for just one reason - because the media allows it, encourages it, and spends big bucks producing it. Bush's war-on-evildoers turned war-on-terror turned regime-change turned crusade-for-freedom-and-democracy is a media-orchestrated production, complete with banners, flag backdrops, bells and whistles. In case you haven't noticed what the rest of the world knew at the outset - the illusion of Bush as a strong, principled leader is also a media creation. Totally.

It is folly to think we can continue to sit on our butts and there will be no day of reckoning for the total breakdown of fundamental journalistic principles. I hate to keep dragging poor Walter Williams, the first University of Missouri Journalism dean, across these pages like some old worn-out Weekend at Bernie's skit, but the Journalist's Creed Williams wrote a century ago still applies today, and is a clear statement of journalistic ethics. Williams fervently believed that journalists were totally - and only - trustees for the public, and that anything less than accuracy and fairness in reporting the news was betrayal. He believed that suppressing or ignoring news that might embarrass the powerbrokers is indefensible.

Betrayal. Indefensible betrayal.

If Williams had an idealistic vision of what journalism should be, John Swinton, former Chief of Staff at the New York Times, was more realistic about what the business of journalism really is. In a confession before the New York Press Club, Swinton said:

The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell the country for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press. We are the tools and vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.

Corporate giants such as Time-Warner, Disney, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, Viacom, General Electric, and Vivendi own all media in this country; therefore, they own everything we see, hear, feel, smell or touch. They are our sensory masters. If it were not so, we would rise up against the racuous, political-agendae-driven, circle-jerk speculation by paid political activists that passes for today's news.

It's time we woke up and realized that not everyone who "journals" is a journalist, especially in the electronic media, and most notably on cable TV. Can you imagine the consternation of folks like Fox's Greta Van Susteren and CNN's Jeffery Toobin, attorneys who abandoned their law careers for the bright lights, if each were handed a pair of scissors and a jug of glue and told to "cut and paste" their transcripts, uh, after they pounded them out on manual typewriters?

How long would CNN's resident brain surgeon, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, last as a full-time "journalist" if Americans stopped dieting, refused a breakfast of Total cereal, and boycotted Walgreen's? Thanks to CNN, Dr. Gupta will save us a trip to the hospital - he will come right into our homes and perform the lobotomies.

"Mainstream media" is the mother of all oxymorons. To really appreciate "fair and balanced" in action, see Robert Greenwald's Outfoxed. Aside from daily humdrum chores of cleaning up George Bush's tortured rhetoric and rewriting quoted material to reflect what Bush meant to say rather than what he actually said; aside from covering up or completely ignoring critical matters such as a revengeful White House leak blowing the cover of a covert CIA agent and endangering the lives of contacts throughout the world, a stolen election, a teetering economy, the unconstitutional silencing of an FBI translator, billions of taxpayers' dollars missing in Iraq, rampant abuse and torture of prisoners, the cruel abandonment of veterans; the media continue to whoop it up in one huge journalistic Karaoke gig. There seems to be no end to their capacity to embarrass themselves by singing along to the propaganda track furnished them by the White House.

The entire mainstream media apparatus appears to be in "stand down" mode, much like NORAD was on the morning of September 11, 2001. With malice aforethought they ignore the destructive blips on their news screens, knowing full well the majority of Americans will not venture beyond what they are told to believe. Most Americans have no idea of what is actually going on in the world, either at home or abroad. Most accept without question Bush's recent pronouncement during his news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin:

I live in a transparent country. I live in a country where decisions made by government are wide open and people are able to call people to me (sic) to account, which many out here do on a regular basis. Our laws and the reasons we have laws on the books are perfectly explained to people. Every decision we make is within the Constitution of the United States. We have a constitution that we uphold.

Think about that. Think about it while you're waiting for the media to report that policemen across this country are tasering our children in classrooms to shock them into submission - zapping the elderly in nursing homes to keep them docile and obedient, handcuffing students and dragging them off to jail for wearing "anti-American" peace symbols on their T-shirts. Think about it while you're reading the repressive Patriot Acts I and II that literally strip the Bill of Rights from the US Constitution that Bush says he is so proud to uphold.

You'll have time to think, and to read, if you're waiting for the media to report that many veterans are being stripped of their pay and benefits, are being charged for food while lying wounded in hospitals, and are being charged a fee (tax) for their health coverage. You'll have plenty of time to think before the media breaks the news that, just last week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was hit with a lawsuit in an Illinois federal court charging him with being directly responsible for the torture and abuse of detainees in US military custody. The lawsuit, far from being frivolous, was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First on behalf of eight men who were subject to such treatment and, if there is a God, Rumsfeld will be convicted of violating that most "quaint" of documents, the US Constitution, as well as federal statutes and international law.

Those who don't read foreign media will never know that the International Criminal Tribunal for Iraq (ICTI) this week found both Bush and Tony Blair guilty of a series of charges, and found they deserve life sentences for war crimes and genocide in Iraq.

Kohki Abe, a professor of law at Tokyo's Kanagawa University, said Bush and Blair should face the "maximum penalty available." He added that they should have been tried in the International Criminal Court, but admitted that, for "political reasons," they would not be prosecuted. Abe explained the ICTI had been set up so that acts such as those Bush and Blair are guilty of "do not go past without the criminals behind them being tried."

Like all thuggish bullies, George Bush, who is ever more deluded by both his senses and his judgment, is getting so full of himself he's itching for a new fight. He told a cheering crowd at the National Defense University this week, "We will fight the enemy, we will lift the shadows of fear and lead free nations to victory. No matter how long it takes." So, Bush is back on the hunt, and he says ironically that he will topple "tyrants who don't respect the rules of warfare."

The darkness is closing around us. If ever there was a time in our history for the media to just do the right thing - that time is now. It's time the media faced the fact that, sooner or later, Bush will pick a fight with someone who's capable of fighting back, and then ratings and profits won't matter. When that mushroom cloud hits the fan, it will affect us all, and it will be too late to do anything about it.

And nothing will remain but our butt prints in the sand.


Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma freelance writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at rsamples@sirinet.net

---

Nothing needs to be added.

Top 10 Conservative idiots

democraticunderground.com

1. What's the best way to support the troops, especially in a time of war? Republicans on the House and Senate veterans' affairs committees have got the answer: raise their taxes. Those Republican majorities voted last week to "impose an enrollment fee of at least $230 a year on 2.4 million veterans - one of every three now eligible for Veterans Affairs Administration health care," according to Military.com. Apparently half of those 2.4 million veterans used the VA health system last year.

George W. Bush has been keen to insist that during a time of war we need to make sacrifices - it's just a shame that the sacrifices apparently have to be made by the soldiers he sent to war in the first place. I mean, I'm sure the top 1 percent who benefited hugely from Bush's tax giveaway could sacrifice, say, that fourth BMW in order to make sure veterans get the health care they deserve. But I guess the Republicans prefer to charge people who have sacrificed plenty already.

---

These people really have no shame. There’s no reason to think they’re going to sacrifice anything for anybody. The only people the “upper class” care about are themselves. Maybe we need to give them a shovel, and put them to work.

---

And while I’m here, I’ve got something to say to the plagiarizing, perverted, drunken Rep. Jim Gibbons (R-Nev)

Gibbons is under fire from Nevada Democrats for his speech in general and particularly the lines: "I say we tell those liberal, tree-hugging, Birkenstock stocking wearing, hippie, tie-dyed liberals to go make their movies and their music and whine somewhere else."

well, Jim. I cut trees, I don’t hug them. I don’t know what the fuck Birkenstock stockings are. I don’t have anything that’s tie-dyed. And I don’t whine. I live in the South, I like car racing, I sponsor a race driver, and I wear workboots and a hard hat for work. And I still think you’re an asshole, and so’s your boss, the president bush, who is also a war criminal, and a mass-murderer.

If you have something you want to tell me, well, you just come on right the fuck over and say it, you little wimp-ass.

Santorum Minimum Wage Proposal Worse Than Nothing

go to original

By EPI, (Economic Policy Institute)
ILCA (International Labor Communications Association) Associate Member

The minimum wage amendment proposed by Sen. Rick Santorum (R), which is expected to come to a vote on Monday, would harm far more workers than it helps.

The Economic Policy Institute estimates that a straightforward raise of $1.10 in the minimum wage could directly benefit, at most, about 1.8 million workers.

The Santorum proposal, however, is anything but straightforward. Other provisions would take away minimum wage eligibility, overtime rights, and would overrule higher state standards for workers who earn tips. Many millions of workers would stand to lose pay and protections to which current law entitles them.

• Weakening FLSA Coverage: Employees of businesses with revenues of more than $500,000 and all workers who engage in interstate commerce now have important protections under the Fair Labor Standards Act, such as the right to be paid a minimum wage and to receive overtime pay when they work more than 40 hours a week. The Santorum amendment eliminates FLSA protections for all workers at businesses with revenues up to $1,000,000. In 1997, 6.8 million employees worked at firms with revenues of between $500,000 and $1 million.

• Cutting Overtime Pay: The amendment abolishes the 40-hour work week and replaces it with an 80-hour, two-week work period. Today, those who work 50 hours in one week and 30 the next receive 10 hours of time-and-a-half overtime pay. Under the amendment, such workers would no longer get overtime pay, making mandatory overtime cheaper for employers. This change encourages employers to overwork employees in busy periods and cut their hours when things are less busy—leaving workers less able to control their work hours and to balance work and family. Construction workers, for example, whose work hours often vary from week to week, will be particularly hard hit. Currently about 100 million workers are eligible to receive overtime pay.

• Working For Tips Only: The Santorum amendment forces states and local governments to adopt a 100% tip credit. In other words, employers will be allowed, under state law, to pay nothing to tipped employees, as long as their tips from customers add up to the minimum wage. In convoluted language, the Santorum amendment prohibits states and local governments from enforcing any state or local minimum wage law or ordinance that requires any part of tipped employees’ wages to be paid in cash by the employer. Even states that have eliminated the tip credit entirely, and that require restaurant workers and other tipped employees to be paid the minimum wage by their employers, will have their laws overridden by the Santorum amendment. Tipped employees include a wide range of workers such as taxi drivers, porters, hotel cleaning staff, and the like. Restaurant wait staff alone currently number about 2 million.

• Weakening Safety & Other Protections: The Santorum amendment excuses millions of employers from paying fines for violations of federal safety and health, pension, and labor regulations. First violations of “information collection requirements” – even if knowing and willful – will be excused for the more than 5 million businesses with revenues under $7 million a year. Information collection requirements include a broad class of notices and postings required in order to inform and protect employees, such as hazardous material warnings, training requirements, and information about pension and health benefit plans.

---

Minimum Wage Issue Guide

---

The president bush and his allies continue their war against the working class. Now, of course, when the “liberals’ and Democrats protest against this blatant attempt to destroy the lives and families of working people, they’ll whine about how the Dems are “engaging in class warfare”. The corrupt media will report all this, but will certainly leave out the fact that this act is grossly anti-family.

How can anybody think this bunch has any “values”?

Power and Law: A New Ruling in the Padilla Case

http://writ.findlaw.com/mariner/20050302.html

By Joanne Mariner
Wednesday, Mar. 02, 2005

As shaped by men like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and justified by some (now notoriously) inventive lawyers, the Bush Administration's approach to fighting terrorism can be summarized in a phrase: the president's inherent power. A series of legal memoranda drafted by government counsel argue that the president possesses inherent authority to have people detained without charge, interrogated mercilessly, and kept in a legal limbo for unlimited lengths of time.

But while these lawyers focus on the Constitution's grant of power to the president as Commander in Chief, they ignore constitutional principles like the separation of powers and the concept of individual rights. They also disregard an entire body of statutory law that sets limits on the government's power to detain, question, and prosecute people suspected of wrongdoing.

In an important decision issued Monday in the case of so-called enemy combatant José Padilla, a U.S. district court judge in South Carolina rejected the government's approach. His ruling, rather than deferring to the government's broad claims, directs the reader's attention to the letter of the law.

In a relatively succinct opinion, Judge Henry F. Floyd touches on separation of powers principles, the difference between battlefields and civilian settings, and - in a couple of brief but compelling references -- underlying civil liberties concerns. But the linchpin of his ruling is the Non-Detention Act, a federal statute passed in 1971.

"No citizen," that law provides, "shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress."

…

Preventive detention is a bad idea, inconsistent with constitutional principles. But the Bush Administration, in detaining Padilla and others, has made a bad idea much worse. Its form of preventive detention was never subject to congressional debate, has no temporal limits, and is unconstrained by due process protections.

It is raw power, pure and simple, and it is being exercised on a human being. The court was right to stop it.

Joanne Mariner is a human rights attorney. Her previous columns on thePadilla case, the other detainee cases, and the "war on terrorism" are available in FindLaw's archive.

---

Something to remember: Whatever we allow the government to do to someone else, we have given permission for it to do the same to us.

US should look beyond border to recruit troops

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printstory.mpl/editorial/outlook/3059805

Recruit foreigners to serve with promise of citizenship
By Max Boot
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle News Services
Feb. 27, 2005, 8:32PM

…
Some experts are already starting to wonder whether the war on terrorism might break the all-volunteer military. But because reinstating the draft isn't a serious option (the House defeated a symbolic draft bill last year, 402 to 2), some outside-the-box thinking is needed to fill up the ranks. In this regard, I note that there is a pretty big pool of manpower that's not being tapped: everyone on the planet who is not a U.S. citizen or permanent resident.
…
The simplest thing to do would be to sign up foreigners for the regular U.S. military, but it would also make sense to create a unit whose enlisted ranks would be composed entirely of non-Americans, led by U.S. officers and NCOs.

Call it the Freedom Legion. As its name implies, this unit would be modeled on the French Foreign Legion, except, again, U.S. citizenship would be part of the "pay."
…
There's no reason we couldn't recruit a fresh batch of foreigners today. It would be easier than trying to sweet-talk more troops out of recalcitrant allies or, these days, recruit at U.S. high schools.

Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

---

A fascinating proposal. As it stands now, the children of the rich and privileged don’t serve in the military. So there’s not much of a chance of our seeing them protesting about the needless deaths in our needless foreign adventures. There still seems to be a problem, though, with the workers families. Groups and individual parents of the young American people killed in Iraq are protesting, and this keeps an irritating running sore of questions for which there doesn’t seem to be any rational or moral answers from the president bush.

What can be a better answer than to use foreigners as the cannon fodder for our Domination Wars? Nobody’s going to complain then. After all, it would only be foreigners getting killed, so what’s the big deal? The supine media isn’t going to make that a front page story.

So who is Max Boot?
from his biography at The Council of Foreign Relations
http://www.cfr.org/bio.php?id=5641

Senior Fellow, National Security Studies
Award-winning author and former editorial features editor, The Wall Street Journal; expert on national security policy and U.S. military history and technology.

Experience:
Contributing editor to The Weekly Standard (current); editorial features editor (1997-02), the Wall Street Journal, and writer and editor (1994-97); writer and editor, The Christian Science Monitor (1992-94).

Nowhere in that trash proposal is the thought that, perhaps, a better solution may be to stop the obscenity of our Domination Wars.

The war in Afghanistan was the first of these under rule of the president bush. The US simply bombed the snot out of an already ravaged country and left 156 American military dead. http://icasualties.org/oef/. We installed our puppet government and moved on to the second war. No time to waste. The 2002 elections were coming up. And left behind a ruined country and Osama bin Laden. Remember him? And as a bit of “collateral damage” we poisoned large areas of the country with our DU munitions.

And so on to Iraq. This didn’t turn out as expected. No weapons, no Al-Queda, no flowers. We’re still trying to install our puppet government. The US has lost 1,508 young American people http://icasualties.org/oif/, a not mentioned, anywhere, tens of thousands of Iraqis. And again as some “collateral damage” we’ve poisoned the ground, buildings, and people of Iraq, as well as our own military and those of our allies. We’ve also destroyed what was left of Iraq’s infrastructure after the first Iraq war and 12 years of sanctions. And still no damn flowers.

The president bush and the lackey rice now seem to be preparing the American people for round three. Where are they going to find the manpower for that? The administration says there’s no plans to restart the draft, but we know they’ve lied to us before. Now we read about idiot proposals like the blood-thirsty boot presents.

These are truly sick, perverted people in charge of our government, and so are their opinion makers. Quite surprising, really, that allegedly a bit over half of those who voted in November, thought they had “moral values”. Now, I read the bible. The president bush claims to be a “Christian”. I’m not sure what bible he reads, but in mine, I can’t seem to find anywhere Jesus condones this sort of activity. In fact, I’m sure we can find any number of places where he condemns it.

The president bush is a sociopath. He is being guided by perverts. In the end, all the victims of the administration, from 9/11 to today have been reduced to “collateral damage”

Sick. Very sick. And so very sad.

Hate in America

WARNING!!!
To God's Elect: Leave Sweden NOW!!!
"And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, come out of her my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues." Rev. 18:4
Fags have a 3 point agenda: 1) decriminalize sodomy, 2) add fags to the protected classes as victims like blacks, and 3) criminalize Gospel preaching against fags. Sweden's doom is now irreversible!
With the imprisonment of Ake Green, Swedes have allowed the filthy sodomite agenda to be completely fulfilled. See our monument to Pastor Green here.
With this act, Sweden has drawn to it the wrath and mocking of God!
"I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh;When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you" (Proverbs 1:26-27)
"He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision" (Psalm 2:4).
See our commentary on the Swedish Royal family here!
Sweden is a land of sodomy, bestiality, and incest. See more here!

THANK GOD FOR ALL DEAD SWEDES!!!
Read our recent flier on this matter here.
Listen to Pastor Phelps' sermon on the matter here.
Unconfirmed numbers of Swedes are dead as a result of the tsunamis which ravaged Thailand and the other lush resorts of that region, and thousands more are unaccounted for, either still rotting in the tropical conditions or buried, as they deserve, as asses in mass graves (see Jeremiah 22:19). Scarcely a family in Sweden has been untouched by the devastation. Bible preachers say, THANK GOD for it all!
WE PRAY FOR ALL 20,000 SWEDES IN THE TSUNAMI'S WAKE TO BE DECLARED DEAD!
If you have something relevant to say (and cuss words are not relevant, you tolerant, loving, sodomite Swedes) contact us at info@godhatesamerica.com

The trash above was taken from the home page of pastor phelps' church at godhatesfags.com , zip area 66604.
It is really saddening to see someone so fixated on a single passage in the Bible. In my version the quotes of Jesus are highlighted in red. He commanded that we should love our neighbors as ourselves and that we should love God with all our hearts. The message does not require intellectual consideration--it invites it but the end result for the intellectual is no different in substance than it is for a simple person--the meaning is clear. We do not generally judge people on whether or not they have committed a sin, that is for God. We try to see the good within the person. As I understand it, we are all sinners. The fixation, whatever the cause, is a refusal to see good and that is an abomination of both commandments.
Topeka residents decided not to rescind a recent addition to its charter which prohibited discrimination for sexual orientation. Congratulations Topeka but it will take a lot more than a six percent plurality to separate pastor Phelps from the object of his hatred.
What does all this have to do with the guerrilla campaign you ask? Well it seems that the same crony of the president bush who funded the "swift boat" ads is now funding similar ads for Phelps to attack gays and the AARP, who have opposed the recent proposals to revamp Social Security. The new ads are even less credible and only demonstrate how to use hate against anyone who doesn't quite see things the same way you do.
How can we stop it? By seeing the good in everyone and by believing that they can change if they are simply, slowly awakened to the potential of love. For quick relief it has been suggested that shop dropping works quite well.

Agricultural dictatorship in Iraq

http://www.commonground.ca/iss/0412161/cg161_marya.shtml

BC The Organic Way by Marya Skrypiczajko
December 2004

…

During the US occupation of Iraq, administrator Paul Bremer decreed 100 orders pertaining to Iraq’s economic, political and social future. These orders are now in place until revised or repealed by a new Iraqi regime. Since the new Iraqi government is tied to the US government, it is not expected to be revising Bremer’s orders any time soon.

Order 81 is a new patent law that includes a chapter on plant variety protection. The gist of this chapter is that Iraqi farmers are now only allowed to plant “protected” crop varieties defined as new, distinct, uniform and stable. The heritage seeds Iraqi farmers have been saving since the time of Babylon do not meet these criteria; those that do are products of multi-national seed companies and include transgenic seeds. In addition, this order gives plant breeders that claim to have discovered the new varieties the exclusive rights to all production and sales of the “protected” varieties in seed and harvested plant form.

This monopoly will last 20 years for crop varieties and 25 for trees and vines. Basically, it gives the large biotech companies control over Iraq’s seed trade and thus, a significant part of their agricultural system. Furthermore, it forces Iraqi farmers to become dependant on these companies. These amendments are not at all in line with Iraq’s previous patent law, which prohibited private ownership of biological resources.

…

In Iraq, all this is being touted as “agricultural reconstruction.” The officials who enacted this law claim it is to ensure Iraq has a steady supply of good quality seeds and to make it easier for it to become a member of the WTO. They then tie this in to their goal of claiming to help better feed the citizens of Iraq.

Hmmm. Iraqi farmers previously used seeds they had specifically designed for their growing conditions. North American and European members of the WTO do not have to abide by similar restrictions on seed use. Hunger has so far not been solved in any other under-privileged country by corporate control of that country’s seed market. It seems clear that this is actually about the control and commercialization of Iraq’s agriculture system, not about helping the Iraqi people.

…

---

These decrees can be found at http://www.cpa-iraq.org/regulations/#Regulations

It becomes obvious to anyone reading the Bremer Decrees that the “model country” that the president bush plans to create in Iraq is going to be based on the failed “neo-liberal” policies that have already ruined several countries. To be blunt, the president bush has sold out Iraq from under the Iraqis to his corporate allies. I believe there is something in the Geneva Conventions about this. Oh. That’s right. I forgot. Mr Gonzalez, our new Attorney General says they’re outmoded and “quaint”.

This particular decree makes the farmers of Iraq nothing more than indentured servants to the bio-tech corporations, and is just a small example of what the president bush envisions for Iraq. Its economy has already been sold out. These decrees have the effect of reducing Iraq to nothing more than a fiefdom of the US.

It remains to be seen how independent the new government of Iraq is going to be, or rather, allowed to be. If these decrees are left in place, and the US maintains its military presence in Iraq, as the administration says it is (and the permanent military bases we’re building says we are), there is not going to be much “independence” or “sovereignty” for the Iraqi people.

Meanwhile, the administration trots out the recent election, and new schools, and happy smiling Iraqis, and points to this as justification for its obscene invasion. The US has killed tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi people. Look at your family tonight, and picture them with their heads blown off, and their guts spilling out on the ground. That’s what the president bush has done.

The US has poisoned the ground, the buildings, the Iraqi people, and even our own military, with the hundreds of tons of depleted (DU) munitions. That’s going to last thousands of years. The Iraqis are still suffering from the effects of these munitions used in the first Iraq war when considerably less was used. Now those consequences can be multiplied a thousand-fold. And, the president bush has still been unable to articulate a coherent reason for any of this.

As of now, 1,499 US military personnel have been killed in this obscene farce. The president bush has not attended a single funeral, nor has he allowed any photographs of the coffins of our brave young men and women as they return to the US as the ultimate “Army of One”. The president bush sent them from their homes, for whatever twisted reason, in our name. He should, at the least, have the decency to acknowledge, and honor, their return. And we should demand that he does so.

The mainstream media are also complicit in the administration’s crimes. These are the things that should be the headlines, the front page stories, daily. By shuffling the Iraq war to the back pages, unless, of course, some outrage or another occurs, they allow the president bush to evade the responsibility and accounting for his crimes.

And where is Congress in all this? Do they pay attention? Or are they too busy picking up the envelopes for their “campaign fund” ? This failure to hold the administration accountable shows how corrupt and cowardly the US Congress has become. Older readers may remember a time when the Congress stood up to presidents, and refused to be enfeebled through fear and craven appeals to partisanship.

I don’t know what it’s going to take to turn this country around from the direction it’s heading. And where it’s heading is catastrophe. Do we really think the rest of the world doesn’t notice? Maybe catastrophe is where we’ll have to end before the American people wake up and say “Stop. That’s enough. We want our country back”.